BEND, Ore. (AP) -- Several times a week Ryan Strasshofer sifts through the list of homes entering the foreclosure process, punches a list of addresses into his GPS had heads out on what could be called the Burst Bubble Tour of Central Oregon.

Strasshofer is the Bend-based representative of Gorilla Capital, a Eugene company that is Oregon's leading buyer of homes at foreclosure auctions. He is looking for homes his company can buy and resell quickly.

"To summarize our business model, we sell them cheap because we buy them cheaper," said John Helmick, Strasshofer's boss and Gorilla Capitals CEO.

The company tracks foreclosure listings in 13 counties and cherry-picks the most profitable prospects.

That amounts to about 60 to 70 homes among 10,000 or more it may track, Helmick said. The 2-year-old company racked up $8 million in sales last year and expects to increase that by 20 percent this year.

The company focuses on homes that sell for $100,000 to $160,000, marketing them for resale through its Web site, newspaper ads, Craigslist and e-mails to potential buyers.

About half of buyers intend to move in. the rest are investors, Helmick said.

"It just goes to show that even in a down market, there is money to be made if you know what you're doing," said Rick Sharga, senior vice president of RealtyTrac, a California company that tracks U.S. foreclosure listings.

RealtyTrac reported that foreclosure filings in Oregon were 21 percent higher in October than in the previous month and up 159 percent from October 2007.

In Deschutes County, Gorilla Capital figures show that September was the first month the county had more than 100 foreclosure auctions but that the number of default notices - a first step in the foreclosure process - has been dropping since August.

An outing with Strasshofer offers a good look at the breadth of the crisis. In every neighborhood, from one-story rows of early 20th-century mill shacks near the Deschutes River to upscale homes where planted ponderosa pines are just taking root, borrowers have fallen behind.

Defaults seem to come from every economic caste, but there are common causes: divorce, layoffs, luxury purchases and too much leveraging of falling equity, said Strasshofer, who operates as a private contractor.

"It's amazing how many homes I drive by and see a new boat or motor home in their driveway, and they're in foreclosure," he said.

Strasshofer attends most of the daily auctions on the Deschutes County Courthouse steps. Often, he's the only one there as process servers or sheriffs deputies read pages of documents before taking cash bids.

He's looking for properties he can resell quickly with a markup to 10 to 15 percent. He estimated he buys only one out of every 400 houses he looks at.

"We won't buy a house unless we can sell it at a price that's so far below the market that it will be the next house that sells of that type," Helmick said.

Investors often comb foreclosure auctions for deals, and in recent years, groups of investors have pooled their money. But Gorilla may be the only company with a system for dominating the market.

"What I saw was an industry populated by moms and pops, and there was no aggregator, no one large entity," Helmick said.

Helmick got into the business in 2001 with Benjamin Bazer, Gorilla's president. Bazer, who learned the foreclosure markets from his father, provided the know-how while Helmick supplied capital from the sale of ecollege.com, a site he founded with his brother, Rob Helmick. They incorporated as Gorilla Capital in 2006.

The company wants at least half of any foreclosure home purchases in the counties in which they operate. That's easy for now because they have few competitors.

According to company statistics, of 111 homes put up for auction in Deschutes County in October, five sold. The rest reverted to the lenders holding the liens.

Helmick said the banks have not dropped the price low enough to get interest from buyers.