Entrepreneurs snap up foreclosures on courthouse steps.

Spend some time with Jerry Barth and it's easy to get an understanding of the flip side of the housing bust.

Not much more than a year ago, it was the Realtors, mortgage brokers and lending agents who were all so busy they could barely find time for lunch.

These days it's a guy like Barth, who as the owner of Foreclosure Strategies LLC buys cut-rate foreclosed homes on the steps of county courthouses, fixes them up and tries to sell them, dicey market and all.

"You got to figure out how to be in five places at one time," said Barth, a real estate broker who figures he puts close to 75 miles on his car each work day. "Norwalk, Pomona and the Agoura courthouses do (auctions) every single day."

Over the last two years, Barth said he has netted about $2 million on 50 homes he has bought and sold. But now he's busier than ever, with foreclosure activity up three-fold as the housing market has begun to unravel.

It happens in every cycle. When there is a significant downturn in the residential market, a cottage industry pops up trying to make a buck on the slew of foreclosures bound to hit.

Now, with foreclosures rising each month as more homeowners lose their houses and condos to variable rate, exotic mortgages adjusting upward, the foreclosure sales market is set for a spike in volume.

From large companies that broker the sales of whole portfolios of homes at ballroom auctions to sole proprietors who snatch up houses from brokers, multiple players are getting in on the action.

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"There is money today looking for this," said Lew Feldman, a real estate attorney with Goodwin Proctor LLP. "There is public money looking to be deployed and take properties."

There are traditionally two ways that people can buy a foreclosed home: in an auction, which is held on courthouse steps after a homeowner's notice of trustee's sale period expires; or from a real estate broker, who lists bank-owned homes that have failed to sell at court house auctions. Bank-owned properties are also sold off at formal ballroom auctions.

Working an angle

Everywhere in between there are individuals and companies working an angle.

Barth, who has been buying and selling foreclosed properties for more than 20 years, is one of those who actually bids at courthouse auctions. He also operates a Web site where interested parties can sign up for a $750, two-day seminar with Barth, who will teach students the ins and outs of auctions.