Lesson Learned: It doesn't hurt to make an offer.

My Dad has a buddy who has a little place at the beach in the OBX (North Carolina's Outer Banks). Every year we go down there as a family and spend a week at the house, which we get for a dirt cheap rate of course. The house is nothing really glamorous or special, sort of resembles a double-wide on stilts, but its clean and comfortable and suits our needs perfectly.

This year, we had to find a new house at the beach for our extended family vacation. My Dad's buddy had his beach house up for sale for a couple years and this summer finally sold it. Two years ago He was asking something like $350,000 for the little place one lot over from the Sound in a vacation house subdivision. After a while the price dropped to $250,000 and last summer my Dad and I thought about what it would take for us to buy it from him. With the banks tightening up and neither one of us having much money to our names, we sighed and just kept dreaming of what it would be like to own a beach house. The last listing price I heard was $225,000 at the end of last summer.

Then this year, a few months ago, we start planning our regular vacation and my Dad tells me that his friend sold his beach bungalow and we'd have to find someplace else to stay. Well, congratulations, I'm sure he's happy to have it sold.

Out of curiosity, I asked my Dad if he knew how much the place had sold for. He told me to sit down. This was not good. His friend let the house go for only $80,000. I was dumbstruck. For $80,000 we could have figured out some financing ourselves and been the proud owners of a beach house.

But we never even made an offer.

We didn't even know that the guy had been that desperate to unload the property. We never asked how much he'd be willing to accept. Down there in a prime beach rental environment with limited buildable lots, I would think the land value alone would be more than $80,000. I still can not believe the seller accepted something so low.

So this year we are vacationing at someone else's rental beach house. Its very nice, but I can't help but mentally kick myself every time I pull up to it. I could have had my very own beach house and not had to stay in someone else's income property. But I never thought to act and just make an offer. Hell, I would have given the guy $100,000 and been extremely happy. Instead I'm left mourning the loss of another deal. This is one lesson definitely learned.