"As the mortgage-lending crisis spreads, business is booming among small mortgage field-servicing firms such as JR Services, which specialize among other things in "property preservation." Driving the trend: the national homeowner-vacancy rate, which measures how many vacant homes are for sale. That rate rose to 2.8% in the fourth quarter of 2007, matching a record set in the first quarter of last year; by some accounts, it hasn't been this high since the Great Depression. Meantime, U.S. foreclosure filings, a prelude to vacancies, surged 75% last year to 2.2 million, according to RealtyTrac. In December alone, there were 215,749 foreclosure filings, almost double from December 2006......" Foreclosures, Vacant Homes
For This Niche Industry, Foreclosures Bring a Boom
