I Just Closed 8 Denver Deals... Here's What Went Wrong

Added: 2026-05-27

[00:00:00]In the last 30 days, I've had clients lose six figures, almost walk away from million cash offers, and have home inspections that claim $100,000 in damages that didn't actually exist. In my 15 years of Denver real estate, I've flipped hundreds of houses. I'm in the top 3% of US agents by volume, and I talk to dozens of buyers and sellers every single month. The struggles of buying a home are not unique, and everybody goes through them, and they can be full of a lot of pain. So, I'm breaking down the eight worst ones from this month, including a seller who torched his own cash offer. A buyer who lost $200,000 because no one read the contract, and the inspector who was flat out wrong. And it's my hope that by sharing their challenges and their solutions, you save yourself time. Let's start with $100,000 damage report that just wasn't real. So, I was helping a client buy a house up in Summit County, Colorado, which if you don't know, is at about 10,000 ft, okay?

[00:00:52]Now, this was a newer home. This was an expensive home, and it had a stylist stucco on there called EIFS, EIFS. And if you're not familiar with it, it's just a different style of stucco, okay?

[00:01:04]Now, what happened and what came to fruition helps me understand why this EIFS became an issue in the first place.

[00:01:12]So, I learned a whole lot from this because down here in Denver, what they recommended us do was not a thing. So, we had a full home inspection, and this was a 5,000-ish square foot house, and so we're paying thousands of dollars for an inspection, and the home inspector who did it has actually inspected this house multiple times. Some 15, 20 years ago. Old-timer there knows everybody in the neighborhoods. Very highly regarded as a home inspector. Lots of trust put up in this person. So, when he tells you, "Well, you need to get a stucco inspection," you listen. Now, little did I know that a stucco inspection was like $1,800. Like, that was more than the home inspection was. What the heck is going on? So, what they do is actually go through and they prod the stucco in all these places around every window, every door, and then do a 100% inspection just on the stucco. Well, what he came back with didn't quite make sense. I mean, this is a convoluted engineer sort of report. No normal person could actually distinguish what this was. So, I talked to him, and I reached out. I was like, "Hey, how's it going? What's going on? Can you explain this report to me?" Right? As the buyer's agent representing the buyers.

[00:02:19]And basically, what he said was that it needed a whole lot of work, to the tune of six figures. For like a 5,000 sq ft house. Shocked the heck out of me, right? And so, I'm freaking out a little bit, going, "Oh my god, are we going to be asking for $100,000 worth of work?

[00:02:33]$100,000 or more worth of work? What the heck do we do?" Talked to him. He was a bit, I don't know, disingenuous. He was kind of, I don't know. When you talk to somebody and you just feel like they think they're better than you, right?

[00:02:46]That's kind of how he was he was talking to me. And so, I instantly was wondering if this guy was having a bad day. So, I decided to put my thinking cap on and really thought about it after the conversation, going, "Wait, okay, $100,000 worth of work. How much is it to stucco a house?" So, I actually happened to know a GC that lived in the same neighborhood up there in Summit County. Decided to give him a call. I was like, "Hey, buddy, how much would it be to restucco an entire house? The one that I'm helping my buyers buy. It's got 5,000 sq ft. You're probably about 10 bucks a square foot. So, you're probably, you know, between like 50 to maybe 70, 75 mark on the high end to totally restucco it, remove the old stucco to put new stucco on. That's what I went, "Oh, how the heck is it supposed to cost $100,000 plus in just repairs if you can redo the whole thing for 50 to 75 grand? Something doesn't add up."

[00:03:32]So, this is where things get interesting on a transaction because you have one person here who's supposed to be a professional that is saying stucco dead.

[00:03:41]Then on the other hand, you have a very trusted GC who actually built my friend's house up there as well that is like, "Dude, you can replace it for, you know, not quite half of that, but almost half of that." So, then we had to get a third party involved, too, that went out and checked it and it was going, "Man, this stuff is great." So, what they ended up doing was comparing today's standards to when it was built. It was built like 20 years ago or so when this stucco was put on. And for the time it was built up to code, and it's still in great condition. And so, at the end of the day, we have conflicting viewpoints happening here, and we ended up chalking up the inspector to kind of having a bad day and maybe not not knowing what he's doing, but maybe maybe inspecting it to a different standard than would be normal for a 20, 25-year-old house. And we ended up having in writing from multiple contractors that were like, "Hey, dude, there's nothing wrong with this." But it can be one of those sticky situations where you don't want to feel like you're advising someone to go forward with it when they're not fully comfortable. So, what you have to do is just get as much information as possible, and then try to make as informed of a decision as you can. And so, they moved forward with it.

