Casey Serin is young, hopeless, clueless, irresponsible, ill-intentioned...he committed fraud. He blogged about his foreclosure auction and his excitement at witnessing it. He extols the virtue of drinking fresh juice to cure his foreclosure woes. Why am I wasting both your time and mine with this? His actions (or actual inactions) impact each and every homeowner or future home buyer in this country. How can I make such a bold statement? Stay with me and I'll explain.
Casey Serin obtained a $330,000 mortgage on the aforementioned property. It was offered at auction for $216,000 opening bid. No one purchased this property. Countrywide was the lender (at least on the first). Total loss: well at this point that is still a bit up in the air but lets use the purchase price less the opening bid =$114,000. A 34% loss. Casey received $50,000 cash back at close. Casey also signed a $50,000 unsecured promissory note on this property in order to push through a short-sale which never materialized. He is unsure is he needs to repay this.
Let's see if we can makes some sense of this. Casey secures a mortgage for $330,000 and pockets $50,000. He defaults on the mortgages. The property is foreclosed. Estimated value at foreclosure: $216,000. Countrywide now owns a $216,000 house which they paid $330,000 for in Sacramento which needs repairs (based on photos posted by young Casey). Casey is $50,000 richer. OK, he is not $50,000 richer at this very moment because he is a train-wreck and made a huge mess out of this but if he had any common sense he would actually be $50,000 richer.
Countrywide is experiencing an almost 20% delinquency rate on sub-prime loans. A record number of other sub-prime lenders are shuttering their businesses because they are being choked by delinquencies. Are the lenders to blame for this situation? In part, yes. But so are the appraisers, real estate agents, loan officers, and even the purchasers. Many are culpable.
The result will be tighter lending practices to prevent this type of future fraud and abuse. Today the result is the impact in property values, the unknowing homeowners who now find themselves owing far more then their home is worth because people like Casey Serin falsely inflated the value of a neighborhood only to turn around and crush the value a few short months later.
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:
www.pattayamail.com/478/pictures/n12_478.jpg
Posted by: Soem Dood | May 13, 2007 at 04:57 AM