I had someone ask me recently who my female heroine’s were; I couldn’t think of one. Not one who I admire, whom I would like to emulate. Except, perhaps that when I’m up early enough and not in a hurry to start my day, I catch some old episodes of Mad Men on Sunday mornings. Gosh I wish I had watched that show from the beginning… or had copies of the episodes. Those women were gracious, classy and knew how to be very, very charming. It’s something that I certainly didn’t see grow up—not like that. Not the social graces of Gracie Allen; not the behavior of the women of Mad Men. But then again, the men of today aren’t as gentlemanly as those men either.
I decided on New Year’s Eve to do something that I have never done in my online dating life. I deleted all of the past men who have contacted me. I deleted most of my profile and replace it with two sentences. New Year, new beginning; less of me in some places, more of me in others. I had contact this week from four new men. The first was a 40 year old from Philadelphia. After brief hello’s, he proceeded to tell me ‘that he had a nice package’. I responded by saying that I hoped he worked for UPS, because I wasn’t interested in talking to some stranger about his ‘junk’. The second sounded like he was actually interested until he began asking me whether or not I liked to have my neck kissed; my response was yes, with the right man in the right relationship…he disappeared. The third claimed he was new to online dating, wrote some neutral banter and ultimately asked me to write to him off the site onto his yahoo email address. Ahhh, the ‘let me send you the gift of some unsuspecting malware through yahoo. Really, I like you, but I don’t care if your friends get pissed off that your mailbox has been hijacked and they end up with months of offers from Canadian pharmacies and offers of how to make their dicks hard enough to break bricks with—whether or not they are female recipients ’. Thank you, but no.
If you’re going to ask me to write to you off site, then have the courage to give me you real ISP address—not one that you’ve hidden yourself through with an untraceable yahoo or gmail account. You’ve just taught me that I can’t trust you, so I have to ask myself what you’re hiding. So just like in the Wizard of Oz, I’ve had to learn to pay no attention to the man behind the curtain of a computer screen. The fourth told me that his ex-wife and he still shared a time-share in Punta Cana and were we to hit it off, we could go. He had a canned letter that he sent to everyone; efficient but impersonal….and I know that because in it he wrote that I sounded ‘hot’…ummm… in the two innocuous sentences that I had written in my profile? Nope. That he wanted me to send him a picture to his private email address….ummm right click copy and paste..just how lazy are you? And that he wasn’t looking for anything long term; just friendship and affection…(sigh). You can have friendship; you can have affection; you don’t get both in the same relationship. I do, however, I have to say that he scores some points for his upfront honesty; it’s just not what I’m looking for—and the carrot of an island vacation is dangling in front of me on a stick, I’m not willing to jump to chase after it. Perhaps that what all of online dating is—just one sales pitch after another. Some men are just window shopping, some men willing to purchase and return during their 10 day money back guarantee period; some men willing to have done their consumer report background and are ready to live happily ever after with their purchase. Some men need the ‘high definition/3-D’ version of more and more pictures. Really, I take a crappy picture and look better in person; take the shot and ask me out on an actual date.
I’m frustrated. I’ve gotten angry and I know it; not in particular, but in general—everything annoys me. People moving too slowly in traffic, people still calling my house four years after the purchase looking to collect payment from the dead-beat I purchased the place from. People, after giving a full explanation of my reason for calling, asking me what I was calling about…I just told them! My patience level is at zero…and that tells me something. What it means is that my well is empty. Nothing has me feeling fulfilled.
