Let me share something funny but “enlightening” with you today. Don’t worry, it has nothing to do with lame stuff. I just want to tell you how a little “oversight” cost my friend hundreds of dollars and lots of wasted time while doing a fix and flip project.
It happened a couple of years back, when my buddy was just starting his rehabbing business. I didn’t really know what possessed him to make his first fix and flip project an experiment but while that incident produced disastrous results, it did teach him a lot of things.
My rehabber friend, you see, has little background on doing construction work so he decided not to hire professional contractors. In addition, the fixer upper home that he has purchased looked like it didn’t need too much work, just a little paint touch-up and some new fixtures. That gave him the confidence to do the rehab on his own, with the help of his friends, of course.
To make the long story short, we were having a break after putting finishing touches on the paintjob when my friend’s seven-year-old son started telling us that the “walls are melting.” Well, to say that we were fairly surprised was the understatement of the year. The kitchen walls, which happened to be of the same color as butter, were indeed melting.
It turned out that one of the pipes behind a wall got busted and my genius friend “forgot” to check if the piping system was still in good condition before applying the first coat of paint. He just relied on what the realtor told him. Despite that disastrous day, we were quite thankful that we got to discover the house’s dirty secret before my friend sold it to the buyer.
So the moral lesson of the story is to always do your homework when rehabbing a house. Give the property a thorough checkup and don’t take the words of a realtor at face value. And even if you do know something about fixing and flipping a property, it wouldn’t hurt to seek the assistance of professional contractors.
