Property preservation and field services enter 2026 facing many headwinds. Costs have climbed, volumes have shifted, and stagnant pricing structures have left contractors and preservation vendors absorbing pressure from multiple angles. At the same time, servicers face heightened scrutiny, aging portfolios, and climate-driven risk, requiring faster reporting and tighter compliance. The industry is being asked to do more with less, even as the labor pool thins and technology investment becomes critical.
In this year’s look at the state of the property preservation sector, leaders fromAREMCO,Cyprexx,ServiceLink,Genstone Field Services, andSafeguard Properties share how they’re redesigning operations, rebuilding the contractor ecosystem, and using technology—especially AI—not as a buzzword, but as a practical tool to keep properties safe, servicers compliant, and communities protected.
In this excerpt from the December 2025 MortgagePoint cover story “The Cost of Readiness,” we’re sharing insights from Raquel Pasala, VP, ServiceLink.
We’ve heard from many about how HUD’s pricing structure is impacting vendors and contractors. How is this affecting the health of the industry, and what would you like to see change in HUD’s approach?
It would be good to establish a regular schedule or cadence for pricing reviews that includes automatic increases every two to three years, at most every five years. As an industry, we should be on the same page so that there’s a standard for cost. Multiple layers of the supply chain need to be considered, each adding value, from local boots on the ground to regional and national providers. From servicers and investors, all the way up, there needs to be appropriate compensation, taking into account the additional requirements that need to be met. Technology costs need to be taken into account, as well. This impacts the health of the industry as it creates barriers to entry into the field for new players. As providers retire, the field is thinning.
How are companies like ServiceLink managing to maintain service quality and compliance standards despite financial pressure from outdated pricing models?
ServiceLink continues to invest in our technology, which allows us to implement added automated quality control and scale as needed with things like image recognition and natural language processing. This allows us to maintain our top-notch quality service and meet compliance standards through an upfront investment that will help our clients in the long term.
Labor shortages continue to challenge preservation firms nationwide. What are the biggest hurdles you face when recruiting and retaining qualified field contractors today?
The cost structure is certainly prohibitive, as are the restrictions we face when it comes to the level of training we can provide for our independent contractor providers. There is also a lack of instruction from an industry guideline perspective. They outline the result but not how to get there, and that leaves a lot open to interpretation. Ambiguity can be a challenge.
How do generational shifts in the workforce—especially younger workers’ expectations for technology, flexibility, and communication—affect the way you structure field operations or training programs?
We adapt our training programs to meet the needs of each individual we are working with. We are cognizant of the fact that today’s younger generations are very conscious of the environment, work-life balance, personal safety, and mental health. We have shifted to a more flexible work environment, with work-from-home options and flexible scheduling to accommodate the needs of today’s employees.
There has been notable consolidation across field services and related sectors in recent years. How is this reshaping the competitive landscape?
The shift has been needed, in a sense, to right-size the industry, where default volumes have been decreasing for many years. However, it has minimized the number of options our clients have.
How is ServiceLink leveraging technology to improve efficiency or compliance in field services today?
ServiceLink is at the forefront of leveraging advanced technology to enhance efficiency and compliance in mortgage field services, particularly through its proprietary EXOS Technologies platform, which integrates artificial intelligence, machine learning, and cloud-based systems to automate workflows, reduce turnaround times, and ensure regulatory adherence across default management processes. Central to this is EXOS One Marketplace®, a comprehensive asset decisioning hub that provides servicers and investors with real-time, portfolio-wide visibility into property statuses via personalized performance dashboards, predictive analytics and geospatial modeling—enabling users to drill down to ZIP-code-level forecasts for repair probabilities, water intrusion risks or other preservation needs based on historical data and environmental factors, thereby optimizing costs, minimizing losses and justifying claims in audits by embedding HUD guidelines, timelines and claimable expense calculators directly into the interface.
This tool collectively addresses fragmented workflows by consolidating data from field services, auctions, loss analysis and asset management into a single ecosystem, fostering proactive decision-making amid labor shortages and economic volatility, while built-in compliance checks—such as transactional claimability reviews and exception flagging—help navigate diverse investor requirements (e.g., FHA vs. GSE loans) without manual intervention, ultimately driving greater scalability, accuracy and resilience in an industry grappling with rising property complexities.
How do you balance the human expertise required for nuanced field decisions with the increasing automation of inspections, reporting, and quality assurance?
We always work hard to ensure we’re providing our clients and field partners with a white glove service, keeping that human touch and having a person involved every step of the way. We have open lines of communication for those nuanced situations, and they can get a hold of a person at all hours of the day, so we can facilitate and partner with them for the unique decisions that are needed for a given asset. We have streamlined our real-time communication to ensure there is always a human to provide support and expertise.
Are there opportunities for greater collaboration across preservation, asset management, and mortgage servicing that the industry hasn’t fully capitalized on yet?
Yes. ServiceLink offers an end-to-end solution that brings all these areas together, which helps to reduce costs for our clients by streamlining the process. This is something that we do that is unique and is an opportunity for the industry as a whole to take note. There is often a focus on individual partners, which can segment and bifurcate the process. When you collaborate across preservation, asset management, and mortgage servicing—along with title and auction—you plug those gaps and meet all their needs that otherwise are left to the client to fill. This is where offerings like EXOS One Marketplace really benefit our clients.
What are the “blind spots” you think the industry still has: areas that aren’t getting enough attention but will be critical for long-term sustainability?
The industry does a great job of identifying a wide variety of areas that need attention. What is missing is the overall view that considers all these individual focuses—that often are tugging in different directions—to provide insight and pull together the big picture.
The post Pricing Pressures and Technology’s Role in Field Services first appeared on The MortgagePoint.
