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.