When Frank Verna pulls up to a battered, four-unit apartment building at lunch hour, he's just over a mile as the seagull flies from the gated oceanfront palaces of South Florida's wealthiest.

But this stretch of 21st Street, pocked by homes with boarded-up windows and dead-ending at railroad tracks, is unlikely to make it to a tourism poster.

Verna turns the car around in case he needs to make a quick exit and reaches into the center console for a Smith & Wesson M&P40. The real estate agent tucks the pistol into his jeans.

"Just watch your step," he says, pulling back the tangle of bushes grown across the building's entry path. Beyond is the darkened doorway to Unit 1 — missing its door.