Flip House (Randy's House)

We just did another really big thing... Our neighbor, Randy, mentioned to us on several different occasions about selling his house "cheap" and moving. You can tell just from the outside that it needs a lot of work. We told him that we wanted to buy it and we would fix it up and he agreed to let us know when he planned to sell. These passing conversations happened for over a year and a half between us. Even though we were looking for a vacation rental during that time, we were still a little hesitant on getting something because we didn't want to have our money tied up and miss the opportunity to buy Randy's house. After so long, Travis and I guessed that he probably wasn't really going to sell his house any time soon and we became a lot more active in the Port Aransas search. The same day (!) our offer was accepted for the Port Aransas house, we found out from a different neighbor that Randy's house was listed as a foreclosure. I couldn't believe it!! What are the chances?! After we got back from Port A, it took days to finally be able to reach him and when I did, he said he didn't know how serious we were about buying. We ended up having 8 working days before it went to auction and I went to work to try and get it! We had to get Travis' parents to buy the house since we were under contract for Port A and we decided that we would do all of the remodel work and then split any profit. This has been the most stressful deal... trying to get his loan reinstated, remove the HOA liens, order a Resale Certification, get an attorney to notarize, get an inspection complete, locate the survey, helping Travis' parents with paperwork... all while Randy was not very available and all on a super rush deal. It was a ton of work and I am completely shocked that I was able to pull this off in time. We closed on the house today with one day to spare!! I still can't believe it!! We have our work cut out for us over the next several months for sure!

I snapped these pictures during the inspection. The cigarette smell was so bad that I could only stand to be in there for a few minutes at a time! :-/