Insane Bank Practices: Role of Asset Management companies in liquidating REOs!

As we all know banks are not in the business of managing properties.   So, after the Real Estate crash of 2006 some banks reached out to these Asset Management companies to help them with the task of liquidating millions of Real Estate assets which they were going to foreclose.   The role of these Asset Management companies had 2 major roles which was to provide a valuation platform on these assets in addition to managing the process of expenses and day to day interaction with Real Estate agents who were assigned to market these assets.

Mind you not ALL the banks opted to outsource these services to these outside companies and banks like Wells Fargo Home Mortgage have their own REO organization that handles the liquidation of Wells Fargo and they do  a much better jobs of any 3rd Party Asset Management company.  

1) Provide Valuation Platform:  Asset Management companies such as RES.NET, Bramer Asset Management, IASServices, LRES….etc where charted to provide Broker Price Opinion platforms for valuation of these Assets.  These companies were also chartered to train agent on valuation and 

2) Expense Management:  The 2nd critical role of the Asset Management companies was to manage the remote task of property management for the banks using the Realtors.  In other words, Asset Management companies used Realtors to do the banks’ dirty work FREE of charge!!    We were supposed to locate contractors to provide bids on repairs for approval.  And any repair cost that exceeded $500, the realtors were supposed to provide 2 bids.  

These Asset Management companies who were using Realtors to get FREE Property Management, were not satisfied with the fee they were charging to the Banks per Assets.  Starting in 2010 these Asset Management companies routinely cut themselves into the Real Estate transaction commission and reduced the Listing Agent’s commission by 1% to make themselves rich from the REO liquidation business.  

Overall, our experience with the Asset Management companies in the past 7 years of REO Liquidation has been mixed with some good Asset Manager coupled with some amazingly incompetent one’s who could have easily killed the deals with their complete ignorance of Civil and Criminal law of State of California.

What has been your experience with Asset Management companies!?  Let us know.