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A Minnesota painting contractor with four houses in foreclosure

Posted by: Prashant Gopal on April 21

The Minneapolis Star Tribune tells the amazing story of a painting contractor, living with his wife and three children in a trailer park, who three years ago managed to buy four homes worth $1.2 million. He was hoping to flip the homes and get rich off the appreciation. Instead, the real estate market collapsed and his investment properties sank into foreclosure.

The story is part of a series that started April 20 about the unraveling of the investor-heavy Wright County real estate market.

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Reader Comments

Flipper

April 23, 2008 04:30 AM

Don't laugh cause that's me. I'm hoping for Fed to come in and give me free money like it gave Chase Bank to buy BearStearn. Why not give me money when Fed gave $200billion to big bank as bailout money with more billions if bank just ask. Foreclosure aint my fault because the real estate agents told me I can flip myself out anytime and make millions; the appraisers said my 4 properties were worth double what I paid; the NAR experts tell me home prices and sales are going up and up; I filled out the loan documents honestly, told them exactly what I was doing with the real estate investments; the banks were happy with my loan papers and gave me the loan. So why am I being punished? Am I the only honest person in America?

Not a burger flipper

May 7, 2008 12:45 PM

I give the same sympathy to both short selling stock speculators and any "flipper" caught with their hands in the housing cookie jar: none.

Let alone someone flipper who held on to four (4) homes for three (3!) years. That person should have read the "Flipping for Dummies" book again before he started, as he forgot the part about "selling" the house.

Dave Drew

June 30, 2009 08:38 PM

We almost lost our tail on a real estate investment. Sold just before the market collapsed.

Dave Drew
A Phoenix, Arizona Painting and Drywall Contractor
http://www.drewpainting.com

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BusinessWeek editors Chris Palmeri, Prashant Gopal, Peter Coy, and Dean Foust chronicle the highs and lows of the housing and mortgage markets on their Hot Property blog. In print and online, the Hot Property team first wrote about the potential downside of lenders pushing riskier, "option ARM" mortgages and the rise in mortgage fraud back in 2005—well ahead of many other media outlets. In 2008, Hot Property bloggers finished #1 in a ranking of the world's top 100 "most powerful property people" by the British real estate website Global edge. Hot Property was named among the 25 most influential real estate blogs of 2007 by Inman News.

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