[00:04:46]They love the house, and knock on wood, they won't have any more problems for the next 20 years that stucco. Number two, and I didn't even know this was possible. And to be fair, I don't work with a whole lot of seller financing sort of deals. Most real estate agents don't. Someone selling the house, I was buying the house, they're using a lender, and they get out traditional financing. But apparently, there was a situation that I was just informed of from one of my clients, not on a property I was helping them sell, but something she had done several years ago that was now affecting her to this day, about seven, eight years later. So, she had a property that was paid off free and clear, okay? It had an HOA to it.

[00:05:22]$250 a month. Nothing crazy. HOA actually had quite a few amenities for that price. And so, when she sold the property, she sold it on a seller finance deal. And what that is is basically the seller turns into the bank, right? The seller has a note on the property. You pay me $2,500 a month over the course of 30 years, and maybe you have a balloon payment after 5, 7, 10 years on that payment to pay me off completely. But I act as the bank as the seller, you get title to the property.

[00:05:50]Great. Well, HOA, property taxes, and homeowner's insurance are not paid through your lender like maybe they typically would be. At least property insurance and taxes. HOA generally, you pay yourself.

[00:06:04]Well, what happens if you stop paying the HOA as the buyer?

[00:06:08]How are you supposed to know as the one who is the note holder on the property?

[00:06:12]Well, they didn't know. And what happens is in the state of Colorado, the HOAs have a lot of control.

[00:06:17]HOA ended up putting this property into foreclosure, ended up owing tens of thousands of dollars, and at the end of the day, there ended up being an additional HOA issue, and this ultimately resulted in the HOA completely foreclosing, selling that property, and her losing a couple hundred thousand dollars.

[00:06:36]Didn't even know it was possible. Now, I didn't go to the nitty-gritty on this deal because it wasn't my place. But thinking that that's even possible with as strong as HOAs are here, like, HOAs are more powerful than banks here in the state of Colorado. It's a little goofy, but at the same time, it keeps all the other owners protected in an HOA. So, if you have any sort of funky creative finance deal going on, whether it's the seller, whether you're the buyer, just make sure that you put in checks and balances to not end up in a situation like this.

[00:07:08]All right, number three, and I'm going to give this guy credit because he is wanting to make leaps and strides in his career, and it's amazing. He's in his 20s now.

[00:07:18]He's working in a financial institution.

[00:07:20]He is doing amazingly well. And he's coming over here, you know, from out of state, looking at potential rental properties. His family has made money in rental properties and investments, and he's starting on his path, and he has picked Denver to be his place. Now, what you see online and where numbers crunch is very different from the reality of getting here on the ground. And what we quickly noticed just with some quick drive-arounds is that, man, the places where it made the most sense to have a rental were not anywhere that he wanted to live. So, we ended up opening the box way up, all the way out to the 470 loop, you know, around the Denver metro area, and even far south out in Castle Rock, which might be where he wants to end up being eventually.

[00:08:06]But this just goes to show you that like just looking online, no matter what city you're in, if you are not intimately familiar with it, like there might be some painful decisions on where you think you want to be versus where you actually want to be when you show up.

[00:08:22]So, the lesson here is that remote buyers, you need more than one discovery trip here on picking areas and a trusted agent doing video walk-throughs in the neighborhood, looking around, making sure you're not next to a, you know, a cemetery or train tracks, right? Not just the house. But some clients do make a mistake on their way out of a deal, not necessarily just into one. Which leads me on to story number four, where I just about had a seller who torched his own cash offer deal on a property he is part of selling, and it was not quite the dreamy offer, but as dreamy as you get for a house that needs a lot of work. And where this one got a little bit sticky is that there were multiple owners to this property.

[00:09:03]And this was a really good lesson for me, right? Especially when there are unmarried couples on title to a property, and that everything has to be written down in plain English as far as who's getting paid what. Because this property was turned into a rental for many, many years. One of the parties was managing the property, and the other ones were not as active in it. But on title, they are all three equal owners.

