Amy Smith looked lost wading through the investors swirling outside the Gwinnett County courthouse. Most clutched clipboards. Smith held a sippy cup.

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Pouya Dianat/AJC (ENLARGE)

Kiki Smith, (front) sits in the front of her yard as her mother, Amy Smith, (holding son Preston) looks on. The Smiths lost the home to foreclosure following mounting medical bills and a skyrockerting mortgage payment.

ABOUT THIS STORY This story was written by Bill Torpy, Brian Feagans, Tammy Joyner and Drew Jubera. Torpy reported from the Fulton County courthouse steps,Feagans from Gwinnett County, Joyner from bankruptcy court in Atlantaand Jubera from the courthouse steps in Bartow County. RELATED: • More photos of foreclosure sales • Search pending foreclosures • Mortgage crisis tips, news

Her husband pushed their 20-month-old son in a stroller as their 7-year-old daughter played in a nearby patch of grass.

The Smiths were about to lose their Loganville home. They'd come to see who would buy it.

"We just wanted to find out how long we've got before we have to get out," said Smith's husband, who asked not to be identified.

Their eldest child, 11-year-old Kiki, suffers from a rare bone disease that has required three operations so far. Medical bills have topped $100,000 and, even with insurance, the Smiths owe more than $10,000. Those bills mounted as monthly payments on their adjustable rate mortgage shot up — from $1,000 to $1,400 — on the home they bought for $159,000 in 2004.

"You have to pick between a house and your child," Smith says. "That's an easy choice."

More than 6,800 properties in the 13 core counties of metro Atlanta were advertised for auction Tuesday — a record setting number, up 49 percent from the same month last year. From Gwinnett to Fulton to Bartow counties, an auctioneer reading from a sheet on courthouse steps became the public endpoint for private tales like the Smiths'.

In some cases, ARMs and subprime mortgages exploded in the faces of families who couldn't handle what life had thrown them — illness, divorce, unemployment. In others, time ran out for people who got into mortgages over their heads, loans they shouldn't have landed in the first place.

About half the properties advertised for foreclosure this month actually went up for bid. Many were postponed, perhaps just temporarily, as homeowners worked out deals with overstressed banks or filed last-minute bankruptcies.

But wrenching stories of families lingering at the courthouse as their homes are sold are few. Mostly, Georgia's foreclosure system rolls forward with the unemotional efficiency of a threshing machine mowing down wheat.

At the Fulton County courthouse, seven criers from MR Default Services, which represents lenders and handles more than half the region's foreclosures, read out bids simultaneously. Each crier from that firm, which represented 596 properties in Fulton alone, was assigned a chunk of the alphabet based on the names of those in foreclosure. A woman named Misty held up a sheet saying "F-M." A man a few feet away held up "T-Z."

They read in rapid-fire fashion. Usually, the lender's bid went unanswered and the lenders took back the house, looking to sell it again down the road, almost assuredly at a large loss. Most properties up for foreclosure these days have little or no equity — almost 75 percent of the loans being foreclosed in Fulton were made since the start of 2005.

About 70 investors crowded around various criers waiting for a certain property to be called.

Dylon Ross, a veteran investor, was not shy about what he wanted. "I'm not looking for great deals. Now we are looking for steals."

In the previous weeks, Ross and his partners drove by maybe 300 houses. He wanted to make sure his "steal" was wood and plaster, not just weeds. "First thing, we have to make sure there really is a house there," he said.

Asim Qureshi, 34, a newcomer to the game, looked to spend up to $200,000 for a home in Sandy Springs, where he lives.

"I don't like a place I don't know," said Qureshi. He is wise to buy near his home because investors must pay 100 percent and make an instant decision to purchase a house they are only merely familiar with.

Jon Stovall, 39, and his sister, Sarah, 40, leaned on a bannister, waiting for their crier to arrive. They've teamed up for years to buy homes from Alpharetta to Suwanee. They buy low, fix them up and resell in 45 to 60 days. But a sluggish market has changed that.

"Now it takes twice as long (to sell) and we make half as much," he said. The crowd of investors on the courthouse steps "is a skeleton crew of what is usually here."

Back in Gwinnett, as criers shouted out "Going once, going twice, sold!" the Smith family tracked down the attorney who would auction their house.

They learned their bank would almost certainly be forced to buy it back. The good news, an investor told them, was eviction is at least two months away. "The sheriff's department is backed up," he said.

The family has largely moved out already and is living with her parents. She feared eviction would come Tuesday. "I didn't want them to come in an throw all our stuff out by the street," Smith said. "I didn't want the kids to see that."

