Flip This Wholesaler

Hola Amigos!

Did you enjoy my disappearing act?

Sorry about that, but I’ve been really busy counting all my money after closing a big, fat, ginormous deal last week!  It was one for the record books, guys!  Then, after I finished counting all my loot, I decided to take some of my profits and head down to the Keys for a few days to bask in the glory of my accomplishment.  It was awesome.

Would you like to know how much I made on the deal?

You should probably sit down for this….

FIVE.

HUNDRED.

DOLLARS.

!!!!!!!

Wooohooo!  Hell-to-the-yeah. Girlfriend is straight up ballin’ over here in T-town!

So, yeah.

A five hundred dollar deal.

And it wasn’t one of those stress-free, send-a-text-message-and-sell-a-house deals, either.  I had to work for this one.

The lady I sold the house to is by far the biggest pain in the ass buyer that I have ever worked with.  BY FAR.

I actually sold her another deal towards the end of last year (I found her by calling a For Rent sign in the hood, btw).  When I initially talked to her she told me she was looking for concrete block duplexes, and that she would pay up to 32k for them if they were in decent shape.

So, a few weeks later I brought her a deal that fit what she was looking for (it was a deal I was working with my buddy Lee).  She then proceeded to freak the hell out when I told her that we didn’t actually own the property.  She went on and on telling me how we were breaking the law because we had no right to sell the house, blah, blah, blah, it’s illegal, blah, blah, blah, blah.

I did my best to explain to her that there was nothing illegal about it, but she wouldn’t shut her mouth.  Seriously, she just kept on going, and every time I tried to get a word in edgewise, she would interrupt me.  To make matters worse, she has a very thick accent (she’s from South Korea), so half the time I can barely understand what she’s saying.  And also, she doesn’t talk, she yells.

I’m getting stressed out just thinking about it.

So anyway, after getting yelled at by this woman for about 10 minutes or so, I started to lose my cool. I can only take so much you, know?  As much as I wanted to go off on her, I decided it would be better to just get off the phone ASAP before I called her one of the four letter words that was on the tip of my tongue.  So I told her I had another call coming in and that I would have my partner call her back and see if we could work out a deal.

Lee ended up calling her back and calming her down, and after haggling with her over closing costs (she’s even cheaper than my Cheap Bastard Buyer, if you can believe that), we ended up selling her the deal and it closed a few weeks later.

So that’s the back story.

This time around I brought her a deal that some investors/wholesalers that I know had just closed on.  I probably spent an hour and a half on the phone with her haggling over the price (she wouldn’t budge from 28k), and after that we had to haggle over the closing costs (she wouldn’t pay a penny more than $200).  I can’t even put into words how draining it is negotiating with this woman.  Just imagine having someone yelling at you in a foreign language (really loud), and then when you try and say something they yell even louder.  It’s so annoying, and by the time I got off the phone with her all I wanted to do was punch her in the face as hard as I could.

Anyway, this all happened last Sunday, so the plan was for me to get the contract signed with the seller first thing in the morning, then fax it over to her along with the assignment contract, and her husband would drop off the escrow check at the title company.  Closing would be Tuesday.

I went and got the contracts signed with the seller on Monday morning, then called the buyer (I’ll just call her PITA from now on), to get her fax number.  She gave me the # and told me her husband would be dropping the check off at the title company as soon as she got the contracts.

I faxed the contracts and then waited.

And waited.

Finally she calls, and this is how the conversation went:

PITA: Hi Dear, I’m not going to be able to buy this property from you.

Me:

PITA: Hello?

Me: Are you kidding me?

PITA: No, I’m not going to be able to buy the property from you.  But that other property on 14th St., I pay you twenty eight thousand dollar for that one.

(I forgot to mention, I also told her about another deal being sold by the same sellers- the 14th St. property).

Me: Are you telling me that you’re backing out of this deal that you committed to yesterday?  The one you told me this morning you were going to close on tomorrow?  The one that I just went and put under contract with the seller and set up the closing at my title company for tomorrow?  Is that what you’re telling me?

PITA: Yes, but I will pay twenty eight thousand dollar for the other property.

And then she went into yell mode, and I can’t even really tell you what she was yelling about because #1) I couldn’t understand what the hell she was saying and #2) my head was about to explode.  There was smoke coming out of my ears I was so pissed off at this woman, and I really had no choice but to hang up on her while she was in mid yell.  It was either that, or I was going to unleash the fury on her, and it would not have been pretty had I done so.

So, yeah, I hung up on her.

I immediately called the sellers to let them know that she was backing out of the deal, and also to tell them that she was offering 28k on the other property, which I think they were asking 38k for.

Meanwhile, PITA finds out that the 14th St. property is on the MLS, and calls the listing agent to put in her offer for 28k.

