They say you never fail until you stop trying. I am at that point and I need help, badly. Sorry this is going to be a bit long but I'll try to keep it as short as possible. I would most sincerely appreciate any advice or words of encouragement you could offer as I am at my wits end.
I have been on a path to try to find financial freedom for just over 15 years now. In 2006 I opened my own restaurant. I sold hamburgers and teriyaki bowls. I thought it was a great little restaurant and thought I did a great job but I made a few mistakes, the first three of which all come down to location, location, location. July 3, 2007, my son's second birthday in fact, was the last day the business was open. I shut it down and declared bankruptcy. A few days later, I met with the landlord of that building. We met at 11:00 and talked for well over an hour. He sat with his back to the door and I could see people walking up trying to get in but, of course, it was locked as the business was closed. The sad thing is, the restaurant normally opened at 11:00 am everyday. In span of time that I was sitting there with the landlord, I counted far more people trying to get in the door than I had ever seen when I was open. We'll never know, but if I had stayed open just one more month, might things have turned around? It was very frustrating.
But I didn't give up after that. I decided to get involved in real estate in 2008. Near the end of 2008, with the help of a new mentor, I was able to purchase a property subject to: with the intent of seller financing it to someone else. It was supposed to be "free" to me because it was sub2 but you know what 2008/09 was like and that property sat vacant and needed some other repairs I was not aware of and ended up costing me almost $9,000 before I was able to start cash flowing it.
I had just come off bankruptcy and that $9,000 and the money I was spending on boot camps, REIAs, and other education, nearly broke me. I did not have the kind of money to do another one of those "free" deals again. The people who moved in were buying the place on seller financing. They paid for 8 months, although never on time. In the 9th month their payment did not come in and I found that they had vacated the property and trashed the place. They even took all of the appliances with them too. That ended up costing another $12,000 to get back in shape and cash flowing again. Thankfully, I was able to raise a little bit of capital for a 7% stake in the equity and cash flow.
Those incidents really derailed all my efforts. I stopped marketing and looking for new investment properties. I spent the next few years regularly going to my mentor's office trying to figure out a way to get more properties but without having to spend a ton of my own money, which I didn't have much of anyway.
By 2011 I had given up completely and walked away from real estate. I still had that one property that was cash flowing about $200/month but, after tens of thousands of dollars spent on my education and thousands of hours spent in trying to figure out how to grow in real estate, that was all I had to show for it.
I didn't know what to do next and then in early 2012, I learned about Bitcoin. It blew me away and, at the time, was trading for about $20. I didn't know how or where to buy them or how to store them. It took me some time to learn all of that information and by the time I was ready to buy, just 6 weeks later, the price had jumped to $125. Of course, that was just my luck, it seemed, like everything else. Had I learned about Bitcoin a few months earlier, I could have bought at a few dollars each.
I ended up buying a fair share and still have some but that is not the point. I ended up meeting someone at a local Bitcoin meetup group who seemed very knowledgeable about the subject. The two of us formulated a business plan. My idea was based on my own experiences at the time in not knowing about Bitcoin and how to acquire it and use it, etc. Our plan was to educate people on all of these things but also to make the case of why the price will inevitably rise. We put together a pretty awesome presentation and set up our first class. The idea was to give away the education and incentive to buy some Bitcoin and then right there we would sell the students some bitcoins at a 10% mark up, which was not unreasonable considering what others were selling for at the time.
We ran pretty quickly and only gave ourselves just two weeks for our first class. We managed to attract 5 people and, in spite of the small numbers, we sold $5,000 of bitcoin that very night and made a $500 profit! The following week we were going to go to the first Bitcoin expo in San Jose and had planned our second class after we returned. While in San Jose, we learned about money transmitter laws and how we were breaking the law. I looked into what it would take to become compliant and it would have cost several hundred thousand dollars for each state we did business in. That was the end of that business.
Nothing really happened in my pursuit of financial freedom over the next couple of years as I waited to see what else I could do. Then, in 2015, I learned that the people who were in my investment property were moving out and that I'd have to deal with this property again. I contacted my old mentor who was still managing the trust for this property and learned that real estate prices in the Dallas area had gone up drastically. He also informed me that, soon after I walked away from real estate in 2011, things started picking up and he was making money. He suggested it was a good time to get back into it. Of course, the moment I decide to get out, things pick up. We'll never know, of course, but had I stuck to it would I have found success?
