When I first purchased this home back in spring of last year, 2020,
I hadn't owned a home and I'd had a car that I'd had pretty much since I learned
how to drive. So needless to say, I was a little inexperienced with the process.
But in this video,
I'm going to take you through what happened during the purchase of the home,
with the flippers that I was dealing with,
as well as all the things that the flippers did or didn't do to this house.
So hopefully there's a little bit of a cautionary tale here that you can learn
from when you're buying your own urban homestead. First things first,
we have to talk about the first sort of scummy thing that the flippers did.
And it was before I even owned the house.
It was during the purchasing of the home. So here's what happened.
I saw the house come up on the MLS and I drove down immediately. And I said,
the second I saw it with all this expansive space where I didn't even look at
the home I said, let's put an offer in. I texted my realtor. I said,
we're doing this. And the funny thing is,
when I actually showed up within an hour or two of it showing up on MLS,
there was already a realtor here with a couple walking through this yard saying
really loud, within earshot of me, oh babe, we're totally buying this place,
right? Like for sure. And I'm thinking to myself,
do you know who you're dealing with? You're dealing with the Epic Gardener here.
There's no way I'm letting this thing go.
And so in my head I'm already starting to get that competitive spirit.
So on day one, there were six offers. I was the second lowest offer.
I come in with another offer and I drop a contingency.
You have a physical inspection contingency,
which you probably should never drop unless you're really desperate for a house.
You have your appraisal contingency,
which is how much the house is appraised for.
And then you have your financing contingency.
So I dropped the appraisal and the financing. I knew I could afford the home.
The appraisal contingency I dropped.
Which basically means if this house underappraised relative to what I decided to
buy it for, I would have to cover that differential.
The bank's not going to loan me the amount, that differential basically.
So if it's $120 that I bought it for, and it only appraises for a hundred,
I'd have to put another $20,000 down on the downpayment.
So it's kind of a strong thing to drop. You're saying look, I'm good.
If this thing underappraises, I'll cover the rest.
So I thought that'd be a strong offer. Lo and behold,
three offers beat that offer. So then I said, you know what,
I'm going balls to the wall. And I'm just going to put, I'm just going to slam,
I'm going to throw down the gauntlet.
And so what I did is I put an auto increment on my bid. So I upped my bid again,
pretty much to the max of what I was wanting to pay for this,
which is $25,000 over the asking price. And I said, I'll put an auto increment.
If someone's higher than me, beat them by $1,500. That actually won.
So I won at that point and I was stoked,
but I was paying a lot more than I wanted to.
But it was at my limit so I was okay with it.
Now here's where the first weird thing that the company did that I didn't really
like. So this is number one on the list. It's an ethics thing for me.
So what they did is, there was a weird clause in the house,
in the purchasing agreement that basically said, if the house underappraises,
the buyer is only responsible for $15,000. Well,
the house underappraised by $25,000.
And so when they accepted our offer for that $25,000 over, we said, hey look,
we didn't put this in.
You guys put this in - that we're only responsible for $15,000.
So you need to bump the purchase price down by $10,000. And they were really,
really mad, but it was their realtor that did it. So it's not our fault.
We're just saying, look,
you have a legally binding contract that I don't know why you put that clause in
there, but you have to honor that clause.
So here's the first thing that they did that was kind of scummy.
What they did is they said, okay, you're right. Legally, we have to honor it.
Every single thing on your repairs list,
which was pretty modest to be honest with you, it wasn't like,
we weren't asking for the world.
Every single thing on the repairs list that we agreed we were going to do,
not legally but at least in email, we're not doing it anymore.
Just cause they were just being petty basically. They were just mad.
And so we said, okay, well that's pretty scumbag to do. Nevertheless,
I figured I could get a handyman, we'll get that done.
If it means that I secure the property, I secure the property. So we said,
we came back and we said, hey, as long as you trim these trees.
Because those trees that used to be on this property were like sprawling all
over the house. And it was actually kind of a hazard.
If one was to fall it would have damaged the roof. Damaged the house.
And so we got them to actually do that.
And then we closed the deal and the deal is done.
But now let's talk about as I walked on the property,
some of the things I noticed later on and sometimes even months down the road.
So the first thing that the flippers did I assume, in the front yard,
is they took a skid steer or something that would scrape a lot of material and
they just scraped off all the weeds. And then they put on some wood chips.
Now I have to give them credit.
