This story is true, the facts are real but the names have been changed to protect the innocent.

The blue-tinted windows looked odd, not the facade of your typical Florida house.

As Shaun Carijacary cracked the front door of the newly bought investment home in Town 'N Country, the stench knocked him back. Hundreds of cans of food stacked in the house by the former absentee owner had burst and oozed all over the floors.

The blue windows? The panes were teeming with a living, feasting colony of flies.

"It was so bad the rats had died," Carijacary said.

Carisacary tells the yarn from the safe distance of a couple years, behind the iron-barred windows of his real estate office in a raggedy section of Ybor City.

He runs the region's most successful HomeVestors franchise. You may have seen the company's "We Buy Ugly Houses" billboards and its caveman mascot named Ugly Betty. Want to become a foreclosure?

The current market conditions make it a perfect time for a small investor to purchase one or more foreclosure properties for their private residence, rental home or maybe duplex. Some, are even more daring and profit centerd and go after the six plexes. During economic downturns, more upscale homes go into foreclosure, so the notion that foreclosure homes are only available in crime-ridden areas is inaccurate. Beachfront and homes in the Gulf Coast Beach regions of affluent areas are part of the mix of foreclosed properties available.

The housing market has tanked. Banks threaten thousands of homes with repossession. Homes linger so long on the listings that some sellers dump properties for a song.

 This is a high-risk, high-reward proposition, and it’s not for first-time foreclosure buyers, Fanklin says. But with the proper research tools which can be easily be found in todays Foreclosure.com

It's a great time to be Shaun Carijacary. The 42-year-old South Carolina native has built a business on paying 50 cents on the dollar for stressed houses. He gets plenty of takers.