The white shuttle bus came to a stop and Damon Borozny joked to the passengers, "All right, time to scare the neighbors."

Borozny, a product manager for an office supply business, was helping lead a new kind of tour for Atlanta — the home foreclosure tour.

Alison Church/AJC (ENLARGE)

Tour participant Evelyn Swanson discusses a foreclosed home on Wood Trail Lane in Decatur with home inspector Kenneth Fuller.

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A dozen people paid $49, or $65 per couple, to spend five hours Sunday checking out other people's broken dreams and possibly find a deal.

Real estate agents have held private foreclosure tours, but last weekend's tour may have been the first in metro Atlanta open to the public. It drew home-seekers, investors and even tax-lien purchasers.

At stop No. 5 on the seven-house expedition, the group examined a 4-year-old, two-story home on Glenvalley Drive in Decatur that looked beautiful in the dappled sunshine of a color photograph.

In March 2006 the house sold for $275,000. It sold again in May 2007 as a foreclosure, bringing $206,550. Now the lender had it back and was asking $176,900.

Upon closer inspection, the dwelling revealed its wounds. The back door was boarded after vandals broke out the glass. Holes were bashed in the bedroom walls. Cabinet hardware, the air conditioning condenser and gutter sections had been stolen.

Still, the visitors saw potential. "I want this house — in Midtown," said Evelyn Swanson, a consultant who lives in a Midtown bungalow that feels cramped.

After 20 minutes of opening cabinets and eyeballing the foundation, the group moved on to stop No. 6 — a small house in the Reynoldstown neighborhood of Atlanta where moisture curled the wood floors and stacked cinderblocks obstruct a doorway.

Foreclosures have risen because easy credit put many people in homes they could not afford. Equity Depot reported last week that more than 6,000 metro properties are scheduled to be sold on courthouse steps next month. Lenders will end up buying back many of the homes.

Borozny and Butch Whitfield, an agent with Harry Norman Realtors, started Foreclosure Tour and Learn after hearing about similar operations elsewhere.

Borozny bought his Grant Park home this year out of foreclosure. He had lived in it as a renter, then was evicted when his landlord lost the property.

After months of dealing with the bank — "human beings have souls; banks don't," Borozny told the participants — he was able to move back into the home as the owner.

When his wife read him an article about a foreclosure tour in Orlando, "it was like an ah-ha moment," he said. "That was it."

To spread the word about their startup, Borozny and Whitfield gave talks, blasted e-mails, posted ads on craigslist and backpage.com, alerted investment groups, built a Web site and contacted the media.

Whitfield selected for the tour homes in popular intown neighborhoods — Decatur, Lake Claire, Reynoldstown and the Old Fourth Ward — that he considers good investment opportunities.

Experts in financing and home inspection rode along and talked to passengers about such topics as FHA financing and ARV — after repair value.

"I saw too many pine trees in the front yard," inspector M. Kenneth Fuller cautioned the group after stop No. 1, a 56-year-old brick ranch in the Medlock Heights neighborhood of Decatur. "They're the first ones to come down."

To ratchet up the fun, an envelope was hidden in each home, and the finder received a gift.

"This is the prize?" Qasaan Allah asked after finding an envelope in a fireplace and winning a small flashlight. Allah is a warehouse employee who rents in Duluth and is considering investing in foreclosure properties.

None of the tour participants lives near the neighborhoods they visited.

"Butch, where are we, my friend?" piped up Alfred Jenkins during the ride to stop No. 2, the Pine Glen area of Decatur. A recent transplant from Florida who works in health care, Jenkins was renting in Buckhead and looking to buy intown.

At the final tour stop, a brick home in the Old Fourth Ward near City Hall East, flashlights were handed out even though it was midday and sunny.

"It's not dark," Borozny told the passengers about the home set back from the street. "It's boarded up." The boards were installed to protect the windows.

"The Whipples" was hand-painted on the mailbox. At one time the 1,745-square-foot house sold for $330,000. Now it was priced at $199,000.

The visitors mentioned "Blair Witch Project," the horror movie, as they poked around in the dark.

In reality's glare, however, the home was anything but a horror, they said.

It didn't seem to need much work. Shops were just a short walk away. And a remodeled house up the street was listed at $649,000.

"That would sell for a pretty penny" after some cosmetic improvements and about three years time, said Bob Chakales, a businessman who sold his house on Wieuca Road in Buckhead at the peak of the market and was now looking for another home with a lot of upside.

Two more foreclosure tours are scheduled for next month. Future tours might include one limited to foreclosed condominiums.

Borozny and Whitfield are talking about putting bargain-hunters on Segways and riding up and down Peachtree Street. Watch out.