[00:09:26]So, when it comes time to sell the property, who gets what as far as the proceeds go.

[00:09:31]And this is where this question actually came up once the offer came in, and and just about resulted in blowing up this deal because now, once it doesn't become real in selling a house until you get an actual offer. You can put a house on the market, and until that offer comes in, you're not really doing numbers. But everybody does numbers. All right, how much did we buy it for? How much are we selling it for? What are the closing costs associated with it? And then what is my chunk going to be when I walk away? And then that's when the questions came up of who was what, and it raised a tiff in the situation. They're in the process of figuring it out and making it happen, but there's a very good chance attorneys are going to be involved, and in the meantime we're just hoping to be able to close on this and have this settled before closing. So the lesson is, if you're in a situation where there are multiple people on title, especially not related, have everything 100% down in writing. Number five of this month, and sometimes the biggest frustrations can happen with an agent on the other side of the deal. You know, I've had some interesting transactions over the years, you guys.

[00:10:38]Some of the most frustrating ones are when someone just can't read the verbage in the contract, okay? Uh and I've actually done two different deals with this agent, and it was the same darn thing each time. I should have known better, and now she's going to be blacklisted. I say that she's going to be blacklisted, but honestly, if she has a listing on the market one of my buyers wants it, of course we're going to be putting in an offer. But here's the deal. So, you get a property under contract. Yay, everybody's happy, everybody loves each other. By the end of the deal everybody's ready to rip each other's hair out. That's just what happens. And it always happens under the inspection.

[00:11:14]So you go through, you get your inspection done, and on this house there weren't that many things going on with it. It was actually in really good shape. But there was A, B, C, and D, right? And they were all kind of minor things. And one of the items was to uh seal up any exposed nail heads and boots around the vents on the roof. Uh it was called out from the inspector, that's what we asked for in the inspection, that's what they told us they would do on the inspection resolution. Well, when it comes down to it, they give us an invoice for a roof certification. Well, my buyer is an attorney, okay?

[00:11:46]And they didn't seal the roof nail heads or the boots around the vents, but we have this roof cert, which is more expensive than the work would have been, uh which is basically a piece of paper that says the roof's good for 5 years.

[00:11:59]But on the contract it states what they were to do. And so we get into this pissing match, right? And she gets mad at me, she's spitting nails, and I'm just going, I'm sorry, the contract states this is what you were to do. It's great that they got a roof certification. We are so grateful on that, but you still haven't withheld your part of the agreement. The reason why there are 50 pages, 75 pages during an entire transaction is because stuff goes wrong, people sue each other, and this is trying to prevent all of that from happening. So at the end of the day, no matter what they ask for, what no matter what you agree to, do it to the teeth. Don't be creative, don't say, "Oh, well, I just did it myself when they asked for a licensed electrician to replace that GFCI outlet." No, you replacing it will not do, and if something God forbid ever happens to that one dumb outlet in the future, you are going to be sued for it, which means I'm going to be pulled into it, right?

[00:12:57]So at the end of the day, what you need to do and stick behind is what's actually been signed down on paper.

[00:13:04]Don't go out of the box, don't try to be creative. Once again, contracts are legally binding, and they do survive closing, and don't assume the other side knows what they actually agreed to, okay? But the weirdest conversation I had this month wasn't about contracts or anything like that. It was about a house that sold that absolutely shouldn't have. So I had a new listing that just came on the market at 375-ish range, and we had a number of showings first weekend, and I get a call from another listing agent that also happens to have another listing in that same neighborhood at very similar price point, different amount of finished square footage, we needed more work than they did, and so on and so forth.

[00:13:46]So we start talking about the neighborhood, and she starts expressing her frustrations of not having an offer in hand yet. She's been on the market for 2 months or so, can't get anybody in the door kicking and screaming. I start looking at the comps a little bit more in detail, because they were out of my square footage range, so I didn't really pay attention to them that much. And then I looked into it, and she's like, "God, this other one just around the corner, same exact square footage as ours, worse condition, they went on the market last week and they're already under contract for crying out loud, and they were five grand more than we were.

[00:14:17]What the hell is going on here?" And I start looking at it, and I'm going, "Actually, you're in much better condition. You're not a little bit better, you're in much better condition.

