Since the departure of Ed Delgado from Five Star, some years ago, any hope of meaningful discussions turned towards the commercialized pomp and circumstance most vividly portrayed in Shakespeare’s play Othello. Candidly, Delgado’s last meaningful attempt to change the Industry from being simply a black hole sucking money in was with his publication about the need for a Universal Work Order. In fact, Delgado’s paper from June 2017 was written in his then position as President and CEO of the Five Star Institute and on behalf of the National Mortgage Servicing Association (NMSA) and entitled, PROTECTING CONSUMERS AND COMMUNITIES: PROPOSAL FOR STANDARDIZATION OF KEY DEFINITIONS, GUIDANCE, AND BEST PRACTICES FOR THE PRESERVATION AND MAINTENANCE OF VACANT & ABANDONED RESIDENTIAL PROPERTIES.

On Page 7 and identified as Opportunity #3, Property Inspection Report. Delgado states,

A common inspection report will improve the quality of the report, reduce the training needs for each inspector, encourage the adoption of mobile applications, and establish common industry standards. A derivative of Fannie Mae’s property inspection requirements (Form 30) and format should be utilized to consistently capture the discrete property condition attributes by all servicers and property inspection vendors. Regulators, investors, servicers, and property inspection vendors should collaborate to create a standard methodology and approach for assessing the condition of a property.

The Five Star has become more of a poor man’s IMN conference in recent years and for all intents and purposes, it has completely replaced the National Association of Mortgage Field Services (NAMFS) Annual Conference. In fact, other than the typo ridden NAMFS Response to CFPB Proposed Amendments to Regulation X, nothing has really been forthcoming other than their payments of over $100,000 to Gatehouse Strategies to bump pricing up a bit from Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. The years of $100,000+ annual payments to NAMFS Executive Director Eric Miller have, for all intents and purposes, bankrupted the trade association. Recently, after the co-opting of NAMFS by Verisk with handsome benefits and payments to both the NAMFS Executive Director Miller and NAMFS President Matt Zoldowski, the former with junket trips all over the US and the latter as a paid agent, have been questioned by many for their legality and propriety. Moreover, though, the antitrust issue raised by the control of all property preservation and bidding software by Verisk and the increase of pricing, their almost single handed financing of the last NAMFS Annual Conference leaves little to the imagination.

Brookstone Management along with ZVN Properties joined with MCS to kick off trading their Cliff Notes on property preservation. It was most surprising in that both Brookstone Management and ZVN Properties are aware of MCS and their involvement with GIS Field Services and the accusations of both illegally transferring proprietary contractor information directly to GIS Field Services and that both firms are owned by Littlejohn & Co. Antitrust was alive and well and financially supported, once again, just like the NAMFS #FraudFests of old.

Denia Ray, VP of Property Preservation for ZVN Properties was Ringmaster for Kimberly Dawson, SF Collateral Risk-Real Estate Asset Management Director of Property and Field Solutions, Fannie Mae; Mike Greenbaum, COO, Safeguard Properties; Tracy Hager, SVP, MCS; and Ryan Hennessy, CIO, Guardian Asset Management. Then came Ringmaster Kerry Medel, Director of Client Engagement and Compliance Oversight, Brookstone Management  for Jim Pike, VP Field Services, Cyprexx Services LLC; Talia Ramirez, VP, Claims, Preservation and Government Servicing, Computershare Loan Services; Denia Ray, VP, Property Management, ZVN Properties; and Abigail Schuettinger, Director of Operational Excellence for Field Services, Altisource. Finally, Ringmaster Brian Flaherty, COO, Global Strategic for Micole Booker, AVP, Investor Claims Property Preservation, Flagstar Bank; Meredith Lyons, Executive Principal, Xome; Elizabeth Squires, AVP, Client Account Management, Safeguard Properties and Luis Vergara, Chief Strategy Officer & Chief Product Officer, Guardian Asset Management.

Basically, it was a circle jerk of the same people blowing smoke up each other’s ass just switching seats in between forums. It was a mid level advertising event in an Industry that is rapidly imploding on itself. And it was truly sad. Hundreds of thousands of dollars spent from the tens of millions of dollars stolen from Labor. And the desperation that was added to the top of these forum discussions was the totally meaningless information spewed about much like how vomit is hurled off the porches on fraternity row.