Odds are that you may have never heard about mortgage field inspections or know what the duties of an occupancy inspector are. Don’t worry most people don’t either. Mortgage field inspections are inspection ordered by mortgage companies on properties that they hold the loan on and where they need to check and determine if the property is occupied or vacant. Many times, these inspections are required to be completed so that the mortgage company stays in compliance with HUD, VA, FHA and Fannie Mae guidelines. HUD, VA, FHA and Fannie Mae are government backed programs that will issue the mortgage if the borrower defaults on the loan. So basically, they will buy back the loan from the mortgage company if the borrower fails to make the payments and the mortgage company has to foreclose on the property. These programs are in place to help encourage mortgage companies to loan out money to home buyers. These government programs all have guidelines that must be followed so the loans are eligible to be bought back, and part of that is set up an inspection when the mortgagor falls behind on their payments to determine if the property is still occupied or vacant. Now we do not work for the mortgage company we are independent contractors and we are rarely told what the nature of the inspection is so we do not want to assume that the property is in foreclosure or ever convey that idea to the home owners, occupants or neighbors. We are just there to determine the occupancy status and or deliver a door hanger card. The truth is there are many reasons that companies send us out to inspect a property and most time we do not get a reason. There are different reasons for an inspection like falling behind or missing payments, the mortgagor has applied for a home equity loan or a refi, filed for bankruptcy, mortgagor has passed away all of these will generate an inspection.
The types of inspections that were generally complete are:
- Drive-by inspections 5-6 photos
- Contact inspections 5-6-photos
- Door hanger inspections 6-7 photos
- Vacant interior inspections 20-30 photos
We will go into more detail on how to conduct these inspections in our videos in our Resources section as well as instructional resources that will be given to employees upon hire.