This house was bought very cheap, and had a huge upside. However, once again, I found a way to make a mistake to mess things up.
I purchased a white board, and put on it a list of what repairs were needed for the house, but along with that, I put the purchase price, cost of repairs and potential profit. In hindsight, this was very stupid, and thinking back, I can easily predict what happened next, but....
A contractor that was hired to change windows, add some siding, and outside soffits saw this, and I am still not quite sure how - but his prices doubled overnight - AFTER he had finished the work. After a fight, we has paid, and that entire mess caused serious problems with the house.
Unfortunately, I could have made over $25,000 on that house, and do to a lot of mistakes, bad contractors, etc, this property turned out to be a loss. The money that was lost was put on a low-rate credit card, and that was the very beginning of what will eventually turn out to be close to $80,000 in credit card debt (at the time, it was just shy of $10,000, but that number will start to grow with future mistakes.)
After that, I developed a contractor contract, and every contractor hired had to sign the contract. This seems very simple, but something that was seriously overlooked.
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