Recently I read some of this ongoing saga at Iamfacingforeclosure.com regarding this kid Casey Serin. After attending some guru seminars, he bought something like 8 properties with no money down and no job apparently. Now this clown is 2.2 million in debt and a bunch of his houses are going into foreclosure.
There are several problems with this. Folks like this kid, gambling with other people’s money under the guise of ‘investing’ artificially drove up the prices on homes in this country by speculating on them, much in the same way that the stock market zoomed to unprecedented heights in 2000, only to come crashing down. Many think the same thing will happen to housing prices. In the meantime, many gamblers/flippers are going to get caught in the mousetrap.
The lending system that allows this type of borrowing by someone with no job is equally to blame. The piper will be paid, it’s just a question of who will pay. Future home buyers? Lenders themselves through eating bad loans and being forced to shut their doors? Everyone in the U.S. through higher interest rates or government bailouts? Who pays for all the impending bankruptcies?
Many of the flippers failed to realize the carrying costs of a piece of real estate that you cannot sell to anyone and cannot rent for enough to cover the monthly expenses, if you can rent them at all. When there is no bigger fool behind you, guess who is the fool then? Last one holding the bag.
Casey Serin may just be the poster boy for this era of flipping/speculating/gambling gone bad. His blog and the subsequent media attention has spawned several anti-casey and parody sites, one of which is the aptly named Iamnotfacingforeclosure.com .
INVESTORS who buy run down properties and then improve them with sweat equity and some of their own cash create value and deserve to be rewarded for their hard work. However, the GAMBLERS who do little more than sign loan papers and then plant a ’For Sale’ sign in the front yard do so at their own risk. Poke a stick at a snake and it may bite you. Something needs to be changed in the system when someone with no job, no income, and no documentation can buy properties so easily and get themselves into such a mess that everyone else may have to bail them out.
Rant away.
RE: Casey Serin:
Some similarly business-minded folks from the old country also run into tough times, due to their own innovative ideas for creating wealth, just like Casey:
Uzbekistani immigrants await discussion of entrepreneurial methods
After tiring myself out trying to figure out what the heck this dude Casey Serin is actually up to, I finally found a place that catalogs his activities, history, associations, and purpose.
The site bills itself as “the leading semi-satirical wiki about foreclosure blogs”, and I’d say that’s accurate, given the predictably rather vertical market for “semi-satirical wikis on the topic of foreclosure blogs.” Still, it’s a good read.
Address:
http://www.caseypedia.com/
Hotlink:
Casey Serin