Foreclosures boost some businesses

Nick Masse watched his residential pool maintenance business dry up when financially-strapped homeowners no longer felt his service was a necessity.

The prevalence of foreclosure homes, however, has kept the owner of Mesa-based Arizona Pool Service busy cleaning and repairing neglected pools.

“A lot of pools are in really bad shape,” Masse said. “They have a lot of dirt and garbage on the bottom. What we do is drain those, clean up all the green slime, all the dead mosquitoes and all the (mosquito eating) fish that the county puts into them. We get them swimmable again so the real estate agent can show the house and sell the house a little quicker.”

Masse is just one example of an East Valley small business that has been hurt by the recession, but helped by the foreclosure crisis.

Cathryn Scheeler’s business, Mesa-based Desert Breeze Glass, replaces broken glass inside and outside of foreclosure homes. Robert Allen, owner of Gilbert-based Garbage Guy Inc., removes discarded furnishings, toys, clothes and trash from inside them.

There’s plenty of work to go around.

According to the latest market report from RealtyTrac, an online marketplace for foreclosure properties, foreclosure filings — default notices, auction sale notices and bank repossessions — were reported on 11,525 properties in Maricopa County last month, compared with 12,351 in December and 7,463 in January 2008.

Because of the economy, fewer residents are willing to spend money on replacing damaged windows on cars and homes, Scheeler said. While that business has dropped off, foreclosure homes have provided steady work, she said.

“You don’t know if it’s the old owners or just some bad kids in the neighborhood,” she said. “The most we’ve (replaced) in one home is six windows, and they’ll smash the glass in the showers and sometimes the mirrors. Maybe it’s just whoever is taking some anger out and they’re just in a particular room and they start throwing things.”

Allen’s construction site clean-up business disappeared with the near-collapse of the home building industry, but cleaning out foreclosure homes has helped fill that void.

“We have done quite a large number of them,” he said. “One of our clients had us do about 200 homes in a three-month period. On the flip side, the banks gave everybody a break during the Christmas season and so we ended up doing almost no work in that arena after Christmas through January. I anticipate that will pick up.”

The foreclosure crisis has dragged down home values and prices, and therefore fewer homeowners are willing to sell their homes and move to larger ones. Instead, they’re choosing to remodel or expand their existing homes, and that has benefitted Queen Creek-based Custom Dream Homes.

“It has definitely helped out because custom home building is pretty much nil because you can’t get appraisals (for financing),” said Bill May, owner-operator. “You can’t ask for an appraisal of the custom home because the appraisal is going to be based on what homes are selling for, not what it costs to build a house.”

The remodeling and add-on business is steady because homeowners are able to get financing if they have a considerable amount of equity in their homes, he said.

“I have quite a few jobs lined up for as slow as things are, so I’d say we’re doing pretty good,” May said.

The foreclosure home business is unfortunate, but necessary to keep Arizona Pool Service financially stable, Masse said.

“If it wasn’t for the foreclosures, we would probably be going away or we would be considerably downsized,” he said. “It would probably be me working like when we first started.”

The company now has five employees and farms some work out to subcontractors.

While grateful for the business, Scheeler said she sympathizes with the long-gone homeowners as she’s replacing windows in foreclosed homes.

“I know they were on the right path, they were doing the American dream,” she said. “We don’t know what these mortgage people are saying. You think you’re dealing with a reputable company and next thing you know you just signed away saying your mortgage could triple.”

For Garbage Guy, cleaning a house could mean simply removing a few phone books and a little trash here and there, but in other cases it involves removing multiple truckloads of discarded furniture, clothes and trash, Allen said.

“This represents a family’s loss of some sort,” he said. “There’s toys or baby food, or things that are there and it kind of tugs at your heartstrings to recognize it. This isn’t just a job, this was some family’s loss.”