Hi BP! New investor checking in!

[Steven Belew]

Howdy folks,

I'm Steve Belew, and I'm from Spring Hill, TN (~30 minutes south of Nashville).

I've been lurking on BP for a couple of months, listening to podcasts, reading articles, etc. 

My wife @Anne Belew and I just closed our first deal yesterday, and it was a whirlwind! We closed on Friday, owner was facing foreclosure auction Monday, inspection received at 2:00 AM Friday morning, financing partner pulled out Thursday. We ended up convincing the seller to finance 30K of the 65K offer to save the deal.

Lessons learned:

• Don't allow the homeowners to be present for the inspection.
• Schedule the inspection ASAP.
• Have some backup financing or reserve cash available to save a deal. Ingenuity's great, but sleep is better.
• If you're contacting sellers in foreclosure (and I think you should), the more time between your first contact and the auction date, the better.

I'd like to thank the members of this community for providing the wealth of information that's available here, and I hope that someday I can make some valuable contributions of my own.

Thanks!

Steve

P.S. Anyone know a good GC in the Spring Hill/Columbia, TN area? I sort of skimmed past that advice about having your network in place before making a deal. Another lesson learned.