JUST SOLD! Clearfield Investor Rehab

I recently listed his home and we finally closed on it this week with a first-time home buyer.  The story behind this home is worth sharing for those of you looking to rehab and resell properties.

I was brought on as the listing agent for this home after the original listing agent decided not to re-up his listing contract.  That particular agent's business model was focused more on buyers than on marketing.

Once I placed the home on the market, we had it under contract in three weeks.  That's when all the excitement started.  The buyer's agent submitted a repair addendum to me that had 15 bullet points on it.  Included in that was a request for a "new" roof.  The roof had just been replaced three months prior but apparently the wind had caught a roll of shingle and flipped it over.  Ultimately we agreed to repair the roof and most of the other items on their list.

My seller hired a handyman who said he could do the job and they got to work.  Coordinating between the buyer's agent, the inspector, myself, the seller, and the handiman was an absolute circus and we ended up having the inspector go back to the home so many times to review items on the checklist that he eventually quit on us (I don't blame him.)

One of the biggest items that we had to get resolved was how to have a roof properly installed on a low pitch.  Here is a picture of the repaired roof that was unsatisfactory to the inspector:

As you can see the middle shingle there broke into pieces in a wind storm and was repaired in a less than satisfactory way.  We also found out that the entire roof was actually installed incorrectly and we were compelled to have a professional roofer come back and put everything in right.

So how did my seller get such lousy service from his original roofer? Well, the original contract for the job was having personal problems and ended up absconding with the seller's money on another project home just as this project was finished.  Clearly, the contractor was trying to save some money by cutting corners on this roof.  My seller was placed in the very awkward position of having to pay more to have all the cut corners repaired.  The corners never should have been cut in the first place.  

The moral of the story is that when fixing homes, its important to supervise the subs and contractors that do work for us.  If they perceive that we are too busy or don't care how the work is done, unscrupulous ones will take advantage were it is to be taken.  The problem is that the honest ones look just like the unscrupulous ones.  You never know until their work is finished and that's why it's best for us to let them know we are extremely interested in what they do and how they do it.