One year ago today: July 26, 2016, the growing menace.
Five years ago today: July 26, 2012, eight dollars left.
Nine years ago today: July 26, 2008, $200 cell phones.
Random years ago today: July 26, 2013, is that me 35 years ago?
Oh no, I’m grumpy this morning. Even the radio station put me off. My regular (as in twice a week) business station faded so I stumbled on this total liberal broadcast and listened to it. You know the type, the ones who think it is the “duty” of border guards to “rescue” illegal immigrants. To get them inside, provide blankets, and refreshments. Maybe welcome them to America. It seems a truckload of people died, but it must be on TV more than radio since I’ve not heard much. This station was pressing for charges of dereliction of duty. Why yes, it was a Tampa station, now that you mention it. Here’s an unrelated photo of a gore-tex jacket for $200.
For openers, I view most real estate agents as bank shills. They are there to coax you into borrowing every penny you can possibly pay back at interest. Is this the best thing for you? I doubt it. The radio was about why people should buy rental property. The focus was on commercial units, but the logic was the same as long-term leased housing. That’s where I began to loosen up. That, and my breakfast of tomato-cheese scrambled eggs on toast, with Nescafé. Most of the show was your standard issue pablum, so I’ll only touch on those areas where my opinion differs.
I don’t trust commission salespeople. No matter what they say, their incentive is to over-sell you and close quickly. It doesn’t help that Florida is the home of the ham-fisted dodo who already has his other hand in your back pocket. The one whose ads show his picture instead of the house. They’ve got nerve calling what they do a trade. Last year, 30% of the “agents” printed disclaimers that they had no knowledge of the property being sold, yet many insisted you make an appointment before you could get any yourself.
The radio station seemed inordinately concerned with stating that the real estate agent could not really help you unless you told him everything. I disagree. Their so-called special knowledge is nothing more than a few ratios that are easily learned. A few refused to do business with me when I would not tell them this private information even when I stated I was a cash buyer. A few tried to bait me into arguments that their calculations were somehow “better”. Duh. (I asked one of them to tell me the formula he used. He hung up.)
The history here is something you’ve heard me repeat before. My generation has that inherent belief that you will never starve if you have a room you can rent out. It seems the shadowy world of pension economics is now drawing a similar conclusion. Rentals look so good on paper, you just take the monthly net and multiply it by twelve and away you go. Pure horse hockie.
The majority of people who rent long term are credit risks, convicted felons, or those who want to avoid any type of self-maintenance on the property. All three will tie you so close to home base you’ll have nightmares over taking your own annual holiday. An extra third of your money will be eaten up in insurances and high interest—the bank won’t lend you money on commercial property.
El Salvador
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Before continuing about real estate, here is your mystery photo for the day. Taken with the new microscope at 4x, it’s something you have probably seen many times. I’ll give you two hints. It is not biological and my hobby is microscopy, not medicine, or crystallography, or entomology. Just looking through the microscope, that’s all. To see what’s new. Give up? It is a single printed line off a Wal*Mart bar code. They only appear solid to the jaybird eye.
The trick is to buy the best properties you can for cash. There are multiple reasons for this but the best one is that businesses who owe money are always under the gun. You will make sub-optimal decisions when the bank man is breathing down your neck. But when you buy a scum property for cash, any rental income it generates goes rapidly into your next month’s cash flow. Anyone with basic spreadsheet skills can easily what-if the potential on that, but the younger you start, the better.
There is a situation where I would borrow. That’s when a larger property unexpectedly came on the market with a positive return. Distressed properties make the most sense. As long as your borrowing is less than you can service should the property become totally vacant, it is worth it to buy and hold. Always keep each property in a separate trust. I’ve always thought when I see vacant properties for years on end, the owner must have figured the same as I did. So you’ll know, in September, I’m looking again.
