Flip Gone Wrong

[Tyler Mcclean]

I had a property I was flipped upstate NY. It looked amazing on paper, but the struggle of finding reliable contractors in the area was a killer. I had to pay extra to have my usual guys from Long Island go a few hours away and stay at this house. It hurt my bottom line a little but it was still shaping up to be a nice deal. I ended up posting the listing and apparently some of the things done by the previous owner was never permitted as the lower level of this hi-ranch was finished. Apparently that was never approved and the town hit me with a ton of violations to get this up to code I had to pull permits and if anyone has worked in NY before you know this process is extremely slow. While this process was playing out I also unknowingly had a leak in my water main underground in the front yard. I live nowhere near this property so I wasnt checking on it and I had the house winterized for the winter and the main shut off in the garage. The water company contacted me a feww months after we finished while I was waiting for the permit issue to be resolved and told me I needed to pay the bill that I owed the 7000 DOLLARS!!! I obviously went nuts lol. Why wouldn't they call me sooner?! I ended up having to pay like 10k to have the front yard Dug up and the leak fixed, and negotiated the water company down to half. All together I was luckily able to almost breakeven minus my sanity lol. But yea definitely was a stressful year with this one on the books that I initially thought would be a homer.

[Ken M.]

Quote from @Tyler Mcclean:

I had a property I was flipped upstate NY. It looked amazing on paper, but the struggle of finding reliable contractors in the area was a killer. I had to pay extra to have my usual guys from Long Island go a few hours away and stay at this house. It hurt my bottom line a little but it was still shaping up to be a nice deal. I ended up posting the listing and apparently some of the things done by the previous owner was never permitted as the lower level of this hi-ranch was finished. Apparently that was never approved and the town hit me with a ton of violations to get this up to code I had to pull permits and if anyone has worked in NY before you know this process is extremely slow. While this process was playing out I also unknowingly had a leak in my water main underground in the front yard. I live nowhere near this property so I wasnt checking on it and I had the house winterized for the winter and the main shut off in the garage. The water company contacted me a feww months after we finished while I was waiting for the permit issue to be resolved and told me I needed to pay the bill that I owed the 7000 DOLLARS!!! I obviously went nuts lol. Why wouldn't they call me sooner?! I ended up having to pay like 10k to have the front yard Dug up and the leak fixed, and negotiated the water company down to half. All together I was luckily able to almost breakeven minus my sanity lol. But yea definitely was a stressful year with this one on the books that I initially thought would be a homer.

Sorry man, I hate that when it happens. 

That's why I always teach my investors to live within an easy drive of their investment. Things come up.