Bank Owned & REO Property Preservation

Property preservation and code compliance for bank owned and REO properties across Maryland's Eastern Shore, Delaware, and Virginia. Initial cuts and mowing cycles, licensed weed control, tree pruning, drainage and grading, walkway and hardscape inspection, debris removal, snow removal, and a dated set of photographs from every visit. Licensed and insured. MHIC #105982, MDA Pesticide #27327, MDE Yellow Card.

Get On The Schedule (443) 205-4415

We keep it cut, keep it clear, and keep the file current.

Between the day a property goes back to the lender and the day somebody new takes the keys, nothing about it pauses. Grass keeps growing. A lot nobody is watching starts collecting other people’s tires and mattresses. A limb that comes down in a storm stays down, and the vines get into the fence line. The county writes to whoever is on the deed, and by then that is the bank.

We handle the outside of those properties across Maryland’s Eastern Shore, Delaware, and the Virginia shore counties. A first cut on ground that has gone months without one, a cycle after that so it never gets back to where it was, debris and dumped material hauled off, brush and limbs cleared, and a dated set of photographs from every visit so the file is complete without anyone having to ask for it.

Preservation and compliance are the two halves of it. Compliance runs to somebody else’s clock: a code deadline, a date on a work order, an inspection that has to clear before a closing. Preservation is keeping the property from getting worse while it waits on a buyer, and an empty property gets worse quietly. A downspout comes apart in March and pours against the wall until somebody drives out in July.

Neither half is a mowing contract. Treating what comes up through a gravel drive takes a pesticide applicator license. Correcting a grade that has turned back toward a foundation takes erosion and sediment control certification. Assessing a heaved walk and then repairing it takes an MHIC number. We hold all three, and every card below names the one it runs under.

Overgrown Lots First cut on standing growth

Scheduled Mowing Held on a cycle after that

Concrete Repair Cracked slabs & trip hazards

Pruning & Tree Service Limbs, deadwood, shrubs

Storm Cleanup After a blow

Clean Outs Loaded and hauled out

Parcel Clearing Ground put back in order

Brush Chipped On Site Nothing left by the drive

What a season without upkeep does to a property.

The county writes a citation. Height limits on grass and weeds are a code violation across the Shore, and the notice goes to whoever is on the deed. Nobody is living there to bring the mail in, so the first anybody hears of it is usually the second notice.

A notice carries a deadline to abate. Miss it and many jurisdictions will send their own contractor, cut it themselves, and attach what that took to the property. That attaches to the title, and it has to be cleared before the property can transfer. A missed mowing cycle becomes a closing delay, and it does it quietly, through the mail, at an address where nobody is picking up the mail.

The whole escalation is headed off by the smallest thing on this page, which is being on a cut and treatment schedule before the first notice is ever written.

It stops showing. An agent cannot photograph a lot that is chest high, and a buyer who pulls into a drive through waist-high weeds has already decided something is wrong inside before anybody opens the door. Everything on this page is upstream of a showing.

Water starts going the wrong way. This is the one that reaches the structure rather than the look of the place. Nobody is clearing the gutters, so they fill and overflow at the wall. Nobody notices the grade that has settled toward the house, or the swale that has silted in, or the downspout that came apart at the elbow. A season of that puts water against a foundation every time it rains, and the damage is in the footing and the crawlspace long before it is visible from the road. A vacant property is the one where it goes unwatched the longest.

Something falls. A dead limb over a driveway does not care that the house is empty, and a hanger left in the canopy after a blow comes down on its own schedule.

Trip hazards become somebody’s liability. A heaved walk slab, a settled step, a loose railing. The property is still being walked on, by agents, inspectors, appraisers and contractors, and none of them are looking down.

Every visit comes back with photographs.

A property manager working a file two hours away cannot see the lot. The photographs are the only thing standing between the order and the invoice, and a set that arrives short is a visit that has to be argued about later.