Cathy asked me where my passion lies these days. I’m at a loss. There are some things that I’d like…to make a full time move to a warmer climate, to go to law school, open a day spa, to have some expertise in antique Alaskan art, to be in a full time committed relationship, a new puppy…but passion is a whole other level. I told her that I usually go onto the five year plan. It takes me about five years to gain full proficiency in an area and then I move on to another subject. I’m in that lull right now--directionless. I love real estate. When I entered the field, I didn’t do so to work as an agent…I shudder at the thought—it’s an awful job and I’ll freely admit that I’m not nice enough to be an agent—buy something or get out of my car. I’d rather be doing nothing than playing chauffeur. Housewives who ‘love people’ enter the field with some grandiose self inflated version of their importance , but in reality they are nothing more than nosey bitches, and gossiping sows who think they are somehow better for having leased a snazzy car for a mere $300.00 per month; the full pretense of self deluded success. In reality they know so little about the field. I fell into being an investor in real estate and what I learned quickly was how many ways there were to ‘skin a cat’ and make money…and every one of them is a story unto itself. So much so that my friend in Georgia Michael and a fellow real estate investor told me that I should stop what I’m currently doing, and just travel around the country to real estate investment clubs and just tell my storied. I laughed….they are great for cocktail party entertainment. Originally, I thought that it might be fun to rehab and decorate—to parlay my talent as both a national and international award winning art director from the two dimensional world of design to three designing houses—but what I learned about myself was, for as much as loved beautiful surroundings, what I loved more, was winning.
Being smarter, being faster, having elite knowledge should be every investor’s ultimate goal. That it pays far more to work with your brain than your hands and that the more in depth your knowledge is in one area, the further people will go, and the more you can charge for your skills. You walk into a room and people ask ‘who ARE you?’ not at all in negative connotation, but for your presence. You travel across the county and people that you’ve never met tell you that they’ve hear of you. It’s nice that through no effort of your own, the reputation of your work precedes you. Even after I left the art field, my reputation would keep my phone ring with offers for work for many years from places like AT&T; I had already had my national security clearance. I was just past wanting to do it anymore.
Cathy and I spoke about this yesterday. I’ve told her that maybe I’ve been lucky, but I’ve never HAD to work at a job that I needed to JUST for the money. Every time I have ever worked in a field, I loved it so much that I would have done it for free. And I suppose that’s why I mentor—without payment ; because there were people to help me when I needed them; it’s my ‘give back’. But I do have a line. I won’t volunteer a full project for free—not in the same field that I get paid for or my value as a professional is lessened; but I will walk someone through the help that they need.
She talked to me about my love of the real estate field—and I do love it, but the day the sub-prime mortgage availability died, so did the openness of the field. Let me explain. Sometime over the last six months I had heard a podcast of national speaker Lee Honish tell a group of investors that ‘the banks weren’t stupid’ and that we, as investors ‘would just have to be satisfied with a discount of 12-20 percent’ (I don’t remember the exact numbers he stated—but it was within that range). He couldn’t be more wrong in the message he was delivering to his self-selected audience. The day that sub-prime mortgages ended was the day that everything changed. When the short sale approach to purchasing houses changed, at first I thought that it was me—that somehow I had been lucky over the last 10 years instead of smart; I was wrong. The banks got greedy. No one could have ever predicted the collapse of the major players in the finance industry; but just like they thought they were being creative that got us into this mess, the banks think they are being creative to get themselves out. I have had banks ask for homeowners to continue paying for the remainder of 25 years a ‘reduced rate’ for a mortgage on a house they no longer owned; to hold homeowners hostage and refuse to allow them to be sold unless the homeowner paid a five year balloon payoff on a house they had sold beforehand under the guise of ‘the investor of the note won’t allow the asset to be released until…fill in the blank. All kinds of demand of nonsense. Every time, I have told the homeowner that were I in that position, I would let the house be foreclosed on—OR, to agree to the terms and then file bankruptcy later to clear the judgment. THAT is the banking industry’s big threat—that if the homeowner doesn’t agree to terms, they are going to seek and get a judgment. Play that tape thorough to the end boys…get a judgment, homeowner files for bankruptcy…that’s the end of your judgment. But then there are the homeowners who believe the greedy attorneys who tell them to file for bankruptcy to stop their foreclosure—and it does—for three months. But then you can’t file for bankruptcy for another decade or so with a judgment hanging over your head.
