All Forum Posts by: Doug Pintarch

A lot of good advice.  I have come to learn it is actually called a sandwich lease and people do use it as a strategy.  It strikes me as something a motivated seller would take on, an alternative to wholesale.  It is not a fit for me and I am still not convinced it isn't shady.

I would start by paying off one card at a time. Make as high of a payment as you finances will allow and then move on to the next card when that one is paid off. You will need to at least make the minimum payments on everything else. 

@Doug Pintarch, my first guest checked in last night.  I know what you mean about not sleeping!  We also have 4 kids under 10 there right now.  Checkout is Monday, and we have a quick turn.  It looks terrific, and I hope they are enjoying the special touches that we put in for them.  

I just *had* to try the Keurig to see how it worked.  :D  

I got my first booking set for six months' out, a snowbird 60 day rental, through VRBO.

It took a couple of days, but I got set up on AIrBnb and now have 5 immediate bookings.  I have just sent my first "You'll be here soon" email to the first visitor, who will be arriving in two days.

We are doing all of our final safety checks, such as adding carbon monoxide detectors to the existing smoke detectors, putting in the child protective outlet covers around the property.  Just washed windows.  

I'm so excited for the first guest!

"Gentrification" is not wrong.

A neighborhood is either desirable or expensive or undesirable and inexpensive. It can move in either direction for a variety of reasons. 

Maybe a community loses its industry and there are no more jobs, so prices go down, but it's still a bad place to live because there are no jobs and no future. Maybe hot new industries come to town and the opposite happens.

Maybe crime goes up, and people who can afford to leave move away. Maybe crime goes down, and people who used to avoid the neighborhood start moving in.

The list goes on and on.

Suppose we have a low-cost area that is in reasonable commuting distance from high-paying jobs. Why is it low-cost if it's so well-located? The obvious answers include crime and dilapidation. There are two ways things can go from here: The conditions improve and the prices go up, or the conditions stay lousy and the prices stay low. The "anti-gentrification" crowd tells you that price increases are immoral, but are they really ok with crime-ridden slums? Of course not. They promote magical thinking - the idea that we can get rid of crime and fix up the buildings without increasing the prices, even though the only reason that the prices were low was the conditions!

All of this without even mentioning that everyone who OWNs in a "gentrifying" neighborhood wins the appreciation lottery.

Shorter commutes are more green. It's better for society as a whole if the people working the high-paying jobs live near them. People doing little to no work don't have any particular reason to prefer one area to another, nor should we pander to them. The idea that you are more entitled to live in a particular area if you "started out there" has terrible implications and quickly becomes oppressive. 

Finally, of course, the elephant in the room is identity politics. Most ant-gentrification rhetoric usually stems from toxic identity politics. People who get very angry when Identity Group A is displaced by Identity Group B don't care one whit when the opposite happens somewhere else. At best, such people are consistent in supporting the displacement of "richer" people by "poorer" people, or at least those they imagine to be so, while opposing the displacement of "poorer" by "richer." But adding emotional rhetoric doesn't change the facts above.

How about "unlicensed real estate transaction coordinator" ?

@Doug Pintarch Amazing!!!! I guess the real barriers I need to overcome is fear and locating a solid real-estate lawyer. I’ve avoided this very moment for so long, but I guess it’s time to dive in. Thank you for the advice, Doug!