Looks ok from here!

Looks ok from here!

Finally went to see the Small House of Moisture Misery that I thought would make a good flip since it was selling so cheap. Turns out other investors thought the same thing – there were 4 offers in, the highest just slightly under the asking price.

The real estate agent was a fix-and-flipper himself with many years of experience. He was distinctly negative about the house. “It’s worse than it looks from the outside,” he said. “Hold your breath!”

He was right, it was really bad. Not just the things the needed repairs (such as, heating system, new kitchen, new roof, demolition of the shed and carport, demolition of the moldy water-damaged areas (many), new floors, etc. It also needed not to be that house! The layout was all crazy, the bedrooms upstairs had almost no spare headroom, there was no basement so the hot water heater was in the dining room!

Did I forget to mention that, when you opened the bulkhead to look into the crawl space, you couldn’t see the crawl space because the water was up to the top step?

At that price, I didn’t think it was worth it. Besides, with mold you are buying potential liability. It’s a problem that you always hunt for if there has been water damage, and it’s a problem you might want to avoid, unless you get stuck with it. (More info about mold here.) I agreed with the agent that it would be best to tear it down, but at that price we didn’t want to own vacant land (plus the cost of demolition and hauling away).

However: I got over the idea that nobody else was interested, that my judgment was poor and I wouldn’t be able to recognize if something was terribly wrong. I knew I would have offered the asking price if the house was right and it would have been a great flip. Even though there was no deal, I learned a lot about me!

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