10/15/2026
Closed a garage! 💃🏻💅🤣
On paper, this one looked like a fairly straightforward flip. A 2-bedroom, 1-bath home, roughly 720 square feet, in an older Fort Worth neighborhood where smaller homes aren’t unusual.
But the more I learned about the property, the more I realized it wasn’t what the county records made it out to be.
Based on the property’s history and what I could piece together, I believe the original home burned down sometime in the 1970s. What remained was a garage that had been converted into living space, and I use the term “converted” loosely.
Exposed wiring, makeshift rooms, a bedroom partition without a door, a small kitchen and bathroom. It was very much a DIY efficiency.
The sellers had received offers in the $90,000–$100,000 range, but those companies weren’t able to follow through. After looking into the property, I could understand why. It wasn’t a house.
Initially, I thought we might be looking at land value somewhere in the $50,000s or $60,000s, possibly even less.
But after digging into the zoning, I discovered it was zoned for two-family residential use.
Once I realized a duplex was an option, I could evaluate the property based on the numbers for a two-family development rather than a single-family residence.
That changed what the land was worth to a potential builder and, more importantly, what I could get for my sellers.
This was also an inherited property, which is something I work with frequently. The owner had passed away without a will, so we worked through the heirship documentation with the title company and were CTC quickly.
Our original closing date was October 9th, but the builder wanted to move it up to September 29th. Between the HM lender and insurance company, we ran into so more delays and last-minute issues than I care to relive. Despite the effort to close early, we ended up closing on October 9th, our original contracted date. 🫠
Had I evaluated this property strictly as a single-family teardown, the numbers would have been considerably lower. Taking the time to understand the zoning, redevelopment potential, combing through online documents about setbacks, getting on the phone with the city etc allowed me to approach it differently and ultimately get more money for my sellers.
Another complicated property closed.
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