My wife has been working on getting all our accounting in order from this crazy roller-coaster year.
Here is a shot of our living room floor. A big mess of receipts, invoices, bills, and other paperwork from all our real estate deals and travels this year. She is identifying, organizing, and sorting it all:
And here is a picture of a quick calendar my wife put together to figure out where we went this year. Everything from real estate investing seminars to going across 4 states baby-sitting deals:
Looks like I’ve been on the road 3 months out of the year - by plane or by car. My wife went on some of the trips with me as well.
Our taxes are going to be crazy this year. We are trying to be proactive now to avoid doing all this next April. We’re entering all the transactions into Microsoft Money and categorizing them. We have kept pretty good records of everything. It all just needs to be categorized. Lot’s of tedious work!
I’m so glad that I have a detail-oriented wife. It helps that she is working on her accounting degree too. I can’t wait until she becomes a CPA and helps me keep my crazy finances organized.
We made an agreement early on: I will make it, she will count it (and keep it safe). I’m still working on the making part… 
79 Comments
October 14th, 2006 at 8:38 pm
Sweet and if you two don’t look for an honest way to make a living, you both will be counting calendars real soon.
October 14th, 2006 at 8:56 pm
HI Casey,
I really hope you can get out of this mess.
October 15th, 2006 at 4:18 am
Bills, bill, bills. I understand what you are going though. However, again, get rich through fraud is NOT the way to go, espeically when you don’t have a clue of what you are doing.
Having said that, I still love this blog. The point of it is to teach everybody out there on exactly what NOT to do, in another words, “Don’t do what I did. That’s my advice”.
Anyway, young kis have guts that’s for sure. It has its pros and cons. I’m in the software business and I earned my first million when I was 21, knowing abosulty nothing and sold my company when I was 26. I can relate to your mentality, however, I really earned it through honest hard work, even when i was 21, I worked 20 hours a day non-stop. Nothing comes quick and easy, that shall always be remembered.
Here is a proposal. We might have a designer position later and mabye we can arrange a deal, how does that sound? You sell us your houses and we wipe you off clean. In return, you work for me for the next 10 years or when you pay off the differences.
No promises at this point.
October 15th, 2006 at 8:10 am
How is the bird dogging going? Did you get the fixer you made an offer on? Where are you going to get the money to fix it? Going to get some more of the hard money to get you through?
October 15th, 2006 at 8:27 am
Arizonadude… If my 130,000 cash offer gets then I will be buying this property at 52% of After-Repair-Value, which is 250k. It will take 20-30K to fix thing up. Market it at 220 for a quick sale. Its a first time buyer area and very very few 3/1 houses at this price (if any). Has a bigger 0.2 lot.
So this thing is a money maker. Do the math. After expenses this thing will make 30K or more. If the repair crew is fast this thing can be turned in a month and be back on the market. Even with the holidays and all this should be a 3 months or less deal.
I’m probably not going to buy it myself though. I will assign the contract to another investor/handy-man for 5-10K.
However, if I can find a good crew, some private money, and work under the guidance of a seasoned investor.. i might give it a shot myself. We’ll see.
Hopefully this thing will get accepted.
October 15th, 2006 at 9:47 am
“I’m still trying to avoid weaseling out with BK, if possible. I may HAVE TO though…”
You may not be able to - I believe you can’t declare bankruptcy if the debts were incurred fraudulently, and you’ve pretty much admitted that this is the case.
Otherwise everyone would pull the same stunt - get ludicrously indebted to a truly insane degree and then try to, as you yourself put it, “weasel out”.
October 15th, 2006 at 9:51 am
Knowing a few CPA’s myself I can tell you that they have to sign a code of ethics. I am guessing that loan fraud probably doesn’t fit into that category. Good thing she signed all the papers too so you can her life as well as your own.
This is not a personal attack, but you need to cut your losses and get on with your life. I’m sure you feel like you are “just getting ready to turn it around”. Guess what, you are not. You are in over your head and you a have a problem just like the “day traders” and “multi-level marketing” fads of the past, there is no easy money to be made. This is especially true when you have no f’ing idea what you are doing.
