Another heartbreaker...

Deep breath...



Dramatic sigh...



"Grace" and I have been trying hard to keep Sunday, the Lord's day, holy. That means no mailings, no running comps, no reading real estate books. But today, well, we had to get some work done. And I guess it's a good thing we did, because we may have just saved ourselves from a real nightmare. In other words, we decided to pass on an REO (bank-owned property for you newbs newer than us newbs.)

That stats went roughly like so:

ARV: $425,000

Repairs: $50,000

Our latest counter-offer to the bank was $300,000 and they pay closing costs.

The bank came back with "We'll pay closing costs if you raise your offer price (to an unspecified amount). I also detected an unspoken proposition of "...and you wear a Seattle Seahawks jersey outside a Redskins game.")

Seasoned investors will already recognize that this deal is too "tight." In other words, there's no room for another investor to profit--or for us to profit--if we assign/flip the contract to them. We thought we could do it, but basically it comes down to this:

We offered too high.

When we finally realized this, it was shocking. We've been making dozens of offers through the MLS system that have been WAAAAAYYYY below market value. Unfortunately, we were undone on this one because of bad comp assessments initially. We should have offered at $250,000, max. Instead, we offered at $290,000, leaving us no room to negotiate. And man, I tried. I offered the bank cookies. Yeah--I was gonna bake them cookies. They must have heard I was going to use the Costco pre-made batter concoction...

Anyway, a good friend and renovator suggested we decline the bank's counter. Probably a good plan, although I have a good feeling about this place. Call it irrational--the first state of all of my business ventures--but I think there's opportunity here. It's a five bedroom, four bath, single-family home not far from Ft. Belvoir. We could pack this place with military guys. I'm seriously thinking about buying it anyway and putting a foosball table in the huge basement. That basement, btw, even has a bar.

Sigh. Well, tomorrow's another day. I've got a half-dozen phone calls to make to realtors, mortgage lenders and investors. We might get something rolling in October...

UPDATE: Here's a pic of my latest heartbreaker:

UPDATE II: I don't know why, but the pic is at the top of the page...