Foreign investors are buying up real estate in low-income and black neighborhoods in Baltimore.

Every Thursday, Brian Leibowitz cautiously watches the newcomers on the courthouse steps. They come to auctions to purchase abandoned homes, viewing properties on their cell phones and raising their hands if they see a good deal on paper. Leibowitz, director of acquisitions at a Baltimore real estate company, knows there's only so much money to be made if you go beyond counting numbers. An experienced homebuyer can overcome bureaucratic entanglements, has enough money to wait out permit delays, knows which homes are in a food wasteland, monitors high-crime neighborhoods and keeps an eye on whether properties are stabilizing or deterioratingneighborhoods.

"Baltimore tends to chew out and churn out newcomers," Leibowitz said of the new faces that have appeared in the city in recent years.