A horror story to end all horror stories about flipping spec houses........the stuff of nightmares for people in housing.
The 10 mistakes that make quick-turnaround house investments risky
By NOELLE KNOX
USA Today
A flipper's 10 mistakes
SACRAMENTO, Calif. — If there's a poster child for everything that went wrong in the real-estate boom, it just might be Casey Serin.
In one year, the 24-year-old Web-site-designer-turned-real-estate-flipper bought eight homes in four states. In every case but one, he put no money down.
That April, at his peak, Serin had $93,000, which he had taken out of the homes as he bought them. By July, he was broke, desperate for one last deal.
Now? Serin has $140,000 in credit-card and credit-line debt and five houses in foreclosure. Last month, he started iamfacingforeclosure.com, a blog that's drawn both notes of condolence and expletive-laced condemnation.
"I did some stuff shady, but I'm not going to hide from it," he says. "Somebody can learn from it. I've already had people contact me and say, 'Hey, I'm in the same place.' "
The rise and fall of Casey Serin is a tale with moral and financial lessons for real-estate buyers, lenders and regulators.
Having consumed real-estate guides and seminars, Serin made just about every mistake a newbie could make — most of them, he admits, were no one's fault but his own — from fudging loan applications to buying homes sight-unseen.
That he began with bold dreams of class mobility makes his fall a peculiarly American saga.
Serin didn't know much about real estate at 19, when he bought his first condo.
As a Web-site designer, Serin was earning $35,000 a year at S.M.A.R.T. Association, a maker of marketing systems for health-care providers.
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