Sustainable and Affordable Property Care 

Exquisite Property Services (EPS) provides property care and junk removal services that are high quality, affordable, efficient, and eco-friendly. We help customers divert as much waste as possible from landfills to save them money in disposal and cleaning costs while also protecting the earth. Our services offer an effective and efficient customer experience that is simply... EXQUISITE! 

Our History 

In December 2014, my Aunt Mary lost her ferocious fight with cancer. Immediately, the loss devastated my family to its core. In the middle of grappling with the gravity of our loss, we were also confronted with the responsibility of handling the care of the properties she had worked so hard to both attain and sustain. One of the properties even included the family home where she raised my mother and my mother subsequently raised my siblings and I.

Cleaning out the properties and hiring contractors proved cumbersome. Local bulk pick up ordinances were inconvenient, recycling regulations were confusing, and contractors wanted way more money than we could afford for our clean out projects. As novice homeowners we spent lots of money and wasted great amounts of time learning to navigate affordable property care services. 

At some point we completely depleted available funds for cleaning the properties out. We also live in a city that has an ordinance that limits the number of bulk items residents can sit out each month for pick up (10 items). As a naturally inquisitive person and a full time doctoral student in public administration, I decided to research local, state, and federal environmental protection agencies, learn about regulations, understand pricing, and ways residents could dispose of their own waste.

Armed with my new knowledge, I began my own do-it-yourself clean out projects, room by room. But I started to notice that as I pulled the dusty items out of each room and began sorting the waste from the family keepsakes, there was something wrong. The cleaning agents and dust involved in the projects were impacting my vulnerable respiratory condition. I went to the doctor and was given prescriptions for my asthma and told to limit my exposure to the cleaning agents and dust. But I was in the middle of a bunch of clean out projects that I needed to finish and had no money to hire a contractor. I started my research again. I learned about the differences in cleaning agents and air pollutants. I contacted industry experts to inquire about standards and best practices. I eventually learned about proper ways to conduct cleans out while minimizing contact with pollutants. I began testing the cleaning power of industry certified environmentally friendly cleaning agents and in a short time I was able to finish my clean out projects without compromising my health or the environment.

My family was completely surprised and absolutely excited about the work I managed to complete on my own and I was proud that I was able to figure out how to handle the project without costing the family tons of money. There was the added benefit that the work I completed was also safe for my health and the health of my environment. It also felt rewarding to donate the family's unwanted items to local nonprofits and senior homes rather than having the items end up in overcrowded landfills. 

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I knew I had done something that needed to be shared with friends, family and the community I love. 

Our Philosophy 

There is no shortage of property care and waste removal services for customers to choose. It is not my purpose here to pretend to invent the wheel. Waste management services come in all shapes and sizes. However, while property care services are not a new phenomenon, few standards have guided contractor ethics and little attention has been paid to customer service.

Big box companies have little to no attachments to the communities and families they serve. Missed or late service appointments, high fees, and poor work quality are just a few problems that plague many waste management products. EPS stand apart from its competitors in our philosophy to provide a commitment to EXQUISITE PROPERTY SERVICES!

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Our Leadership Team 

Karima Jackson, Owner and Operator

My name is Karima Jackson, owner and operator of Exquisite Property Services (EPS). I am a doctoral candidate at the School of Public Affairs and Administration at Rutgers University-Newark. With a research focus in administrative law and social/environmental justice, EPS is the result of years of research and industry examination to best understand how to provide quality, environmentally friendly, and affordable property care services to property owners in communities where those services are currently out of reach. My research includes quantitative and qualitative design and analysis in such courses as Urban Planning, Study of Public Organizations, Leadership Equity and Diversity, Government Budgeting and Resource Acquisition, Legal Foundations and Public Administration, and Performance Measurement and Management. I have taught undergraduate and graduate courses at Rutgers University-Newark in Navigating Space,Place and Identity; Introduction to Nonprofit Management; and Technology and Public Administration. I am published in the Journal of Public Administration Research and Theory on research around the theory of symbolic representative bureaucracy and the importance of institutions being representative of the communities they serve. 

EPS is also the product of my experience as a life long resident of Newark, NJ who was taught very young that I have a responsibility to my community. My siblings and I were charged with the responsibility of not only cleaning up behind ourselves in the house, but we were reared to take pride in our community and keep it clean. I watched as my aunt advocated for our neighborhood through her civic engagement and her insistence to hold public officials accountable to residents. I understand that healthy families require healthy communities and healthy communities require a committed, collaborative coalition of stakeholders to uphold their responsibility to the community. Through my work at the nonprofit, Organize Change Inc., I have the experience of collaborating with local and state government, private corporations, religious and nonprofit organizations, and community residents to organize local clean up events and improve the quality of life in a South Ward neighborhood in Newark, NJ.