Leslie Stoner stands at the balcony of one of the foreclosed properties she and her husband are purchasing in South Eugene, Ore. They're buying a matched set of side-by-side single family houses, each with a duplex in back.<br><i>AP?photo Leslie Stoner stands at the balcony of one of the foreclosed properties she and her husband are purchasing in South Eugene, Ore. They're buying a matched set of side-by-side single family houses, each with a duplex in back.</i>

EUGENE – Investors, if they’re bold and cagey, are finding some sweet deals on foreclosed rental properties in Lane County – although only a few, so far, have been brave enough to try.

Leslie and Marc Stoner are among the few.

They’re buying a matched set of side-by-side single family houses, each with a duplex in back.

They outbid two other investors on the first part of the two-property purchase, paying just $312,000 for three updated units – complete with unusually high-grade appointments, such as glass mosaic tile in the bathrooms and European cabinetry in the kitchens.

“It was a religious experience,” joked Leslie Stoner. “We were very, very happy.”

A well-stocked foreclosure market locally is luring more investors out to shop, real estate agents say. About 55 houses per week are hitting the Lane County foreclosure docket, said Erick Harpole, a broker with Keller Williams Realty.

And based on the size of the pipeline, the weekly rate is bound to increase, he said.

A list of Lane County homeowners who are now 60-to-90 days late on mortgage payments – compiled by Experian – contains about 1,200 properties, Harpole said.

“What if half go to foreclosure? That’s 600 units and we’ve only sold about 1,600 units (locally) year-to-date. Banks are going to move it for whatever they can get,” he said.

The falling prices are whetting investors’ appetites, but buyers are still dead set on bargains and tight with their cash, said Elliott Braaten, a broker with John L. Scott who specializes in selling repossessed houses on behalf of banks.

“Investors are being very cautious. Let’s just put it that way,” Braaten said. “I had three offers on one property – all from investors – and they all came in at the same price and it was too low (for the bank). They want to buy, but they want to pay significantly less than retail.”

Although the Stoners, a couple in their early 50s, are ahead of the pack, they were far from impulsive when they bought their new, six-unit rental complex.

Both Leslie and Marc Stoner have worked as drug company representatives for a decade.

And Leslie makes an avocation of not only staying current with local property listings but also on top of national economic trends.

Before the 2008 stock market crash, she said could see that trouble was brewing. The housing market was ranging so “bizarrely high,” it was a threat to the national economy, she said. “It looked like a house of cards.”

So, in December 2007, Leslie Stoner took the family’s money out of stocks and put it in money market accounts and then finally into certificates of deposit – safe from the big hits most other investors took in the stock market.

“I took a minor in econ, which has saved us a fortune,” Leslie said. “We never lost money.”

Additionally, Marc, Leslie and their 16-year-old son, Scott, are so frugal that when Marc was laid off for eight months last year, they lived off Leslie’s salary and continued to save money, she said.

Leslie Stoner learned as a child to bank against economic hardship. She was a late-born child in her family, and so her parents experienced – and brought her up on – vivid memories of the Depression.

For example, she heard how her grandfather sent his young daughters to various grocery stores in town to buy food on credit – because the merchants had a hard time saying no to hungry children.

“I’m frugal at heart,” she said.

Leslie said she’s not one to go out on a limb to purchase property. She and her husband started their investments modestly, refurbishing their own first home – “a gold-shag-and-particle-board palace,” she said.

They built a pair of duplexes in Eugene 3½ years ago, sold one and kept the other, and then started looking for a new rental property to buy.

The hunt took three years, Leslie said. At first, prices were just too high. Then, the wave of foreclosures came and brought low-priced properties to the marketplace.

But the Stoners were fussy. They wanted well-placed property.

In the spring, they found the side-by-side house-and-duplex combination properties that were a half block from the burgeoning Woodfield Station at 29th Avenue and Willamette Street.

Eugene investors Kevin Braunger and Robert Keifer had owned the properties since the early 1980s – since the last big recession – through a series of evolving limited liability companies.

For nearly 30 years, Braunger and Keifer successfully bought and sold real estate in Eugene and certain California cities. They also had an advertising agency.

The partners picked up the Woodfield Station-area houses for a total of $38,000, land records show, and held them for two decades.

Then, in 2004-2005, when the market was warming up, they built the backyard duplexes and renovated the houses.

They installed tile, glass, granite, metal and white-painted woodwork. The units fetched a “deluxe” price in the rental market – for example, $895 for a one-bedroom place.

Keifer was out of the country and unavailable for comment. Braunger did not respond to a message left with his attorney.

One year into the current recession, the partners lost their investment. GreenPoint Mortgage of Georgia foreclosed on one of the two-part properties in December 2008 and the other in March 2009. The bank enlisted the John L. Scott Real Estate foreclosure specialist to find a buyer.

“(One property) was listed on a Friday, and there were three of us who submitted offers by Monday,” Stoner said.

The Stoners picked up both properties for a total of $627,000. They declined to give details of their financing, other than to say they made a “significant” down payment.

This summer, Leslie spent a vacation’s worth of 12-14 hour days restoring the landscaping. With the help of her family, she cleaned and painted and spiffed up the units. “You get a good price on something like this, but you earn your equity,” she said.