What You Should Know About Property Preservation

Property preservation is the practice of preparing a property that has been foreclosed upon, or that has defaulted or entered into the possession of a bank. This is because for such properties, the quality of the property itself is often quite low as a result of poor handling by the prior homeowners.

Once an owner of a piece of land and the buildings on that land knows that he or she will be losing the property to foreclosure, for example, he or she is unlikely to spend a great deal of time or effort in attempting to fix that piece of property and maintain it appropriately. As a result, property preservation is often necessary in order to restore that property to a sales-worthy state.

Property preservation also involves securing the land and the property in order to ensure that the land is not damaged any further, be it by the prior owners or by others. Changing the locks on a foreclosed house, for example, would perform the function of property preservation with regard to preventing the previous owners from coming back and causing any damage to the house.

If the land has a swimming pool, then those performing the property preservation will need to secure that swimming pool according to the proper guidelines for the state and city or town in which the land lies. Any trash or debris on the land must be removed as part of property preservation, and the property must be made both safe from any squatters or thieves, as well as safe from the elements.

This means that property preservation often involves boarding up the windows, and also emptying the water pipes of a given property, as well as taking further action in order to winterize the property.

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