It was November 18th, 2019… the day I won the auction for a ratty Detroit duplex. It was ugly, I knew that from the pictures. But it wasn’t until December 19th that I was able to walk through it (a few days before I was supposed to close on it) and see how bad it really was.
To be honest, I thought it’d be worse.
Yes, I knew the roof had a hole in it. Yes, the water damage and general exposure to the elements for what has probably been years was bad. But it wasn’t TERRIBLE terrible.
There was a lot of work to be done. That was clear. But how much… well, I’m not good enough yet to be able to quantify it. Regardless, I knew it’d be expensive so my plan was to punt on closing as long as possible so that we wouldn’t have to get to work on it until we had some free capital.
A couple days after walking the property, I received an email to schedule the closing. I haggled with the woman over the phone, hemming and hawing about why I couldn’t close soon, and in fact, why I couldn’t close until late March.
And I did have a partial excuse. After all, we were in California visiting family early this year from mid-February through mid-March. She bought it, and the closing was scheduled for March 20th, 2020.
Well, by the time March 20th came along, the world was looking pretty different. We honestly weren’t sure if we wanted to take on the financial commitment of this rehab. I’d walked it with my general contractor and he guessed it’d be anywhere from $100k – $120k to rehab it.
Oof.
So when we returned, just before we were supposed to close, I asked to push the closing. And it was rescheduled for May 26, 2020.
So we thought about it some more. I walked it AGAIN, and we decided that it wasn’t worth it. The duplex, fully done, would likely only appraise for about $80,000. Yes, it’d be a cash cow, but leaving so much money in the deal would hurt.
But I still wasn’t SURE sure, so I let the clock run out on the closing and when it was time to pull the trigger I told them that we wouldn’t be closing on it. I received confirmation that it was cancelled and I was in “default” with the Detroit Land Bank (gosh that sounded harsh!).
But it wasn’t long before I was regretting my decision. You see, Dougie Fresh is on the SAME block, on the other side of the street a few houses down. There’s something about the area I find intoxicating. Yes, it’s a bit rough. But it feels peaceful and (mostly) safe. I get good vibes. And every time I’m in the area, I think about how I’d regret not buying the land bank one.
So on June 8th, I emailed again but saying we’d love to still close on it if possible. And it was. So on June 15th we had a new closing date of September 30th, 2020.
Well, as that date approached we’d finally decided that yes, this is something we want to do. I was going to treat it like an experiment and learning experience, trying to sub-contract out some tasks, maybe do some myself to keep costs down.
But I didn’t receive an email two days before our closing date like I was supposed to. I knew this was a sign something was wrong, and I knew I’d be able to reschedule again. At this point we were super tight on funds (still are!) and any delay was welcomed. So I waited until September 30th and emailed my Land Bank agent saying I just received a notification from my calendar that we were closing today… “is it still happening”?
Sure enough, it wasn’t properly scheduled, so we rescheduled again for October 14th. I had every intention of closing this time, and we did.
It’s been a long time coming, almost a year. And Kaitlin and I had gone back and forth on it at least a dozen times. Ultimately, I just couldn’t let it go. It was a heck of a courtship. Hence the nickname, Courtship Revival.
At first, I planned to demo just the kitchens and do my best to repair the plaster in the other rooms. But I’m thinking it might be best to just take it down to the studs, have access to everything, and replace all of the mechanicals.
The demo on this alone could be $6k-$10k, so if I can do a lot of it myself and/or with neighborhood hired help, that could save a lot right there.
It’s definitely going to be an interesting learning experience. Stay tuned!