Ours come back dated, in a before, during and after set, wide enough to show the whole face of the work and close enough to show that it was finished. Address confirmation, the standing growth before the crew starts, the ground after, the debris loaded, and whatever else was found on the property that nobody knew about yet. An open well, a collapsed outbuilding, a dumped load in the tree line, a dead tree leaning at the neighbor.

On acreage we photograph from the air. Our crews already document construction sites by drone for erosion and sediment control compliance, and a twelve acre parcel is the same problem: no photograph taken from the driveway shows what the back of it looks like.

Scheduled inspections come back as a written report with the images attached, so a hardscape finding or a drainage note is on the file in a form somebody can act on rather than buried in a folder of photographs.

The point of all of it is that nobody has to come and check. One set of images per visit, filed the day it happens.

The First Cut

Ground that has stood since spring is not a mowing job. Above roughly knee height a mower stops cutting and starts pushing, so the first pass is brush equipment and the second pass is the mower behind it. Then the string trimmer around the foundation, the meter, the fence line, the mailbox and anything else the county photographs when it writes a citation. On a lot that has gone a full season the growth has usually hidden something, so the crew walks it before anything starts turning.

Scheduled Lawn Mowing

After the first cut the property goes on a cycle so it never returns to that state, which is a fraction of the work the first cut was. Fourteen days holds a lawn through Shore summer. Thirty days is enough through spring and autumn and on a rural parcel where nobody is measuring the turf. The cycle runs on our calendar rather than on someone remembering to order each visit. See lawn mowing and year round maintenance plans.

Scheduled Weed Control

Mowing does not touch what comes up through a gravel drive, a fence line, a walkway joint, or the stone around an outbuilding, and that is most of what makes a property read as abandoned. It also runs on its own calendar rather than the mowing one: pre-emergent goes down before anything germinates, and after that it is spot treatment on a cycle, so the drive and the fence line stay clear between cuts instead of being cut back to bare stems every two weeks. Applying herbicide for hire in Maryland requires a license, which is why a lot of vendors mow around the problem instead of treating it. We carry MDA Pesticide Business #27327 and Applicator #42337, so bare-ground and selective control is something we can do rather than something we have to sub out. Near tidal water it is done inside Maryland’s water quality rules and the Chesapeake Bay Program restrictions. See weed control.

Scheduled Pruning & Limb Maintenance

Limbs over the drive and the walk, deadwood, hangers left in the canopy after a blow, and the shrubs that have grown across the windows and the front door. On a vacant property this is a safety item before it is an appearance one. It goes on a schedule for the same reason the mowing does: shrubs put on most of their growth in one stretch of the year, and a hedge that swallows a front step over a single season takes a fraction of the work to keep back that it takes to cut out. Structural pruning on trees is a dormant-season job, so it lands on the calendar rather than on whoever happens to be there in July. What comes down goes through the chipper on site, and we are a Maryland Licensed Forest Product Operator (#011109), so the wood has somewhere real to go. See tree and shrub trimming and brush chipping.

Drainage, Grading & Water

The item that reaches the structure rather than the look of the place. Gutters and downspouts that have filled and are emptying at the wall, grade that has settled back toward the house, swales silted in, and washouts on a slope nobody has looked at. Our people hold the MDE Erosion and Sediment Control certification (the Yellow Card) and the Delaware DNREC Blue Card, which is the credential for reading and correcting how water moves across disturbed ground, and we install these controls for a living rather than reading a checklist. See erosion control and excavating.

Scheduled Hardscape Inspection

Heaved slabs, settled steps, loose railings, a drive breaking up at the apron, a retaining wall starting to lean. These get walked past by agents, appraisers and inspectors who are not looking down, and they are the property’s clearest liability while it sits empty. These get walked on a set schedule rather than when somebody trips, and each one comes back as a written report with the photographs attached. We assess them as MHIC #105982, a contractor licensed to repair what gets found rather than only to report it, so the fix and the finding do not need two vendors. See property and site inspections and concrete repair.

