 Months later, as the United States housing bubble began to rapidly deflate, Serin became unable to pay the mortgages or sell the properties; at one point, he estimated that he was approximately $2.2 million in debt, with a net worth around negative $600,000.Serin's house buying spree ultimately ended when a lender rejected a loan application for what would have been his ninth property, after discovering his blog.Because of the sheer magnitude of Serin's debt and the improbability of his story, some observers had initially questioned its veracity, alleging that the blog was either performance art or a viral marketing campaign.