I looked into it and decided that I could do a minor rehab on this property and sell it for a very handsome profit. With his help, we estimated it would sell in the high $200s possibly as high as $300,000. We estimated repairs at $25,000. This would have left me a profit of over $100,000. I was able to borrow some money from the one investor who helped me with the sub2 a number of years earlier and was still a beneficiary in the trust and I got started on the repairs.
At the same time, my financial situation had gotten a little bit better since 2008. Not only that, but my wife has some free time now with both kids in school all day and she wanted to help. She has been reading and listening to all my old tapes and even went to her own boot camp in FL last month to get caught up on everything. We have since turned on the marketing machine trying to find more properties.
Back to the rehab...I did the rehab but, partly due to my own inexperience and other unforeseen factors, the rehab and holding costs ended up costing me closer to $60,000 than the $25,000 originally planned. I also didn't get on the market until mid October and by then it looked like prices were dropping and ended up listing at $265,000 instead of the $300,000 like planned. The property sat all winter and weather did not help in Dallas. Although it was a relatively warm winter for us, every single weekend in the months of November and December, we had rain. The property had 0 showings for 3 months.
Then in February, showings started picking up. By the end of the month I got a lowball offer of $245K. I redid the numbers and felt I was still justified at my price or close to it. I decided that my minimum was $259K. We haggled for a few days and they came up as high as $257K and I decided to hold my ground. There are some who might think that was a stupid decision on my part at the time, and I couldn't argue with them. But, thankfully, a week later I received a full price offer! The buyers showed a pre-approval from the bank with a large down payment and great credit score.
They wanted to close quickly and quickly ordered an inspection. The inspection report found some windows needing repair, an active termite issue, and some wood rot on the chimney and some damaged shingles (although the roof had just been replaced). They were in a hurry to close so I got to work and got those things remediated, which ended up costing me another $2,000.
Considering all that I put into it now, the cost of the money I borrowed, selling costs, etc., I was looking to make about $30,000 profit at this price instead of the $100,000+ I had projected when I started this project. Even at $30,000, I would be happy to finally get this property off my back after all these years.
But then yesterday the appraisal came in. The appraisal came in at $238,000, which is complete BS. The appraiser used 3 comps to come up with that value. One of them was from a property sold 9 months ago. The other two were sold in December and January, the two bad months I mentioned earlier. Part of the reason for this is because this is the largest house in the whole tract. It is difficult to find comparable properties of this size. But I had received multiple offers on this property, the lowest of which was $242K and the buyers did come up from there. How could you tell me it is only worth $238,000 when multiple people are willing to pay at least $242K? Not only that, there is a property in the neighborhood that is 500 sq. ft. smaller and sold 3 weeks ago for $240K. How again can my property, which is fully renovated and 500 sq. ft. larger, be worth only $238K?
I haven't heard from the buyers yet but, more than likely, they will either want to renegotiate at $238K or walk. If I sell at that price, I'm lucky to break even on this property. If I let it sit any longer, I will be losing money at that price.
I have been marketing for 2 months now and have gotten 1 phone call, which did not pan out. This real estate business does not seem to be working. We have tried all the things the gurus tell us but are getting nowhere. We thought, at least if we'd make some money on the one property, then it would be worth the other money we've been spending trying to get the business going. Now it looks like I'll be lucky to only lose a few thousand on this house with no profit at all.
What I've found so far is that it looks like there is money to be made and I can find the properties if I had significant capital to work with, which I don't. I have spent money on courses in raising capital but all they seem to tell you is how to do it legally, but not where to actually go to find it. Other than the one investor who helped me out, who I already had a relationship with, I have not been able to raise any other capital.
After 15 years of trying to figure out how to become financially free, hundreds of thousands of dollars spent, thousands of hours, and bankruptcy, I am tired and worn out. I don't know what else to try. I look at all the other people out there, oblivious and just working a job and putting their money into a 401K. I used to think they were idiots but, truth is, if I did what they did, I would be hundreds of thousands of dollars better off than where I am now. I could have saved many, many hours and spent more time with my family. And I could have saved an awful lot of stress over the years. I used to hear other people complain that they wish they had more but they never seemed to do anything about it. My wife and I have always been willing to put in whatever time, money, and effort was necessary.
There is a lot I'm leaving out of this story. I used to think that eventually I'd figure it out and it would all be worth it. Now, I'm starting to regret every decision I've ever made and wish I had never gone down this road. I am ready to give up. But there is always going to be that nagging feeling in me that if I just stuck with it a little longer I would have made it. I feel ashamed for all the time and money I've wasted over the years and my life that I'll never get back. I don't really want to quit but I am tired of spinning my wheels and I don't know what else to do.
