Safeguard Properties

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****The following reflects my opinion, readers are encouraged to form their own conclusions**** Abysmal is the only way I can describe the management of this company. From my understanding, they employ ghost writers and seek to get articles published in magazines in an attempt to bolster their image, but the management of Safeguard seems to have completely lost sight of their stated mission - to safeguard properties in their care from loss. Unfortunately their business model is to subcontract all of the maintenance and management work out to what was proven to be mostly untrained vendors. The industry of maintaining homes in various stages of foreclosure has been correctly identified as "a race to the bottom", and it seems that Safeguard is the biggest cheerleader for that race. Come on and think about it, these homes are assets that represent a significant investment - and they sit for many months, or sometimes even years while the foreclosure process takes place. During this time, it is Safeguard who is "supposed" to be responsible for ensuring that the property doesn't suffer any losses - whether it be from a leaky roof, a vandal breaking in, or a loss in value from poor exterior maintenance. Unfortunately Safeguard has been incredibly combative with their vendors for years, employing a strategy of skimming their invoices, charging the vendors back after the jobs are done. Let me explain. If you are a vendor with Safeguard, they send you many many properties to service each month - so that by the end of one month you may have serviced 100 homes, and you may have $10,000 in invoices waiting to be paid by them. So the next month, after you have done another 50 houses, Safeguard will "audit" your invoice for the month before and say "you remember this house from last month, well we say that there wasn't really 10 cubic yards of trash there - oh I know we agreed that there was when we sent you the work order to remove 10 cubic yards - but now that it's too late to do anything about it we are going to change your invoice and say you only removed 5 cubic yards". Now some people would say - fight them for the other 5 cubic yards, but then you risk getting dumped by them altogether, and Safeguard uses that to their advantage. They seem to take great satisfaction in trying to take a percentage from every month's invoice.. Safeguard claims they vet their subcontractors, but it is clear to anyone who has worked in quality control or code enforcement that the vendors Safeguard employs have no clue what they are doing. How Safeguard manages to talk their way into obtaining or keeping contracts with these financial institutions is a complete mystery.