Declare BK, get a job, and get on with your life…
October 15th, 2006 at 9:55 am
Casey:
If you’re willing to work on freelance PHP type projects, post a comment here. I might have some work for you. Freelancing might be a good middle ground between a full-time job and no income at all.
As to the CPA issue, I think it’s not so much whether an accountant can get a job or not (though a low credit score certainly doesn’t help), but whether someone with a felony conviction can even be licensed as a CPA at all.
Though I think a felony conviction is unlikely, a CPA license represents a significant asset, so you should check it out.
October 15th, 2006 at 10:31 am
YOu have a child and you’re taking this kind of risk?
I’m convinced this site is a fraud.
October 15th, 2006 at 11:45 am
I see more travel for seminars than for actual business.
Good lesson for everybody who cares: If you really need to spend more time on educating yourself about your business than on running it, then you shouldn’t be in business. Sorry.
-btc
October 15th, 2006 at 12:09 pm
Sigh, big sigh.
Every single investment decision you’ve made excepting the first has gone bad. What doyou know now that yyou didn’t know then?
Your after repair valuations are compd on May-Jun 06 for sale Feb-Mar 07.
$50/day is lost every week you cannot find more money, a contractor, a permit inspection, etc.
There isn’t enough in this for those of us who know what we are doing alone nevermind holding your hand. Ask yourself why someone would -sell- for $130,000. Ask yourself why sales at $250,000 are down 20-30%. Ask yourself what DOM is truly not the MLS lies and plan the sales date from that.
I’ve done the math and it doesn’t add up.
October 15th, 2006 at 12:18 pm
I know you can’t get a job because, we’ll you’re a complete loser. But you might want to consider selling oranges on the freeway on ramp. I know where there are some really dirty rotten oranges are you can buy on the cheap. Then all you have to do is spray paint them orange and sell them for 15 times what you paid.
Jackpot!
October 15th, 2006 at 12:59 pm
If you get evaluated by a psychiatrist and they confirm you are addicted to buying homes, then maybe your lawyer can use that in your defense?
October 15th, 2006 at 1:03 pm
Mr Serin,
Man I hope it works out for you but I really think you should concentrte on squareing up others debts right now. Where is this property for 130k, Rio Linda? You better be looking for properties in desirable areas in this market. So a quick sale of 220? Are you going to sell it yourself, better figure a 5% commission to be safe. Also carrying costs etc. I think you can make a few bucks on the deal if what you say is correct. Better have that puppy inspected by a professional home inspector as well as a pest inspection. This wil give you a more realistic idea of fix up costs. Worst case scenario the place is infested with termites or other unpermitted issues. Better to have the liability on someone else. I agree you can make money fixing up houses. The people who really do well are well versed in construction. I really think you just need to be careful.
October 15th, 2006 at 1:29 pm
Interesting comments about low credit CPA not being able to get a job with a CPA firm… will have to look into it…
What’s there to look into? You are amazing. You carry off denial with a youthful arrogance that I don’t recall being the norm when your age.
It’s simple. Ruin her credit or bankrupt her and she’s never going to get a crack at any respectable CPA firm.
The only solution apparent would be for her to divorce you immediately and take action to remove herself from your collapsing loans — which she probably cannot do in any case.
October 15th, 2006 at 2:22 pm
The real estate is crashing dude!!! In Japan, in an economy where people save and are thrify, the average condo in Tokyo dropped 80-90% in 10 years (!!!). You read that right, 80%.
San Diego dropped 4% LAST MONTH… and every bubble has a symmetric bust following it. Imagine 5 years of drop at 10-15% per year.
October 15th, 2006 at 2:41 pm
>> If my 130,000 cash offer gets then I will be buying this property at 52% of After-Repair-Value, which is 250k.
Which you determined how? So far you have little success in estimating the real prices your properties will be able to sell for. What makes you so sure you’re even in the ballpark this time?
>> It will take 20-30K to fix thing up
I’ll ask the same question as above. How do you know? Have you brought in a contractor to look at it? So far your track record at estimating these things isn’t good.
>> Market it at 220 for a quick sale. Its a first time buyer area and very very few 3/1 houses at this price (if any). Has a bigger 0.2 lot.
