Lost 22 properties. Built it all back. Here’s one thing that saved me:

[Jorge Vazquez]

Lost 22 properties. Built it all back. Here’s one thing that saved me:

I kept one credit card open—just one.

While everything else collapsed, that single card kept my credit history alive.
Years later, that “tiny thread” helped me rebuild perfect credit and access over $500K in lines.

The tip?
If you're going through a storm, protect at least one loyal credit card. Don’t max it out. Don’t close it. Just hold it like gold.

Credit history isn’t about being perfect—it’s about being persistent.

If I bounced back, so can you. Tell me about your experience with bad to good credit in 2008!

[Jay Hinrichs]

Quote from @Marcus Auerbach:

So, how did you lose 22 properties?

my story of the GFC and I assume this was a situation caused by the meltdown of FLA real estate in 08 to 2011.. same thing is happening in parts of FLA today. Not to that drastic extent but SWFLA coral and lehigh are seeing some major wipe outs on new builds and half built new builds.

I lost all my credit lines  25 million worth of 1 year revolvers that us HML use to fund loans for all you investors out there.. But my core bank lowered my Credit line from over 10 million down to 1 mil.. So wipe out of 24 mil in credit lines.. And at that I was on 90 day extensions for about 3 years.. so they could call it at anytime really.. This allowed me to start back up. Most if not all HML today all have credit lines the big boys have massive ones with wall street the smaller banks I used that would give me 3 to 5 mil those are gone today.

So Here I am 30 plus years later with same banker I started with who went to bat during the GFC and today we enjoy some credit lines with them .. But  what they did open up for me was development lines Horizontal ( which if anyone has tried to build a subdivision knows those are really tough and if you need private money very expensive) and just finishing up on 90 home project were they loaned me over 45 mil to build it out plus 6 plus mil for horizontal.. having a commercial banker on your team is critical and you protect them with your life literally.

Personally I never had CC debt even through the bad times so that was not an issue for me. But I get the theory. I have never been a max leverage guy and I dont like paying interest on basically anything other than projects were there is no other choice.