More filing Chapter 13

At 9:30 a.m. Tuesday, M.O. Jackson arrived at bankruptcy court, papers in hand, hoping to help her son save his home. Ahead of her and behind her at the federal building in downtown Atlanta were more than 100 harried homeowners trying to beat the clock. It was D-day, the absolute drop-dead deadline for homeowners facing foreclosure. They had until 10 a.m.

The number of people filing for Chapter 13, which allows time to reorganize financially and pay bills, has grown in recent months. Some 333 Chapter 13 filings, alone, made their way electronically to the federal court between last Friday and Monday. Others, like Jackson, chose to make a personal appearance Tuesday. It was down to the wire.

By 9:57, Jackson had cleared the metal detectors. She raced to the elevators and punched "13." A minute later, the door opened and she flew into room 1340 where a staffer asked: "Are you here trying to stop something?"

Out of breath, Jackson nodded, held up her papers and was directed to a window. "I hope the young man behind me made it," she said.

The Jacksons decided on bankruptcy late Monday night after consulting with foreclosure prevention specialists. While Chapter 13 buys time, it comes at a price: you carry the bankruptcy label for seven to 10 years.

When her son couldn't get time off from his job Tuesday, Jackson was pressed into service.

"The things you do for your children," she said, still out of breath.

Property belonged to neighbor

Some 45 miles north up I-75, a small group lingered in front of the Bartow County courthouse in Cartersville, acting more like a neighborhood welcome wagon than a herd of investors ready to pounce on 100 or so foreclosed properties.

Kim Cook passed around homemade brownies.

"I was up until 10:30 last night baking these," said Cook, who with her husband Bill is an auction regular.

Here, there was little of the chaos common in larger counties. Just one crier at a time called out the properties. Criers who've never worked here before learn quickly not to call out over others.

County workers leaving the building often stopped crier Cheryl Leigh to say hello or give her a hug – even as she read property names. One property she auctioned belonged to a former neighbor.

"It's basically like a small town. It's not cutthroat," said Bill Cook. Gregory Harris, 45, an Army Sgt. First Class, came to see if he could buy his brother's Adairsville home. His brother hurt his back five years ago and hasn't worked steady since, he said. His wife tried to keep up the payments, but she got sick and they fell hopelessly behind. Harris had just paid his brother's electric bill, hours before power was to be cut off.

"I haven't told him I'm here. I'm trying to make it a surprise," said Harris, who'd never been to a courthouse auction and didn't know he needed cash or a cashier's check to pay for the house in full. The house went back to the lender. Krunel Patel, 22, works at a gas station and recently won $40,000 in the lottery. He was looking for a real estate investment. He saw the blizzard of foreclosures as his chance to get a deal. He had little sympathy for those who'd lost their houses.

"These people brought it on themselves," said Patel, who lives with his parents. "They shouldn't have got an adjustable rate mortgage."

House is no longer theirs<

In Loganville, Amy Smith stood in the driveway of the three-bedroom house, waiting for her daughter Kiki to climb off the school bus and into the Timber Valley subdivision for one of the last times. The family moved their beds and clothes out Sunday. But they've returned each afternoon, not wanting to upset Kiki's routine.

The family lives with Smith's mother now. It's just as well, Smith says. Power and water had been cut off. And the family was besieged by callers hawking "deals" after the home made the foreclosure listings.

The yellow bus pulled up to the house, and Kiki hobbled off wearing a bright light blue cast and a bright smile.

Smith, Kiki and 20-month-old Preston all have a hereditary disease — called Vitamin D resistant rickets – that makes bones brittle. Kiki has broken nearly 10 bones, most recently her foot.

Within minutes Kiki and her little sister, Hannah, were rolling down the steep front yard, giggling a path to the curb. Kiki's kinky hair gathered leaves that the Smiths will never rake.

It was 4 p.m., deadline for auctioning off foreclosures. The house was no longer theirs.

If only they'd opted for a fixed-rate loan, Smith said. Her husband, a handyman, just got a nice promotion. Perhaps they could have made it through this rough patch.

"You work so hard to get good credit and live in a good school system," Smith said. Then, watching her girls wrestle in the yard, she caught herself. "I know there are a lot of folks worse off than we are."

Smith will miss the personal touches, from the slate floor in the kitchen to the Georgia flag on the mailbox. And the timing – just before Christmas – is particularly tough. "We decorate like the Griswolds," she said.

Smith packed the kids into her mother's PT Cruiser, backed out of the driveway and drove away from a place that's rich with memories but no longer home.