TikTok user Taylor Nicole (@cocktailsjustcause) achieved something that most young adults can only dream of — she bought a home of her very own. Congrats, sis! But wait. Taylor drove by her new house to take a look just a couple of days before it transferred to her, and the previous owners showed no signs of moving out.
Buying a home is a lengthy and complicated process, and when Taylor described her problems with the old owners and “the people who are facilitating the purchase,” something seemed amiss. One TikTok user wasted no time, asking:
“Who are “the people who are facilitating the purchase” as in are the real estate agents &/or REALTORS®️, attorneys, employees of some company, or something else altogether? Who wrote the contract?”
Great question.
Buying a house is a huge, and very expensive, deal. If you’ve managed to scrape your cash together and can finally afford a place of your own, it makes sense you might do a little DIY to save some pennies. Maybe not the kind of DIY this homebuyer settled on, though. Forget getting handy with a paintbrush, or hanging some wallpaper — thrifty Taylor decided to cut corners when purchasing her new house by… not using a realtor. Or a lawyer. Or anyone, really, apart from taking advice from her dad, who said he had bought many properties like this previously without all of that annoying legal stuff.
Unsurprisingly, this led to a tricky situation that saw Taylor take to TikTok for help. TikTok, much like her dad, is also not a great source of advice. In the video, she explains that the homeowners got a better offer from someone else — an all-cash buyer, so they didn’t want to go through with the sale. Contracts of some kind had been signed with Taylor though, so our girl said she was going to persevere and get what’s hers. Go girl!
People in the comments were obviously aghast when it was revealed that Taylor had no lawyers and no realtor in sight, so she made another video to explain herself:
According to our real estate queen, in the town she is from, buying a house like this is “really, really common.” She goes on to explain that often you just “read through the contracts which are typically, like, a page long, that just basically say, like, hey, give us the money and you get the house, within a certain amount of days”.
A realtor stepped into the comments to offer this:
“As a realtor, this sounds crazy.”
It also sounds pretty crazy to people who aren’t realtors, too.
Let’s give Taylor the benefit of the doubt though, right? She’s out there doing it — creating the life she wants, starting with a house to call a home.
Taylor wired the money to the previous owners with the understanding that they would vacate the property. Another problem surfaced. For some reason, Taylor’s wire didn’t go through:
Would she ever catch a break?
The next installation in this saga brought great news — the previous owners finally left the property:
And because they moved out a day late? Our girl got to keep her part of the escrow! With previous tenants finally out of the house (phew!), Taylor was excited to give her TikTok followers a tour of the new house. This is when things went south for the people who had been rooting for her.
Captioning the video with “The flip of my life,” followers were outraged that the story they had been so invested in was little more than a landlord griping that their heinous money-grabbing activities were on hold.
Taylor was quick to respond in defense of her nefarious ‘career’ choice. Watch this to see a stunning example of someone not realizing that they’re the problem:
Users were rightly angered. @djustfgyens wrote:
“Are you f***in kidding me? All this drama so you could flip? You’ll have the day you deserve ma’am”.
Another commenter summed it up perfectly, attempting to explain to Taylor why this move makes her the enemy:
“If there were no landlords houses would be more affordable and there would be market pressure to help those people with bad credit get a house. You’re still the villain in this story.”
Turns out Taylor was the antagonist in this tale the whole time. Certainly not the character arc that Taylor wanted, but definitely the one she deserves.