Junk Removal business

[Dien Rice]

Originally Posted by sandalwood

Dien,

Great story. I am very glad some young people still have the entrepreneur DNA. Means mankind might stay alive.

As for the cleaning out of houses, it depends on the house. By that I mean if it is a foreclosure, the lender won't use anyone who isn't licensed, bonded and on their approved list.

How do I know? I looked into it after the real estate bubble went pop. If the government takes back the house, the hurdles to becoming the clean up person are even greater. How do I know? I looked into it.

Individual real estate brokers don't hire people to clean up houses unless they own them. The brokers are given the house by the lender to resell. The lender obtains the clean up workers. How do I know? I looked into it.

I also know some people in the business. They are meticulous about getting the properties cleaned and junk hauled away as they can be. The reason is simple. They can be replaced in a heartbeat. They operate by contract and are on call 24 hours a day, 7 days a week.

One of the people told me the worst to deal with is the government. When they call, they give you a deadline. If you don't meet it, they move you to the bottom of the list and there you stay. He told me they paid quite well and on time but they were hard task masters.

I think there are easier ways to make a buck at least here in Northern Nevada. We have our share of vacant and abandoned houses to be sure. However, if a person wants to be Mr Junk Remover, good luck. That end of the real estate chain is already sewed up.

Mind you, everything I said above is applicable to Northern Nevada. It may be different in Osh Kosh or Bangor or Laramie. Don't know about those places but I would bet it parallels or mirrors our scenario.

However, I know of one house a person can come and clean and remove the junk. Anyone guessing the correct answer gets an all expense paid trip to anywhere they wish to pay to go.

Have a great day.

Hi Tom,

Thanks for that great info. Willow (the girl in the story) did it this way...

What she did was she talked to the new owners of recently sold homes if they would like the "junk" removed (assuming it hadn't been removed already)... Since they owned the house (having just bought it), there were no issues.

She knew who to ask, because her Mom was a real estate agent, so her Mom knew who the new owners were for the houses she sold.

Therefore, one idea is you could get some of this info from real estate agents, especially if you developed a relationship with one who would be willing to tell you the info on new owners... (However, you might wonder, why would they bother? - unless they were a friend or family... I have no idea of what possible "legalities" may be here, either.)

The main thing though, is you would have to be able to find out who the new owners are, so you can contact them. Often there are ways of doing that (though I'm not an expert in that - though I know others here do know that info...).

These comments in past posts may also be useful...

"Go to your County CourtHouse...to the Assessor's Office and ask if they have a LIST of people who have purchased Homes. (If their office doesn't have this "Public" list, some office does)"
http://www.sowpub.com/forum/showthread.php?p=18322

"You can check with your local Courthouse and / or City Hall. Often they can provide you with a recent list of all new move-ins. However digging the names and addresses up yourself can be time consuming so you may want to consider outsourcing it by purchasing a list from a list broker who specializes in obtaining names and addresses of new move-ins sorted by zip code."
http://www.sowpub.com/forum/showthread.php?p=24374

Is it worth doing? I suspect it probably strongly depends on the characteristics of the area.

Where I live, if a house is sold, it's already been cleaned. Usually the seller will clean it, or at least remove the "junk", in order to get a higher price. (I was involved in the sale of a condo just over a year ago, and we got all the "junk" removed just for that reason.)

However, in a "down" market, with many "abandoned" and "foreclosed" homes, that may not always be the case - so in that kind of market, there may be better opportunities for "junk removal". The way Willow did it was to get permission from the new owner who just purchased the house (assuming it hadn't been cleaned already), rather than contacting lenders/owners prior to sale...

She lives in Florida, which is the state with the largest percentage foreclosure rate...

http://realestate.yahoo.com/promo/st...reclosure.html

Best wishes,

Dien