Casey Serin launches volume 3!

Casey serin has just released the third book of his chef d'oeuvre, titled "A Million Little Leases", all in the space of 24 hours! Talk about a massive focused action of late-nite business mettings!

Casey Serin releases a new book!

Casey Serin has released a new book... and it's not "The Foreclosure Code"! His new epic is entitled "House Crash": (All apologies to Neal Stephenson, author of Snow Crash)

David Crisp: Can I have $1.8 billion too?

This may be old news to some of you, but real-estate scammer David Crisp got a $1.8 billion line of credit to start the "University Towers" project in Bakersfield, Kaleeforrneea. Astonished, I sent in a prank email to his newfound financiers Neuflithz Wisenthall & Schlumberger:

To whom it may concern:

Thank for the time in reading my email. I was wondering if my corporation could get 1.8 billion dollars in financing for a commercial project of ours. It consists of multi-pronged business campaign aimed at several markets. Real Estate does this all the time in high-rise construction: offices, condos, and retail are often located in the same building. I was considering doing the same, but on rural property. Consider the following possible uses of formerly country farmland:

1) Llama farm - llama wool sells at a premium. The llamas could also be featured in a petting zoo. Possible advertising revenue could be done with state and country fairs.
2) Wind farm - wind turbines could be installed along ridgelines on the property to maximize power generating efficiency. Some of the debt being taken on could be easily paid in the long term thanks to government subsidies.
3) Hydroelectric - small hydroelectric turbines could be installed on small streams on the property. It is a myth that only large rivers produce abundant hydroelectric power.
4) Ethanol distillation - extra switchgrass not consumed by llamas could be processed into clean-burning ethanol technology. It's been proved that switchgrass is a far more effective ethanol crop than corn, and can also be consumed readily by llamas and other grazing animals. It is also a perennial plant that does not need fertilization.

I'm sure you'll agree that this would be a wise investment. I look forward to hearing your reply. Best regards,
[Signature]

Any rational investment firm would promptly relegate my email to the spam folder and block my IP address. However, I actually got a polite reply from these fine gentlemen. I thought to myself "I think I smell a scam here". First, Mr. Crisp claims that these are "high-level financiers from Europe", and when further pressed said "Do I feel confident about this as a funding source? Yes, I do, 110 percent [...] I'm confident with people that are working on it, I'm confident that it will get done." Their reply to my email as follows:

NWS-MANAGEMENT CONSULTANTS
For International Investment & Financial Services
Tel.: +971-4-2236322 / Fax: +971-4-2279800 / Mob: +971-50-5443571
E-mail: nws@emirates.net.ae P.O. Box: 42556 Dubai, U.A.E. License No.: 530866
Website: http://www.neuflithzwisenthallschlumberger.com

C.C. : Credit Analysis
Pages : 6 (including this page)

RE: YOUR REQUEST FOR THE LEASING / ENHANCING OF LINES OF CREDIT UP TO € 1,800,000,000.00 (ONE BILLION EIGHT HUNDRED MILLION EURO)

Dear Mr. Nadolski,

As per Dr. Dias' instructions, annexed please find relevant documentation relating to the above mentioned subject.

Please inform us for our records how you came to know about our organisation, i.e. , personal references, Time Magazine or International Herald Tribune advertisements, Financial Press, Internet, etc.

Best regards,

NWS - Dubai Office

C.C.: NWS - London Office
[Personal information and credit request form omitted]

If they are "high-level European financiers", then why is their headquarters in Dubai? And why are they so eager so lend me money? Maybe they actually liked my business proposal. Should I take them up on their offer?

You can read more about David "It's all about image" Crisp at the Bakersfield Bubble Blog.

The Chicago Spire Is a Pipe Dream

The buzz in Chicagoland has been about the newly redesigned Chicago Spire. The Chicago Plan Commission recently approved this new design. Architecture fans are gushing over its sleek, winding, glass superstructure, politicians are fawning over how it will add to the sky line and the city's marketability for the Olympics, and your average citizen is wondering why the silhouette of the building resembles a popular sex toy. More importantly, the people of Streeterville living in the immediate vicinity of the future 150 storey structure worry about the building's impact on traffic and public space.

However, I think the biggest roadblock to the project is simple economics. I'm going to assume the popular estimate of the project costing $2.2 billion to be accurate, though I'm sure cost overruns are going to push it higher. The biggest folly is the fact that it's going to be mostly residential with some retail shopping on the ground floor. No mixed-use, with partial office space: it's pure condo.

