A lesson learned from Lending money to a BP contact

[Brie Schmidt]

Today is a great day!  I finally got my money back from a BP member after over 2 years.  We had met on BP in 2015 as he attended my meetup group and over the years he was very involved with the community here in Chicago and had worked with a few contacts of mine.   So in summer 2017 he contacted me about a private money offer.  He was flipping a property and they ran out of money.  He needed $15k for the final punchlist and sent me over the estimate and pictures.  Cabinets were in, floors were done, it was just small things like carpet in the bedrooms, counters, and fixtures.  I had done a few private money deals before so I used that agreement that I had my lawyer review years before, which did have a personal guarantee but not a note.  So he asked for $20k so he could have a cushion and said they would finish in 30 days and list the house before the winter market, and I would receive $5k when the loan was paid off no later than February with a daily interest charge after that.  

I checked in a month after I sent the money and he said they had some delays with contractors and his partner had to go back to work so he was doing the work in his spare time on nights and weekends.  The weeks went by with very little progress and as we headed into winter he ghosted me.  The note due date was quickly approaching and from what I could tell no progress had been made since I lent the money.  We were now approaching a year since I had lent the money and the project still wasn't completed so I had my lawyer seek legal action.  We had to hire a private investigator to serve them as the sheriff was unsuccessful.  Finally in winter 2018 we had our court date and received the judgement.  The guy I lent money to never showed up in court or communicated with my lawyer, but the partner did and it sounds like he was also a victim in this situation.  So another year goes by with little progress until the partner communicated that the property is done and being listed for sale.  So we had to go back to court and get a lien on the property and after over a month of pushing the closing date I am happy to report that it closed and I got my money back!  I did negotiate to drop the daily interest changes (about $7k) and just get my investment of $20k + the $5k and court / legal fees.  I felt bad for the partner that got scammed and wanted to ensure there was enough money from the sale to pay me off and be done with it.  So after 2.5 years it is finally over.

Next time I would definitely do a background check even if I know them from local meetups and BP and I would definitely get a note signed to secure a lien against the property.  If the partner hadn't been upfront with us I could have missed this and had no recourse to ensure payment, and because my agreement didn't include that the judge had to order it and it was up to him to approve or deny it.