While Jason and I are still enjoying our new house, I want to talk about another real estate experience we encountered.

During the fall of 2006, my partner and I looked all over Indiana for a vacation property to enjoy for the summers to come. We finally settled on Nineveh, a small Indiana town about an hour south of Indianapolis. Nineveh has a series of small lakes with cute properties on its waterfront. After viewing over a dozen properties, our realtor finally decided to show us a neglected foreclosure that needed some work.

We walked into the place and immediately knew that this was the one. It stunk of a nasty wet dog and had noticeable pet hair everywhere. There was also a soiled carpet with a immense water stain underneath a non-working, built-in air conditioner. The kitchen was dark and crowded, not to mention army green in color. There was a bank of cabinets blocking the view of the water and of the living room. The previous owner had also decided to leave behind an old dishwasher that probably had no seal.

Aside from the unfortunately placed kitchen cabinets, the lay-out of this 3 bedroom home was fantastic. There was a master bedroom with its own bathroom, two living rooms, and a partially finished walk-out basement. We were going to make this our dream place!

We quickly started renovating this 1960’s home with elements to bring it back to its roots. We chose to demolish the entire kitchen, replace the windows, and to open up to the deck with some better doors. We also replaced the flooring throughout, choosing a nice carpet for the sleeping areas and hardwood-style laminate flooring for the living areas. The cabinets we chose were a trendy IKEA style reminiscent of a retro European look. This was not going to be the typical Nineveh lake place.

We finally finished the renovations just before July 4, 2007.

Then came the homophobia. We were heading to Atlanta to visit with some friends and decided to check out the new siding that had just completed the renovations. While at this finally finished project, our neighbor let his true rural, backwoods, bigotry shine. I guess after 7 months, he finally chose to put down his Busch beer and let it sink in that we were a gay couple.

We filed a police report and while on the long drive to Georgia, decided that it would be hard to relax in that environment. We were now going to be ‘œflipping’ this beautiful lake place.

We had spent months renovating the property, and adding our personal touch’¦only to have to work backwards and now try to retro-fit the place to appeal to the masses of Nineveh.

We had chosen to use the realtor that had sold the place to us. This turned out to be a big mistake as she ignored us while attending classes to become a broker. (My distaste for the average realtor should be a future post)

We finally chose a new realtor this past month who reminded us about the importance of staging. We decided to buy some inexpensive art work and small pieces of furniture to showcase how someone could live if they made this place their home. It looks great and I’ll let you know how the bidding war ends up.

If you’re an investor, you need to be able to shift on a dime. We had no intention of selling this place but we were now forced to. I’d love to hear of similar stories where you may have had to change your exit strategy earlier than intended.