Landscape Is Changing for Field Service Industry.

Las Vegas -- The head of the nation's largest field services provider says that the field services niche is gaining respect and understanding from other participants in the mortgage servicing industry.

"The entire field services landscape has changed - over the last five years in particular," said Robert Klein, head of Safeguard Properties. "When I started this business, field services was thought of as the lowest point on the totem pole of the default management industry. Nobody would talk to us."

Nobody includes the Department of Housing and Urban Development, whose officials often told him that their client was the servicer, not a vendor such as a field services provider. But today, he said, HUD and other stakeholders in the mortgage finance system understand how important field service work is to minimizing losses in the event of default. A senior HUD executive and municipal officials recently participated in a panel discussion on field services that Mr. Klein hosted as part of the Western States Loan Servicing Conference here.

And that increased communication with HUD and other regulators and investors has been a good thing for all concerned, Mr. Klein told MSN.

HUD's guidelines for field services work, which are often used as a template for other investors, are very complicated, Mr. Klein said. Interpretation of the guidelines is a key factor in guiding how field service providers know when and how to perform property preservation and maintenance work, and HUD now views companies such as Safeguard as business partners.

"We have made it our business to become experts," Mr. Klein said. "We are out there to protect their interests as well as our clients."

As a result, Safeguard now presents a ...