(FORTUNE Magazine) – The RTC's perpetual clearance sale has opened up high-return investment opportunities for savvy real estate players. There are even some limited ways for ordinary folks to get in the game, but buying troubled assets is a risky venture that requires considerable expertise and entrepreneurship. The Cadle Co., a private investment firm in Newton Falls, Ohio, has been buying nonperforming loans from the RTC since 1990 and was the winning bidder on a $1 million package of delinquent commercial mortgages at an auction in Los Angeles this past September. The company pays an average of 25 cents on the dollar for its loans, says President Daniel C. Cadle. His staff of 30 spends most of its time trying to restructure the debt so that the borrower can resume payments. Failing that, the company forecloses on the properties and sells them. Cadle says he loses money on some assets, doubles his money on others, and averages a 20% return. That kind of glittering prize encouraged Ben Dupree, the RTC's former head of real estate sales in the eastern U.S., to go for it. He left the RTC in March to join a private Atlanta company, Kilburn-Young Asset Management Corp. Now, instead of selling, he's buying several million dollars worth of the RTC's delinquent loans on Connecticut condominiums. The company plans to restructure the mortgages so that ''as the borrower sells units, he will pay us X dollars per unit,'' Dupree says. ''The sum of those X's exceeds what we paid for the loan.'' He thinks these kinds of deals can return 20% to 30%. Individual investors can either go directly to the RTC or bet their money on companies that do. Wayne Gardner, a real estate attorney in Mesa, Arizona, recently put together $265,000 with help from an uncle and cousin to buy a bum loan on a Phoenix apartment project. Private companies, like General Financial Services in Wichita, Kansas, have taken money from passive outside investors. But before you write that check, be aware that with many Wall Street behemoths like Merrill Lynch and Lehman Brothers in the market for RTC merchandise, prices have come off the floor. ''The big bargains have passed,'' says Charles W. Singleton, vice president of General Financial Services. In addition, doing business with the RTC can be a prolonged, bureaucratic nightmare. Though Wayne Gardner put in his winning bid back in July, he has yet to take title to the Phoenix property. Says he: ''Normally a deal like this would have closed in August.''-- M.D.F.