Maybe, if you got all your numbers right, and if you can find a buyer. The “first time buyer areas” are the ones being hit hardest right now.
>> So this thing is a money maker. Do the math. After expenses this thing will make 30K or more. If the repair crew is fast this thing can be turned in a month and be back on the market. Even with the holidays and all this should be a 3 months or less deal.
Of course, “quick turnover” these days has stretched out to many months in lots of markets. The days of concluding a deal in a week or two are over. You seem not to realize that, onor do you understand the real costs of carrying inventory, even though those costs are what is killing you.
-btc
October 15th, 2006 at 4:18 pm
you spent almost as much time on seminar travel as you did on property travel. that probably wasn’t the smartest move. you had all of those properties that should have received the most of your time!
you ALSO had a week vacation in hawaii in the middle of all your real estate trips. nice.
October 15th, 2006 at 4:31 pm
Casey… the photographs of your place add some legitimacy to fend off the people who think this site is fake. Anyhow, I feel your pain and have no useful advice except there are people like Frank Abagnale who turned a bad situation into a success. Maybe after you declare bankruptcy or get out of your current mess you can tell other people how to avoid your real estate situation, and build a business on that. But first you need to admit you are in a serious state of crap and give up on the dream of getting rich on real estate.
October 15th, 2006 at 6:42 pm
Casey,
A lot of companies check credit scores. It says quite a bit about your reliability and judgment.
Not to mention they dont want to hire someone who has to spend their work day on the phone with creditors.
October 15th, 2006 at 6:58 pm
CPA firms don’t hire employees that have bad credit. Do you know why?
The same is true about banks and other financial institutions as well. If you can’t handle your own finances, how can you be trusted to handle someone elses?
I remember interviewing someone I thought did lights out on an interview for a position at the mortgage company I used to work for. We were going to train this person to be a mortgage underwriter. And then we saw their credit report, nothing but collections and late pays, we call these folks BTR’s (born to rent). Needless to say, this person didn’t get the job.
I can also concur what others have said about filing for BK. You will have to pay back any mortgage debts not satisfied after the properties are sold because they were bought with fraud. I’m not sure about the CC debt. You might be able to get that discharged. I can’t believe these CC companies allowed you to run up a $100,000 + tab of unsecured debt. The CC companies will probably try to say you committed fraud when you applied for credit with them. You need a sympathetic judge. You really need to find a job, ASAP. Good luck.
October 15th, 2006 at 10:52 pm
Hey Casey,
Was that you I heard part of a radio interview with on KFI?
Your story and process bring back a buss load of memories for me. Those times seem like 10 minutes ago and very much affected my job/career, marriage/divorce and of course my finances. I should not forget a few years paying off the IRS too. Now 10 years later, all of the bankruptcy, short sale, bill collector and intertwined family and job memories are a huge part of my fiscally conservative and suspicious well off self.
I am not sure but have heard that you may face more painful bankruptcy and short sale ramifications in 2006 than I did in 1996. I am hopeful that other readers will know the difference and explain. The game is not lost at 24 my man. You will be a much wiser person when this is over and It will be over if you keep doing the right thing.
The people who write hateful things have their own issues and I am embarrassed on behalf of the human race for them.
October 16th, 2006 at 1:48 am
Are many of you blind? This guy is a hoax making money of blogging with his wild stories.
This is the last time i will be visiting this site.
October 16th, 2006 at 2:17 am
I’m not saying it doesn’t happen, but it is illegal to not hire someone because of bankruptcy.
I didn’t say anything about bad credit. Just BK.
If you can prove a company turns you down specifically because of BK, they can theoretically get in a lot of trouble. However, it is hard to find a lawyer, even an employment discrimination specialist, who even knows about this (ironic, since these days a lot more people are probably turned down for jobs because of bad credit than because they’re female, but most employment lawyers only know about gender/race/age discrimination).
I don’t have the link here but just look up the federal BK laws. It was the will of Congress that people declaring BK would get a fresh start and therefore it should not be held against them in (sorry, this is by memory, could be wrong) hiring or renting. This may have been amended by the recent BK overhaul but I know it was true a few years ago.
p.s. I’m not a lawyer nor do I play one on TV. If you need a professional opinion, please find a professional.
