Tuesday, October 24, 2006

Sold All American!

We put the condo under contract in 10 days but the buyer's fell through. They weren't qualified (even though they assured me they were actually qualified for more). I don't know why their mortgage person wasn't straight with me the first time I called. Anyway.

Right after that deal fell through I got a call from two buyers. They were both interested and both saw it the same day. I ended up getting an offer from one. We had a little bit of a bumpy road because she wanted to give us a grocery list of stuff to fix and then wouldn't close at the end of the month when she had all her financing in place. We refused to show it to her daughter (petty I know) because she was going to stretch out closing another 2 weeks. But, it was all resolved. We sold it for 156,000 (I gave them a choice of 2,000 in closing costs or a price reduction.)

When all was said and done we only made about $6,000 on the whole deal. It would have been better to hold onto the condo and sell it to a contractor for $140,000 than to remodel but the experience was probably worth it.

I swore to my friends that I would never do another flip though....but guess what?

Lesson Learned:

Never buy a house that is totally outdated or badly remodeled. Fixing the bad DIY projects was worse than starting from scratch.

Don't believe buyers when they say they are qualified. Call their mortgage person before you sign the contract. Unqualified buyers waste your time and you may miss a potential QUALIFIED buyer by messing with them.

Use the 14-day ForSaleByOwner kit in Home Depot. For $14 dollars you can expose your house to thousands of buyers. I got tons of calls and "hits" on my listing. Cheaper than a newspaper ad and much more effective.

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