Thanks for reading this long, sad tale. If you have any words of encouragement or any advice at all, I'd love to hear it.
I have been on a path to try to find financial freedom for just over 15 years now. In 2006 I opened my own restaurant. I sold hamburgers and teriyaki bowls. I thought it was a great little restaurant and thought I did a great job but I made a few mistakes, the first three of which all come down to location, location, location. July 3, 2007, my son's second birthday in fact, was the last day the business was open. I shut it down and declared bankruptcy. A few days later, I met with the landlord of that building. We met at 11:00 and talked for well over an hour. He sat with his back to the door and I could see people walking up trying to get in but, of course, it was locked as the business was closed. The sad thing is, the restaurant normally opened at 11:00 am everyday. In span of time that I was sitting there with the landlord, I counted far more people trying to get in the door than I had ever seen when I was open. We'll never know, but if I had stayed open just one more month, might things have turned around? It was very frustrating.
But I didn't give up after that. I decided to get involved in real estate in 2008. Near the end of 2008, with the help of a new mentor, I was able to purchase a property subject to: with the intent of seller financing it to someone else. It was supposed to be "free" to me because it was sub2 but you know what 2008/09 was like and that property sat vacant and needed some other repairs I was not aware of and ended up costing me almost $9,000 before I was able to start cash flowing it.
I had just come off bankruptcy and that $9,000 and the money I was spending on boot camps, REIAs, and other education, nearly broke me. I did not have the kind of money to do another one of those "free" deals again. The people who moved in were buying the place on seller financing. They paid for 8 months, although never on time. In the 9th month their payment did not come in and I found that they had vacated the property and trashed the place. They even took all of the appliances with them too. That ended up costing another $12,000 to get back in shape and cash flowing again. Thankfully, I was able to raise a little bit of capital for a 7% stake in the equity and cash flow.
Those incidents really derailed all my efforts. I stopped marketing and looking for new investment properties. I spent the next few years regularly going to my mentor's office trying to figure out a way to get more properties but without having to spend a ton of my own money, which I didn't have much of anyway.
By 2011 I had given up completely and walked away from real estate. I still had that one property that was cash flowing about $200/month but, after tens of thousands of dollars spent on my education and thousands of hours spent in trying to figure out how to grow in real estate, that was all I had to show for it.
I didn't know what to do next and then in early 2012, I learned about Bitcoin. It blew me away and, at the time, was trading for about $20. I didn't know how or where to buy them or how to store them. It took me some time to learn all of that information and by the time I was ready to buy, just 6 weeks later, the price had jumped to $125. Of course, that was just my luck, it seemed, like everything else. Had I learned about Bitcoin a few months earlier, I could have bought at a few dollars each.
I ended up buying a fair share and still have some but that is not the point. I ended up meeting someone at a local Bitcoin meetup group who seemed very knowledgeable about the subject. The two of us formulated a business plan. My idea was based on my own experiences at the time in not knowing about Bitcoin and how to acquire it and use it, etc. Our plan was to educate people on all of these things but also to make the case of why the price will inevitably rise. We put together a pretty awesome presentation and set up our first class. The idea was to give away the education and incentive to buy some Bitcoin and then right there we would sell the students some bitcoins at a 10% mark up, which was not unreasonable considering what others were selling for at the time.
We ran pretty quickly and only gave ourselves just two weeks for our first class. We managed to attract 5 people and, in spite of the small numbers, we sold $5,000 of bitcoin that very night and made a $500 profit! The following week we were going to go to the first Bitcoin expo in San Jose and had planned our second class after we returned. While in San Jose, we learned about money transmitter laws and how we were breaking the law. I looked into what it would take to become compliant and it would have cost several hundred thousand dollars for each state we did business in. That was the end of that business.
Nothing really happened in my pursuit of financial freedom over the next couple of years as I waited to see what else I could do. Then, in 2015, I learned that the people who were in my investment property were moving out and that I'd have to deal with this property again. I contacted my old mentor who was still managing the trust for this property and learned that real estate prices in the Dallas area had gone up drastically. He also informed me that, soon after I walked away from real estate in 2011, things started picking up and he was making money. He suggested it was a good time to get back into it. Of course, the moment I decide to get out, things pick up. We'll never know, of course, but had I stuck to it would I have found success?
I looked into it and decided that I could do a minor rehab on this property and sell it for a very handsome profit. With his help, we estimated it would sell in the high $200s possibly as high as $300,000. We estimated repairs at $25,000. This would have left me a profit of over $100,000. I was able to borrow some money from the one investor who helped me with the sub2 a number of years earlier and was still a beneficiary in the trust and I got started on the repairs.