In Mr. Honish’s instance, what ‘the banks not being stupid’ entails is the presumption of the investor being the end purchaser—we, as investors aren’t stupid either. Most of the investors that I know are not long term holders of real estate, but make their money flipping. Were I inclined to buy a piece of property for a mere 12-20% off of the fair market value, there would not be enough money to fix, hold, sell and ultimately see a profit for 3-6 months worth of work. The industry standard is a purchase of 30% off of fair market value, MINUS repairs—and those estimated repairs don’t include risk and unforeseen hidden defects that have to be corrected. And that would presume my own cash being used to purchase—the additional cost of repaying borrowed money at interest to make the purchase and repairs is a further burden. Sure, a 20% profit for some paint and carpet sounds good—but those houses can be sold in the open market without needing AN INVESTOR. Yes, there are pockets in America such as in Iowa, southern California and states rich in natural gas that are seeing a real estate boom, but for the most part, most of America is in a reduction or sideways movement in the value of their homes. For the most part anyone, anywhere can get a 12-20% reduction off of the asking price of a house—without going through the headaches of the approval of a short sale, clearing title and negotiating other debt.
I watched the TV show 'Flip Men' yesterday, and those guys are idiots--they proved my point. They bought some house outside of Salt Lake City, Utah and paid under a hundred thousand for it. After they broke in, they found paperwork for a lien on the propert by the city which cost them $4000.00 of 'unexpected' cost, the former homeowner left all of his stuff in the house which cost them money to store for 30 days, they gave him $1,500.00 to get his stuff out, and had an ultimate offer for $5000.00 less than the listing price. Without blinking an eye, the flippers lost over $10,000.00 in profit--and that's why an investor CAN'T be satisfied with just a 12-20% profit. But as I said, those guys were idiots. They should have never bought that house before finding out what all of the liens were, they should have never given the homeowner $1,500.00. (They justified it by saying that new appliances would have lost them $3,000.00 so they felt that $1500.00 saved them $1.500.00. Are they crazy? They should never pay $3,000.00 for appliances for a house that's going to sell for less than $150,000. and they should have never paid the homeowner $1,500.00. A storage unit for 30 days should have cost them between $200-300 dollars and given the old homeowner the key. At the end of 30 days if he didn't get his stuff out--well--that's a different TV show--Storage Wars--and it's no longer the new homeowner's problem.) In the end, they put in $15,000.00 worth of work to get a profit out of the house of $15,000.00. Wrong. They should have doubled that. You put in $15,000.00 worth of work to get a $30,000.00 profit. That's why no one bid against them at the courthouse; the smarter investors KNEW there wasn't enough money to do a good deal.
What the banks aren’t caring to understand is that unless a piece of property is up to code ‘enough’ to qualify for the mortgage being sold to a secondary purchaser, the homeowners aren’t getting an original mortgage. So who is fixing up neglected properties in cities like Baltimore—where I have friends buying up and rehabbing entire city blocks? What are governments like those NJ thinking when they are talking about enacting into law buyers having to buy at maximum discount of only 18% of appraised value and to need to record at the courthouse a purchase contract so that ‘big brother is watching what you, as in investor are doing’? Who’s going to be paying for the recording and should the property not ultimately be sold, what investor is going to shell out even more money with additional paperwork the clear the title? No one, and now you have a clouded title issue, a potential foreclosure action to clear the title just clouded and even more mess. End buyers—people that are going to live in those houses don’t have enough cash on hand to do the purchase AND fix the house—that’s where investors come in—without us, cities throughout America have lost. So houses sit, neighbors ruined for the detraction of some crappy house that can’t be sold. That means less money in taxes for the city to operate, less people choosing to live there, further reducing the desirability and increased housing values and less influx of capital to generally have made it just a little bit better for the American dream of home ownership to operate.
Yes, I know enough in my broad base knowledge of real estate to make money in other areas of investing. Buying subject to the existing mortgages, etc. But short sales were my little baby...I loved working the chaos in this aspect of the field. I had many properties come to me that other investors just didn't know what to do with. Houses that had a murder in them; father was in jail, mother couldn't be found; house had been abandoned for 8 years, couldn't find the homeowner, township officials wanted so the liens on the property went up by hundreds of dollars each day...plats disappearing...lots of fun. So today, the banks playing hardball can hang onto their properties and wait to sell to a greater fool than I am…if it’s not by my rules, generally, I’m not all that interested in playing…which still leaves me without a new career direction.
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