Paying some serious Stupid Tax!

[Katie M Reece]

Just wanted to share how I made several mistakes in a row and am now paying some SERIOUS stupid tax!

• Had an accepted offer on 3 duplexes, got cold feet after the inspection showed major neglect and signs of scary problems.
• Came back with a lowball counter which the sellers shutdown flat. The numbers still worked, even with major reno budgets, because each duplex has 2 undeveloped studios (so 6 free studios for the deal) which are going for an easy $1.50/sq. ft in my area.
• We had been the first offer for these properties and thought that if we walked the sellers would be more reasonable with the major repairs that were needed. We were WRONG!! The offers came flooding in and we had to pay an additional $10k to get them to accept our new offer (and they refused to fix any of the repairs we had cried about). Plus we lost one of the buildings that immediately went under contract. Now to add insult to injury our interest rate jumped over a half percent.

The moral of the story (as far as this Noob can see) is to run your numbers, check them twice and then COMMIT!!