toledoblade.com --

ROCHESTER HILLS, Mich. - At 14, Joan Cyman hauled wood and helped her father to build a deck on the back of their house.

It was one of many projects to turn the four-bedroom, three bathroom suburban house into a home on a cul-de-sac in a new subdivision in suburban Detroit.

"I felt like it was left to me and should have stayed there the rest of my life," she said.

It didn't.

At 41, Ms. Cyman is 145 miles north in rural Roscommon County, having lost the house to foreclosure in 2006. Now a long-vacant eyesore, the Rochester Hills residence has a buyer, a businessman whose sideline of buying foreclosed homes has picked up as the housing market has tanked.

"You have to look at it as a business," said Mike Smitha, 52, a local investor who is waiting to close on the property. "It's simple economics: Buy as cheaply as you can, maximize the money it's going to take to repair and sell it for as much as the market will bear."

The home was one of 700 seeking new life in a recent auction in Michigan, which had the fourth highest foreclosure rate in the nation in September, according to RealtyTrac Inc., of Irvine, Calif.

Ms. Cyman said money disputes with her husband, from whom she's separated and divorcing, made it difficult for her to make ends meet. She fell behind on her mortgage payments, and her lender started foreclosure in September, 2005, on a $228,650 mortgage she took out nine months earlier.

The house has a purchase agreement for $136,500. Real estate agent Ron Walraven said its would be worth $250,000 once it is repaired.

He estimated it needs about $40,000 worth of work, including updating the kitchen and repair damage caused by basement flooding.

In 2002, after the original $37,500 home mortgage established by her late father was paid off, Ms. Cyman took out the first of three adjustable-rate mortgages to pay large bills.

"They'd call me and say, 'I can put you in a seven-year ARM.' The payment would go down."

Yet her overall household debt rose. She said she tried to work with her lender, Wells Fargo & Co., on a plan to catch up on back payments. She said the company was uncooperative and told her there was nothing it could do.

A Wells Fargo spokesman said he could not comment on Ms. Cyman's case, but the company said in a statement it works hard to keep customers in their homes and has expanded its efforts to help them.

Dan Sugg, president of the Michigan Mortgage Lenders Association, said his industry recognizes the responsibility it shares in keeping homes out of foreclosure. Among other things, he said, it's holding foreclosure-prevention workshops in the hardest-hit areas.

Mr. Smitha, who bought Ms. Cyman's former home through an auction house, plans to sell or lease it sometime next spring. He sees much the same upside that he parents saw 30 years ago, including a nice neighborhood, solid school district and ample living space.

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