Investor Harold Stark paid $365,000 for a three-bedroom Boynton Beach townhouse last year. But the monthly mortgage payments soon started to feel like a noose around his neck.

His property’s value dropped below what he still owed, $329,000. But rather than letting the townhouse fall into foreclosure, Stark worked out a deal in which he sold it for $285,000, and his lender, Chase Home Finance, forgave the difference.

Pep talks were not on the agenda this weekend as beleaguered mortgage industry professionals attended an exposition in Long Beach.

After all, the keynote speaker was William Dallas, whose Ownit Mortgage Solutions Inc. was one of the first lending companies to fold last year amid a sharp downturn in the housing market.

“People ask me why I don’t get back into the mortgage business,” he told a crowd of about 200 on Saturday. “Because I’m not stupid.”

The former chief executive of Agoura Hills-based Ownit, which abruptly closed in December, encouraged attendees at the California Assn. of Mortgage Brokers’ 2007 Grand Exposition to find solutions for survival in the turbulent industry.