As Economy Heads South, Repo Men Reap the Benefits

When Wall Street goes bust, they walk on Easy Street. When recession hits, their business booms.

They are repossessors and auctioneers, scavengers of bad times who clean up the fiscal wreckage when the economy breaks down.

“This is the boom time for us, definitely,” said Evan Gabriel, an auctioneer in Canton, Mass. “It’s a real big opportunity.”

And they have the 1980s to thank for their success. Then, companies and people borrowed freely from banks to buy and build.

Then came the crash. In New England, the sore spot of the nation’s economy, scores of banks were left with piles of bad loans.

Enter the banks’ foot soldiers--repo men and auctioneers.

The repo men take back cars and boats, among other things, when their owners no longer can make payments. The auctioneers sell off houses and other things the banks foreclose on.

“I don’t like to say there’s a lot more business. There’s enough bad news in the economy. We don’t need to make it worse, you know what I mean?” said Ron Bethel, who repossesses boats in Mendon, Mass. “But there’s more than a moderate increase.”

The repo man’s stock in trade is expensive cars. Sometimes, though, the booty is bigger.

Jack Barnes, executive director of National Finance Adjusters, an association of repossessors, once claimed a herd of 74 horses in Oklahoma. Another time, he repossessed a helicopter and flew it to Florida.

“We’ve done oil drilling equipment, all sorts of things,” said Barnes, who runs his own repo firm in Tulsa, Okla. “Right now we’ve got a computer to test eyes for glasses that was repossessed from an optometrist in town.”

Sometimes disgruntled owners don’t let their valuables go without a fight, but Barnes said repo men don’t get rough the way the character in the 1984 movie “Repo Man” did.

“The repo guys I know thought the movie was a riot,” Barnes said. “I don’t know of any who carry guns. They aren’t going to jeopardize their business with stunts like that.”

“We’ve come a long way from the old image of 300-pound guys who shake people down for their car keys,” he said.

An auctioneer’s life is more sedate, though competition is growing.

“Five years ago everybody was doing well, so there weren’t as many auctioneers around,” said Charles Balyozian, a Boston auctioneer. “Now people are rushing to get into this business.”

He said auctioneers can make $100,000 or more a year.