[00:14:26]And you're in a better location. And like it it just kept stacking up and up and up, and I'm going, "You're cheaper, you're in better condition, you're in equally of good of a location if not better, but yet you're the one that stayed on the market, and they went under contract. You've been on the market for 2 months, they went on the market they went on the market a week ago, went under contract immediately."

[00:14:47]And sometimes this is just the reality.

[00:14:50]Sometimes, especially the early spring months, we're talking like February and into the beginning of March, the buyers can still be really slow. And then they come off the fence maybe in April, it's different every single year, but it's within like a 4 to 6 week period that all of a sudden it's like all the buyers just like wake up, and they're like, "Yeah, it's time to go buy a house." And you know, they start looking, and then as they're looking like, "Boom, one pops up," and they're like, "Ooh, honey, this one's 375,000, this is fitting all of our boxes, two bedrooms, two baths, it's like 1,600 square feet, unfinished basement, totally fine with us, we'll add value to it over time. Let's go look at it." Meanwhile, there's one three doors down that they didn't even know was on the market for 2 months at five grand cheaper that was in better condition because it was already there during their initial search. But then they get an auto search email set up from their agent, and that pops up, and then they see it, they get excited, and you know, endorphins are kicking in, and they're like, "Boom, we got to jump on this property." Meanwhile, they probably could have gotten 10, 15, 20 grand off that other one that's been on the market for 2 months, but they let it go. So the lesson here is, just because something has been on the market for more than a few weeks does not mean anything is wrong with it.

[00:15:59]Look at the oldest stock first, start weeding down your list, and then and only then do you want to start competing with the newest stuff that's just hit the market, because you're going to pay the most for that. That's just how it is. And while that seller was stuck on the market, another one of mine was dealing with a company that was literally in bankruptcy. And you know, this this story, it's painful because we're seeing so much more of this corruption happen, and it has to do with solar panels. So if I could give you any bit of advice on solar panels, just don't. Don't deal with them, don't have them, don't have a lease on them, don't get a loan for them, because when it comes time to sell you will 100% be responsible for that solar. Solar does not add value to the house, it does not detract from the house unless you have a loan.

[00:16:43]Just know that. How do I know that?

[00:16:44]Because I've asked an appraiser who's done a thousand homes, in his words, and I quote, "After appraising a thousand houses with solar and a thousand houses without solar, what I can tell you is that it neither adds or detracts from the value of a home."

[00:16:59]No buyer right now is going to take on your loan for a 20, 30, 40 thousand dollar solar panel, okay? Now, this one was a little bit more interesting because while we were in it, we realized that this solar company had gone bankrupt.

[00:17:12]Now what the heck do we do? Who the heck actually owned the loan on the solar panels? It was a lot of headaches to jump through. It delayed closing. It was quite an interesting learning experience. And so thankfully, whoever was taking over the company from the bankruptcy was taking over the leases, and was actually responsive. But now we had to sit on hold for 45 minutes to an hour and a half every single time we called them, and we were just down to the wire again after delaying closing once, to making it to the closing table with this issue on the solar panel company, but we finally made it, and it just, you know, it was just another big lessons for me and for everybody in the transaction, cuz you know what had been through this, title company, uh the listing agent, me as the buyer's agent, the buyer, the seller, of course, happens to And so when it comes down to it, you know, the the seller is the one that can make this decision, the home owner, I should say, and that is just again, the lesson here, don't have solar panels unless they're fully paid off. Got it. They are kind of sold to you as a value add sort of thing, um and it just isn't true. You're just being lied to. All right, and the last one here is probably the most satisfying of the entire month. But before we get onto it, if you are finding yourself looking around Denver, wondering about properties, uh have questions, just feel free to call me, text me. I love to talk about this stuff. I love talking to people that are about to move here, cuz this is such an amazing place. Or you can download my relocation buyers guide, it's going to answer a lot of the questions, just go over so much of the information about the Denver metro area.

