Questions and Answers

Our service costs you nothing. In addition, our no cost service is designed to alleviate many of the carrying costs associated with a vacant property since many of these costs are paid by our subcontractor who is the resident Property Caretaker. You are however, required to maintain a Homeowner Fire Insurance policy and pay for any pool or hot tub maintenance services you already subscribe to which is no different then what you would provide if your home was vacant.

While there is no cost for our service, there is no fee paid to the Homeowner. Rather, Homes In Transition collects a small fee from our Caretakers each month which allows us to ensure the care, maintenance and showability for your home during the term of our Caretaker's occupancy and its eventual return to you ready for closing.

For many reasons your property may need some remedial work to make the home habitable or get bring it to a condition you would like us to maintain. We have a staff General Contractor that is licensed, bonded and insured that can perform any type service or repair your property may require to return it to top form so we can help your Realtor get it SOLD!

Due to the difficulty in repairing the damage that can be created by even the best of pets moving into an unfamiliar environment we do not allow pets unless expressly allowed in writing by our property owners. Fish and small birds are generally exempt from this rule on a case by case basis. That being said, if you own a house that had pets, or is likely to be sold to a pet owner, it makes sense to allow pets. Keep in mind, your former home is now just a house on the market for sale and many (84%) of buyers have or want pets.

A house with empty bedrooms is likely to get low ball offers -- a house that is a home, with children in it -- has LIFE in it. It is the contractual responsibility of the Caretaker to make sure the childrens room or rooms are kept "Show Ready" and we Reward our Caretakers (with Gift Certificates) for doing well in our unannounced Show Ready Inspections and charge them a reinspection fee if they have not lived up to their responsibilty when we return within 48 hours to make sfure the problem is resolved. 

On balance, a family looking for a 3 or 4 bedroom house will more likely be INSPIRED BY a well maintained, child filled, Show Ready Home... than a house that is empty, dusty and lifeless. After all, they ARE looking for a HOME -- aren't they?

Any time you have property, you have potential liabilities. Homes In Transition works to limit your exposure by... placing several buffers between you and portential liabilities.  We have our milliondollar blanket policy and every Caretaker has their policy as well. Your REAL Liability comes in if you DON'T have someone living in your Vacant Home... not only have you breached your insurance policy and the premiums you've been paying -- have NOT been purchasing insurance... you are fully on your own, with a breached policy and no buffer.  Let us help you with this huge problem -- with our FREE service -- could it get any better? Yes, we also have a 100% Guarantee!

YES, HIT's Services are completely free to you and the seller. 

We only ask that once the Vacant House is put into HIT's program,

that it stay in the program for the entire time it is on the market for sale. 

The Seller will incur a flat $500 fee if the Seller decides to return the house to vacant status

-- or decides to let a relative live in it, rent it or any other reason than the sale is consumated. 

Which is only fair, because HIT has incurred substancial costs to Background Check a proper Caretaker to the property, after interviewing them, reviewing their furniture, inspecting the property after the Caretaker has moved in, taking the time to properly Stage each room and weekly inspections in the first month to make certain the Caretaker is keeping the house in "Show Ready Condition".

Should the Seller decide to remove the property from our care, our costs will need to be covered and we will be assisting the Caretaker to relocate to another property under our care.  In general, it is expected that the Caretaker will be dedicated to the property they move into until it is sold.

HIT decided early on, that the service we provide can be free to the

homeowner and the realtor and still be a wonderful value to the Caretaker. 

We build our business on fairness principles and the principles of the more people we assist,

the more successful we will become. 

We have yet to have any complaints from Caretakers -- that think we charge too much ($500) for a house... and we have NEVER gotten a complaint from a Realtor or Homeowner about all the services we provide for FREE.

Well, it could and has happened in the past. 

We can be certain because we video our home inspections

prior to the Caretaker moving into the house. 

Our videos have, in every circumstance, proven to both

the Homeowner and the Caretaker when the damage occurred. 

The Caretaker is responsible for the proper repair of any damage that can be attributed to their actions. The Homeowner is responsible for things the Caretaker could not be expected to fix, i.e. a leaking roof or a broken pipe.

If a Caretaker has children that decide to write on the wall with a permanant marker, then the Caretaker is responsible for painting that wall again, if the carpet has grape juice or red wine spilled on it... a professional cleaner will need to remove the stain.

However, when you consider the TEN's of Thousands of dollars of LOSS avoided by dodging the infamous "Low Ball Offer" -- literally, a $350K house has $70K at risk - and that buys a whole lot of paint and carpet cleaning.

But, read the next two tabs and you'll feel even better about it.

YES, the Caretaker must have a $300K liability policy and their own Renter's Insurance (even though they are not renters).

The Caretaker has been very carefully screened and interviewed.

We know the history of Civil Litigation involving the Caretaker -- on a Local, City, State and National Level, we know the Criminal Background on the Local, City, State and National Level, we check the Caretaker against the Sexual Predator Database, we also do a full Credit History and then personally interview them.

We only bring Good Citizens into our program,

we know more about our Caretakers than their own Mothers do...

Could a Caretaker snap and rampage the house, doing untold damage?  Sure, but compared to the much higher odds of that happening if the house were to remain Vacant... it's not as likely.

