[Author's note: This post concerns a piece of canal-front property I looked at several times to find a shortcut on my way to work. It would have been an ideal investment. What do I do instead of chasing money 24 hours a day? I sit around reading Scientific American. In the end I decided Florida real estate is a little too risky for the beginner. Unlike a true speculator, I do not have the option to lose, so I rejected this property because of irregularities with the title. I was researching the property but could not find the real owner.]
[Author's note 2015-11-20: I also did not know that in about a month, I would almost die. But yes, I was already looking for bargain properties and finding the oddball ones. When these things happen to me more than average, it is only because I am out there looking. This post reveals many of the same concerns about housing as I still have twelve years later. I would normally have bought then instead of now, and be living Miami-Dade. So maybe I'm glad that did not happen?]
I sure need to buy a house. I’m still renting close to four years after I moved here, and prices have indeed exploded. That’s okay, I know real estate is a pyramid scheme and I never overbuy. In fact I’ve found several pretty good bargains. To me the fanciest and most impressive house is the one you can pay for cash. Closely followed by the one you can build yourself. The trouble is I don’t have enough room for more than one or two projects at a time, and my place is about the most you can rent for less than $500 a month, which is my cutoff point, the amount over which I would buy rather than rent. The one place is still up for grabs but I’ve driven by repeatedly without seeing the new owners. Explanation: there was a large lot for sale on River Road, but nobody could find the owner. I spent a while tracing things, but must have made the same mistake as the others. You see, before they passed away, the neighbor had made arrangements to use their address to get his mail. Then he died, etc. and his mailbox name and number were now in front of the wrong property. I even paid for a satellite search to make sure I had the right location.
So, I missed the big one. The couple went the extra mile, literally. They kept feeding the dog that lived under the porch until it became friendly enough to read the dogtags. Which led them to a trailer court in Naples, and the owner. They got it for $60,000. I was willing to pay $75,000. House shopping usually starts when I get fed up with the people across the hall. Idiots [who] give renting a bad name.
I don’t mind the Spanish obsession with installing door locks upside down and water taps backwards. I already know if it is broken, and the Spanish-speaker doesn’t use it every day themselves, it will still be broken in ten years. What gets me is the obsession with going out of their way to make things rough on the next guy, for no apparent reason than to see how long he’ll take it. Don’t call me any names, the fact is that I have lived longer in South American 99% of anybody around here, and I know exactly what I’m talking about.
The front gate is broken, sagging from age and won’t latch. So the man across the hall knots a stupid little piece of string over the old handle, and hooks it over the latch. I suspect he actually thinks that string is going to deter a burglar. Now he, and everyone else using the gate has to set their groceries on the ground, rain or shine, undo the little contraption, step through and reverse the process each and every time they pass through. He could fix the gate for less than $2, but no. Instead, he loves the attention. (No, I won’t fix it because I’m not the one who wants it closed. My upbringing teaches one never give in to an idiot, for it just brings on the next problem.)
Well, lately he’s figured out that the person on the inside can pull the gate tighter than the person on the outside can reach through and undo the knot. Of course, the landlady should be fixing the gate, but she’s a basket case. Lord knows she already spends tons of money on her mortgage and the repairs will have to wait. Sincerely, she sits on the front porch and is waiting for the day twenty years from now that the mortgage will be paid off. She uses candles and mopes around in the dark, I wonder if she watches the electrical meter for entertainment. But she will not get a job.
[Author’s note – this weird landlady became a case study in strange mental conditions. As time went by, she would sit in the dark to save electricity. She has a boy around eight, who she has trained to do his homework in the window before the sun sets. She lives on nothing, barely able to scrape by each mortgage payment from the two rental units. Yet because she does not work, she thinks herself a financial genius. Unlike other geniuses, she does nothing with that extra time.
My buddy Frank thinks she has brain disease or something. Myself, I have seen this kind of obsessive cheapness, where people would rather slowly starve than get a job or get ahead. I think she had let things go so bad that she lacked the logistics to repair the gate. She has so cheaped out that she has no car, no gas, no cash, no tools to get it done, and be damned if she is going to be seen walking to the hardware store like a mere working class peasant.]
The rumor is that the neighbor’s obscenely fat and ugly wife is afraid of being attacked by that serial rapist near Flagler last summer. So, he is just smart enough to figure out how to save the $2 and inconvenience others while having marginal claim that he is only doing his husbandly duty. His wife is equally lazy, she often stays inside for months at a stretch.
Return Home
+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++
