Nigel Swaby

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Nigel Swaby losing his wheatgrass virginity to Casey Serin.
Nigel Swaby losing his wheatgrass virginity to Casey Serin.

Nigel E. Swaby (born August 9, 1970) is a Salt Lake City mortgage broker who writes a number of purportedly award-winning, nationally recognized blogs -- among them: SLCRE, DHC, and allegedly, RCS. He is also a confirmed reader of Caseypedia. His last name is pronounced "SWAY-bee".

Contents

[edit] Background

Swaby was initially held up by the haterz as an example of how virtually anyone could enter the real estate business with few, if any, credentials. In fact, he notes no credentials whatsoever and his only discussion of past activities related to his involvement in selling Olympic pins at the Salt Lake City Winter Olympics in 2002.[1] He was often rebuffed on some real estate websites, where he was insulted for his incorrect forecasts of real estate trends. While some saw him as a verbal masochist of sorts, who ignored the insults and repeatedly came back for more, others noted his willingness at times to admit prior mistakes and make new predictions.

Swaby is widely known in the Haterz™ community under a number of colorful nicknames:

Swaby was employed as a mortgage broker at Integrity First Financial during most of the early Casey saga. His boss was Byron Goates, who had been alleged by some Haterz™ to be the "money partner" who sponsored Casey Serin's March 2007 trip to Utah. The purpose of the trip was not fully explained by any of the parties involved at the time, leading to speculation regarding Swaby's affiliation with Gold Medallion Homes, his access to those homes during Serin's visit and the possibility of further shady deals. Swaby later explained the Salt Lake City trip in a four-part series of posts on DHC.[2][3][4][5] His detailed expose' revealed that neither he nor his boss had any role in Serin's adventure or reason for being in Salt Lake City other than meeting them informally for lunch and a tour of some available homes.

On his blogs, Swaby at times bragged about shiny objects he supposedly owned, including two BMWs, an indoor pool, a spa, and an outdoor pond with koi. The few pictures of Swaby that circulated on the internet gave the impression that his wardrobe included a large pleather section.

[edit] From Pin Salesman to Web Journalist

Swaby was initially attracted to Casey Serin as a source of traffic for his websites and potential leads. A frequent commenter at IAFF, he once noted:

Every post I’ve ever made on this board has a link to my blog… either within the post or in my name… sometimes both.[6]

He apparently attempts to continue this pattern (see "link whoring") of driving traffic to his blog by posting links on message boards such as Silicon Investor where he posted as: "SLCMORTGAGES", and after his 83 posts was placed on ignore ("plonked")[7] by 4 people, meaning about 5% of those who read them did not want to see any more of his posts.[8]

In October 2006, he leveraged Serin's story by writing a series of articles on his Salt Lake City Real Estate Blog.[9][10][11][12][13][14] Although the story had already been covered by USA Today[15], Swaby attempted to juice the situation by issuing a paid press release:[16]

Aspiring Web Journalist Lands Real Estate Story of the Year
Salt Lake City, UT (PRWEB) October 31, 2006 -- Casey Serin has become the media poster child for the American housing bubble as it deflates. [...] Nigel Swaby, a licensed mortgage broker and industry writer, has picked up the story on his blog www.slcrealestate.blogspot.com and has released a serialized version of his interview with Mr. Serin.
"I saw Casey's story out there in the first weeks of September and made a couple of advisory posts," Swaby commented. With house prices declining, the media turned its focus to bubble talk and Casey soon became the poster child of what not to do. "As I kept reading his story, I realized he's very intelligent and pretty shrewd about reaching his goal of avoiding foreclosure," Swaby added.

Nigel promoted his Casey Serin series at various real-estate online forums, rapidly developing a reputation as a self-promoter. This exchange from the San Diego Creative Investors Association messageboard was typical:[17]

nswaby, 0/27/06 at 10:28 PM:
For anyone who is interested, I have posted part two of my Casey Serin story. Part 3 should be posted Sunday. I'll let you know when it's up.
TonyMontana, 10/28/06 at 02:41 AM:
I think you have posted part 2 of your attempt to get traffic to your blog. One word "Classifieds". Good luck on your new career.
nswaby, 10/28/06 at 09:06 AM:
Thanks for the comment man. Now everybody is reading my blog to see exactly how "lame" it is!
TonyMontana, 10/28/06 at 10:14 AM:
And I'm sure you won't disapoint them one bit.

Nigel went on to comment about Yahoo News "picking up" his coverage, but was forced to back off somewhat:

nswaby, 0/31/06 at 06:16 AM:
Wow! My "lame" articles on Casey made Yahoo! News today.
investorintexas, 10/31/06 at 10:30 PM:
Why did you purchase a press release for this? All of these PRweb purchased press releases get distributed via Yahoo as well.
nswaby, 11/01/06 at 11:14 AM:
Ahh, I feel bad. That was a little misleading. [...] The truth is, most business news is generated by press releases. Tickle Me Elmo 10 wouldn't be the hottest thing this Christmas without a well timed press release from Mattel.

At one point, Nigel claimed to have 2759 regular readers of the SLCRE blog. That number has become a major inside joke among the haterz™ who often mention it in ludicrous situations.

