California Man Loses Nine Houses
Los Angeles resident Shawn Forgaard, a 37-year-old software company project manager, bought ten homes — one to live in with his family, and the other nine as an investment. At the time, however, he didn’t realize that this might bring him to bankruptcy.
Now he acknowledges that it was a real mistake investing money in real estate market, but says that losing all nine houses in the mortgage meltdown has made him wiser.
Forgaard told Reuters in an interview that he has no regret.
“Everyone stumbles. I’m not going to hide or run or live in denial, or with regrets. 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.”
Forgaard knew that property values would decline, but he also thought he would be able to survive the storm.
“I knew I was sitting on time bombs,” Forgaard said. “I knew the market was going to go soft and I knew that property values would decline. But I figured that I had enough equity to survive the storm and sell or take the loss and refinance. I didn’t anticipate a downturn of epic proportions such that home values are 40 percent less than they were.”
Forgaards bought his first investment home in 2004 in North Las Vegas. Further purchases of property in the next two years were in Phoenix and Palm Springs, California. Currently, Forgaards plans to sell his Santa Cruz home and to declare bankruptcy for the other properties before the banks start foreclosing them.
Forgaard says that he and his family are still optimistic. MSNBC reports that he will no longer deal with 10 homes at once.
“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.”
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