Bannedjoe
Well-known member
Many of you have some solid thinking, and I'd like to get your opinion on this.
A little background:
The wife and I sold our restaurant back in 2015.
We held out as long as we could after the Obama recession, but when things get tight, the first thing that comes off people's spending habits is dining out, and it pretty much killed us.
Anyways, I had a hard time selling the place and took a real hit when I did.
I finally found someone, not the best candidate, but he was able to make the down, and I elected to carry the note with a balloon payment due in a couple of months from now.
This guy got into this business without a clue, just knowing he wanted to.
He could have just stepped in, asked for and taken some advice and it could have been turnkey, but he didn't.
He took a year, and spent a bunch of money turning the place from a nice family friendly BBQ restaurant into a bar.
We we're located halfway between Phx and Vegas.
Many people made it a point to stop along the way for some good food.
Unfortunately, he decided not to get a full food service license, and went with the lower grade bar food license which only allowed him to serve prepackaged deep fried, microwaved sort of food.
Also unfortunately, drinking and driving as a sport died out long ago, and no one in their right mind is going to stop halfway to Vegas for a few hours and drink.
Also, there's not near enough people in this town to even support a bar.
Bad decisions all around.
He finally got the place open, and hired a few friends to run the joint while he tended to his landscape business 150 miles away.
He'd come up on the weekends and spend his whole time sitting at the bar drinking and buying rounds for all his new "friends".
To add to his bad decisions, he never paid for any of those drinks, assuming since he was the owner, that everything was free.
Come the end of his first month, he hadn't paid his help a dime, was out of inventory, out of money, his help quit, and he closed.
He's had the place up for sale since, but he's asking waaaayyyy too much for it, and no one's going to pay it.
The thing is, he's been making his payments to me all along this whole time, with only one or two missed or late.
There's zero communication between us.
Now, here's the thing.
His balloon of tens of thousands is coming up in a few months.
There's only three scenarios that I can see.
A. He either has the money, or sells the place dirt cheap to pay me off.
B. He defaults, and I have to foreclose.
C. I can extend the note, and allow him to continue making payments.
I do have a guy who has an RV park almost next door to the property who will be more than happy to pay off the note and buy the place and expand his park if I have to foreclose, so there's that.
The big question is, is it appropriate to contact the dumbass who I sold it to and ask what his plans are so I can prepare, or do I just wait and see if the shit hits the fan?
A little background:
The wife and I sold our restaurant back in 2015.
We held out as long as we could after the Obama recession, but when things get tight, the first thing that comes off people's spending habits is dining out, and it pretty much killed us.
Anyways, I had a hard time selling the place and took a real hit when I did.
I finally found someone, not the best candidate, but he was able to make the down, and I elected to carry the note with a balloon payment due in a couple of months from now.
This guy got into this business without a clue, just knowing he wanted to.
He could have just stepped in, asked for and taken some advice and it could have been turnkey, but he didn't.
He took a year, and spent a bunch of money turning the place from a nice family friendly BBQ restaurant into a bar.
We we're located halfway between Phx and Vegas.
Many people made it a point to stop along the way for some good food.
Unfortunately, he decided not to get a full food service license, and went with the lower grade bar food license which only allowed him to serve prepackaged deep fried, microwaved sort of food.
Also unfortunately, drinking and driving as a sport died out long ago, and no one in their right mind is going to stop halfway to Vegas for a few hours and drink.
Also, there's not near enough people in this town to even support a bar.
Bad decisions all around.
He finally got the place open, and hired a few friends to run the joint while he tended to his landscape business 150 miles away.
He'd come up on the weekends and spend his whole time sitting at the bar drinking and buying rounds for all his new "friends".
To add to his bad decisions, he never paid for any of those drinks, assuming since he was the owner, that everything was free.
Come the end of his first month, he hadn't paid his help a dime, was out of inventory, out of money, his help quit, and he closed.
He's had the place up for sale since, but he's asking waaaayyyy too much for it, and no one's going to pay it.
The thing is, he's been making his payments to me all along this whole time, with only one or two missed or late.
There's zero communication between us.
Now, here's the thing.
His balloon of tens of thousands is coming up in a few months.
There's only three scenarios that I can see.
A. He either has the money, or sells the place dirt cheap to pay me off.
B. He defaults, and I have to foreclose.
C. I can extend the note, and allow him to continue making payments.
I do have a guy who has an RV park almost next door to the property who will be more than happy to pay off the note and buy the place and expand his park if I have to foreclose, so there's that.
The big question is, is it appropriate to contact the dumbass who I sold it to and ask what his plans are so I can prepare, or do I just wait and see if the shit hits the fan?