Our First Failure And Why It Feels So Good

[Ariel Goldenberg]

My wife and i have flipped a house once, 7 years ago. Different times, different environment.

After making the decision to go back into the game, and after months of reading and listening to BP podcasts, we finally pulled the trigger and put an offer on a house in Vallejo CA. The market in Northern CA is crazy mind you, and after back and forth of counter offering, our offer of $242,000 ($17,000 above asking price) was accepted. 

We had 7 days to close. In these 7 days of insane roller coaster, we managed to arrange some hard money for financing, set up an appraisal to estimate a property we hold for the purpose of the loan approval, arrange an inspection, meet 2 contractors and crunch the rehab numbers so they make sense, find out that the lender can not 100% finance the deal as hoped, get discouraged but somehow, on a late-night phone call arrange some cash from a family member, and all that only to discover a day before closing, that the seller had $140,000 of liens against the property..

The deal fell apart. 

My wife and i felt great. We went celebrating in a nice restaurant..

Why?

Because with all the disappointment (it should have been a really good deal), we also felt satisfied.  we felt that in these 7 days we received the best and indispensable education we could get only by jumping into the water. My main message here is that you don't learn how to swim from books. Books and podcasts are highly valuable education tools, but they don't teach you how does it FEEL to be an investor. How does it feels, and i mean in your BODY, to put your money on the line. How does it feels to work simultaneously on multiple deal aspects in a pressing time frame. 

The only way to get this kind of experience is to actually to DO it.   

What i'm saying is, that no matter how much education you acquire - you will never be 100% ready. You have to let yourself make mistakes. (we did a few for sure). You have to get out there.

We are already looking for our next deal.

Goodluck to you all!