At the same time, my financial situation had gotten a little bit better since 2008. Not only that, but my wife has some free time now with both kids in school all day and she wanted to help. She has been reading and listening to all my old tapes and even went to her own boot camp in FL last month to get caught up on everything. We have since turned on the marketing machine trying to find more properties.
Back to the rehab...I did the rehab but, partly due to my own inexperience and other unforeseen factors, the rehab and holding costs ended up costing me closer to $60,000 than the $25,000 originally planned. I also didn't get on the market until mid October and by then it looked like prices were dropping and ended up listing at $265,000 instead of the $300,000 like planned. The property sat all winter and weather did not help in Dallas. Although it was a relatively warm winter for us, every single weekend in the months of November and December, we had rain. The property had 0 showings for 3 months.
Then in February, showings started picking up. By the end of the month I got a lowball offer of $245K. I redid the numbers and felt I was still justified at my price or close to it. I decided that my minimum was $259K. We haggled for a few days and they came up as high as $257K and I decided to hold my ground. There are some who might think that was a stupid decision on my part at the time, and I couldn't argue with them. But, thankfully, a week later I received a full price offer! The buyers showed a pre-approval from the bank with a large down payment and great credit score.
They wanted to close quickly and quickly ordered an inspection. The inspection report found some windows needing repair, an active termite issue, and some wood rot on the chimney and some damaged shingles (although the roof had just been replaced). They were in a hurry to close so I got to work and got those things remediated, which ended up costing me another $2,000.
Considering all that I put into it now, the cost of the money I borrowed, selling costs, etc., I was looking to make about $30,000 profit at this price instead of the $100,000+ I had projected when I started this project. Even at $30,000, I would be happy to finally get this property off my back after all these years.
But then yesterday the appraisal came in. The appraisal came in at $238,000, which is complete BS. The appraiser used 3 comps to come up with that value. One of them was from a property sold 9 months ago. The other two were sold in December and January, the two bad months I mentioned earlier. Part of the reason for this is because this is the largest house in the whole tract. It is difficult to find comparable properties of this size. But I had received multiple offers on this property, the lowest of which was $242K and the buyers did come up from there. How could you tell me it is only worth $238,000 when multiple people are willing to pay at least $242K? Not only that, there is a property in the neighborhood that is 500 sq. ft. smaller and sold 3 weeks ago for $240K. How again can my property, which is fully renovated and 500 sq. ft. larger, be worth only $238K?
I haven't heard from the buyers yet but, more than likely, they will either want to renegotiate at $238K or walk. If I sell at that price, I'm lucky to break even on this property. If I let it sit any longer, I will be losing money at that price.
I have been marketing for 2 months now and have gotten 1 phone call, which did not pan out. This real estate business does not seem to be working. We have tried all the things the gurus tell us but are getting nowhere. We thought, at least if we'd make some money on the one property, then it would be worth the other money we've been spending trying to get the business going. Now it looks like I'll be lucky to only lose a few thousand on this house with no profit at all.
What I've found so far is that it looks like there is money to be made and I can find the properties if I had significant capital to work with, which I don't. I have spent money on courses in raising capital but all they seem to tell you is how to do it legally, but not where to actually go to find it. Other than the one investor who helped me out, who I already had a relationship with, I have not been able to raise any other capital.
After 15 years of trying to figure out how to become financially free, hundreds of thousands of dollars spent, thousands of hours, and bankruptcy, I am tired and worn out. I don't know what else to try. I look at all the other people out there, oblivious and just working a job and putting their money into a 401K. I used to think they were idiots but, truth is, if I did what they did, I would be hundreds of thousands of dollars better off than where I am now. I could have saved many, many hours and spent more time with my family. And I could have saved an awful lot of stress over the years. I used to hear other people complain that they wish they had more but they never seemed to do anything about it. My wife and I have always been willing to put in whatever time, money, and effort was necessary.
There is a lot I'm leaving out of this story. I used to think that eventually I'd figure it out and it would all be worth it. Now, I'm starting to regret every decision I've ever made and wish I had never gone down this road. I am ready to give up. But there is always going to be that nagging feeling in me that if I just stuck with it a little longer I would have made it. I feel ashamed for all the time and money I've wasted over the years and my life that I'll never get back. I don't really want to quit but I am tired of spinning my wheels and I don't know what else to do.
Thanks for reading this long, sad tale. If you have any words of encouragement or any advice at all, I'd love to hear it.
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