This all turns into one giant drama fest (I’ll spare you the details since this post is already 12 miles long), but after about 25 phone calls between PITA, me, the sellers, and the listing agent, she ended up buying the 14th St property 2 days later and I walked away with a BIG FAT CHECK in the amount of $500.00.

Because that’s just how I roll.

THE END.

P.S.

Oh, I almost forgot to mention the funniest part of the whole story, which was a conversation I had with PITA while she was trying to get out of paying her half of the closing costs. It went just like this….

Me:  PITA, can’t you just agree to pay your half of the closing costs?  Are we really going to sit here and haggle over a few hundred dollars?

PITA: Well, they don’t call me the Asian Jew for nothing!  BWAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!

Me:

(Several uncomfortable moments of silence ensue as I sit and ask myself if she really just said that).

PITA: Uhhhhh…… you’re not Jewish, are you?

I have absolutely no idea how I got the jingle from those old Löwenbräu commercials in my head, but I’ve been humming it for the last 2 hours.

Do you remember those cheesy commercials?

Do they still make Löwenbräu, even?

I just did a search on YouTube and found one (a commercial, not a Löwenbräu) so you all can enjoy the jingle right along with me.

Here you go….

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3oUBaCyXWNk[/youtube]

Awesome.

That guy who orders “The biggest steak you’ve got and a bottle of Löwenbräu” kinda reminds me of Jack Nicholson circa The Shining, except a little less disheveled.  And also a little less evil.

See the resemblance?

[youtube]http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vUzFmupz38s[/youtube]

I heart The Shining.

Alright, so enough with the beer commercials and horror flicks- let’s talk about my deal that fell apart this week, shall we?

So yeah, the short sale deal that I sold to NFB went up in flames Tuesday because the approval letter from the bank expired the day after we signed the contract, which was not supposed to be a big deal, but then the BPO also expired a few days later.  To make a long story short, my buyer (who I told could close on the property in 2-3 days), was not happy to hear that he was going to have to wait until a new BPO was done and a new acceptance letter was issued.  Can’t say I blame him.

He ended up getting kind of sketched out about the whole deal, and cancelled the contract.

So that was awesome.

Another one bites the dust. Woohoo!

In other news, I’ve got 2 other deals in the hopper, but have decided that it’s in my best interest to not write about them on this here blog (until they are officially under contract, anyway) because doing so seems to be a big fat jinx as of late.

I’m sure it’s all just a coincidence, but you can never be too careful, ya know?

And that’s all I’ve got for now, folks.

Have a great weekend!

P.S.
If you live in the Tampa Bay area and are looking for a new pet, you need to get your behind over to the Pet Adoption Expo that’s being held at the Florida State Fairgrounds tomorrow from 10-4.   I’ll be there all day with the Humane Society, so if you decide to go, make sure to stop by and say hello!

P.P.S
Just wanted to remind you guys that for some unknown reason (WordPress sucks) the apostrophes do not work in my blog titles, and that I know there should be an apostrophe between the “e” and the “s” in the word “heres”.

In case you were wondering.

P.P.P.S.
I wrote a new article for the BiggerPockets blog this week about the cheapest and easiest way to find buyers for your wholesale deals. You can click here to check it out.

P.P.P.P.S.
How many P.S.’s are too many?
Four?
Five?
(also, should there be an apostrophe in P.S.’s?)

P.P.P.P.P.S.
Let it be Löwenbräu.

Well, I guess I should get the bad news out of the way first….

You may have seen this coming if you’ve been reading my blog for any length of time and know the history that me and the Murphster have when it comes to working deals together (like this one, for example).  When we join forces the two of us are like one giant black cloud of bad luck.  It’s almost kind of funny, but then again not so much.

So, yeah, the land deal has pretty much gone straight to hell in a hand basket.

I got the call from Murphy first thing Monday morning, which was an AWESOME way to kick off my week.  I had just gotten back from the gym, saw that I had a missed call from Murph, and when I called him back the first thing he said was, “Steph, I’ve got some bad news….”  (YAY!)

Apparently the head honcho guy from up North decided that these parcels of land are too far away from where they’re going to be building, so they decided to pass on the deal (for the second time). It doesn’t make much sense to us since the land is right smack dab in the middle of several other properties they own, but there’s not a whole lot we can do about it.  Murphy is still negotiating with the guy to see if they would be interested at a lower price, but I don’t think it’s gonna fly.

Oh well. It’s not the first time one of my deals has gone up in smoke, and I’m sure it won’t be the last.

I do have some good news to share, however.

Check it out:

That, my friends, is what I like to call a thorough ass-kicking of the month of March!

Each of those red dots represents me getting up at the crack o’ dawn and running 4 miles. This has been a goal of mine for I don’t even know how long, but I have never been able to discipline myself to actually follow through.  Usually I’ll stay on track for 2 weeks or so, and then I’ll start slacking off for one reason or another.

