VPR Committee Conference Calls

While vacant property registration (VPR) ordinances have existed for years, most were not heavily enforced. That changed as the national mortgage crisis grew and cities experienced increasing numbers of vacant and abandoned properties. Cities with VPR ordinances on their books began to enforce them more vigorously, and many cities, Chicago, IL and Chula Vista, CA among them, enacted new ordinances.

In 2008, the Mortgage Bankers Association (MBA) created a Vacant Property Registration Committee, led by Safeguard's founder and chairman, Robert Klein. This committee convened a series of conference calls with representatives across the industry to discuss the potential impact of these ordinances on the property preservation world, and recommend more workable alternatives for both cities and servicers. Out of the VPR Committee grew the MERS^® Initiative. Today, more than 400 municipalities are signed onto the MERS^® system, used either in conjunction with existing VPR ordinances, or in place of them.