We bought our first flip in Chicago as out of state investors in late June. The plan was 120 day flip and everything started off great. This is the end of the joyful parts…

Until it didn’t…contractor has been MIA and not productive at all on a consistent basis. He has probably cost us easily 6 - 8 weeks total. We have made more than a few rookie mistakes ourselves that we aren’t proud of. I really expected better from myself but the contractor was great at over promising and way underdelivering. We were too trusting and gave him too much grace probably. This won’t happen again!!!

We made some changes to the scope of work and now definitely regret at least one of those for sure. Contractor said we could replace the staircase and move it. Aesthetically it was a great idea and changed the flow of the house. However, we cut the old stairway down and now he hasn’t done hardly any work in the last four weeks. We should have been on the market by Halloween and now we don’t think we can finish by New Year’s Eve. We are guessing we will be suing him for the work that he was paid for and didn’t do. Along with the lost time and interest payments that he has cost us.

We are over budget by at least $20K ( our original scope of work was definitely not accurate) and are searching to find a new contractor to help us finish this project and at best break even.

We need to mud & tape the whole house, paint, replace 7 windows ( glass block ), finish two whole bathrooms, install kitchen cabinets, install flooring throughout the whole house and probably build a staircase that we already paid the contractor for.

Lots of lessons learned on this property on what not to do. 😢😢😢

We would welcome any and all advice, recommendations or referrals. We need to get this property completed and on the market. We aren’t giving up as we know that real estate investing can change our lives and our future generations too.

Thanks for taking the time to read our first post.

Chicago, Illinois

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