Since I work downtown, I've witnessed many new condo and hotel constructions planned and under construction. Also, more than a few office buildings have been converted to condo as well. The market is clearly saturated. If you don't believe me about the Chicago housing market having too much supply, these numbers on housing inventory back me up. All these condos are going up downtown, but the amount of office space is proportionally going down. You need high paid workers to live in all these fancy luxury condos.

So what do these other condos have to do with the Chicago Spire? The Chicago Spire will be competing against all these other condo developments. Given, the Chicago Spire will be the tallest building in North America when completed, I'll give it that much. However, a simple calculation based on the projected costs of the project ($2.2 billion) against the number of units for sale (1200), reveals a very disturbing statistic. In order for the project to break even, the average price of each condo will have to be $1,830,000. A quick search on ziprealty shows that you can get yourself a mammoth greystone rowhouse from the 1880's for that price fairly close to the city center. To each his own.

Let's take a different approach to that condo price though. Traditional methods of calculating housing affordability suggest that one should not spend more than 30% of one's income on housing payments. Another way is to multiply your household income by 2.5-3.0 to determine how much house you can afford. Let's be generous and assume a multiple of 3. This means to be able to afford living in this glass and steel phallus you must make about 610,000 a year. How many people make that kind of money? According to the latest US census data (2005) only 31,506 households make more than 200K a year in Chicago proper. The number making more than 600K a year is probably a fraction of that. That's not a lot of high-rollers go to around. My educated guess is that they will try to find more value for their money, like an all-stone Victorian mansion.

But never fear, the mainstream-media says all is well! National Public Radio interviewed some economic experts for us and broke it all down. The first person, a Realtor®, stated "if we're able to get a totally different and new group of buyers into the marketplace they're going to create more demand... it will help push up pricing especially in the premium buildings in the city". He thinks the key is to sucker foreigners who don't know any better to buy up our overpriced property. Expert number 2 from the Trump International Hotel and Tower says that Chicago can definitely handle the higher prices, because we have more luxury projects in the works (i.e., more supply of expensive condos will mean more demand for expensive condos). And of course, the baby boomers will swoop in and save the day! The pulverizing logic of faith-based economics has won me over. It's all good, build away.

Casey Serin: An elaborate hoax?

Everybody loves a good conspiracy theory. Take the Flat Earth Society's opinion on the Apollo Moon Landings. I propose here that one should consider that Casey Serin's story on iamfacingforeclosure.com is an elaborate internet hoax, like Primate Programming Inc. Here are a few reasons:

1. Nobody could get in 2.2 million dollars in debt so quickly at such a young age with no employment history. It's true that 0% down no-doc neg-amortization loans have been out of a while, but 8 properties? Didn't the subprime mortgage market start to collapse in 2006? Then again, Casey Serin wonders aloud why is my credit score so high, since it takes a few months for one's credit rating to be affected.
2. Despite Casey's loathing of "haters", Casey is willing to put up a collection of satire on himself. This is an indication to me that the whole site itself is satire.
3. Even though Casey Serin is constantly mocked and parodied in comments and in other blogs for abuse of the word "sweet", Jamba Juice product placements, and obsession with wheatgrass shots, he continues to do so. Even today, he has a whole post dedicated to juice.
4. Deliberate irony in several posts. The foremost on my mind is the post entitled Homess Dude Trespassing on my Property, despite the fact that he himself is homless (he lives with in-laws) and soon will not own the property either. Another is the post with the foreclosure auction, where the auctioneer is wearing a hat that says "flop", and uses a trashcan as a podium. There is also the above-mentioned posting of satire pictures.
5. Despite comitting mortgage fraud on a massive scale, among other scams, the State and Federal governments have not yet used him as a posterboy for mortgage fraud, despite his high profile public image.
6. Nobody posting on Casey Serin's blog has yet met him in person, as far as I've read in the comments (can somebody prove me wrong?).

Despite all of that, there are a number of things that are not in my favor:

1. Numerous photographs of properties that would be time consuming to steal from other pages, and pictures of events that require paying for entry.
2. Pictures of legal and financial notices that might be tough to fake.
3. Appearances in the media and with Robert Kiyosaki (Rich Dad, Poor Dad) that would make it difficult to fake one's story.
4. The fact that many real estate purchases were timed to have a minimal impact on credit score (though this may not have been intentional), and they were done in multiple states to allow for easier committal of fraud.