Selling the first door... pt 2.

June 2012.

Our original buyer has secured financing again for the purchase of the college rental. Collectively Pete and I are 1.5% excited about the prospect of selling the rental. Overall we're cautious and make plans as if selling it isn't an option that is ever going to pan out. Blase is the best word for our attitudes at this point.

Inspection happens and we get a list of the repairs needed before the sale can go forward. Really the list isn't that bad but it's also not that great, because now we need to shell out the money for everything that needs "fixing" from our own pocket. Remember, we've been burned before with house sales falling through days before closing so spending this money could really be no return on investment. We load up at the hardware store and let the tenants know we'll be there for a few nights during the week to work. At this point we have a pretty good relationship with the girls and they're fine with our presence.

We're getting down to the final days before the sale. At this point, we're about 3% excited about the possibility of selling the place. I didn't even ask for the time off of work for closing until about 72 hours out from the sale.

The morning of closing dawns and we both work from home for a few hours. When the time comes to leave the house we act as if we're going to the grocery store, instead of headed towards the sale of our biggest pain in the ass property that we were dying to get rid of. At the real estate office we make make polite conversation with the agent, the buyers and the bank official that was there to give us the money. I remember thinking that it wasn't over and at any point everyone was going to stand up and leave, leaving the deal dead on the table. There were some delays with various things and each time a delay happened my heart would start pounding and blood would rush fast, as I was positive that it was the end. After about two hours of expecting, nay knowing, the sale was not going to go through, we sold the first door.

Suddenly we one less house.

Apparently selling houses isn't just an urban legend, it actually happens and it happened to us!

Up next... the reality of no longer having the college rental.

Selling the first door... Pt. 1

Thank you for the kind words about my less than triumphant return to blogging! I can't tell you how nice it was to read the comments and how they helped inspire me on to not let the blog slowly die floundering (again).

Now that we're measuring our renovation in terms of years everything is really starting to really swim together. I find myself stumped about when we did/demo'd/built certain things more often than not lately. Keeping track of everything on here would be helpful for my growing older memory. For most of my life I've kept a journal, going all the way back to when I first learned how to write and it's a blast looking over my life in those old notebooks and diaries. One of my first entries is "I am lerning how to writ cursiv and do not like it." (I still don't like to write in cursive, btw) Also, I lost my grandfather from Dementia/Alzheimer's so I know how precious memories are and I'm trying my hardest to preserve what I can now in case the same horrible disease strikes me in my old age. I hope to high heaven it never does though, as the thought of losing all I hold dear in my head is scary beyond belief.


So... where to start... I left off with the start of 2012, ready for a new year, and a whole new attitude regarding our 'too many houses' situation.

Let's go even further back.. in March of 2011 we put the college rental up for sale. We didn't think that we had a chance of selling it until the crappy tenants were out in three months and we had a got in there to fix it up. Given the horrible condition, our speculation was that we'd not only get no offers from buyers but that we'd get some seriously less than desirable tenants. 

For some wonderful reason Karma smiled on us and we signed a contract with the best college tenants in the entire world. Somehow they saw through the complete filth and destruction that the property was in and signed for the upcoming school year. It was a complete miracle that we got such great tenants with the unit in the condition that was in and to this day we're still so thankful for those girls. (No offers during this time- FYI).

So June 2011 comes and we spend a solid month transforming our beat to shit, smells like an old bar, and looks like an abandoned building, college rental into something that we'd even live in. It was hard. Possibily the hardest transformation we've ever done and in the shortest time frame yet. I might write a post about that month, but might not as I'm afraid it would just come across like a whinefest.

Months go on while the real estate market gets worse. And we've had zero offers on the place. So, we drop the price. Time goes on. 2011 turns into 2012. And still no offers. We instead focus on getting the girls to sign for another year. "Give them anything they want" we told our agent. Getting tenants to sign for two years is always a relief, but getting these girls to sign again would amazing and would talk a lot of pressure of us for the coming year. When the girls signed for another year I almost cried with relief.

Suddenly out of nowhere we started getting showings in March of 2012. And then we got offers. Multiple offers. Really low offers, but offers just the same! We picked the better offer and started to work with them. Having been burnt badly by a house sale that fell through 10 days before closing, we were cautious and didn't let ourselves get any hopes up at all. It's a damn good thing we kept all expectations low, because what followed was a roller coaster of a house sale. Two weeks shy of the closing date, the sale fell through because the bank pulled their financing from our extremely qualified buyer. We'd already mentally prepared ourselves for the news and carried on like the sale never was an actuality. Most important, as we told ourselves time and time again, was that we had girls signed for another year. That gave us time to focus on getting other things done before we had to come up with new tenants, or a new plan of maybe moving into the rental ourselves.

Three weeks went on after the sale fell through and we got more low offers. While in the process of working out a deal with someone else, our first buyer walked back into the picture. Apparently he'd been working that whole time to secure financing with another bank. Despite him being an extremely qualified buyer, it's hard as hell right now to get a loan through most banks for a property in a complex that is 99% rental units. It seemed like that he really wanted the place and was willing to jump through the hoops in order to get it.

I finally let myself get a teensy bit excited at this point.
But only the teensiest of amounts.