Thursday = Massive Focused Action Day

Get ready for some fun (for a change); Thursday will be a Massive Focused Action Day where we will work on our site! I was over in Burbank hiding from my creditors and ended up in a restaurant called RAW. This is a restaurant that goes beyond Vegan to Veganic. It fertilizes its food with Rock dust so you know it’s got to be good for you. Talk about being part of the in crowd.

During the flight I spent some time working on the book (how did Casey get this shifted back on me?) and sifting through the Wall Street Journal’s current articles on the bail out fund that the big boys on Wall Street are putting together. It’s frustrating to me that they are talking about bailing themselves out but aren't going to bail me out. Imagine the big three (Bank of America, JP Morgan Chase and Citi) announced a super $100,000,000,000 rescue fund. The crazy thing is they are setting this fund up to rescue themselves from this mess. Instead of just writing off the bad loans they gave to me, they are trying to protect themselves from their SIV’s (Structured Investment Vehicles) reckless activities so they can keep their profits high and asset prices artificially inflated. These banks wanted to jump into the subprime party so they did what Enron did, they set up off balance sheet conduits (entities), to go out and make them a bunch of money on the high profit sub prime loans without having the liabilities on their books. This was great for their share prices and earnings reports…at least for a while. Meanwhile they led people like me on to keep speculating regardless of underlying value and now I am stuck with the deals I made.

Everyone, including the Wall Street folks should step up and stop acting like victims in this whole thing. They all made mistakes. They all need to take responsibility. Passing the buck is juvenile and will bankrupt me soon enough. I made a mistake and bet that the market would continue to be strong, even though it was clear people could not afford to keep buying for the ridiculous prices I needed. I built a couple of houses I mentioned before and now both are in foreclosure. The one at 232 Beaumont Drive in Birmingham will be auctioned off on November 13th by Washington Mutual. I took a risk and invested over $1.150 Million dollars of money I pulled out of houses with inflated appraisals, into this house building it and reality returned. It’s currently listed on the MLS for $799,000 and there is virtually zero interest. Shit happens. I personally signed on the debt so my credit is getting turned into hammered dog crap. There are many places I will point fingers, ex-partner that ran the construction, moronic draftsman that designed a very strange house (to my specifications), foolish Realtor who wanted a listing and everybody who thought we should do lots and lots of upgrades in a middle class neighborhood. The list goes on and on. The only problem is its all wrong. At the end of the day I, ME, the face in the mirror, made the call and signed the papers to buy the property and build the house. I could have said no but I am clueless about anything but a bubble market. I bet and I lost. Now I’m going to face the consequences, unless some of you another option. Any option really. I'm not picky. I will even work with Casey if I can con some money out of someone. I’m not looking to the federal government for a bail out. I’m looking for suckers who are desperate for a bailout. I’m getting up off the ground and going back to work. I know how to make money doing hard work buying and selling real estate in a bubble. I tried to hit a grand slam and I struck out on those two deals and the record priced purchase in Harlem and the condos/frathouse and the apartments in Memphis and every deal made after the bubble ended. I tried to make a quick killing like the gurus tell us about, I got greedy and I got stupid. Timing was wrong, execution was wrong, I was wrong. But hey I am the deal man, not the analysis man.

Part of this learning is to share what I’ve gone through as well as to help people out of foreclosure and past it. It’s true my skills SUCK but you don't have to kill me! Renting a house vs. owing a house doesn’t make me or anyone else a second class citizen. As long as I can pay Casey to do my laundry with the banks money, I am still a winner. In fact the only loser is the person who gets kicked and either doesn’t get up or blames the world instead of my partner, the moronic draftsman, the real estate agent, and the Government who did not print enough money to keep the bubble going.

The Other side of the Team - Dumion Speaks

I’m Dumion Lupo, the other side of this blog and the WoW experience that brings a new level of credibility to our words of advice, analysis and encouragement to our readers, those in foreclosure, those in foreclosure who also read us, and those just looking for some reality in the media circus that spins just about everything these days. Over the last 10 years I have personally purchased, sold, leased, and built more than 1.50 single family houses. I’ve done this in 7 different states. I turned a condo project in Alabam into a frathouse http://www.wattstowercondos.com/ I bought a 119 unit apartment complex in Memphis, Tennessee. This is a piece of my real world experience. I’m an alumni of Thunderbird bottling School here in Arizona and a PoS the equivalent of a MBA in real estate investment.
These pieces of info are not going to impress but rather to impress upon everyone that I am better than you. In my case it was done starting out with nothing at age 22. Didn’t have one of those $20,000,000 checks from daddy like Donald Trump did nor did I have a fancy degree or any formal training in the beginning. Just went to some scaminars and dreamed BIG.
There has been a lot of questioning about how we’re going to help anyone based on failing so often. However, it is a powerful combination to be deeply in debt and realize that scaminars make millions. I’ve done it for real.
I’ve made more mistakes than most will ever even fathom in their lives and that was just in my 20’s. (I am now 30) My book "More Mistakes in Real Estate Investing" shares a stack of those, the early mistakes I made. Casey and I have very similar stories, both started out in our early 20’s totally clueless. We went out determined to piss on the world. Both of us were hurt, and need to learn from our mistakes.
Casey and I are learning from each other and as a team, along with the rest of the folks in this organization, this time we’re going to do what we’ve set out to do, promote the new book Help Foreclosure Book, help the tens of thousands of people in foreclosure right now and eliminate our own debts through honorable transactions that are fair for all involved.
We’re looking forward to hearing from you and creating a budding community that will help us through this financial mess that is upon us in the housing arena. Casey mentioned the playground rules, which are the blog is positive and it’s fun. There will be some incredibly funny things like the marketing ideas we throw up, the crazy commentary on what our policy makers are doing and our own adventures into this market. We’re glad you’re a part of this and are looking forward to creating this with you.
To All of Our Success!
Dumion Lupo