There were some mornings when I felt like a giant pile of dog crap (like today, for example) and the last thing I wanted to do was run 4 miles, but I made myself do it anyway.  Screw slacking off.  I wasn’t put on this earth to be a slacker.

And that’s all I have to say about that.

I’ll leave you with some pictures of Chef Steph’s latest adventures in the kitchen…. chocolate chip cookies!!

My good pal, Shae (who is frolicking on the beach in Jamaica right now) got to be my guinea pig. She tells me they were good, but I’m pretty sure she would say that no matter what.

Mmmmmmmmmm……sugar

Health Food

My very first mixer.  I named him “Little Buddy” ($9.99 @ Walgreens)

Little Buddy hard at work

Oh yeah

Sweet, delicious, cookie dough

Almost

Viola- chocolate chip cookies, A-la Steph!

Hehe.

Have a great weekend, everybody!

P.S.
Flip This Book Club meets here at 8pm on Monday- we’ll be discussing Crush It! by Gary Vaynerchuk. Hope to see you here!

7/27/09

Holy crap, it feels like I’ve been gone FOREVER!

Sorry it took me so long, but, like I said in the video- I had to go through all the old posts (and there are lots o’ them), and try to categorize them so they made sense.

Needless to say, the whole process took me a wee bit longer than I had anticipated.  And I still haven’t gone through 2007 yet.  Actually, I made it through January, and that’s it.   Not so much because I didn’t have the time, but more so because that year was a freaking nightmare, and I’d prefer not to relive it.   It’s painful reading through some of the stuff in the beginning.  Ick.

Anywho, it’s nice to finally have everything up and running.  I was going through blog withdrawl..

While I was away, I ended up closing on the deal I got under contract in the beginning of the month.  It actually closed EARLY, if you can believe that.  Go ahead and mark that one down in your calendar, as I’m sure it will never happen again.

Of course, a deal wouldn’t be complete unless something went wrong, and this deal was no exception.  It actually could have turned out a lot worse than it did, but still..

To make a long story short, my buyer decided that it would be a good idea to switch the utilities into his name, move into the house (air mattress and all), install a window ac unit, put up blinds, and mulch the front yard.

He did all of this BEFORE the closing.  And no, I’m not kidding.

Wanna know how I found this out?

I got an IRATE phone call from the listing agent, who went by the house two days before the closing, saw his handiwork, and wanted to know what the hell was going on.

This is not a phone call that you want to be getting when you are trying to make friends with an REO agent so they will feed you pocket listings.

I was totally caught off guard, and did the only thing that I could think of:  I blamed it on my imaginary contractor.

The agent told me (in so many words), that if I make any more offers on her properties, she’s going to throw them in the trash can.  Woohoo!

I can’t say I blame her.  She told me she’s been trying to get in this asset management company’s good graces for 3 years, and has finally started to get a ton of listings from them.  If they caught wind of the shenanigans that were going on at the house, they would pull her listings and she would be screwed.

Good times, eh?

I almost dropped the f-bomb on my buyer, but figured, the damage was already done so what’s the point?

Thank God the deal ended up closing, I got my money, and now I’m on to the next…

It’s 5:25 am right now and I haven’t been to bed yet, so I’m going to sign off.

I hope you guys like the new blog..

For those that have been reading via feed,  please subscribe to my new feed: http://feeds.feedburner.com/flipthiswholesaler The old feed will no longer be updated…

Also, please be sure to update your links if you are linked to me.     And follow me on Twitter.   And Facebook.  And sign up for my Flip This! Newsletter.    And give me your firstborn child.. hehe.

Later Alligators!

P.S.
Thanks to Shae and Scott for helping me out with my technical difficulties.

P.P.S
Joelle from Moxie Design Studios ROCKS.

P.P.P.S
If you’ve sent me a private msg or email recently and I haven’t gotten back to you, please don’t take it personally. I’ve been swamped, and am way behind…

P.P.P.P.S
Hi Mom! XOXOXO

7/6/09

So I had a dream last night that my buyer for the property that I just got under contract, backed out.

I called him first thing this morning to set up a time to meet and get everything signed, and he told me he does not want to move forward with the deal any longer.

Yay!

The house comes with an adjacent lot, and he was under the impression that the lot was buildable, and apparently it isn’t. This is a deal breaker for him, unfortunately.

So now I have to find another buyer, which I’m fairly confident I can do, but I’m still pretty irritated about the situation. I was planning on setting aside this entire week to finish up my ebook, but now it looks like I’ll also be marketing for another buyer.

Oh well.

I should know better by now than to count on a deal closing until I actually have the funds in my bank account. Even if you’re sitting at the closing table, with all of the documents signed, and your buyer is sitting across from you with a cashier’s check for the purchase, things can still go wrong.

Gotta love this business!