November, and the pool guy says the house has been empty since March

How many months of carry did he have in the original numbers? That's the whole thing, right. If he penciled four and he's at eight, the veining doesn't matter.

The weekly landscaping crew is my side of this business and I'll tell you nobody argues about that invoice on a luxury vacant. They argue about everything else and they pay the mow bill same day, because they know one bad photo of the lawn and the showing is dead.

@canton four. He told me four like it was a wide margin. That's what made me stop asking questions. Everything else in his sheet was defensible, the reno scope was real, his exit comp was a real closed sale and not a wish. The carry line was the one number he'd treated as an afterthought and it was the biggest line in the deal by month nine.

Dumb question, if it goes eighteen months who is actually holding that loan at that point? Does the original lender just keep extending or does somebody sell the paper along the way? I'm reading about notes and this is the part I can't picture.

@vellum depends entirely on who wrote it. I've watched a capital call go out on a luxury flip that ran long and half the small investors had no idea that was even possible when they signed. That conversation is not fun.

The vacant property insurance line is what got me. I'd never thought about it. A house nobody lives in costs more to insure than one somebody does, and on a house that expensive it must be an actual number.

Ravine lot at the top of the market is the entire asset. You could argue the house is a liability strapped to good dirt. Nobody flies a stone guy in for the dirt though.

Ask him what the extension looks like. On short paper the extension is usually a fee plus a rate bump, and it gets negotiated when you have the least leverage of the entire deal, which is the month you need it. Terms vary by lender and it needs to be in writing before you're counting on it.

Three ovens.

I'd want to know if there was an HOA or architectural review sitting over that lot and whether his exterior changes went through it. Nobody reads that document until a neighbor complains and then it's the only document that matters. Varies wildly by community.

The staging contract expiring is the detail I'd frame and hang up. Those are usually a term with a monthly after, and the day someone lets it lapse on a house like that, they've stopped believing in their own timeline.

I hold things for a long time on purpose. Waiting with a thirty-one thousand dollar monthly bill is a different activity than waiting with a paid-off lot. People use the same word for both and they shouldn't.

@warrant that lapse is also how a stager finds out the deal went bad, by the way. The call just doesn't come.

I buy whole houses in whole towns for less than what that stone probably cost. Not making a point, it's just funny to read from where I sit.

My portfolio is small and boring and the thing that breaks at scale for me is turnover timing. Same disease, three zeroes off.

What I want to know is how a lender underwrites an exit in a submarket that trades five houses a year. What's the comp set even made of? Five sales isn't a market, it's anecdotes.

Flying a fabricator in because the locals kept missing the veining is either the most professional thing in this story or the reason he's at eight months. Both, probably.

I'm planning a first purchase and reading this was oddly calming. My version of a bad month is a water heater.

I've been trying to work out where I fit and I keep coming back to the pool guy in this story. He got paid every month for eight months and never once cared whether it sold.

Every unit I own has taught me something and none of them taught me anything about a thirty-one thousand dollar carry. My whole building doesn't cost that in a quarter.

@sextant did he ever say whether the lender had already extended once by the time you walked it? The tell is usually that they stop volunteering the maturity date.

The number that stuck with me wasn't the thirty-one thousand. It was four. He planned for four months in a place that sells five houses a year.

Can someone spell out carrying cost for me? I think it means everything you pay just to own the thing while it's empty, so interest and insurance and utilities and the lawn. Is taxes in there too or is that separate?

@juniper taxes are in there, and on a house at that price they are not small. From the build side, the other thing I'd have wanted to see is his finish schedule. Luxury scope creep isn't a bigger version of normal scope creep, it's a slab that arrives with the wrong veining and now you're eleven weeks out on a re-order.

I've been in this a month and I did not know houses could just sit like that.

Thirty-one a month across the eleven months you describe is around three hundred forty thousand of pure carry, before a single price cut. Two agents and no staging by spring means the cuts came too. I'd bet the reno was profitable and the calendar ate all of it.

I do fast cheap deals and I'd have lost my mind by month two. He was calm at eight. Genuinely don't know if that's discipline or denial.