Avatar's Blog

It’s almost enough to make you cry. It’s definitely enough to make you take a hard look at your own financial plans. The story of Casey Serin, the twenty-four year old from Sacramento, California who has spent the last five years sinking further and further into debt after reading some real estate books and going to some real estate seminars, is a sad tale indeed.

Featured in Sunday’s USA Today, Serin also keeps a blog, iamfacingforeclosure.com, where he chronicles his journeys into $140,000 of debt. The list of what this young man did wrong in the property market is astonishing. He made his first foray into the real estate market at nineteen, purchasing a condominium while he was earning a $35,000 salary. Apparently, everything went smoothly until Serin decided do leave his salaried job and start his own company. A risky decision in and of itself, it did not take long for Serin’s mortgage payments to exceed what his income could have him afford. Selling the condo, he made $30,000 off the deal and proceeded to blow the profit on an array of things, including dates.

Serin’s tagline on his blog is includes the phrase “what NOT to do in Real Estate,” and this is definitely an accurate description of USA Today’s list of his mistakes. Using every shady and silly trick in the book, such as using “liar loans”, quitting a second job, buying sight-unseen and purchasing eight homes with no exit strategy, Serin is now considering bankruptcy.

If nothing else, this story is a neon lit, fifty-foot high billboard advertisement against educating oneself through self-help books and seminars. When the business you are attempting to get into could involve this type of serious financial disaster, you must seek better advice than “How To” authors. A young man such as Serin has (had?) decades to make money in the real estate industry, but he may well never live down the mistakes he’s made over the last five years. Nobody, buyers or lenders, wants to see this type of thing happen.