October 16th, 2006 at 9:17 am
Conservative n Suspicious
You will be a much wiser person when this is over and It will be over if you keep doing the right thing.
The people who write hateful things have their own issues and I am embarrassed on behalf of the human race for them.
Apparently “doing the right thing” does not exclude committing intentional fraud for the purpose of financial gain.
You’d be better off not wasting time suffering for the human race and instead taking a long look in the mirror.
There is no moral equivalency to this debate. There is no “other side”; no “alternative opinion”. There are those who think rules should be followed, and those who think it’s just fine to cheat, lie and steal.
October 16th, 2006 at 9:57 am
Ethic is what inherited from family/society nor learned from school. No more ethical lecture for Mr. and Mrs. Casey Serin.
Here a simple picture. Mr. and Mrs. Casey Serin can’t borrow any money from the banks or friends anymore. This is good because it stops Mr. and Mrs. Casey Serin from dreaming, lying, and committing fraud.
Hope Mr. and Mrs. Casey Serin acknowledge that they can’t operate the same way anymore (i.e. borrowing money, gambling money, etc money, buying house, etc). It’s time for a change.
October 16th, 2006 at 10:19 am
Conservative n Suspicious
You will be a much wiser person when this is over and It will be over if you keep doing the right thing.
The people who write hateful things have their own issues and I am embarrassed on behalf of the human race for them.
What a sanctimonious pontificating a-hole. That’s right buddy..grieve for me and my like….I for one won’t even give you a further second thought.
October 16th, 2006 at 10:27 am
The more I read this site, the more I laugh. You managed to do every single thing wrong with regards to purchasing properties
miss the market, buy homes you never saw, fraudulently obtain loans, go 100% plus on everyone, and you STILL want to pick up another house!!!!! You are like the idiot at the casino who keeps pulling hundreds out of your pocket thinking this will be the time the cards are in my favor.
Your biggest mistake of all is publishing this out there. I myself work for a large mortgage company(thankfully we have none of your loans, I checked). I have fwd your blog to just about everyone I know in the industry. I will tell you one thing, we take this VERY seriously. BK isnt going to help you because you lied….even worse you admitted it online. You are going to be dealing with this for the rest of your life. My advice get a job right now, and start doing right. Maybe the judge will go lenient on you, but I dont know why they would.
I am curious, what were you expecting to happen here? How much were you planning on making per house? 20k, 30k, 50k , 100k? You could have made more working a real job.
October 16th, 2006 at 10:41 am
It’s nice to see that on April 3-10th you took a vacation to Hawaii.
For the life of me I can’t see why you earned it. It must have been nice to get all those “real life” problems off your back for a while.
BTW I just got back from a Hawaii / French Polynesia vacation as well. I paid for it all with the money I’ve saved by renting. Got a new Rolex to.
My next step is to buy properties from people like you at auction.
October 16th, 2006 at 10:55 am
Casey,
I’m only a few years older than you and worked in real estate as an undergraduate to pay the bills. In addition, I went to seminars and workshops on how to make money in real estate. The information I learned was extremely valuable. After deciding to shift gears and finally finishing graduate school I realized many things in life. First, you need to go into a career that you are good at and love. This is extremely difficult to achieve and comes at the cost of blood, sweat, and tears – but in the end joy and wisdom are your prizes. Secondly, you need to balance views in life; call it the carrying two glasses technique. In graduate school one of my mentors, a doctor in the field told me, “whenever you feel the sudden urge that this is the greatest thing in the world, reach back and put on your contrarian glasses. What would someone else say about this?” With that said, from all your posts, calendar, and blogging it seems that you went with your direct gut instinct. Now that you are wet behind the ears what do you think if you put on a different pair of glasses, would the world look like? What would the fact that you are writing a blog about facing foreclosure say about you?
