Hey @Joshua Smith
What was the unexpected issue in my first house hack? Fleas in the carpets on the day of the closing! 🤦♂️
Quick story: In 2011, after several months of searching, I found a decent, brick side-by-side duplex in a B+ neighborhood with a good school district. At the time, both units were occupeid with month-to-month tenants who had lived there for 9+ years each. The tenants weren't particularly clean, their rents were about 30% below market, and they had a bunch of cats. They also had a bunch of stuff in the side yard.
Needless to say, in order for me to get the owner-occupied financing, I needed at least one of the units vacant. I was not thrilled about either of the tenants that were there. While they seemed nice enough during the walk throughs, I could sense that they were not going to be particularly happy to have a new landlord coming into the picture and kicking one of them out.
We negotiated with the seller and eventually came to an agreement on a price and also worked into the deal that he was going to sell the property to me vacant. We were under contract for a couple of months while we got through the various contingency periods (attorney approval, inspections, appraisal) and while the tenants were given a sufficient amount of time to move out.
On the morning of the closing, I met a contractor at the property to do the final walk through. We confirmed that the tenants had moved out and the place was left in decent shape. There weren't much that the tenants left behind. The apartments were going to need new carpets (the old ones were very dirty and worn, which is not unusual), painting throughout, and a thorough cleaning.
As we walked out the front door and approached our cars, the contractor looked down and noticed that he had multiple black fleas on his pant legs. He immediately jumped and started swiping them off himself with his hands, yelping like a little girl! I would have found his reaction amusing had I not had flees on me as well.
Apparently, they were living and feeding on the tenant's cats while the tenants were in the building. But, once the tenants moved, some of the fleas must have stayed behind on the carpets.
My contractor and I were able to shake all the fleas off ourselves before we got back in our cars and I was also able to kill one. I put it inside of a tissue and brought it with me to the closing.
I then laid the napkin on the table and opened it up for everyone to see. Naturally, everybody looked at me like "what the hell is this?" I told them that this is what's in the carpets at the property right now and I said we're not closing today unless the seller gives us a credit. He wasn't too happy about the situation, but it's kind of hard to argue with the visual evidence sitting on the table right in front of him.
He gave us a credit and we closed. I then had the place "bombed" and treated before and after we removed all of the carpets and pads in both apartments. I then went ahead with the light remodel as planned and my wife and I moved into one of the units. She was pretty paranoid about the fleas for a little while after we moved in, but it all worked out in the end.
I can share dozens of other stories of various real estate related "surprises" and "adventures" that I have been a part of over the last 13 years as I worked to grow my portfolio from that one duplex to just over 160 rental units today, but I think this post is long enough already! The moral of the story is, with real estate, there are many things that can happen completely unexpectedly. You just have to be flexible enough and willing enough to deal with them as they come and not get discouraged or let relatively small setbacks derail your progress.
Good luck with everything! Feel free to DM me and connect if you have any other questions about house hacking and real estate investing in general. I'm happy to share!
Vitaliy
