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Increasing numbers of these properties are being abandoned by cash-strapped owners, leaving messes and headaches for neighbors and municipal officials.

Chandler real-estate agent Liz Morganroth said she dons a disposable face mask before she inspects new foreclosure listings but can’t always escape the stench.

“Many of them are disgusting: trash and animal feces everywhere, rotting food in a refrigerator crawling with maggots. We even find pets left in the house,” said Morganroth, who sells foreclosed homes in Chandler and Gilbert for Realty Executives.

Her inventory, she said, is skyrocketing.

A good portion of her listings were occupied by tenants who faced eviction because their landlords weren’t paying the mortgage. “Some of these people had been paying the rent every month, but the owner wasn’t paying the mortgage,” she said. “They were forced to move and lost their security deposits, so they totally destroy the homes out of anger.”

Officials from Mesa to Peoria are seeing the trend and say newer subdivisions on the outskirts of town are some of the hardest hit. They tie it to declining home values, adjustable-rate mortgages, discouraged investors and owners struggling to make ends meet.

“It started ramping up during the past six months, and I don’t see it stopping anytime soon,” said Ray Villa, acting neighborhood services director for Mesa. “We’re getting between five and 10 complaints a week that someone has walked away from a property and is letting it deteriorate,” he said.

Villa, who lives in Queen Creek, said one of his own neighbors packed up and left a house. “It’s all over the place,” he said.

Maricopa County treats abandoned pools to prevent mosquito breeding and the spread of West Nile virus, but that doesn’t prevent algae from growing or the other hazards.