Valley men team up to make money in foreclosure fiasco
CHANDLER, AZ --Just as some struggle to get back on their feet comes word home prices might fall more than 20-percent by next June.
That's according to the financial analysis firm Fiserv that predicts home prices will fall another 23-percent by June of next year.
Analysts say that decline is on top of the 54-percent of homes in the Valley that have already fallen.
But some have figured out a way to make money during this foreclosure fiasco.
Keven Pauling, who owns Keven's Landscape and Tim Hammer of Platinum Painters have teamed up to make some money.
The pair is not only buying homes when they can afford to do so, but they are also working for the banks fixing up foreclosures.
Tim said they were able to work out a deal with Wachovia.
Keven does all the landscaping and Tim does all the painting. The pair said they decided to pool their resources and often hire outside workers to come and clean out all the trash and debris.
"It's sad you wonder what did they have to go through to leave everything all their personal items behind," Tim said.
The men said they never know the stories behind the homes. Thursday the two got their first look inside a new Chandler foreclosure.
Located near Cooper and Chandler Blvd. the men open the doors and are hit instantly with a smell that resembles a decaying body.
"Just foul," said Tim. "It's just nasty the refrigerators are still full of food, clothing laying everywhere. This is probably one of the nastiest ones I've ever been in."
But after setting up a light, the men quickly see the home is still loaded with a lot of valuables including DVDs, a large flat screen television and something of real value in the driveway.
"A Saturn car," Keven said. "I just don't understand it.
The pair said they will have their workers clean out the house, and then they'll come back and do the painting and landscaping. Two or three weeks Tim said the house will be ready to be re-sold.
The banks are so busy right now sometimes Tim said they have several homes in a week to fix up or just one.
But when asked how easy it is to get into this line of work, they say it's not easy.
They've been able to make good contacts with investors and some of the banks.
"What it's done is it's given us work," Keven said. "We can keep our guys busy. We were mostly doing new homes and then the market fell out of those and we're not doing those anymore. All the home sales right now are foreclosures."
Next to the profits, he says comes a good result for neighbors.
Now they won't have to put up that smell.
"It's a nice neighborhood, there's a lot of really nice homes around here," said Keven. "A lot of people work hard to have a nice home and then something like this happens and it doesn't take but two or three months and the place looks terrible."
The team doesn't think they'll be slowing down anytime soon. With more homes expected to go into foreclosure, Keven and Tim hope their new new partnership will be profitable for years to come.
Find out more and contact Keven or Tim.
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