First Flip gone terribly wrong NEED HELP PLEASE

[Teryn Owensby]

Hello,

I am in desperate need of advice on what to do. If anyone can help please advise. My husband and I purchased our first investment property in January of this year. Our renovation was supposed to cost approx. 58,000 and take 12 weeks. We purchased the home for 120,000 and the ARV at the time based on comps and research was supposed to be 245,000-250,000. We took out a line of credit on our own house for 40,000 to use for money that we needed to come up with for lenders and anything else we needed to put into the house ourselves. We got a loan for 107,00 and then a construction loan for 56,750. In the long run our renovation ended up taking 6 months and our cost totaled 70,019. We exhausted all of our 40,000 and the house didn't go on the market until the end of June of this year. We have been paying approx 2,700 in interest a month at this point every month that it doesn't sale. We have maxed our all of our available credit cards just to make payments to our contractor that had to be done and the interest payments and even borrowed money from my parents to pay the interest at this point. Now we are at the end of another month and the house is still not sold. Our line of credit loan on our own home needs to be renewed as it was supposed to be paid back within a year to 0 which we have not done yet. They actually couldn't even renew it, but just do a 6 month extension because now our credit is bad because we have used all available. The cost of that is approx 900 just so we can extend that loan on our home so it doesn't go into default. We don't even really have the money to pay that and we don't have the 2,700 interest to pay that is supposed to come out of our business account on the 1st. This is the reason we are completely desperate and I don't know what to do. We listed the house with Mark Spain and they have done nothing but make us drop the price so no matter what we are losing money at this point. The only other solution they had to was pull the listing and start it under a new one to "refresh it" which we did. We have had a few showings since then but not a single offer. We started at the end of June to list it at 255,000 and have now dropped it to 224,900. Just to pay what we owe to lenders and contractors on this house right now is 215,000 and that doesn't cover any real estate commission or what we have in credit card debt and what we even borrowed from my husbands 401K just to make interest payments for the last 2 months. Again I am posting this to see if there is anyone that can help as we are stressed about this 24-7 can't sleep because of it. We have talked to a another agent that seems to have some kind of strategy that is more focused than Mark Spain and might can help us, but again we don't know what to do about the payments we need to make right now. The other agent also mentioned that at the end of June there was a huge halt in the market and it has taken it a while to adjust. That of course was when we got on the market and have had no luck. Any advice or ideas would be appreciated. We are in Georgia and the house is right outside of East Atlanta. 

Thank you,

Teryn Owensby

[Ed Emmons]

First take a deep breath. How much can you rent the home for? Many are afraid to do this but as you have seen the carrying costs can eat you up. You can sometimes find a person who has just sold their house and is looking for another or waiting for another to close and needs a couple months rent. I have asked high producing agents if they have or know someone in that situation. There are also other banks that offer the business lines of credit that don’t have to be paid down annually. It sounds like your interest rate is high and if so maybe if nothing else a private lender may provide one consolidated payment that could be covered by the rent.

I’m in a situation where a house has sat too long too and I’m going to put someone in it to turn it around. Get a healthy security deposit and you should be in better shape. Just don’t give up and when the smoke clears analyze what you learned. Hope this helps.