At the company’s headquarters here, Adam Smith will assume the duties of Tony Eaton, who has left to pursue personal goals. Smith, formerly director of dispositions, began working for the company in May 2011, and is an integral part of the company’s growth plans and commitment to quality. Also to better serve its clients, Land Interests has reorganized the majority of its sales-advisory personnel to local offices to be more responsible to specific project and related client needs and to establish a local presence in each market.

“We are very fortunate to have someone of Adam’s caliber step in after Tony’s departure,” says Mudgett. The company most recently closed out of two large portfolios consisting of 24 projects and more than 1,400 lots throughout Northern California, Southern California and the Phoenix metropolitan area.

Mudgett tells GlobeSt.com that the company was founded by CEO Erik Frechette in 2006, who in 2008 then founded Paladin ATM, an asset-preservation and management firm that handles a variety of tasks but primarily acts as a court-appointed receiver. “We were led into that field by various banking clients,” Mudgett tells GlobeSt.com. “What caused the expansion was quite frankly doing good work for them. They led us through them to other states.”

The company now has assets in New Mexico, Utah, Idaho, Nevada, Indianapolis and Florida and has set up a receivership offices in Texas because receivers need to be state residents there, Mudgett continues. In addition, the company has primary offices here, in Las Vegas and in Walnut Creek, with satellite offices in Austin and Portland, OR. Land Interests’ primary financial-institution headquarters on the West Coast are in Los Angeles and San Francisco.

“The purpose is a combination of licensing requirements and having local regional real estate knowledge,” Mudgett tells GlobeSt.com. “Where are your customers? You need to be able to have offices there to be able to serve them better. It’s not just where the assignment is, but where are the firms that need our services?”

Mudgett adds that the company has no immediate plans to open more offices, “but if appropriate, we wouldn’t shy away from it. It’s a service business, so you do what you need to do to provide high-quality service.”

Bankers with real estate experience today continue to struggle at varying degrees with difficult assets because their primary focus is on banking, Mudgett continues. “It’s our responsibility to assist them as experts in the business to maximize the value of their assets. The maximizing can take many forms, from rezoning of a property to a quick disposition to a hold-and-improve to a different strategic plan. Sometimes we need to solve existing problems that remove liens and other encumbrances that are liabilities to the asset and which make the asset more valuable when removed.”