5544 Ventura Canyon in Sherman Oaks finally closed last week

5544 Ventura Canyon is a beautiful flip done by colleagues/friends of mine.  It closed last week at $888,000.  That was the third time it had been in escrow.  Yes, it fell out of escrow twice, which is a record for me.

Why? The house attracted very well-educated buyers who expected the home to be structurally pretty. They wanted the bones and guts of the house to be as top-notch as the finishes and top-off.  Alas, there were items that were just not up to that standard.  The flippers wound up fixing and redoing a lot of the structural stuff.  Finally, we got just the right buyers and the house closed last week.  The obvious moral of the story is that flipping houses can be very un-lucrative.  If you are considering flipping a house, make sure that you inspect, inspect, inspect beforehand.