A Southern California company helps consumers walk away from their home.

Three Arizona entrepreneurs develop an online service that generates daily updates on the foreclosure status of any property in the country.

A former journalist launches a website to track South Florida's turbulent real estate market and then establishes a brokerage firm for bulk condominium units in that market.

While the foreclosure crises upended Wall Street and shattered many homeowners’ dreams, it created plenty of others, evident by a rash of business ventures launched in the last two years hoping to capitalize on a short window of opportunity.

Lemonlandlord.com, based in the Phoenix suburb of Chandler, is trying to fill a niche created by the subprime fiasco and mortgage meltdown that continues to decimate cities across the country. The tracking service, launched by Michael Rodrigues, Frank Kelley, and Jeff Kadlec in late August, should provide some relief to renters, realtors, and property managers concerned that their home or commercial space is in default or nearing delinquency.

The data provider has signed a couple of hundred clients to date, and its executives expect that number to climb to more than 100,000 in the next 12 months. “This is going to be a new behavior for renters and property owners.” said Rodrigues. “This foreclosure crises will change the way people operate and protect themselves.”

The Web company, which raised more than $200,000 from investors, has inked agreements with 26 affiliate vendors, from family-oriented sites to mixed martial arts apparel companies. Lemonlandlord charges $7.99 for an initial report, which can be accessed instantly, and a $3.99 monthly fee thereafter.

Arizona is fourth in the nation in foreclosures, with one in every 53 homes involved in the process, according to September data compiled by RealtyTrac. In Maricopa County, where 4 million of the state's 6.5 million residents live, there are 14,927 pending foreclosures.

Kyle Brown salivates over those numbers. When he launched Sharp Equity in Phoenix in the middle of 2007, the bid service was handling a home a week. Now it's doing 60 to 100 homes a month and is one of the state’s largest buyers of below-market real estate. The company specializes in foreclosures, pre-foreclosures, fix and flips, bank-owned and wholesale properties, and rentals.

“It’s an opportunistic time for anyone that likes real estate,” said Brown, who has fixed and flipped homes for more than a decade. “It’s a great opportunity for people to make money back they lost in the crash. There’s some incredible profits to be made.”

The company has a 12-member team that tracks Arizona homes in auction and trustee sales, then categorizes the information for its database of 10,000 investors, who can search by value, zip codes, comps, location, square footage, opening bid, and margin.

Investors can make a 10 to 15 percent profit on one flip, and because the bid service database is so vast, clients can make numerous bids in minutes.

A fee isn’t assessed until a home is purchased, and that typically is 2 percent of the closing price, with a sliding scale for frequent buyers.

Brown knows his bid service is not a sustainable model, but he’ll enjoy the ride while it lasts. “The money has found the market. Even with the in-flow of competition, there’s more than enough homes to go around,” he said.

That’s what led Peter Zalewski to launch CondoVultures.com in South Florida. In March 2006, the former journalist created a website devoted to real estate in the region. Now he distributes a newsletter to more than 20,000 prospective buyers, mostly seasoned investors and institutional players.

“There wasn’t real Wall Street intelligence about the marketplace,” said Zalewski, so he hired a team of researchers who spent five months documenting 163 projects in downtown Miami, which has tripled its inventory since 2003 but seen prices decline 40 percent in the last three years.

The company has poured more than $200,000 into data gathering, and every quarter the company releases a condo report that documents loan amounts, amenities, square footage, and other factors.

Most of his time these days is devoted to another spinoff, Condo Vultures Realty, a brokerage that handles bulk sales. The business, which employs 36 agents, has gained national attention and the ire of Michael Moore, who profiled Zalewski—unbeknownst to him at the time—in his new film Capitalism: A Love Story.