Months of coaxing before calling in the sheriff to evict.


LAKE VILLA, Illinois - If you see Joseph Laubinger on your doorstep, start packing. His courtly presence means you have exhausted all options for keeping your house.

“It’s like I’m a doctor,” said Mr. Laubinger, an agent here for big lenders. “People ask me how much time they have left.”

Hardly any. Legally, they have already lost ownership. If they do not respond to the enticement the lenders offer - as much as $5,000 in cash - he employs the punishment: the county sheriff, who evicts them.

Mr. Laubinger, 60, is having a busy spring. Nearly four million households in the United States are severely delinquent on their mortgages . As more and more of the homes edge toward repossession - a record quarter of a million were seized by lenders in the first three months of this year - agents like Mr. Laubinger are trying to coax people out. He makes at most a small fee for that; his reward comes with the commission in selling the house.

His territory is the northern edge of Illinois and the southernmost slice of Wisconsin ? a 1,550-square-kilometer expanse that encompasses middleclass suburbs built in the last 10 years, resort homes that dot the region’s many lakes and decaying cottages bought by hard-scrabble immigrants.

On a recent Saturday Mr. Laubinger checked up on Israel Lopez and Blanca Sanchez, who had finally agreed to move out after months of negotiating. Mr. Laubinger had a check for $1,800 waiting for them.

But only a young boy was home. Mr. Laubinger left a message for the parents.

“They basically blew me off,” he said as he drove away. “People are staying longer because they’re not afraid.”

Later, his phone rang. It was Mrs. Sanchez. “We haven’t found anywhere to go,” she said. “We were wondering if any more extensions could be given.”

Mr. Laubinger was noncommittal but said she would not be evicted that weekend. That was all Mrs. Sanchez wanted to hear.

“They’re doing the math,” he said. “More time is better than the $1,800 I was going to give them to leave.” If he has to order a formal eviction with the sheriff, the paperwork and processing might take all summer.

Night fell as Mr. Laubinger pulled back into his own driveway here, about 90 minutes’ drive northwest of Chicago. He was not sure he had accomplished much. But a few days later, to his surprise, the Lopez-Sanchez family agreed to leave after all.

When the agent showed up with the check , the couple was still carrying things out to their battered minivan : a big-screen TV, a huge teddy bear, a pot of beef stew for the evening meal.

Mr. Lopez, 31, said he had lost his job early last year after the construction company he worked for went bankrupt. “I had been paying the mortgage every month, but I told my wife, ‘No more sense in that,’ ” he said.

Mr. Lopez was hopeful that he would soon be starting work on a highway crew. Until the family can get settled, their church agreed to give shelter to the couple and their four children.

Mr. Lopez signed the documents and then pocketed the check without looking at it. Mrs. Sanchez sniffled quietly. It was not emotion, she said, but allergies. The couple drove off without a backward look.

Mr. Laubinger surveyed the house. It needed paint, new carpet, repairs. He hoped to have it listed in a few weeks for $110,000.


By DAVID STREITFELD