He has 9 homes in foreclosure- what???

Interesting time to start a new business - coming off a bankruptcy. Where is he going to get the $ to get a business off the ground? I don't think anyone is going to loan him the money. I'm not sure this guy has much common sense. I feel bad for his wife and baby.
 
Just another story of poor [-]investment[/-] speculation decisions and greed getting the best of someone.

"negative amortization loans"! :rolleyes:
 
When I saw he grew up in Santa Cruz, everything seemed to come into fuzzy, hazy focus......
 
He had $800K in stock options and he put it all into real estate:confused:?

Gad.
 
I was incorrect, he wasn't a software engineer, he was a project manager. Doesn't sound like he knows how to do any research or simple analysis. I'd hate to have to work on one of his "projects".
 
Isn't it cute that he released a "self-portrait" of himself and his wife and baby and his dog? I think he subscribes to the view that all publicity is good publicity. :rolleyes:
 
Now I don't know this guy, so maybe I''m wrong. But it looks like he came from an environment which rewards overly aggressive, borderline reckless with 800K of stock options, so he did the same foolishly aggressive things with real estate investing. Owns single family houses all over in different states using as much leverage as he could with negative amortization loans -- and he says now he did it all knowingly because he expected the market to crash (just not this much). I'm glad I never worked on any projects with him. He sounds like a macho idiot. There were plenty of greedy speculators caught in this downturn, but he's a real poster child.

Too bad. 800K stock plus other savings in his early 30s. He'd be sitting pretty right now if he didn't risk it all for some mega-score.
 
My favorite line:
"On the surface it looks like total devastation but it's just the opposite. I'm confident our lives will be much, much richer as a result."

So you're better off than having $800k because.....you now know how to make $1.6M in real estate?

It's one thing to be rash enough to buy 9 homes at the top of the market with (presumably) most of his net worth....it's another to try and lie to yourself by saying "I"m much, much richer as a result despite what APPEARS to be total devastation". The only reason he feels so good is because of his "confidence" - the same "confidence" that led him to lose everything to begin with!

Perhaps he has a book deal/reality TV show in the works that no one knows about yet? ;)
 
People like him are good. He'll have to keep working until he drops, and keep paying into SS so I can go fishing or bike riding, which is what I'm going to do today.
 
If you're going to be a fool at least have some integrity. He is going to go bankrupt and give up BEFORE he gets foreclosed on. Waaaah, poor baby. He should suck it up and work out the properties. If they force him into bankruptcy then OK, but he is going to be a quitter too. High correlation between being a quitter and a successful entrepreneur :duh:
 
"Everyone stumbles. I'm not going to hide or run or live in denial, or with regrets," Forgaard told Reuters in an interview. "On the surface it looks like total devastation but it's just the opposite. I'm confident our lives will be much, much richer as a result."
Click to expand...

How can Forgaard be so confident? Answer: he's good friends with Ben Bernanke. All Forgaard has to do is go whining to Bernanke that his looming bankruptcy is a threat to the American banking system, and Bernanke (compassionate conservative that he is) will immediately step in and transfer responsibility for his debt to the American taxpayer (think Bear Stearns bailout). :D
 
I like this guys optimism ... but nobody hits the lottery twice (800k).

With 800k "invested" you'ld think he could ride this thing out. Even if it took a decade or more. Bankrupcy will definately delay his next venture.

At the risk of repeating myself ... I was upside down on 3 mortgages in the 90's. Ate crow for 12 years ... wrote small checks at my first 3 closings as a SELLER.

Eventually the tide returns.
 
DJRR said:
Waaaah, poor baby. He should suck it up and work out the properties. If they force him into bankruptcy then OK, but he is going to be a quitter too.
Click to expand...
Hey come on, have some pity.
We're not going to be able to live in Santa Cruz, where I was born and raised, and live by the beach. And that was pretty tough to take.
Click to expand...
No beach house = life is not worth living! :rolleyes:
 
"Where I went wrong is I invested heavily in an area that wasn't my passion and I had a really demanding full-time job so I couldn't pay attention to nuances, the little indicators telling you the housing market was going soft," he said. "I was in over my head."

Ah, he wasn't paying attention to the little indicators, the nuances. Also, it wasn't his "passion." So, what, he's saying that if he actually cared about keeping his houses he would be able to, it's just that he lacks the passion? Or he would have actually done some research into what he was investing his entire net worth? Really, the problem was in the "nuances?" Something tells me people like him may repeat the difficult lesson sometime in the future.
 
Dang - you guys are harsh. This guy stuck 10-40% down on the places and didn't bail out soon enough, or have the means to hold onto some of them (which i find odd). I don't know how the stock market is going to move, but have money in it anyway - don't see much difference there. (and some of our individual stocks like Costco are kicking the tail of the index funds i wisely put $$ in - which i hear about at home....) I respect his attitude more than the young Russian guy who bought about the same number of places with liar loans and deception and then put the blame mostly on the loan brokers - can't remember his site, but he was pretty famous a year or so ago.
And he's working that Lyle Lovett do!
 
All his rationalizations sound like something you hear in one of those "Real Estate Seminars". I'll bet he's busy looking for another investment so he can fulfill his "passion".

As they say, a fool and his money are soon parted.
 
Can you say "retard?" I thought you could.

At least when I read accounts like this one (and the iamfacingforeclosure.com moron), my own investing mistakes don't seem so bad.
 
calmloki said:
This guy stuck 10-40% down on the places and didn't bail out soon enough, or have the means to hold onto some of them (which i find odd). I don't know how the stock market is going to move, but have money in it anyway - don't see much difference.
Click to expand...
If you have used margin to speculate on penny stocks that you know nothing about, then you're correct, there is no difference.
 
My guess is that he really had short-term goals for this "investment". Something like a 50% return, rather than a comfortable S&P index. Taxes and maintenance would cost far more than fees and dividend expenses for stocks.

He can't really have thought much about this.
 
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