[edit] Failed Partnership with Casey

At their meeting in Salt Lake City early in 2007, Swaby and Serin agreed to form a partnership in IAFF with the aim of turning the site into a profit-generating "foreclosure resource" website. One of the conditions of this agreement was that Serin would get a full-time W-2 job upon the conclusion of the meeting. Serin's "recklessness and disingenuousness," as evidenced by his unwillingness to enter into a full-time W-2 job (a process involving actual "work"), his holding of a beg-a-thon on the same day that he purchased highly-speculative GSPG stock, and his decision to drop everything to attend additional NRU classes caused Swaby to break off the deal and the agreement was terminated.[18][19]

Nevertheless Swaby decided to forge ahead with a derivative website and blog on his own: www.foreclosureavoiders.comand foreclosureavoiders.blogspot.com. Both sites remained without useful content for a while before being removed.

[edit] Alleged Involvement with RCS

Swaby was accused by some haterz of using his position as a mortgage broker to obtain a credit report for Rob Dawg and then using some of the information to start the Robert Coté Sux blog. Shortly after these allegations surfaced, Nigel briefly stopped updating DHC and removed all the comments including many that alleged this activity. However activity on the RCS blog was short-lived and it was deleted shortly thereafter, ending most discussion and speculation about its origin. At one point, Rob Dawg suggested that Swaby's shiny things would not be his much longer, but he later recanted and stated he did not believe Swaby was not involved with RCS, giving no further information.

[edit] Later Activities

On June 11th 2007 Swaby participated in a Haterz™-cast in which he displayed cool under fire with a previously unrevealed sense of humor and self deprecation. Haterz™ speculated that he was coming in from the cold and would transfer his allegience to the haterz™ team. Swaby attempted to drive traffic to DHC by allowing comments again and offering to continue answering questions regarding "G", the Utah payment and other matters[20].

On June 12, 2007, a post with commenting permitted appeared at SLCRE and a constructive dialog took place. Nigel lucidly and objectively recounted the original Salt Lake meetings, confirmed some suspicions about Casey and otherwise shared facts and commentary related to his involvement with Serin.[21].

After the meltdown at ForeClosureHelpBook.com in October 2007, Nigel began hosting his own version of the Haterz-Cast, eventually renaming it the KoiCast.

In a bizarre twist of events Casey was flown to Salt Lake City for the September 19th, 2008, KoiCast hosted by Nigel, along with WWTF and BTC. Originally conceived as a gag, the visit continued with Casey spending more than a week living in Nigel's basement and eventually being kicked out onto the street after he "borrowed" Nigel's car and disappeared for most of the day. Nigel arranged for Casey to return home by Greyhound, and subsequently reversed his prior position. Nigel claimed that he had seen some of Casey's e-mails during this period and that as he had become more aware of the reality behind Casey's history and activities, he had become much more sympathetic.

After Casey's return home, Nigel deleted everything he had said and done in the Haterz community (including the recordings of several KoiCasts) during the previous year. Swaby attempted to justify his reversal by assessing Casey's personality in animal-based personality classification system:

"I immediately assumed Casey was a Tiger. During his last trip out, I concluded he's really a Bull first, Tiger second. Those two in combination can be very dangerous unless the Tiger gets reined in. [...] With my new understanding of Casey, I didn't feel it was right to leave up my former criticism."

After this final episode, Nigel mostly departed from the Caseysphere, having only limited contact with some haterz™, including BTC and WWTF. He remained in the mortgage business through 2008 and continued updating SLCRE during that period. It was later removed when he moved on to pursue new opportunities in internet marketing.

[edit] References

  1. ↑ Confession Time - I Sold Olympic Pins, DHC, April 15, 2007
  2. ↑ The Mysterious “G” Money Man and Salt Lake Timeline (Part 1), DHC, June 13, 2007
  3. ↑ Salt Lake Timeline Part 2, DHC, June 15, 2007
  4. ↑ Salt Lake Timeline Part 3, DHC June 15, 2007
  5. ↑ The Real Reason for the Salt Lake Trip, June 17, 2007
  6. ↑ Utah House Unwrapped, Back to Foreclosure, IAFF, comment by Nigel Swaby on December 9th 2006 at 10:46 pm
  7. ↑ [1], Wikipedia entry 'Plonk'
  8. ↑ [http://www.siliconinvestor.com/profile.aspx?userid=9117288 Silicon Investor posts by SLCMORTGAGES
  9. ↑ Casey Serin's Story - An American Dream - Part 1, SLCRE, October 26th 2006
  10. ↑ Real Estate Spending Spree - Casey Serin's Story Part 2, SLCRE, October 27th 2006
  11. ↑ The Beginning of the End - Casey Serin's Story Part 3, SLCRE, October 29th 2006
  12. ↑ An Empire Crumbles and a Blog is Born - Casey Serin's Story Part 4, SLCRE, November 2nd 2006
  13. ↑ Towards a Brighter Future - Casey Serin's Story - Part 5, SLCRE, November 5th 2006
  14. ↑ Casey Serin's Story - Epilogue, SLCRE, November 7th 2006
  15. ↑ 10 Mistakes that made flipping a flop, USA Today, 22nd November 2006
  16. ↑ Aspiring Web Journalist Lands Real Estate Story of the Year, PRWeb, October 31 2006
  17. ↑ If anyone is interested in Casey Serin..., SDCIA Message Board, October 26th 2006
  18. ↑ The Real Reason My Deal With Casey Serin Didn’t Work Out, DHC, June 22, 2007
  19. ↑ Nigel Swaby and Foreclosure Help Site, IAFF, April 2nd 2007
  20. ↑ Moderation..., DHC, June 11th 2007
  21. ↑ Mocha's Steamed...
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