Nice trampoline, huh!?
It was August of 2018, and after months of stumbling and failing, I finally landed my first real estate deal. I was unbelievably excited, but it didn’t come without its issues. This group of sellers (7 heirs – all siblings) were rather difficult to rally up and get on the same page. We had agreed on a price, and it was a fair price for both parties, the house was in terrible shape. Everyone seemed all fine and happy…until about a week before we were supposed to close, when indecision and greed kicked in. All of a sudden one sibling wanted a little more, and then two siblings wanted to instead keep the house and fix it up themselves. This was never going to happen, it needed over $60,000 of work. Anyways, luckily a few of the other siblings talked some sense into them and we finally made it to the closing table (on my birthday chance has it). Deal done?!
Not quite, all 8 of us were at the closing table, and when the closing attorney got to the last page of the closing documents, it was relayed to them that they would receive their funds in about an hour after they took the signed, completed closing documents to get recorded at the local courthouse. You’d maybe assume to get a “sure, that’s totally understandable” response from the siblings. Of course, that’s not how it went down. They were adamant that they get their funds immediately after they signed their names on the closing documents. Now…I’m not sure how much you know about real estate, but this just simply does not happen. It has to go through a rather quick process called recording which occurs at the county courthouse. This basically is the official stamp of approval of the real estate transaction.
After hearing this information from the attorney, they were just about to walk out without signing the last document. There I was, speechless at the closing table – I didn’t know what to say. 30 minutes prior, I was expecting to have a rather nice start to my birthday, buying my first flip.
After a few minutes of back and forth from all parties, they finally agreed to move on with the transaction. A wave of relief swept over me. Finally…I had bought my first house!
The funniest thing about this wasn’t anything mentioned above, but at the fact that I was freaking out after I had just bought this. I spoke with a fellow investor, telling him what I just did and how much of a task it was going to be and how I got a case of cold feet. Long story short, he ended up offering to take this off my hands for a small profit to me. I shrugged…okay, let’s do that.
Needless to say, my first flip did not occur with that house, however, it taught me an extremely valuable lesson. This works.