Another interesting thing this blog is eliciting is a generational divide. Some seem so unconnected from our generation that we hear those common remarks of “well in my day people were…” Being only a few years older and not growing up in a different era, I can speak to our generations culture; at least to the extent I lived it. Think about the shows that we had during our 20s – the age we are forming career decisions. Survivor, The Apprentice, Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, and books such as Rich Dad Poor Dad as national best sellers. Ours is a culture of getting rich fast. And this isn’t new to the 2000 era. All we need to do is look at the 90s technology boom and bust and we can see the drive to get rich quick. And what does get rich quick mean? Well, for the most part no one is telling you that you cannot get rich. As a matter of fact, you can become filthy stinking rich but the process includes work. The anger directed at our generation isn’t that they do not want to see us rich but our mentality that we will sit back, do nothing, and count the green dollars as they come in while we sit back and watch Lost on our plasma television. You have a lot to learn and so do I. We all need to grow and develop regardless of our age – the day we stop growing is the day we die. With that said I’m hoping that you can learn from the mistakes you have done. I’m not sure how genuine you are? Somehow I get the sense you are still trying to exploit this situation to make a quick buck.
October 16th, 2006 at 1:01 pm
You are leaving evidence all of the net dude.
http://www.iwillteachyoutoberi....._your.html
“1. Remember to be careful how you leverage. Its your best friend and also your worst enemy. If you know what you’re doing you can actually borrow 100% of value of a house.
If you are REALLY good you can get cash-back at close. I’ve received anywhere from 15 to 50 thousands back at close from the seller when i bought the house. That can really make your head spin.
Its a false sense of profit though because its really a loan, until you sell the house. So the cash you pull out upfront is like a home equity line of credit. Its not free money… yet.
If you don’t have a good plan for that money its easy to get in trouble. You can “juice up” all of the equity in a house and then get stuck with it having no room to pay the costs to sell it.
That’s what happen to me. I went all out investing and bought 7 houses in the first quarter of 2006.
I made some bad moves and am now facing foreclosure on 5 houses in 4 different states.
You can read more here if you want to learn from my mistakes:
www.IamFacingForeclosure.com
Posted by Casey Serin at September 14, 2006 10:44 PM ”
So, how much in TOTAL have you actually received in “cash back ” financing and what did you do with that money? By your own admission, it did not go into more purchases. You ran up over $140,000 in credit cards.
So, the big question is WHERE’S THE MONEY?
October 16th, 2006 at 1:28 pm
That’s exactly what i’m trying to figure out as we go through all our transaction for the year… WHERE IS THE MONEY?
Aside from going to our anniversary trip to Hawaii we didn’t really spend any money on ourselves this year. All the cash-back went right back into the business to float the properties.
The mortgage payments every month on 6 houses at 15k+ per month is what took probably the biggest chunk.
That was the only reason I was “juicing” up the equity - to float the deals, pay the repairs and travel expenses and when I resell, hopefully have some of that left over as profit.
But because of mismanaging the whole thing and buying too many properties, that plan fell through. The cash is all gone … with nothing to show for it!
October 16th, 2006 at 3:34 pm
“The cash is all gone … with nothing to show for it!”
That’s not true Casey..you have a 2.2 million dollar debt to show for it. And don’t forget about all the life lessons and wisdom that you have to show for it as well..man what a schmuck
October 16th, 2006 at 3:35 pm
“But because of mismanaging the whole thing and buying too many properties, that plan fell through. The cash is all gone … with nothing to show for it!”
The mistakes you made had nothing to do with execution. You committed loan fraud on a massive level, in multiple states, making it a federal crime. You only had to do this once for it to be simultaneously highly unethical and illegal.
You are not an investor. You are not even a speculator- speculators make some efforts to control the risks involved in a transaction and are especially careful with their leverage. You’re not even a bad speculator- Aramanth was speculating in the worst ways- placing big bets in highly leveraged assets. But the worst they did was burn through their investors money. You burned through 2Mil of money obtained through fraud. You didnt even put up the capital that was lost.
I dont presume to judge you. That will be the function of your jury.
Someday, you will move on from this. You will get out of prison, and I hope when that happens you have the good sense to get a job and become a contributing member of society.
