I originally titled this story “Real Estate Investing Home Run of the Year”, with tongue-in-cheek because it was NOT! As flippers we were lucky we didn’t bury ourselves in losses and trash! Enjoy this tale of the day my partner and I did what I have warned you about – became so excited about a “dirt”-cheap foreclosure auction property that we took the plunge without having actually seen the house.

We were both – of course – still in our earlier days of flipping. (Experienced flippers are probably already laughing!) We were looking at property in a beautiful rural area where homebuyers were building elegant dream homes on small acreage. We weren’t too concerned with modest manufactured homes on the property, as the retail buyer wouldn’t keep them long.

That’s what led us into this Pandora’s box when we found a foreclosure that was a truly beautiful flat wooded 5 acre lot with a stream – just an ideal place for someone to build their dream.  We planned to bring the manufactured home on it to a nice condition so that someone could live there while building the “real” house of their future.

But we couldn’t get past the recalcitrant owner into the fenced property to inspect it, and the house was set back from the road so that it was hard to see. We actually did not expect to buy it as we were sure bidding would go past our limit. But at the auction there was almost no bidding action, so we stepped in and were thrilled to get it at an amazing price. A price so marvelous we had this place pegged to be our home run of the year! (Maybe the other bidders knew what we did not!)

As the new owners we went to look at what we had. We discovered that the now former owner – a single woman – had no intentions of moving even though she had just lost the property to foreclosure.  And how could she move, with so many farm animals living IN THE HOUSE WITH HER and her small children? Goats, pigs, dogs, cats, peacocks, chickens … all had free roam and were sheltering and “doing their business” in the house.

We did what we would have done in any case as responsible citizens and called Children’s Protective Services on the appalling conditions. In fact this was the only way that we were able to get her out quickly as she was fighting the eviction process every step of the way. CPS finally came for a visit, and the very next day the woman moved out with her children (so at least the kids got a cleaner home). Leaving behind the animals! We had to rehome all of them as fast as we could.

The woman had also left behind 10 years of trash! The neighbors confirmed she had never used a trash service. It was piled high and deep all over the property.

We spent many, many weeks and a lot of dollars cleaning and sanitizing the house, and bulldozing the trash into 30 – 40-yard dumpsters and over two dozen approved burn piles! (the property was in Washington state) To this day I have never seen that much trash on one property.

I am leaving out many details of this adventure – all I can say is that there were days it seemed it would never end. But laugh with me as you get the idea of what we were up against!

At the end of this saga we had transformed the house to top-of-the-market condition and were able to get a good offer on the property in a respectable condition. But it wasn’t over – the buyer’s inspection discovered something we overlooked, animal feces piled in the heat ducting! Thankfully the buyer loved the property and didn’t back out, and we were able to clean that up as well and make the sale – at last.

Believe it or not we actually made a couple grand on that property, to our intense relief. Although that didn’t begin to pay for our personal time and stress, it was nonetheless a memorable example of keeping the purchase price down to accommodate almost any misfortune.

And always, always, always look at the property and know everything you possibly can about it BEFORE you buy. If there is something stopping you from seeing it – if other buyers are avoiding it even at fire sale prices – there is probably a very good reason why!

Would you have taken on cleaning up this property once you learned its true condition – or would you have tried to wholesale it to anyone who would take it off your hands?

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