My Worst Real Estate Investments and What I Learned From Them

In doing wholesale deals there are certainly a lot of things that can go wrong. One example is a house that was bought and taken over subject to the existing financing (where the sellers mortgage remains in place and the seller deeds over the property). At first the seller seemed like a nice guy having good intentions, but he didn't pay his bills. Soon began the problems of getting the guy out of the house. The guy had come into a real hard situation, his daughter had been shot and he was given a lot of grace, basically he was allowed to live rent for free for quite some time. But eventually the guy left owing a $700 bill. It would have cost more money to try to collect from him legally than we could collect from pursuing legal action. We consider that we did two mistakes in this case: first, we didn't set appropriate boundaries with the seller and the second one, we trusted people a little bit too far. So, everybody should keep in mind what former President Ronald Reagan said: “...trust but verify!”

The next big mistake was on another subject to transaction. This guy said that all he wanted was $5,000 and he had a pay off statement that indicated his pay was off was $22,000 and that number worked, 22 plus 5 is 27. At $27k this is a good deal so we went to a money partner and said pull out the $5,000 and let the sign over the deed right and then we would go and pay the mortgage for a couple of months and then would pay off the house when we wholesale in the next 30 or 60 days. So, we gave the seller the $5,000, but we forgot to do the title search. What the guy didn't tell us was that the $22k mortgage was not the only mortgage, but he had a 2nd short term mortgage loaned from a mortgage company and he was already in the process of foreclosure on it too. Now we would have to pay off another $6k and so the deal was no longer any good. We felt it wasn't a good deal anymore as we had already given $5,000 and now we would have to give a $28,000 pay off and be in the house at $33k. The guy didn't give the money back and again trying to persuade him legally would have cost more than we had to collect. That's the way we lost $5,000. So, when you start a deal check the title first before giving the seller any money! You don't want to lose your money! This is also a reason to avoid kitchen table closings as opposed to spending the money with a title company or closing attorney, because in the long run doing it the right way will save you money and let you sleep better at night.