October 16th, 2006 at 4:54 pm
Wow what a compassion. Bashing Casey’s haters and lifting Casey’s spirit. Good job Have Some Compassion. Casey need to cheer up, gotta look good while committing fraud eh
Book deal probably gotta wait for DA investigation.
October 16th, 2006 at 5:02 pm
Have Some Compassion “blah blah blah” didn’t get past the first few lines
Man you really get going when you start talking don’t you? Whenever someone starts using quotes to get their points across..it shows marginal intelligence…
In a nutshell (ie..make it short, cut to the chase..something you obviously are incapable of)
Oh shut up.
October 16th, 2006 at 5:15 pm
About “stated income”
I don’t want to be accused of being a dinosaur, but when I started getting stated income loans, they were for one purpose — to help non-W2 borrowers get financing.
As a self employed person, my 1040 form does not reflect my true income — not because I’m hiding anything, but because depreciation, etc. lowers my AGI and does not compare to the same income of a wage earner.
BUT (and this is important), when I started using these loans (and I’ve used them several times since), you had to have squeaky clean credit — not just no black marks, but a substantial history of responsible use of credit.
AND, you had to put 20% down.
I wouldn’t be surprised to learn that these stiff conditions have been eased, but the pendulum has shifted a bit too far.
October 16th, 2006 at 8:24 pm
Compassion-
The issue I have with Casey (more so with the fact that there are thousands of folks like him) is that they have created a massive instability in the economy that is going to correct itself soon. When it corrects, the backlash isn’t just going to smack the overlevered who missed out on chairs (they’ll get theirs as they always do) but that it’s exceedingly likely to cause panic and chaos that will impact everyone. How many banks can survive the impacts of 1,000 borrowers like Casey? Keep in mind that all 5 (or at least 4 of them) of them mistakenly believe that Casey Serin and his lovely bride are happy owners of a single home they really don’t want to loose (and have capacity to cover that debt–which he would have if there was one and he was a PHP programmer).
More importantly how many of those homeowners are going to continue to pay 40-50% of their gross income to hang on by their fingernails to a home that is now worth a fraction of the debt? When all this property goes back to the bank, regulators are going to freak and the banks will be in a similar situation to Casey but several orders of magnitude higher. It’s the people who are hurt by the likely to be exceedingly tight credit cycle that is coming who deserve compassion. They won’t have done anything but the sea change will hit them almost as hard. The injustice of that is what gets the ire stirred by the others. Most of the others correctly called the top and are now realizing that their foresight is unlikely to be of much use this time.
Casey was just a pawn in this whole game, it’s really the seminar educators who preach fraudulent methods (buy several houses at a time and get cash back at the close) which was a tactic that only worked as long as housing boomed. Or the banks that have done beans about really preventing mortgage fraud (how hard would a database similar to FICO be for mortgages), or the overly accomidating FED that was overly concerned about a Japan deflation cycle (or didn’t want to send their chairman out with a recession in his victory lap, depending on how cynical your view is).
October 16th, 2006 at 9:20 pm
If your finances stay crazy then you’re not getting the point.
October 16th, 2006 at 10:27 pm
“Oppressors! Never have I seen so many MISERABLE, jealous, pessimistic, and oppressing comments aimed at one person!”
Come on now … this guy is saying he lied, he bought a ton of properties, is facing bankruptcy, people are telling him he could go to jail (true), they’re telling him he shouldn’t have lied (true), that he’s in for a tough time (true), that he should do the responsible thing, get a job (true) …
Why are you encouraging him. It’s obvious that both of you are seriously out of touch with reality. Nobody wants him to go to jail (well maybe some people), but he drove up house prices artificially through lying. What are we supposed to do, encourage him to do it some more?
Whatever. There’s some seriously sick stuff going on here, and it’s not the people encouraging this guy to be responsible.
October 16th, 2006 at 11:14 pm
“Insults hurled at others are only reflections in the mirror.. of your own self.”
Ha Ha what a bunch of hippie crap. I’m in the same age group a Casey and I could care less about his plight. He committed fraud to get where he is today plain and simple.
Even now you can see in his comments that he’s completely unwilling to work a real job for a living.
Personally I hope the law catches up with him and for that matter all of the speculators that pushed the housing bubble to the level that it is now.
