My attorney said "you built your deal around his appetite" and I haven't slept well since
I had a buyer in Cincinnati, very specific, wanted small multifamily in Price Hill and Westwood, nothing above $180k, 8 percent cap minimum. I spent six weeks working that box. Found a six-unit on Glenmore that fit almost exactly, got it under contract for $162k, assignment fee was going to be $11,500. Buyer walked on day three of diligence. Said his portfolio was overweight Cincinnati all of a sudden, which, fine, circumstances change. But I lost the $4k earnest money and I had no one else because I had shaped my whole sourcing effort around one person's criteria. My attorney, when I was venting about it, said that sentence. You built your deal around his appetite. He meant it as an observation but it landed like a diagnosis. The sequence was supposed to protect me. I knew the buyer first, I knew the box, I went and found the asset. But I had only one buyer and I treated his criteria as stable because he had been consistent for four months. Four months is nothing. A portfolio allocation decision can change in a week. I think the thing I missed is that having a buyer first gives you direction but it does not give you a backstop. For this to actually work as a model I needed a second buyer with enough overlap that a contract could survive the first one walking. The deal was real. The property was fine. The single point of failure was mine.