[00:18:43]Now, this story is about oh, an investor who tried to pull a fast one on us, and thank God everybody was on board to tell him to go take a hike. So not an uncommon business practice to go in and offer as an investor a certain price point, maybe 25, 30, 40 grand below their current asking price. Now the thing is, I had this listing up that needed a lot of work, and you know, we were at X price, they came in about 30 grand below. It was the first weekend on the market, so I was surprised the sellers even wanted to go for it, but it was clean, it was a two week closing, great. Uh let's give it a whirl. And they'd already looked through the property, right? And I flip a lot of homes myself, so I know how to weed out the wholesalers and the BS. Uh and this agent talked a good game, right? They answered all the questions correctly, and so I didn't get any, you know, weird little spidey sense saying like, "Hey, this is this is a BS." Well, within the first 24 hours he was getting set up in his inspections, which he wasn't going to get a home inspector, he was just going to send his contractors there to check on things, and then do a sewer scope, do a radon test, whatever.

[00:19:49]Okay, great, go. Within the first 24 hours, he instantly comes back and is like, "Hey man, the furnace is 30 years old, the water heater is 20 years old, the electrical panel needs to go.

[00:19:58]Um and so, I'm going to need to get 20 grand off minimally, you know, and I haven't even done the sewer scope and the radon test yet." I was like, "Really, dude? This thing is worth 475 all fixed up. We were on it 375, you offered like 345 on it, went under contract, and you're thinking it needs We already talked about this, it needs 65 grand worth of work now. Within hours, you're telling me it needs another 20 grand worth of work on stuff that you should have seen during a first walk-through. Is that what you're telling me?" "Well, I expect it to be a cosmetic job, you know, when I offer on a property."

[00:20:32]Really? So, you don't go through and look at three of the biggest, most expensive things in a house that will need to be replaced on a townhouse.

[00:20:39]That's what you're telling me. That's how long You've been doing this long enough to know that you don't have to check those items during a first walk-through. Load of beans, right? Now, my sellers after they talked and stuff, they were like, "Okay." Like, after they slept on it, they were pissed off.

[00:20:54]Everybody was pissed off initially, right? That's why I um you kind of have this knee-jerk reaction. I slept on it and like, "You know, if he's just going to get it done in a couple of weeks, like, we'll take that 20 off." So, I went to him and I was like, "Dude, I can't believe it, but they're actually okay with taking 20 off even though I advised against it." Um he's like, "Well." And then, his response was, "Well, well, that's where it starts. I haven't even done a sewer scope or a radon test." And I was like, "You know what? Go ahead and do it.

[00:21:19]You're totally fine. Let's go forward with it." Right? They gave me the go-ahead. Like, I was trying to get him in on it and get him to get a little bit more uh you know, in into the transaction on his side, spend a few dollars on inspections anyway. And then eventually, he turns into a complete ghost, never heard back from him, and the deal just kind of dies in the water.

[00:21:38]But, all was not lost because I've done this long enough to know we have a 72-hour window from when you go under contract to when you have to mark it as under contract on the MLS. Once you mark it as under contract on the MLS, then you go back active again, all the questions you're going to get are from people assuming it blew up because of the inspection. We happen to be within this window of time where we did not actually mark it, and so we never actually had a negative kind of hit on us from the MLS, which was absolutely the right move to make. And in retrospect, we ended up getting another offer, you know, a handful of days later from a legitimate couple. Um and it wasn't put at our ask price, it was a bit below it, but they're getting traditional financing, their motivation is going to be a lot higher than some investor. And at the end of the day, it was just this guy. Man, that was his strategy. Go in at X price, renegotiate for another 20, 30, 40, 50 grand, wherever he thinks he can get, and that's how he goes about it. It's like the car dealer who hands you the keys and says, "Hey, take this car home overnight." Once that car is in your driveway, you are now envisioned again as yours. And oftentimes, people do that because they know the path of least resistance for that seller to cash out is going to be working with your current offer. It is a BS way to do business, in my opinion. Uh and I wish I could have sniffed it out a little bit further and kind of avoid some of that frustration.

[00:22:51]But, at the end of the day, it all works out. So, the lesson here is where a buyer tries to kind of chip at you post-inspection on something they should have checked pre-offer, hold your ground, right? And document everything, and use the MLS clock to your advantage, you know, don't renegotiate just off a bad faith. Now, the differences between kind of toying with the idea of moving to Denver and actually being set on it are quite a bit different. And if I were moving to Denver in 2026, this is exactly how I would go about finding out where I wanted to live. So, watch this video, you're going to learn a lot of stuff.

[00:23:23]And again, if you ever need anything, just feel free to reach out.