For those of you unfamiliar with the Iamfacingforeclosure.com blog, It was created by Casey Serin, one of the many novice real estate investors who bought a couple of books, attended a couple of seminars and then went out and bought a bunch of homes across the United States using Stated Income loans.. You know, the same loans that have made all of the recent headlines lately such as American Home Mortgage.(Our little experience with American Home Mortgage was actually very positive in the way they handled business by the way.)
He was doomed from the get go -- investing in real estate markets across the country that he was very unfamiliar with and had very little knowledge of renovating homes. Let's put it this way... An ocean of easy debt ended up sweeping him overboard and swallowed him up as soon as the real estate market slowed down.
Summary: 7 Homes, Over $100,000 in Credit Card debt and from what I remember over $2,000,000 in mortgages all at 24 years old using financing techniques I assume he learned in some of his real estate investing seminars.
What's Disturbing: How he did it so easily.
What's Different: Instead of hiding away he bought a domain and started a blog in hopes to rescue his projects and gave a lot of detailed information about the whole scenario including loans, real estate agents and everything else most people would be afraid to talk about. The blog was quickly picked up by the media and spread everywhere including USA Today. At one point when I checked the statistics for daily visitors to the blog, he had over 100,000 visitors in a day!
It's been said that he sold the domain name and I don't know for how much.. but as bloggers in the lending business scramble to explain what is going on and how it is effecting the real estate business (most in the same jargon you'll find on loan documents) all you had to do was read that blog to know what is happening and why.
Paul Francis, Broker,ABR,CRS | Suburban Village Realty | 1627 Colonial Parkway | Inverness, IL | 847.337.9236
Date: 2007-08-06 00:27:11