He is the reason I can’t buy a house in Southern California for under 450k.
Oh, BTW I’m in the computer industry as well. Like I bet a lot of the readers of this blog are. I work two jobs from 6am till 8pm saving up every penny I make to scrape together a decent down payment for a house.
Who’s out there crying for people like me? The ones that are actually trying to play by the rules.
Screw this guy and everyone like him that think they can skate by without having to actually work for a living.
October 17th, 2006 at 5:04 am
to: Have Some Compassion
Unfortunately, debt of their magnitude does ruin both of their lives for quite some time. Not forever, but it does ruin their life for a long time.
What Casey did is very common? Give us a break. No one has $130,000 in credit card debt and foreclosing on 5 homes at 24. Do you? That is just outrageous.
Maybe we should have more compassion for Casey, but your arguments as to why we should are invalid.
Dani
October 17th, 2006 at 7:16 am
@Have Some Compassion
I have never committed intentional fraud. If you think stealing money from banks is fine because everyone else does it too — as Casey does — then you are de facto illegitimate. No judgement needed.
Those that have hurtful things to say to Casey: you have your own “demons” to face, so why don’t you start your own blog
I have 2.
but you are stuck, unnoticed, in your paycheck-to-paycheck life
I am neither stuck, nor unnoticed. Just because you don’t know me only means that I thankfully am unknown by the likes of you.
(even though you got a lousey degree or two)
I have 3.
never taking chances, never achieving your dreams (or even knowing that exhilirating thrill of coming close), and you aren’t even HONEST enough with YOURSELF to realize that it is YOU that is the problem..
I have started 5 companies. 2 failed. 1 is ongoing, break even. 1 did well. 1 did exceptionally well.
When I was 24, however, I was working a paycheck job, learning my industry and businesses skills, and investing in my advanced education. By 30 I had one success under my belt, but not before a failure.
But, that failure was an *honest* failure. Not an *ethical* failure, as is Casey’s.
And, if you’re so sure about the legitimacy of fraudulent loans and cash-back schemes, then go ahead and publish your info too, as Casey has. After all, it’s commonly taught by the gurus, right?
October 17th, 2006 at 11:22 am
Carlton Sheets, I cant believe someone just brought that name up.
Casey is worse then the people who ran Enron into the ground. while I aplaud him for standing up and being a man, accepting his fate, and attempting to do right. Then he says he is trying to get another house, that was where the compassion was lost. I believe everyone deserves a second chance, but only after they have learned from their mistakes. It just doesnt appear that Casey has done this.
this is not a victimless crime, Casey is one of those people that pushed values up artificially and priced many out of owning a home.
Mr/Mrs “Have some compassion” needs to get a clue. You keep forgiving people like Casey, you will continue to be taken advantage of.
October 18th, 2006 at 3:41 pm
You are the most UNFORGIVING bunch! It’s easy to hide behind screen-names and say hateful things, isn’t it?
Aren’t You doing the same thing?
You’re just a troll anyway.
October 19th, 2006 at 10:36 am
The stock market is hitting new highs, and the economy is really sparking thanks to all the war spending. So why are you in this fix that you allege? I have no investments in real estate, but it doesn’t make any sense to me. Is this blog fiction? Is this just the first draft of a novel?
October 19th, 2006 at 5:21 pm
Hey fijirobe, you say you work in the mortgage industry, right? If you want to compare Casey to the “the people who ran Enron into the ground,” then it’s only fair to compare the mortgage lenders (with their fast and loose practices) to Anderson Consulting who aided and abetted the Enron execs the whole way through.
I have some advice for how Casey can make 10-fold on his money, although it may take a few years. Sell short the mortgage lenders. I’m already short IndyMac and New Century Financial, also in an inverse fund tied to the Philly housing index. My plan is to layer on shorts of the entire group as it becomes more and more apparent that the housing bottom is nowhere near. Wait until Spring, when defaults only get worse. Eventually it’s going to take Congress to tighten the reigns on all the fast and loose lending practices that ran rampant in the past 10 years. That’s when the more suspect lenders will up and go poof. Already this week we’ve seen warnings from the likes of Accredited Home Lenders and Washington Mutual. The housing bubble this country just went through doesn’t correct its excesses in a single season. It takes years and years along with some mighty purging.
