We see the advertisements every single day, whether in television, the classifieds, or direct mail:

Be independent, invest in real estate today! Just like I did and you too can make $x for only a days worth of work!

or

Facing foreclosure? I'll buy your home for cash!

or

I buy homes for cash call me at 555-5555

The tales of success are hard to believe, and yet thousands do believe it. If the advertisements didn't work, then the people making thousands of dollars (and I'm talking about the seminar leaders not the investors) wouldn't keep doing it.

Unfortunately, as American as Apple Pie and Baseball is the desire to make money quickly and easily. And that is where the investors run into trouble. They have a plan that works wonderful in a "boom" economy - like we faced in the past several years. Unfortunately, those boom times have been replaced by falling prices ? in the speculative areas of the coasts and southwest as much as 30 percent ? and these investors are standing with mortgages and no real means of paying it.

Not exactly a good situation for someone that's leveraged their assets on selling home "x" to pay for home "y".

Casey Serin, a 24-year-old real estate investor, is facing this on a daily basis. He's facing foreclosure on five properties in four states and blogging about it at I am facing foreclosure.com.

I'll give Casey credit, he's sincere about getting all of these cleared up as quickly and as cleanly as possible. Too many people in this market are just walking away from their responsibilities. Two homes on Niatross Place are sitting empty, because the owners couldn't pay the mortgage and rather than working with the bank and taking the high-road they blamed the bank and walked away.

Unfortunately, Casey has become the poster-child of the issues that investors face ? that aren't covered in the real estate seminars. Toby sat through a seminar a few months ago (before deciding to go into real estate) and there was ZERO mentions of the downside of investing. They were selling you on the dream of retiring early and making thousands of dollars.

Is this there fault? Not really. The goal of these seminars (or at least the free ones) is to sell you on the paid seminar that's taking place that night or to at least to get you to buy the materials.

Casey's tale is a sad one and it is a good read for anyone that is interested in investing in real estate.

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