Besides, the Homeowner retains a policy that would cover the house if damaged by a renter... that is pretty typical.

The Homeowner will BE ABLE to have the house insured with our Caretaker residing.

And, Homes In Transition also has Insurance... so the property is covered -- actually covered 4 ways... click the next question for how...

YES, HIT has a Million Dollar Policy that covers anything not covered by the Caretaker's and Homeowner's policies.

Besides, we have a Guarantee.

So, to review, the Property has Homeowner, Renter, HIT Insurances and has the HIT guarantee... the house is covered four ways. And, the house is going to sell faster and for more money... some people would say that the house is insured six ways!

EVERYTHING is guaranteed!

We have a 100% guarantee, that states that we will return the house to the seller in as good or better condition than when we filmed our Property Inspection Video. 

The Seller also gets access to the Property Inspection Video as soon as it is uploaded

to our system and it is available on line for review.

Now, naturally -- HIT is not going to be replacing items that broke or wore out -- like a hot water heater, microwave or dishwasher but will bring items damaged by the caretaker back to the condition it was in prior to the caretaker beginning to care for the property.

Realtors, you are our strategic partners -- we have a wonderful program for you.

• We have Seller Education emails, videos, mailers and handouts. 
• We have Video Emails of Introduction that we can put together for you -- very powerful tools that explain our program, to your Sellers, so that YOU don't have to... and we always try to make our videos funny and entertaining, rather than dry and boring. 
• We will link our powerful website to your website and for those that are looking for RELO experts we even have a special section. 
• We have advanced tools, like the video overlay you see on our pages and if you would like that kind of technology on your site... we can help you with accomplishing that as well... 
• We want your success to be excellent -- you'll gladly give us testimonials and letters of recommendation.

Before you become a Subcontractor Applicant, you will need to pay a registration fee of $89 to process your application and perform a background check. As a Subcontractor you will be obligated to pay for the general maintenance of the property, the utilities, and a low monthly fee of $500.00 per month.

Because the homes in our program are on the market for sale and subject to selling at any time, we do not offer a lease term. In fact, as a Subcontractor to Homes In Transition, you will have to agree that in the event of a sale, you will relocate to either one of our other available homes or out of the program within a specified time. The worst case could be as little as five days. Typically, however, you will have plenty of time to be relocated since most closing processes take several weeks.

Yes. Homes in Transition offers a Moving Program that you pay into on a monthly basis for a term that goes from property to property. Once you accept one of our homes, you have the option of signing up for the Moving Program. The program includes a large truck and men to move your belongings from HIT home to HIT home. We won’t pack your things but since we ask that you furnish the home modestly and tastefully, much of your precious, personal items will already be safely stored offsite or boxed neatly in the garage which will allow for a surprisingly fast move.

Due to the difficulty in repairing the damage that can be created by even the best of pets moving into an unfamiliar environment we do not allow pets unless expressly allowed in writing by our property owners. Fish and small birds are generally exempt from this rule on a case by case basis.

Because smoke is impossible to remove from an environment even after a thorough cleaning and the growing intolerance to even the slightest scent of smoke, we do not allow smoking of any kind in any of our properties.

Our property Caretakers are required to perform the general maintenance for the property during their occupancy. This would include tasks like cleaning the filters in the furnace, fix the dripping faucet or toilet, change the light bulbs, start-up or shut-down the evaporative cooler, make adjustments to the lawn sprinklers just to name a few. They are the kind of tasks that you would perform if it were your own home. The major repairs such as a leaking roof, broken water line, heating or cooling or plumbing failure and the like will be taken care of through our office and be the responsibility of the Homeowner. We also understand that for many of our Caretakers, this may be more then they can do. Therefore, we offer a general maintenance service that again, a Caretaker can pay into on a monthly basis for a term that goes from property to property that will perform these tasks on their behalf as required.

Really needs no explaination but let's talk about it for a moment. ALL homes in a neighborhood are affected by "Comps"... the comparable values in your immediate vicinity.  So what happens to your home value when the bank "short sales" your neighbor's house and then goes after your unfortunate neighbor for the balance -- it still is going to destroy YOUR house value.

An Association has bylaws to protect all those in the community.  But we are in extraordinary times and how can the association help EVERYONE involved when people are abandoning their houses for repossession?  Well, give Homes In Transition a call and we can suggest a change to your bylaws that can be voted on in the very next meeting! Prevent the lawns from destruction, general maintainance and upkeep from making your neighborhood from turning into a Ghost Town, one foreclosure at a time... It's your house values that are suffering as the bank ignores all requests to "take care of the house". A bank gets a great big write off when they "lose money" on a foreclosure, it's a paper loss because what they can't collect, they get back from the IRS in tax credits, so the only ones really losing are your and all your neighbors.  Don't let it happen -- call us!

One house is bad... but what happens when you have every tenth house in foreclosure? The sad fact is that the entire neighborhood goes into a death spiral and gets wiped out -- the values will not recover anytime soon because of the "comps" and buyers will say, "Why should we pay what the house WAS actually worth -- when all the comps are 35% less than the asking price?"

It's a tough one... that cannot be answered BECAUSE the neighborhood, the entire neighborhood -- did get wiped out!