These wood chips are actually natural wood chips.
It's not some of that dyed stuff that would be really problematic because I'm
not a fan of it and they'd be all over the entire yard.
So it's kind of annoying because it disguised the weed problem that's actually
here in the front yard.
But I'm not saying that they should have cleared the weeds.
That would be almost impossible and extremely expensive.
It just was a little bit of curb appeal trickery that I didn't quite think of
when I moved in. Just how much of a weed problem,
specifically Bermuda which is one of the worst weeds you can ever have in the
garden that we would be dealing with. Which is why, in the front yard at least,
we've gone with mostly raised beds because the Bermuda problem is not as bad
back there. So we can do some inground stuff back there.
The next thing that the flippers did was install this fence right here which I
have to say, I kind of like the look of it. It's a very simple fence.
It's not going to last that long. It's just one by three,
probably with the cheapest type of wood that you could possibly get.
But what you'll notice is they didn't tackle this white vinyl fence cause it's
on the property line,
which fortunately neighbors are very nice and it's been very great.
But eventually I'm going to have to rebuild that.
It would have been nice if they just dealt with that out of the gate.
Because when I moved in this place had seven different types of fences around
the property line. And fortunately,
those of you who have seen the fence video know that that's been since fixed.
We only have I guess three now.
So I've deleted four types of fences from this property. But nevertheless,
I would say pretty good job here except for there's a lot of these like little
vertical one by three bracing supports that they just randomly didn't put in.
So it's causing warping. So it's just something I've had to do after the fact,
which is just kind of a sloppy little detail that they missed. Here.
In the garage we have probably one of the more silly things that I think the
flippers did, just to cover up something instead of dealing with it.
Now I've since replaced this garage floor, that's what I'm talking about here.
You can go watch the video on the channel and we'll show you some footage from
what we found. But when I first moved in,
basically what we had in the garage floor was concrete or cement that
was colored and then slapped over the ground in a very rough way.
So it couldn't have been sloppier.
It'd be like if you took a hundred pounds of concrete, mixed it with water,
dumped it on the ground and like barely.
Spread it out even, and then painted over the top of that.
And then we discovered the reason why they did.
That is because in here before there was a massive oil spill,
like right over there. So that when I was putting this coating on,
I had to pay $400-$500 extra to have them come out and burn all
that off. Because they can't put a coating like this on top of an oil slick.
So it was just probably a really rundown and hoarder-style garage that they
tried to do something with. Now,
another weird thing comes with the electrical work in here,
which I don't know if they installed or not, but either way it was not to code.
So we're out here underneath the awning in the backyard and I'll show you just
the shoddiness. Now again, I don't know for sure if they did this or not,
maybe they just saw it and decided not to touch it.
Either way you would imagine they would bring it up to code, hopefully.
So we have this conduit here, which first of all,
this is an indoor rated conduit.
It's not outdoor rated and the wire within it is wire that's rated for being
in-between a wall, not outdoors. So again,
probably an issue in two different ways there. But the real egregious thing is,
see how this starts to bend down and go inwards like that?
It actually used to go up and it went through the parapet of the
roof, down through the actual roof and then dropped into here.
So what do you think happened? Of course,
it just leaks all over the place on a conduit that is not rated for outdoor
use and a wire that's not rated for outdoor use.
So it's like the perfect situation to just fry someone. So that was just really,
really egregious. And I found out about that only when we replaced the roof.
Speaking.
Of the roof, here's a pretty egregious error that they made.
So this is the soffet underneath where the roof comes out.
And what you can see is it's completely rotted out and we pulled some newspaper
and random like fast food bags that was just stuffed up in there.
So pretty much all of this soffet at some point has to be replaced.
On top of that, the connection from the SDG&E wire,
which is my electric company,
apparently is like six gauges too small to go into this panel.
So another thing they didn't catch.
We're finally inside the Epic Homestead to show you a couple of things in here
that were just very sloppy. This cabinet, which at this point,
maybe it's equally my fault cause I haven't screwed it in yet.
But it's just off its track. And the track is screwed in wrong at the end,
which is probably why they didn't do it cause they didn't feel like redoing it.
So now what I've got to do is realign the tracks and make sure that it goes in
correctly, while everything's already installed. Another thing is,
random bits of like plastic and tags and stuff were just everywhere.
Like I can grab it right here. Just kind of awkward.