The financing will be creative indeed, but I’ll be looking. Now that you mention it, let me take a quick look how much cash I could come up with today. Stand by. Hayzoo Kristo, I guess I am doing okay. Tell you what, modify Plan A and I’ll start looking now. But I’m sure as hell not out to give the other guy a good deal. I’m taking the day off to go shopping. And I’m going to have a milkshake at the fancy store. It seems I deserve it.
“Lying is the most fun a woman can have
without taking her clothes off.”
~ Natalie Portman, and she oughta know.
I was on-line and who do I see but a lady I went to school with. I can’t remember her last or maiden name, but that is Peggy. And she’s a fancy lawyer now. Yeah, that would be right. She lived in a log cabin south of town but her family was the most supportive in the county. I knew she married a local nerd named Larry and I did hear something about them going to university together. You’d think I’d remember it. She was not the class beauty or anything but we did get along just fine. She was the type they called “raised proper”. Dang, it was some kind of English name. Anyway, the sound was off before I could tune in, but that was her making some kind of media statement on the courthouse doorsteps. Ozbourn, that’s it. Peggy Ozbourn.
I dropped off the ‘Derbyfield’ novel downtown and did all my technical visiting. And example of that is checking out the new battery load tester. Think of it as the device that measures how many amps the battery has, instead of the volts. The volts will fool you right up until the battery goes plunk. Be careful, a load tester measures the oomph left in the cells and the meter gets damn not damn fast. Pictures later.
Nor was I that active on the house repairs. I did little but watch Mrs. Red at the new feeder and plan how I can rig up a night light in the far back yard with existing components I’ve got kicking around. The feeder has been continually modified to block out ever bigger nuisance birds until even the cardinals have to duck to get at the seed port. It’s either that or feed the whole tarnation—the classic free-rider syndrome.
Leaving that alone for now, I bought all the new videos at the Thrift, including two Indiana Jones discs. By dusk, I headed back along the highway and stopped in the SE end. My notebook was handy and I decided to sketch out a way to build a simple centrifuge for a tenth of the price the used units are asking on-line. When mostly done, this blonde lady butts in to say she has noticed me for months writing and wanted to know if I was recording things people said to me. Ah, most of you guys would have turned this into a buy/sell situation, sex-wise. But it is youse guyz reading my blog and not the other way, okay.
She did two things wrong. One, if she was interested months ago, why is she only speaking up now? And why would she wonder if I was writing something as dull as what people say? Well, okay, there was also a third factor not in her favor. She was far too old to have made the both the above mistakes and hope to keep up with me. I need a woman who can hit the ground running, not somebody I have to piggyback. I’ve noticed her at a couple Karaoke shows, though she did not sing.
What saved the day? Late in the conversation she mentioned, after a modicum of coaching on my part, that she could play rhythm guitar. I took her phone number. Overall, her hesitancy and indecisiveness is not a good herald. Gals, the time to be coy and wait your turn is not the way to meet people like me. Good or bad, it is just not my way. I’ve had it up past here with women who want me to make every real move. It grows old quickly, I mean when I want other people to entertain me, I have to pay for it. Sorry, Judy and Amelia, but sitting pretty is not enough. Your mothers totally lied to you on that one.
ADDENDUM
Boy, just you try to find some lab supplies in central Florida. I just want a box of slides and covers, and some glue and dye. I have all the rest. No wait, I’ll need a lab kit as well, sometimes called a dissection kit. The good ones cost fifty bucks. Go on-line and you’ll get nothing. Except outfits in Connecticut who want you to estimate the size of your order in metric tons. No matter how well you narrow your search, the majority of ads that get through want to do the lab work for you. You can’t specify these bastards out. I’ll find something but Florida is going to make you wade knee-deep through the bullshit first.
I’ve decided to build my own centrifuge, possibly with an Arduino controller. That is something that would justify the price tag, with electric centrifuges running into the thousands these days. A few years back I found some blueprints, so all I would do is adapt that to make the off-on switch a microcontroller-operated relay. Admit it, you liked that nine-syllable word, didn’t you? I already have the equipment, including the 12V motor and, as luck would have it, a beauty of a marine battery that will only hold a charge overnight.
Last Laugh
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