Debris & Dumping

An empty lot with no one on it gets used. Tires, mattresses, bagged household trash, cut-up furniture, and the contents of somebody’s truck bed at two in the morning. It comes off the property and goes where it belongs, which is not the tree line at the back of the parcel. A shed that has come down on itself, a detached garage nobody is going to save, or a farm outbuilding past use comes out the same way. See junk removal.

Brush, Limbs & Overgrowth

Fence lines grown shut, lanes closing in, volunteer trees against the foundation, and vines through everything. The chipper comes to the property and the material goes through it where it was cut, so the job finishes the same day instead of leaving a pile for the next visit to deal with. See land clearing and site prep.

Storm Response

The Shore takes wind off the Bay and the property with nobody in it is the one that stays down longest. After a named storm we can walk the property and report on it whether or not anything needs doing, which is the answer to the call that comes in the next morning asking whether the asset is still standing. Then the work itself: limbs, hangers left in the canopy, whole trees sectioned out of a driveway, and the debris a tidal surge leaves on a waterfront parcel. See storm cleanup.

Winter Access

A property still has to be reachable for an inspection, an appraisal or a showing after a snow. Snow removal on drives and walks, and the walk cleared far enough that somebody in street shoes can get to the door.

What we do not take on, and who you want instead.

Naming this is faster for everybody than finding out on the due date.

Taking the house down. Large demolition and home teardowns are their own trade, their own permitting and their own insurance, and they are not what we are set up for. Outbuildings are a different matter. A shed that has collapsed on itself, an old detached garage, a farm building past saving: those come down and go out with the rest of the debris, and on a vacant property they are usually the first thing an inspector writes up.

Interior work. We do the outside. An interior clearout, a carpet pull, or anything past the threshold is a different trade and a different set of licenses.

Securing the building. Lock changes, lock boxes, and boarding openings are a locksmith and a security contractor. We will photograph a door standing open and tell you about it the same day, but we will not be the ones to close it.

Plumbing winterization. In this industry winterizing means draining the system so the pipes do not split over a hard freeze, and that is a plumber. The winterizing on our maintenance plans is irrigation and landscape, which is not the same job and should not be ordered as if it were.

Anything that needs a permit we do not hold. Where a job crosses into work our licenses do cover, we say so plainly rather than subcontracting it quietly. We are licensed and insured for everything on this page. We carry MHIC #105982, Maryland Licensed Forest Product Operator #011109, MDE Erosion and Sediment Control (Yellow Card), the Delaware DNREC Blue Card, and MDA pesticide and fertilizer business licenses, and we are licensed in Maryland, Delaware and Virginia.

Where we cover.

Orders get assigned by county, so here is the list rather than a radius on a map.

Maryland. Dorchester, Talbot, Caroline, Wicomico, Worcester, Somerset, Queen Anne’s, Kent, and Cecil.

Delaware. Kent and Sussex.

Virginia. Accomack and Northampton.

That is one contractor across the whole Delmarva shore rather than a different number for every county, which is the part that takes work off a desk. One point of contact, one crew that already knows where the property is, and photographs that arrive without being chased.

Call before you need it done.

We do not quote a turnaround in days, because the honest answer changes with the season and we would rather not give you a date we have to walk back. The week after a blow, every crew on the Shore is already committed.

So the useful thing is a call ahead of the need. Scheduled maintenance on a cycle, scheduled hardscape inspections, a post-storm walk and report on the properties you want watched. Then the property is already on the calendar when a showing gets booked, instead of the showing setting a date we have to try to reach.

If it is a one-off, that is fine too. Tell us the address and what the property looked like the last time anybody stood on it, and we will tell you what the first visit needs to be. Ground that has stood a full season and a lawn that missed three cuts are the same line on an order form and completely different days of work, and it is better to sort out which one it is before a crew is standing in it.

Got a showing coming?
Call before you need it done.