What a virtual wholesale deal 900 miles out actually costs to run, including the near miss

A quarter inch stair step at a corner from grade is the single most common thing photo sets miss, because whoever is shooting stands where the light is good and that's usually the front. Add to your shot list: same corner shot twice, once from 20 feet and once from three feet with something for scale, a tape or a phone laid flat.

The $4,600 you gave up may have been reasonable or may have been double. A quarter inch stair step can be $3,500 of piers or it can be $18,000 if the footing's gone and there's a drainage cause you have to fix first. Nobody knows from a photo. Your buyer knew you didn't know.

How many calls to get that contract? I'm starting from nothing and the number I can't find anywhere is how much dialing sits behind one signed agreement.

The part worth knowing is what happens if the buyer just walks instead of renegotiating. With $500 up and a contract at $121,000 in an unfamiliar market, the real question is whether there's a second buyer standing there, or whether it goes back to zero with a seller expecting a close.

$8,400 is a fine outcome. The number that decides whether this is a business is cycle time, and yours is missing the front half. 22 days from contract to close is good. How long from first dial to contract? Mine averages about six weeks and that's what caps me at eight or nine deals a year working alone.

Also, one buyer at $134,000 who could move you $4,600 with one phone call means you had one buyer. That's the actual fragile part, not the crack.

Interested in the paperwork side of a case like this. How is an assignment typically disclosed to the seller, in the original agreement or added later, and does the closing office tend to ask for anything unexpected? The reason to ask is that assignment fee disclosure requirements and whether the assignment itself gets recorded vary by state, and people build a workflow in one market and then port it somewhere it doesn't fit. A notary requirement is usually the first sign of that edge.

Backing off the crack. Six minutes of extra walking is the cheapest money in the whole deal. One addition to the shot list from the framing side: get a shot down the length of each floor at ankle height. Slope and racking show up that way that never catch in a room photo. That gap has cost people a bad guess on a house that looked fine in every still.

Was the buyer cash, and how was that verified? A useful habit when learning how private money actually moves is noticing that everyone in these threads says "cash buyer" and almost nobody says how the cash was confirmed to exist before letting earnest money ride. Also worth knowing whether the buyer had worked with wholesalers before. A repeat buyer coming back at $129,400 reads differently from a stranger doing it.