Foreclosures Open Door To Disorder

Evictions in Montgomery County are also on a record-breaking pace. Prince George's County has the highest foreclosure rate in the Maryland suburbs, but officials did not respond to requests for eviction data.

Then there is Prince William, which has the highest foreclosure rate in the Washington area. After serving 2,771 eviction orders from July 2006 through June 2007, the county served 3,751 from July 2007 through June 2008. More than 1,235 eviction orders have been carried out in the three months since then.

The increase has generated vast amounts of court documents and other paperwork for deputies, including Zampino, whose cruiser resembles a rolling file cabinet on some mornings. On eviction day, it's his job to go inside the foreclosed home to make sure it's empty and safe for the bank-hired cleanup crew to enter.

Often, it's a risky affair. Zampino has been attacked by an angry, orphaned pit bull (solution: Taser), nauseated by mold and cockroach nests (sanitizers for hands and boots) and confronted by such heart-rending cases as that of an elderly blind woman who had been cheated by her daughter (Zampino postponed the eviction until another relative came to her rescue).

Usually, the sheriff's department has little discretion to delay court-ordered evictions, but Zampino and other deputies try to work with shelters and charities to keep families from landing on the street.

More often, the occupants are gone by the time Zampino shows up, having bequeathed a nasty mess to the bank. At one vacant Manassas area townhouse last week, a leaking water heater had turned the living room carpet into a moldy bog. Zampino and a cleaning crew opened another townhouse nearby to find cabinets in full bloom with roaches.

Such headaches are one reason banks are offering thousands in cash to entice occupants to avoid eviction by moving out quietly and leaving the property and appliances intact. The payoff is called "cash-for-keys," and when Steve Whetzel started his home preservation company less than two years ago, the exchanges were practically unheard of, he said.

"Now, $5,000 to $9,000 seems to be the average, depending on the location and the value of the home," said Whetzel, who is a former deck and fencing installer-turned-foreclosure specialist and whose Sterling-based company, KNK Home Preservation, provides banks with locksmith services, property cleanup and all manner of repair work.

For banks, Whetzel said, the cash-for-keys deal is insurance for a smooth eviction. If occupants agree to clean up the property and leave it in good shape, the bank ultimately saves money and improves its chances of a quick resale.

"There's all kinds of sabotage going on, and that's what the banks are fearful of," Whetzel said.

Whetzel's company has grown to 19 employees, all formerly employed in construction, though the operation is so new his e-mail is still deckandfence@aol.com. He expects a banner year for foreclosure services in 2009. "The good that's coming out of this is that we're reestablishing the market," he said.

After Zampino left Whetzel and his crew at the roach-infested townhouse, he drove to another eviction site nearby, where foreclosure specialist Terry Thompson was assessing the damage. There were bags of dog food in the garage, empty cans on the doorstep and, in the basement, signs of a half-finished, jerry-built apartment.

Thompson said a contractor had bought the house and rented out rooms to his workers but didn't pay the mortgage while he collected rent. "That's a scene that's been playing over and over in this area," Thompson said. "These guys got snookered by the owner."

And they were gone by the time Zampino arrived to evict them.

The house was only a few blocks from the townhouse where Zampino lives with his family. There have been several foreclosures in that area, too, he said. Some of the eviction orders have been for the homes of his neighbors.