What I’m thinking about: Walking a tightrope without a net. That’s exactly where we are with a Tennessee property that could cost us $90K.
Here’s the brutal truth: We bought a 25-acre lemon. Not just any lemon — one that was listed twice in the past two years and couldn’t sell at $100K. We paid $90K.
My stomach dropped when I discovered this. After years preaching “always check listing history,” we missed it. Four people, including me, reviewed this deal. Everyone missed it.
Not my team’s fault. My system. My responsibility. The buck stops here.
Now we’re in damage control mode. Terminated our MLS listing. Signed up for a 3 week online absolute auction — no reserve price, no safety net. Whatever the highest bid is, we must accept it.
Could sell for pennies on the dollar. Could get our money back. Three weeks of sweating bullets starts May 22nd.
Even accounting for the risk, my analysis is still arriving at this auction being the best possible route for us to mitigate the damage, potentially break even, or even better.
The real lessons:
Before signing high-stakes contracts, I should’ve used AI to fully explore alternatives. Minimum bid thresholds that preserve the best features of absolute auctions. And additional diligence to conduct on the process of the auctioneer, like their auction market history.
(Upon checking their data, the results are excellent. The brokerage running the auction process is one of the most premier groups in the Nashville area. We would have to dramatically underperform to break even, at least).
My business partner is along for the ride but is as nervous as I am. He’s done tons of personal property auctions — never heard of absolute auctions. Raised valid concerns about insider deals, catastrophic downside.
But most critically: We need bulletproof processes for finding previous listings, since this one clearly slipped by. Every permutation of possible assigned acreage and naming variation should cure this.
This one was even more complex due to there being three separate parcels that we marketed separately. We only listed the parent parcel about 45 days post-purchase, which repopulated the previous listing history. Otherwise, we would have figured this out much earlier.
In this market, one $90K mistake can sink you. Speed of recovery is everything.
Crisis reveals character. We’ll either salvage this to break-even (our goal) or eat a significant loss. Either way, you’ll hear about it.
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P.S. Want the full play-by-play of this dispo disaster? Episodes 122, 123, and 124 of Get Serious break down every painful detail. Raw lessons. No sugar-coating.
