Repo madness

In the last six months, George the Repo Man says he stared down the barrel of a gun at least 30 times held by angry, many times desperate, people who are simply trying to hold onto their cars.

“You never know what you’re walking into,” says George, who asks that his real name not be used because of the dangerous work he does. “I’ve seen dogs chained to vehicles, guarding them. I’ve been slapped, punched, you name it. I had to mace someone just last week.”

An average night on the job can turn ugly fast, but for the repo man, the opportunities outweigh the risks.

Today’s sputtering economy may be tough for Joe the Plumber, but business is booming for George the Repo Guy, who works for John Lamar, co-founder of Final Notice Location and Recovery, a Baltimore-area auto repossession business.

Repo men are often reviled as predators who feed off of debtors behind on their car payments. But behind the scenes, this job isn’t about taking advantage of — or sticking it to — people when times are tough. Lamar and his crew are regular guys doing a highly irregular job.

And they do it well.

A bustling business 

On a recent Wednesday evening in the Final Notice offices in Middle River, agents are planning their shift. George, a bald, burly guy in his late 20s with tattoos on his forearms, employs a specialized computer program to map out their route, based on the cars they needed to locate.

Lamar, a clean-cut 26-year-old with close-cropped hair, talks about how the slumping economy has impacted his workload.

“It’s definitely grown,” Lamar says. “We’re getting more and more repos because banks give loans to people who don’t qualify. They know they can’t pay, the bank knows they can’t pay, but they give out loans anyway.”

No one knows the realities of this economy better than Lamar. A few years ago, he was working in real estate while serving in the Air National Guard on weekends. Just when he started to grow his business, he was deployed to Iraq for eight months, and when he came back, no one was buying houses. He tried bounty hunting, but the time investment wasn’t worth the money. He knew a few people working in car repossession and took a job with a local company. It wasn’t long before he and a friend, Tony Meisinger, started Final Notice. 

The company is only 6 months old, but — like repo companies nationwide — it’s growing by leaps and bounds.

 The number of auto repossessions in the U.S. in 2008 will hit 1.6 million cars by year’s end, a significant 10 percent increase over last year’s total, said Thomas Webb, chief economist at global vehicle-auction giant Manheim,

Numbers from Maryland’s Motor Vehicle Administration show car repossessions in 2007 totaled 13,915. If the current trend holds, Maryland will have well over 14,000 cars repossessed this year. Industry insiders like Lamar say that the numbers are actually higher because some repossession companies do not properly process titles and report them to the MVA.  

 

‘Don’t damage my [expletive] car!’ 

As the team closes in on its first recovery of the night, Lamar points out that the perception of repo men as predators prowling the streets for cars is totally inaccurate.

“We send out three or four spotter cars to locate the vehicles,” Lamar says. “Then we call in the truck. They make the pickup, and we keep moving. That way we save on fuel, and it also helps to avoid conflict. If a neighbor sees a tow truck, we have a much harder time.”

On an average night, Lamar and his team can expect to recover about 10 cars. In a week, they average from 50 to 70 cars. They pull about $300 per vehicle, paid by their client: the bank that financed the car. The rate can climb higher for certain jobs, like the paver  Lamar’s crew recently removed from a construction site.

They pull into a lot in an apartment complex in Reisterstown and quickly locate a delinquent car. The truck rolls up, and the crew leaps into action, working together at a rapid and efficient pace, wasting no time or movement. As the truck reverses toward the car and slides its beam under the wheels, one of the agents uses a crowbar-like tool to pop open the driver’s door. He releases the parking brake and sets off the car’s alarm. The truck pulls forward, and the car comes with it.

Lamar heads to an apartment to let the owner know what’s going on and to show him the repossession request form. They return to the parking lot together, an uneasy pair. The owner, a man in his late 20s, removes his belongings from the trunk, his temper rising by the moment. As he finishes, he turns to the crew and shouts, “Don’t damage my [expletive] car!”

Later, one of the spotter cars rolls up the driveway of a large house in an affluent Owings Mills neighborhood.

“No one’s exempt from this,” Lamar says. “We repo cars from both multimillion-dollar homes and the ghettos. It affects every part of society.”

The real estate market also is forcing people to make some hard financial choices.

“What you’re seeing now is a lot of people overextending themselves,” Lamar says. “They would rather not pay their car payments than lose their homes.”

“That’s logical, though,” adds George. “It’s hard to stretch out in a BMW.”

 

Car trackers 

A lot of investigation is involved in this business.

“It’s a cat-and-mouse game,” Lamar says. “But unlike police, we’re less interested in where you’ve been and more interested in where you’re going.”

Repo men use every tool at their disposal to locate their targets. MySpace is great for visually connecting debtors to vehicles, Lamar says.

“How many times have you seen a guy standing next to his car, front tags in plain view?” asks George to Lamar. “Sometimes he’s even in the driveway of his house, or he’s gone ahead and listed where he works. That’s a good amount of research that’s been done for us.”

Bitter ex-lovers occasionally step forward for repo men.

“We had a 74-year-old man who had bought a Cadillac for his 35-year-old girlfriend,”  Lamar says. When the relationship ended unhappily, “he sold her out and let us know where we could find the vehicle.”

But Lamar struggles with the “bad guy” tag that follows repo men. As he sat behind a townhouse near Little Italy waiting for the tow truck, Lamar offered some advice for people who may be facing repossession.

“What people don’t realize is, most of the time banks put out a repo because they think they’re being ignored,” he says. “If they would just pick up the phone, most of the time the banks would work with them.”

The truck pulls up, the crew gets to work, and the car’s owner peers through her rear door, taking in the scene with a look of resignation.

“Ma’am, we’re here to repossess your car,” Lamar says.

“I know,” she replies with a sigh. “I know.”