Casey is not really the problem here, he’s just a symptom. I think he is the real deal, which is unfortunate for him. I also think he’s a complete dumbass. I love this blog because it confirms everything that I believe about the mortgage lending industry. The problem is that lenders are not doing their job vetting loans beforehand. They don’t seem to care because the loans (especially those sub-prime ones) are so quickly turned into derivative securities which either get sold off to hedge funds or foreigners or foisted onto Fanny Mae or Freddie Mac.
For the sake of the US economy, everyone here should hope and pray that this mortgage-backed security house of cards which we’ve created doesn’t implode in on itself and take down the whole system. I’m betting it will. It’s not possible to remove risk from the equation, despite what the MBS merchants have been telling their customers. Anyway, from my POV, the biggest problem seems to be that lenders don’t appreciate the risk that has never left the equation. They seem to have operated under the premise that these exoctic derivative financials are a panacea. Wait and see the fallout from this false notion, and the many unintended consequences.
Anyway Mr. Lender Man, why don’t you start by taking some responsibility for your side of the Faustian bargain? I don’t own any real estate at all. Do much better speculating in the stock markets. But I love to watch those flipping shows on television. Confirms everything I always thought, for example that it doesn’t take a single ounce of intelligence to succeed in real estate. If flippers are by-and-large such complete morons, it makes me wonder where they dredge up the lenders. Nobody seems to think there’s any risk left in the system. There is, and when it squeezes out the sides of the tube, lookout below.
October 19th, 2006 at 10:59 pm
“The stock market is hitting new highs, and the economy is really sparking thanks to all the war spending. ”
Don’t be mislead by the Dow Jones Industrial Average, which just closed above a “record” 12000 today. Ditto for the S & P 500, etc.
The problem is that the dollar is worth quite a bit less than it was several years ago, let alone 10 or 30 years ago.
The inflation-adjusted DJIA chart is at:
http://www.dogsofthedow.com/dow1925cpilog.htm
It was higher in 2000 than today.
Worse, the Dow and some other popular averages drop underperformers and defunct companies and add in companies perceived to be on the upswing. While this does not guarantee a rising average (as these stock pickers are not omniscient), it has the expected effect.
Even a stock buyer who buys a marketbasket of Dow stocks–or purchases the funds which track the Dow–is worse off now than in 2000, even at the “record” levels.
As for the war spending, the hangover from this debt will be as bad as the early 70s hangover from the “big spending” years of the Vietnam War. (Hint: the Dow plunged to close to 500 in the mid-70s, some tech stocks dropped from $85 to $15, and so on.)
The worst thing Casey can do is to discover stock speculating as a new shortcut to easy money.
–Tim
October 20th, 2006 at 3:03 pm
[…] Truly what other option do you have if you are stuck in this slump? I guess you can sell(?) now and start renting again — but rents are rising as well, as it is wont to do when cautious buyers turn to renting again due to market conditions — and wait for the opportunity to fetch a new home at a more attractive price. Do so at your own risk, which is great, for can you really be sure that new home closer to jobs will ever get discounted? I guess you can also rent out your original house, while allowing yourself to rent closer to work. That may be a reasonable option if you really really hate the commute but still want to ride out the downturn. […]
October 20th, 2006 at 7:51 pm
to get more houses. Some have even questioned if Casey Serin and his blog are for real, because some of the highest-paying Google Ads are those associated with home loans and bankruptcy. However, a few photos like these, with bills and finances sprayed across the floor, make it plainly clear that this guy is no fraud… at least in the blogging sense. Still, Casey is getting a lot of attention from his story and his tell-all blog. Maybe he
October 26th, 2006 at 12:44 pm
I personnally have never flipped! ( LOL) But common sense tells me any business venture needs a Plan, not to mention , you need to be organized w/ a sytem or plan of action for what might happen. slow down, get things in order, then move ahaed slowly…
April 10th, 2007 at 1:11 pm
That’s a lot of paperwork!