Cindy Hornbuckle and her partner Lorrie Garl emerge from the Windermere office in Puyallup geared up like a special forces recon patrol.

Garl climbs behind the wheel of a black Kia SUV; Hornbuckle rides shotgun, juggling a sheaf of the latest foreclosure printouts, a cell phone, a GPS unit and a pocket calculator.

Today’s mission: Scout out the latest crop of Pierce County foreclosures, noting the condition of roofs, the amount of trash in yards, whether the houses are occupied, if there are abandoned vehicles in driveways and other pertinent details.

They’ll rate the properties for potential investors, putting the best prospects on a “hot list” to be distributed at a strategy session the night before the auction.

They’ve been in distressed sales for seven years – two on their own and five as part of a Kirkland-based company called Vestus Foreclosure Group.

The mortgage meltdown has put their specialty in the spotlight. Suddenly everyone wants their expertise.

Hornbuckle and Garl have more than 300 names on their interested investor list, and they say their clients have bought 703 Pierce County houses at auction in the past 41/2 years.

When they started in the foreclosure market, Garl says, they were on the run so constantly that they lived on Altoids and Starbucks.

Now they’ve got it down to more of a science, splitting up properties by location with another partner and bracketing the week: drive-bys Wednesdays and Thursdays, foreclosure seminars Tuesday evenings, strategy sessions Thursday nights, auctions Friday mornings.

Vestus makes its money on commissions: 3 percent of the sale price at auction or of the tax-assessed value, whichever is higher.

Hornbuckle and Garl profit most, they say, when investors choose them as listing agents for properties back up for resale.

On the road, they cruise cul-de-sacs, curtailed developments and grim backwaters they refer to as “challenged neighborhoods.” When they find the right address they barely slow, taking in significant details at a glance: neighbors’ lawns trimmed (good), moss on the roof (bad), peeling paint (bad), new insulated windows (good).

Sixth on today’s list is an old South Tacoma cottage, hidden by overgrown shrubbery and sitting on a cracked foundation.

A gaping garage door reveals the heaped ruins of the owners’ life: moldy mattresses, a folding table, a stack of dinner plates, open cardboard boxes overflowing with clothes. Next to the back door, a child’s bike lies on its side, dandelions poking up through the spokes.

According to Hornbuckle’s papers this house was built in 1900 and was last assessed at $146,300. There are $172,447 owed on the mortgage and $857 in back taxes. The bank wants a minimum bid of just $99,480 at tomorrow’s auction.

Marginal, Hornbuckle thinks, but she has a client who likes challenges. Back in the SUV, she gets him on her cell phone.

“Elliot,” she says, “I found one you might be interested in. You might want to drive it.”

“We see lenders dropping prices from a few thousand dollars to hundreds of thousands of dollars,” she says. “They’re willing to take that kind of hit because they don’t want to have to deal with these properties.”

The services Hornbuckle and Garl offer extend far beyond recommending properties. They hold classes for prospective buyers and conduct mock auctions and strategy sessions so investors know what to expect at the Friday auction.

They’ll even put up the money when necessary.

Vestus’ lending arm, Eastside Funding, will put up as much as 80 percent of the cash at 12 percent interest for a nine-month term.

“There’s a lot of investors who don’t have cash available,” Hornbuckle explains.

Their coaching even extends to psychology. At strategy sessions, Hornbuckle explains how observing body language can reveal competitors’ intentions. Folded arms mean determination, she says. When bidders are ready to give up, their shoulders often slump a bit and their arms drop to their sides in unconscious signs of surrender.

The way to make money in foreclosures, Hornbuckle says, is instead of fantasizing about making the big killing, go for quick, steady turnarounds. Buy low, do minor cosmetic work and put properties on the market at a reasonable prices.

“Some investors have unrealistic ideas about what they are going to make out of this,” Hornbuckle says.

“If you can make $10,000 or $15,000 profit, do one a month or one every 90 days, it can be a nice supplemental income.”

There are definitely good deals to be had, she says.

“You know when you go on a roller coaster and you get that slow creak, creak, creak as you climb up to the top, and then you go rushing down? Well, two years ago the real estate market went that fast on the way up. This year has been double-speed down,” she says.

“The market is going to come back, and you will have instant equity in these properties. The value of houses has gone down 20 percent in the past year. Eventually it’s going to come back.”