If you can’t beat all the vacant foreclosures piling up in your community, then you might as well buy them.

That’s the philosophy of Tom Roeser of Carpentersville, Ill., a city hit so hard by the post-industrial era that it ended up littered with vacant, foreclosed homes complete with graffiti.

So how did Roeser cope?

He started buying the properties.

At one point, he nabbed 69 foreclosed condos in one complex. The president and owner of Otto Engineering revamped the properties and is now renting them out for as much as $675 per month.