First virtual assignment closed at $8,400, nearly dead over a photo nobody took

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 I'd want to know is what happens if the buyer just walks instead of renegotiating. You had $500 up and a contract at $121,000 in a state you've never been to. Do you have a second buyer standing there, or are you 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. How was the assignment disclosed to the seller, and was it in the original agreement or added later? And did the closing office ask for anything you weren't expecting?

The reason I 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. Your notary line suggests you already ran into an edge of that.

Backing harrow on the crack. Six minutes of extra walking is the cheapest money in your whole deal.

One addition to your shot list from the framing side: get a shot down the length of each floor at ankle height. You see slope and racking that way that you'll never catch in a room photo. Cost me a bad guess once on a house that looked fine in every still.

Was the buyer cash, and how did you verify it? I'm learning how private money actually moves and the thing I keep noticing is that everyone in these threads says "cash buyer" and nobody says how they confirmed the cash existed before letting earnest money ride.

Also curious whether he'd worked with wholesalers before. A repeat buyer coming back at $129,400 reads differently from a stranger doing it.