Welcome to Chez Cliff!

Time for some hired help.

In chatting with a fellow RE investor, I was explaining the difficulties in trying to meet potential tenants with my schedule the way it is.  Setting up 3 hour “house showings” turned up nothing.  Most the appointments which are made are actually kept.  The other half of the callers are stuck because our schedules just don’t match.

And using the line “Well you can drive by and peak in the windows” isn’t working.

The other investor faced a similar problem with his rental property.  To solve his problem he hired a Real Estate Consultant.

What is a Real Estate Consultant?

I have no clue.  Never heard of one.

One of the many services this lady offers is finding a tenant for a property.  Credit checks, referrals, references, contracts, blah blah blah.  No fees are charged until she finds a tenant and then it’s 50% of the first months rent.  And because this is what she does for a living her schedule is infinitely more flexible than mine.  Twenty five years of experience.  You can draw two possible deductions from that.  First, after 25 years she must be good.  Or second, she has a rich husband.  After talking with her, I think she’s on the first.

She does offer property management services, which I don’t require.  She isn’t pressuring me to consider that option.  And I’ll need to clarify this but if there is a problem with the tenant, she will handle the collection and eviction process herself.

We’ve scheduled a “face to face” meeting to find out of this will work for us.

Her approach to this is quite simple.  Rather than try to stuff a rental with the first warm body that comes along, she learns what the landlord is looking for.  I gave her some ranges for rent in which she can do some negotiating.  But she understands the higher, the better.

If this does work out, I’m going to turn her on to my Real Estate Agent who also has a few properties which need renting.  I have no problem providing referrals for people who do good work.

Time will tell.

Today I’d like some input.

Lately, websites with mortgage calculators have been scrutinized by yours truly.  More less they all serve the same function and pretty much all spit out the same number.

What struck me as curious was the completely lack of a 2nd mortgage.  It is possible people can put down enough money to have a single mortgage.  Personally I know of none.  Everyone is financed as either some kind of 80/10/10 or 3% down or 5% down.  All those mortgages have a second mortgage attached to them.  Usually with 2nd mortgages, the interest rate is higher and therefore doesn’t exactly match a simple large mortgage calculation.

As an experiment, I ran a bunch of numbers through a spreadsheet to find out how gross this error would be.  The results are relatively minor.

At $500,000, the difference between the two is $143.  This is about 4%.  As an engineer, I can say the number is “close enough” and move on.  But there are finance people out there who may disagree with me.

I put together a poll.  Please take a second and tell me which option you would prefer.  Is precision the name of the game or is the free calculator online enough for a rough idea?

It’s been forever since I reported back on the eBiz idea.

At this point, the content for . . . well for everything is about as ready as I can make it.  At some point, you have to throw the switch and search for perfection on another day.

The next step is hire some cheap labor.  I’m going to work with Guru.com, to find some programmers to build the various aspects of this project.  First, of course, will be the website.

Being a former programmer, the frustration with dealing with clients can be quite high.  Nearly 90% of my former clients had no idea what they wanted.  They knew they wanted something . . . but color schemes or graphics or even text wasn’t in their thoughts.  For some mysterious reason, they believed a website builder was also a marketing, advertising, and content guru.

In my case, only a site style is required.  To control the content of the site, a CMS (Content Management System) such as Wordpress will be used.  That way I can change whatever content is on the page quickly and efficiently, without having to work up another specification and waiting waiting waiting . . .

Admittedly the frustration is quite high.  I had hoped to have everything ready by now.  But burn-out has a way of creeping, striking and paralyzing at will.

Nothing is happening.  Nothing is going on.  This real estate thing has been stretched as far as I can.  Last night I realized I was scraping the bottom of the barrel if the most exciting real estate thing is worms pitching tents.  An article about flossing my teeth would have been infinitely more interesting.

No longer will I waste your time talking about such useless minutiae.  Instead we’ll talk something more pressing: the incompetence of Bob Costas, idiot savant extraordinaire.

The single greatest tragedy to befall the flawless HD broadcast of the Opening Ceremonies was letting that useless pinhead Bob Costas have a microphone.  The only reason the “mute” button was not pressed was due to the Chinese expert, Jim what’s his face, who actually added relevant and timely descriptions of what we were seeing.  But Bob Costas?

Jim:  These are the traditional dresses, woven in the same technique as they were in that period.  This is all meant to accent the single greatest invention of that period: the printing press.
Bob Costas:  Well you know Jim, my cat’s breath smells like cat food.

The parade of nations.  One country could only afford to send one athlete.  Carrying his country’s flag, his face was filled with wonder and excitement as over 90,000 people cheered his entrance into the area.  The feelings of pride, of child-like awe must have been almost overwhelming.  The honor fell to him, to represent the best his country had to offer.

Bob Costas:  You know, the average yearly income of people from his nation is only $134 per year?

What in the world does their average salary have to do with their dreams of Olympic gold?  For crying out loud!  Sorry we don’t all make the whopping 6 figure salary like you do, Bob Costas.  Hey Pinhead, get a clue: why don’t you keep your mouth shut versus comparing their life to your chauffeur-driven, Harbucks sippin’, Manhatten pentehouse livin’ lifestyle.

Insert smooth transition here.

Badminton.  Little asian girls, swatting a piece of plastic (shuttlecock) back and forth at supersonic speeds.  I can’t even see it when they hit it.  Every now and then, a piece of plastic just appears on the ground and all the shoulders slump.  In either disappointment or relief.  Just how these little asian girls know where shuttlecock will appear is anyone’s guess.  This is beyond hand-eye coordination.  They must have this sense of ESP or maybe they can peer into the future.  Who knows?

Damn little asian girls are fast.

It never ceases to amaze me all the little things that can go wrong having a property.  This year, my yard has been invaded by these worm things which spin tents in all my branches.           This photo isn’t an exact photo of mine.  But it’s close enough to show what it looks like.

At first I thought this was specific to my yard. But it’s not. I’m seeing these tents everywhere I go. And all of these plants are dying wherever the tents are.

Good grief.

In the middle of trying to find tenants, sell a house, plot out my next acquisition – I now have to worry about squatters.  Fortunately an Armstrong Nursey is not far from my humble abode.  Daily chemical warfare has been launched against the worms.

But if one escapes, they spread once again.  It’s become a daily routine, spraying all the bushes and tree with worm poison.

At least the Mr Nichols Incident is now under control.