Well, I made a bonehead move. I have been waiting on the title company to set the closing date on my flipper. Sent emails directly to the sellers agent asking for the date, had my Realtor ask as well. Turns out it was set all along on the addendum the bank sent. None of us caught it. Opps. My original contract said 44 days after MEC (Mutual Execution of Contract). I think we all assumed that left the closing more or less open ended to be set at a later date. The closing is set for Monday, but unless my lender is willing to jump through hoops (I highly doubt it), that will not happen. Heck, he still needs to do an appraisal on the property. I will likely have to do an amend extend. If the bank accepts, I’m good. My agent is a bit concerned about the bank accepting, so I’ll have some phone calls to make to push things along. Live and learn.
Besides that, I have gotten 4 bids so far. I’m getting a 5th on Friday. They are all about 3k higher then I need them to be. I’m working with all three to bring the cost down. We’ll see who wins out. When I get a contractor decided, I’ll share costs. Many costs I guessed wrong or did not include on my original estimate. I’m about 20%-30% over on my estimate. Not bad I guess, but not great. What a tremendous learning experience so far though. I can do this 100% better on my next estimates. I strongly urge anyone to hire a contractor to just give you a bid on a property. Even if you don’t plan on buying it. Just get a better idea of your local costs. A few local codes will cost me $1000 more then I planned for based on info I found for cost estimates. I also greatly underestimated the electrical costs by nearly $1000. On the plus side, I over estimated on cabinetry.
Good news though, I’m enjoying every bit of it. The frustrations are more like challenges. Like a puzzle to be solved. How can that not be fun.
Well that’s it for now. I leave you with this quote “We are built to conquer environment, solve problems, achieve goals, and we find no real satisfaction or happiness in life without obstacles to conquer and goals to achieve.” Maxwell Maltz