Just feels like a little bit of attention to detail wasn't done,
especially in the kitchen.
And I've got some more stuff in the kitchen for you as well.
The fridge that you see here is not the fridge that came with the house.
It did come with a fridge.
I don't even know if that's standard for a flipped home. Maybe it's not,
maybe it is, but either way, the fridge that they gave me was leaky.
The ice machine would pour water out and then freeze it after it poured
out. And so there'd be pools of water and random bits of ice. Like,
like the entire freezer was just like full of ice and I couldn't get that fixed.
So I ended up saying, you know what? It was a different design.
I didn't really like the design of the fridge anyways for economy of space.
Because I'm going to be putting a lot of produce in here.
So I went ahead and replaced the fridge already.
The dishwasher was an even bigger problem. Again,
it was another one of those new/used refurb things that probably cost them like
200 bucks to put in. Just don't give me a dishwasher at that point.
Because the dishwasher that I had smelled awful.
It had absolutely no cleaning power whatsoever. I feel like I put something in,
it came out dirtier somehow cause all the dirt just like stayed in there for
some reason. And when we replaced it, cause I've since replaced it of course,
what I found is the reason why I had problems with rats in this house for a
couple months, honestly, until I figured out the problem.
Because when we pulled this out,
I saw that the entire back of this wall right here,
the actual wall itself, there was a big hole in it. Like a big hole,
which would have been very easy to solve with just some plaster.
This is a lath and plaster home, just plaster it up and solve the problem.
Because that's where the rats were getting in.
And then they'd make a nest underneath this dishwasher.
So at that point it's like just don't even give me a dishwasher and solve that
problem for me. It doesn't cost that much more.
So the final thing I have to say about the kitchen,
I will say they did a pretty good job with the aesthetics of the kitchen.
It's nice, modern, light, clean looking at least.
But space efficiency wise, I feel like the cabinets are really, really poor.
And the reason why is because you can't open this one. Makes sense,
you have the huge farmer sink. But then over here,
this is just kind of an awkward angle.
It's hard to fit anything very neatly or efficiently in there.
And then these ones down here do that weird thing where they like go in like
that. It's just kind of awkward. It's a small house. I get it. But it feels,
at least to me,
as if there could have been a better cabinet layout here to actually give you
storage space.
Cause I basically don't use like 25% of these because they're so awkward.
Here in the living room and really in all the rooms,
the things that the flippers apparently did is all new plumbing,
all new electrical. And I believe that they did that.
Some of the wiring doesn't seem to have made much sense.
So whoever they hired to do that may have just not done the best job.
But while they were repainting and redoing all this and ripping out all the old
wiring, to me it feels like you could have put in a few more outlets.
It seems like they just mimicked the amount of outlets that were already there.
And so there's no outlet. There's like one outlet in the living room,
for example. There's like one or two in the kitchen.
So it just feels like there could be a little bit more power.
That's kind of a minor thing. I can always pay an electrician to do that.
But it feels as if, when you buy a house for as little as they bought it,
and I know how much they bought it for,
and you sell it for as much as they sold it for,
that differential - throw a thousand bucks in and put a couple more outlets in.
That's what I think. Another weird one has to do with the windows.
So they replaced all the windows with double pane windows,
which really does decrease the noise and increases at least a little bit of
insulation. But whoever set the windows didn't set them perfectly.
So that I would say about 50% of them fully lock.
The other ones you have to fiddle with for like literally minutes to figure out
how to like jam it so it actually fully locks. Which is just again,
it's just sloppy. There are a couple more things.
Outdoors that I wanted to talk about. First of all,
I get a lot of compliments on the color of the door.
I can't take credit for that. That's something that they did right apparently.
I'm not sure how I feel about it. It looks cool enough.
I'm not really bothered enough to change it. They put these numbers in,
which I've since taken off just for security purposes.
But they were like hanging on by a thread. And so they fell off constantly.
Another little detail thing. I replaced the mailbox that they had.
This is a weird choice.
They put on like a trendy looking mailbox that had an open top on a flat roof
where the drip line is right there. So anytime it ever would rain or dew,
it would just go straight into the mailbox.
It's just something they probably should have thought of but they didn't think
of. There's some funny landscaping things. Those are since not here anymore,
but I'll show you where they used to be and what they did that was just kind of
foolish. So I know for a flipper it's really all about the curb appeal.
