first flip failure, embarrassment, and lawsuits. yay

[Jonathan Thrasher]

I guess this is more of a venting post than anything. 

2 years ago I bought my first house to flip.  Here's the original post.   I stopped posting after everything started going downhill. 

To make a VERY long story short, the house was eventually torn down after many issues arose and at the advice of my contractor.   He advised me to do a prefab home because his partner is the dealer in the area for a prefab home company and it would be faster and cheaper than doing a stick built home.  

After months and months of talking with them about that option I finally got numbers for what the cost would be and found out it was not going to be cheaper and because I wasted months just getting, it wasn't faster either.   I decided it would be best to cut ties with the contractor, cut my losses and sell the lot.   The contractor still owed me a decent amount of money leftover from the original money I gave him but he said come of that money was for a "design fee" for the prefab home which he never communicated with me during the process of talking about doing a prefab home and I never signed any contract with him or the prefab home company.   

 After months of asking for my money back, he refused and said I'd have to sue him to get it back.  So I am.  I'm currently waiting to hear back from my attorney on the status. I wish I could sue him for a lot more than I am. 

As if nothing else could go wrong, last month I accepted an offer for the lot and was supposed to close on it the last week of May.  The last week of May came and my realtor called to tell me the buyers were backing out because a property they found before mine came back on the market after a deal fell through.  

Really??!  Can something else go wrong please?!  I'm beyond frustrated, pissed and burned out.  Yes I definitely made my own mistakes.  I never should've torn the house down.  I should've fired the contractor at the first sign of red flags, which there were many.  I'm incredibly embarrassed at this failure and not really sure what to do now.  

The property is back on the market so if anyone wants a 5500sf lot in one of Grand Rapids, MI hottest neighborhoods (less than a block from Wealthy/Eastern) hit me up.  

[Joe Splitrock]

Originally posted by @Jonathan Thrasher:

I guess this is more of a venting post than anything. 

2 years ago I bought my first house to flip.  Here's the original post.   I stopped posting after everything started going downhill. 

To make a VERY long story short, the house was eventually torn down after many issues arose and at the advice of my contractor.   He advised me to do a prefab home because his partner is the dealer in the area for a prefab home company and it would be faster and cheaper than doing a stick built home.  

After months and months of talking with them about that option I finally got numbers for what the cost would be and found out it was not going to be cheaper and because I wasted months just getting, it wasn't faster either.   I decided it would be best to cut ties with the contractor, cut my losses and sell the lot.   The contractor still owed me a decent amount of money leftover from the original money I gave him but he said come of that money was for a "design fee" for the prefab home which he never communicated with me during the process of talking about doing a prefab home and I never signed any contract with him or the prefab home company.   

 After months of asking for my money back, he refused and said I'd have to sue him to get it back.  So I am.  I'm currently waiting to hear back from my attorney on the status. I wish I could sue him for a lot more than I am. 

As if nothing else could go wrong, last month I accepted an offer for the lot and was supposed to close on it the last week of May.  The last week of May came and my realtor called to tell me the buyers were backing out because a property they found before mine came back on the market after a deal fell through.  

Really??!  Can something else go wrong please?!  I'm beyond frustrated, pissed and burned out.  Yes I definitely made my own mistakes.  I never should've torn the house down.  I should've fired the contractor at the first sign of red flags, which there were many.  I'm incredibly embarrassed at this failure and not really sure what to do now.  

The property is back on the market so if anyone wants a 5500sf lot in one of Grand Rapids, MI hottest neighborhoods (less than a block from Wealthy/Eastern) hit me up.  

I agree it was a mistake to tear it down. You could have sold it after demo to the studs to another flipper who could have finished the job. That would have had more value than an empty lot. I am sorry for stating what you already know.

Don't be embarrassed. It took a lot of courage to post this on BP and I am assuming you did it partly to help others from making similar mistakes. We always hear success stories on BP but people general don't post failures, which are more common than you would think in the flipping business.

It sounds like you are taking the right actions at this point. I would just encourage you to not be discouraged by this experience. Many people have gone on to great things from much larger failures. It is not important how many times you get knocked down, but rather whether you get back up again.