Everybody Talks About Real Estate Wins...What about Real Estate Losses?

Everyone talks about the real estate wins. How about the real estate losses? I'm 29, 60 units. My buddy and I go under contract for 2 separate deals, same seller. One 30-unit seller financing, one 30-unit bank finance as a way to get them some cash and us some creativity. We put together the deal and interest rates skyrocket during this time. So they go from like 3.5% to 6.5% in the months that we're under contract. It was crazy. The bank finance one no longer works. We still have a contract for seller financing. We show up to closing and the seller goes, hey, I've thought about it and I've decided these 2 contracts are now contingent on each other. Now, for context, they didn't mention each other. We have two completely separate real estate contracts. It's never been discussed, never mentioned. So we go, absolutely not. Give us our earnest money back. We're out. He goes, actually, I want to keep the earnest money too. So I want to keep your $145,000 you put in this deal, and I want to not sell you either of these buildings. Of course, you expect title to give you the money back. They said, we're going to wait for a court hearing. So $25K in legal fees later, he's held our $145K. We eventually just settled with him to get the money back to put in another contract. We gave up $45,000 for no reason, just because I wanted the $100,000 back to invest in another deal. We waited a year and a half, so I lost $65,000— actually, $70,000 total. He kept $45,000. The lawyers kept $25,000 just to get my money back on a contract that he didn't show up to signing for. If you want to know the bummer in real estate, that was a huge loss. $70K to a 29-year-old starting his real estate career. That one hurt.