Former American Home TPO Chief Investing in REO

Don Henig, former president of third-party lending at American Home Mortgage, Melville, N.Y., has found a new career after mortgages, investing in foreclosed properties at public auctions. Since the end of November, Mr. Henig has been involved in 30 home purchases. His goal is to buy the homes at a deep discount for cash, fix them up and resell them quickly. He is out raising capital through his firm, First Light Capital, Farmingdale, N.Y. He works with another company, Island Properties, also of Farmingdale, to fix up the homes and then find investors that eventually will buy what he acquires. For now, he is concentrating on buying homes in New York and New Jersey but not the five boroughs of New York City. American Home, a publicly traded REIT that specialized in both prime and nonprime lending, filed for bankruptcy protection last summer after being margin-called by its lenders on Wall Street. Most of the company's assets have been liquidated.