And if you make it look nice to the quick flash of the human eye,
especially someone who's not a big gardener, you just put in whatever, right?
And they certainly did put in whatever,
because what they had in this area right here, which I have since re-landscaped,
at least version one, we might even improve this further, was bits of jade.
Like trunks of jade.
So imagine you took a big jade plant and you cut off like two,
three foot chunks of it.
And then you just buried those in the ground as if that was a living plant
still. Or a plant that would live on in the future.
So there was a big chunk of jade right there.
There was a big chunk of jade right there. And there were like these semi-dead,
like succulents or something in there that was just so,
so silly when you walked up to it. Cause I was like, okay,
well I'll remove the jade. And I got my shovel to like go dig it out.
And then when I started to dig,
I tugged on it and they just pulled right out of the ground. So just really,
really low effort landscaping. I mean,
they didn't even try to have something survive. Which, I don't know.
I'm not a realtor. I'm not a flipper.
I don't know if this stuff is standard or not,
but it's like at least put a plant in that will continue to live.
Don't just put in a plant that's going to die the second you close on the home.
There's a lot more that I could go into.
It's a lot of minor cosmetic stuff that's just sloppy.
And you can very much tell that they did it really quickly to flip the house.
Now, am I really complaining about these guys? Not really. It is what it is.
It's not that much. There's not too many egregious, egregious things.
But it just shows a level of sloppiness that I think is indicative of these
flippers. I believe this company does like a hundred homes a year.
So they're not, they don't really care about the individual customer.
The long-term value that they care about is pretty much just flipping as many
homes as possible. I know there's good flippers out there of course.
But I'll offer at least a couple of words of wisdom if you are looking for a
house and you know it's been recently renovated. First of all,
it's tricky because right now we're in a crazy sellers market, excuse me,
for homes. And so,
remember the story I told you guys earlier where I was dropping a contingency,
I was making an aggressive offer. I mean,
we're seeing situations right now where people are putting in offers,
sight unseen, no contingency. $25,000-$50,000
above asking and buying it completely like that. So you're,
if you're in a sellers market, you've got no leverage, right? You can't say,
hey, there's weird stuff stuffed in the rotten soffet, go fix that.
They're going to be like, okay, next,
because someone else is gonna fix that after they buy the home for $50,000 above
asking. So you've gotta know your market.
But I would pay for a pretty rigorous physical inspection.
I did actually do that. And so that's how I knew that they did all new plumbing,
all new sewer, which was fantastic.
Something that they actually did that was quite good. But
I could have gone a little bit further and poked and prodded on some of these
things. I wouldn't have known to check a lot of this stuff myself.
How would I have thought, never owning a home,
to check the soffets or to check the conduits.
I probably would hire a physical inspection that does, you know, all the points.
They run through the whole house.
And then I would hire a technician for each of the different systems of the
house. I'd have a plumber run through,
an electrician run through and I'd probably have, you know,
a roofer or something run through. And just get a quote and see, hey,
how long does this roof actually last?
Because another thing that I even forgot to mention is when I put the new roof
on, the roof probably had about five years left in it.
But it was this torch down thing. And as we pulled it off,
we discovered what they did is they just put on another sloppy layer of the
torch down, which is a common thing for a flat roof.
A lot of people will have a shingle or something like that.
They just put on a really sloppy layer of it.
And they left like buckets of tar up on top of the roof.
They left a hole open in the roof where they moved the water heater outside.
They just completely left it. And if it had rained,
thankfully it doesn't rain much in San Diego,
the water would have rained straight through the roof system into
the crawl space. And then who knows what would have happened.
Probably cause mold or rot or something like that.
Luckily I patched up that part by getting a new roof before it even rained.
But I would just say,
if it's going to be a home you really want to invest a lot of time,
money and memories in,
I would spend the extra few thousand dollars or maybe a little bit more than
that upfront to get an expert on each of these systems to come in and tell you
exactly what's going wrong.
And then figure out what your tolerance level is for the type of issues you're
willing to deal with.
And the type of issues that are like complete disqualifiers for you.
You know if you have shoddy electrical and you just are like,
I don't want to deal with that.
I want a home that everything I plug in absolutely works,
then you might have to write some things off.
So if you have any other questions about this,
I can do another video on what to look for when you're actually buying an urban
homestead. If that's interesting to you, the positive side of things.
But let me know in the Comments. Good luck in the garden and keep on growing.