All Forum Posts by: Gene Hacker

I bought my first property at 22 while still in school. It was a good deal on a 4 bedroom house. We talked the seller into owner financing and my girlfriend and I borrowed the down-payment from family.

We rented 3 rooms in the house which covered all of the expenses and left a bit extra for fix up and improvements.

I learned a ton about rental management and when we moved on we sold it for a nice profit and it gave us the seed money for new projects.

This is always a balance. I want my rentals to be desirable, clean and safe. I generally make upgrades and repairs with durability in mind.

The tenant/landlord relationship need to be "handled" from the very begging. If you respond to every whim a tenant has then they are going to abuse the relationship very quickly.

I work hard to find tenants who like the unit, the way it is. If they are asking about upgrades or expressing concerns during the showing, I am very cautious. The worst thing is to get a tenant who really doesn't like the place. Like the saying goes...it is what it is.

I like yellow with white trim. This is my combo of choice for small properties. Its bright and make the house look bigger.

Bigger houses I have a light olive green with white trim combo that I prefer.

Brian Hancock,

You seem very certain that there will not be hyperinflation.

Where do you see the US economy in 10 or 15 years?

Do you think will have solved our debt problems?

Do you think the entitlement issues will be less than today even with the boomers reaching retirement years?

Do you think we can continue to monitorize our debts forever without consequence?

If you met a young investor, who was paying his minimums on his credit cards by putting the interest payment on a new credit card...how long do you think this system would work? Would you lend to someone with that game plan?

You should be very careful with advertising as you could cross the line with the SEC.

The replacement trustees deed recorded. The county recorder said that the chain of title looks good and that there were going to process my previously recorded deed.

I learned a few things....

If you have a title claim be prepared to fight to get things straitened out. The title company used was Ticor Title in Riverside was very unresponsive.

The other thing I learned that if I am a buyer I am going to use my local title/escrow office where I know the folks. The selling bank requested that we Ticor Title and seeing that I was buying with all cash I didn't think there would be an issue.

Anyhow I am glad its over and that I have clean title. The crew is back on the job...its good to be making progress again.

A forum to discuss "housing related economics" would be nice to have.

Do you have data showing how the M1 money supply contracted? I have not seen that. In fact the M1 exploded upwards as TARP, stimulus packages, and QE1 rolled out.

Calling for hyperinflation in the next few months is a pretty bold (and likely foolish) move.

In terms of monetary inflation as defined above, I can take a stab at applying probabilities to outcomes...In the next 5 years....

Deflation - 1%
very low Deflation (under 1% a year) - 9%
low inflation (under 3% a year) - 30%
higher inflation - 55%
hyperinflation - 5%

This is using a reliable CPI index...if there is such a thing.

Now push the time line out a bit farther and I would have to think it hyperinflation would have a much higher probability. Between our swelling deficit and unfunded liabilities...I don't think our current path is sustainable and I don't think the solutions are politically possible,

California is a very big state...its probably not a good idea to generalize the entire state with a few antedoal figures.

In central California it is possible to find great deals. I have seen several houses in good neighborhoods sell for under $50k (fixers for under 30k) in the past year which would cashflow very well.