Fliperati

As you may recall, I was quite happy to report that I had a full price offer on my house back in early November from the couple that had initially inquired about a lease option.  Granted, this was after I had reduced the asking price from my original pie-in-the-sky level, but it was still a number that would have generated a healthy return on investment for this flip and I would have been very pleased with the outcome if the sale actually closed.  Also, the buyers had not engaged a realtor and I would get to keep the 3% buyer’s broker commission that I had budgeted for.  Given that the house had only been on the market for about 30 days at that point, I really couldn’t have asked for a better result than what these buyers had put on the table.

I suppose this made it even more devastating when the deal fell apart.  Actually, the term “fell apart” is pretty generous since they were never really able to assemble much of a deal in the first place.  I had no doubt that they were acting in good faith all along (they were clearly infatuated with the house from the first time they saw it), but I don’t think they had a very solid grasp of the work it would take to get the loan, inspection, survey, appraisal and everything else together.  I was okay with a longer-than-usual closing process as long as I had the mortgage pre-qualification letter in my hand quickly, but this seems to be where they had the most trouble (which isn’t surprising given their disclosure about past credit problems and their need for a co-signer).  I checked in with them on a daily basis after they made their offer and was consistently disappointed by stories about the mortgage company needing unexpected documents or their loan officer being out of the office or their co-signer being out of town.  I say “stories” because I was never certain of how much progress they were actually making since I never saw any concrete evidence of the loan application process they claimed they were wading through.

We finally called the deal off after several days passed without any word from the buyers.  I tried to reach the wife at her office and was told by the receptionist that she was very ill and in the hospital.  I’m not sure if they were struggling with health problems throughout the process, but the next day I received an e-mail from them saying they would not be able to move forward with the purchase because of personal circumstances.  The offer had a mortgage contingency and I had lost hope in their ability to realistically close the deal, so I didn’t make much fuss about the withdrawal and said I hoped everything turned out okay for them.  They indicated that they still desperately wanted to buy the house and would contact me immediately if their situation changed, but by this point I was pretty glib about telling them not to bother unless they could present a pre-qual letter for the full mortgage amount at that time.

Major bummer.

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I of course have to open this post with a very sincere apology for leaving everyone hanging in suspense for so long.  It’s been over three months since I posted my last update and I realize it wasn’t fair to simply drop off the face of the earth like that, but there are a number of reasons why I quit writing in the blog so suddenly (although I doubt anyone will be fully placated by my ideas of good reasons). 

The holidays were the first major catalyst in my blogging hiatus, primarily because my family is in a rural part of the Midwest without any high-speed internet access and I simply can’t stomach using dial-up for any purpose beyond bare-necessity e-mail checking.  I spent quite a bit of time at home around Thanksgiving and Christmas because my prior Wall Street job limited my holiday visits to rushed three-day affairs and I wanted to actually spend some quality time with my family this year.  All that home cooking and the slower pace of day-to-day life back home really sapped my enthusiasm for blogging and distracted me from the flip that was languishing back in New Jersey.  I know die-hard real estate investors would never get so detached from their businesses, but I hadn’t been able to spend that much time with my family in nearly a decade so I was okay with tarnishing my work record over a long break. 
 
The second factor in my blogging absence was plain old superstition.  I hate to admit it, but I have always had a strong superstitious side that is particularly pronounced when it comes to major life events that are influenced by luck, competition or forces beyond my control.  For example, I always refused to speculate on my performance on important exams in school until I had the final grade in my hand.  This behavior was driven by the completely irrational fear that discussing the test would somehow “jinx” my results.  Even though everyone else was busily comparing notes about how ridiculous the essay section was and how Question #3 on the first page was straight out of the textbook, I was like a guilty politician dodging pre-trial interview requests from the media: No Comment.  The same goes for job interviews, first dates and poker tournaments: I’ve always thought that speculation brought bad luck and generally avoided talking about anything until the final result was written in stone.

The fact that the full-price offer on my first flip fell through right around the time I began telling my friends about the sale only reinforced this long-standing policy of not discussing anything until it is a done deal.  After that it was tough to sit down and write blog posts on any new developments when I still had the fear of “jinxing” the outcome.  Crazy, I know, but I’ve never been able to shake that kind of superstition. 

My return to blogging indicates that I’ve closed on the sale of my very first investment property, but I’ll save the details of that story for another post because I’m short on time at the moment.  I promise it won’t take three months this time.

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