Bloomberg-
On a rainy night in November, Mark Futral, wearing a red hooded sweatshirt, approached a white ranch house in Flowery Branch, a northeastern suburb of Atlanta, crowbar in hand.
He adjusted a headlamp and slid his fingers under a front window to lift it open. His dog Bella, a 40-pound Rhodesian Ridgeback mix, barreled through and Futral followed, squeezing into an empty room with tan carpet peeling from the floor. It was the sixth home he’d broken into that day.
Though he’s occasionally mistaken for a thief, Futral, 37, is working for Blackstone Group LP (BX), one of the world’s most sophisticated investors. For the past 18 months, he’s picked locks, shimmied under garage doors and crawled through windows to get into foreclosed homes the company has bought.