Decades after he established himself as the greatest Olympic diver in the history of the sport, Greg Louganis was in a dire predicament. His “idyllic” home in Malibu, CA, which he had owned since 1984, was facing foreclosure. A financing deal that was arranged through a contractor he hired to clean black mold out of his home had gone sour, the result of loan documents containing forged information that he was unaware of until well after the fact.

Because of this, repairs in his home went unfinished and untouched for years, leaving his home in disarray. By 2012, Louganis had no equity in his home. He had not made a mortgage payment in months and faced possible eviction.

“My head was just spinning, because I was living in a half-demolished house for seven years,” Louganis tells The Home Story.

Luckily for Louganis, he was able to find a way out of debt and his ordeal. This is how it happened.