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Wow. A 5 million $ wash goes belly up.

mac

Well-known member
Went by this wash last week and saw that it went back to the bank. When I first stopped there to sell him soap, the first thing I thought was, who advised this guy? The lot is about 3 acres. He has three gas islands. The tunnell is nice, about 150 feet and real modern looking. But it was obvious he overbuilt. While I was looking at his setup, he thought I was attempting to "steal" his ideas and asked me to leave the property. Mind you, I was on his sidewalk looking through the glass wall. The bank is asking a little over two million. It's on the main highway in Naples, FL if you're interested. At that price, or a little lower, it might work. Still amazes me how someone with the capacity to do a $5MM project could be so clueless.
 
Rather than sitting on you computer posting on a message board at 8:30am on a Tuesday, you should be visiting your customers a bit more often. That wash didn't exactly go back to the bank yesterday. Way to stay plugged in.
 
Rather than sitting on you computer posting on a message board at 8:30am on a Tuesday, you should be visiting your customers a bit more often. That wash didn't exactly go back to the bank yesterday. Way to stay plugged in.

Was that your wash.....?
 
Sometimes I stay plugged in by being on the computer. My main point was the incompetence of the original owner, not when it actually defaulted.
 
Boogie, you sound a little grumpy this morning. Most wash sales people will tell you that the worst time to be in your customer's face is on a Monday morning (or the morning after a holiday). Most good sales people that I know use the first day of the week as an office day to take care of the dreaded paperwork and lay out the week's plan.
 
It sounds like the perfect wash for this guy from ND. No snow right, I know a whole bunch of other problems, one i guess is not enough business. I visited the $12milion dollar wash in pa that was on modern marvels, so it is possible to make an expensive wash work.
 
While it is possable to make a real expensive wash work, I think it's like hoping to hit on an inside straight. Sure it happens, just not that often. This wash in question is a nice modern looking one, but no candidate for Modern Marvels. The bank is asking a little over 2 million, if I remember right. The washes that have sold here recently that the banks had taken back, have all sold from 40% to 70% of what they were asking for. That should put this one back on the market somewhere around 1 to 1.7 million. At those numbers it should work.
 
Prior to 2007 when the carwash business was portrayed as recession-proof, Naples attracted a lot of wanna-bees looking to cash in on the affluence of the area.

Back then prime real estate was $1.0 mil an acre and fees for water/sewer, land use and transportation impacts could add $100K or more to a project.

In 2006, the median price of a home was $400K, today its $200K. Naples has one of the highest foreclosure rates in the country. Some people believe it may take until 2025 for the area to recover.

Today, you can find washes in Florida listed at or below land value.

I doubt the bank would be willing sell a $5 mil property for less than $2 mil, even in Naples.

At $2 mil, I believe it could make sense for someone.
 
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