All Forum Posts by: Jim K.

@Grayson Grzybowski

I usually never comment on threads like this, but for this one? OK.

The metric "CoC return" is, in full, "cash-on-cash return." It's a pretty straightforward concept.

What you're measuring is how much of your own cash (which could be used for anything) has gone into a project, and what pure cash return you're getting on that cash investment.

If you think about it, you could do a lot of things with your own cash money. Buy groceries, buy stocks,  buy cocaine, make it rain on strippers, put a down-payment on a house...a whole bunch of stuff. You can't do everything you can do with cash with borrowed money. I mean, you can't walk into a bank and tell them you want them to float you a loan for a fat wad of cash to stuff into Miss Amber Dee-Lite's thong at the GIRLS! GIRLS! GIRLS! Gentleman's Club tomorrow night, right?

So, this metric posits that your cash is more valuable than the borrowed money you put into a project (since you can't spend that cash on anything else), and that you should measure the return you get on it.

And not ALL the potential or variable or eventual return from an investment, JUST the straight cash return you get on it. Your cash return on cash invested.

So, in a simplified scenario, let's say you buy a slightly beat-up four-bedroom, two-bathroom single-family house for $100,000. That $100K covers everything on the sales sheet, the cost of the house, filing fees, closing costs, dye inspection, whatever.

Let's also say the down payment is 25%, and then, let's also say that the down payment comes from your own cash (versus being borrowed from somewhere else).

That means that you're going to put $25,000 of your own cash into the deal to buy the house.

Once you buy this place, you also spend $75,000 to renovate it nicely. Again, let's say that the renovation money also comes straight out of your own pocket. You now have fully $100,000 cash invested in the deal.

Congratulations, the newly renovated house is wildly popular! It rents for $2000 a month, or $24,000 a year. Of that gross annual income, let's be wildly optimistic (for the sake of simplicity) and say that you determine that half that money is the net operating income of this property, $12,000.

Your annual cash-on-cash return is 12%. You're getting $12,000 a year on the $100,000 you had to sink into the property. That $100K is no longer available for groceries, stocks, drugs, ladies of the night, or other property investments, but you can use the $12,000 a year for whatever you want.

This is all hugely simplified, but that is the concept behind that metric.

@Damian Komosa

This is only a quadplex, really, as far as laundry goes, a triplex plus you. You do not need super-professional laundry units that can handle two dozen loads a day. You can buy Whirlpool coin-operated washers and dryers for $2000/set at Home Depot.

You imagine that free laundry means they won't be commonly bringing in their whole families to do laundry at the one set of free machines they can use. Guess again. The laundry friends they'll be bringing in will also be new mothers and families with lots of kids. Relatives will be dropping off their laundry for the tenant to do. I can't put coin-operated in single-family and that's typically what happens when I rent to tenants with large extended families who live all over an area.

But  "By any means necessary" worries me a little. Makes me think of the "Push it to the Limit" sequence in Scarface.

@Jonathan R McLaughlin

"Pecunia non olet."

Soft deck brush and gallon pump sprayer. Spray the ceiling with TSP solution in sections, allow it to penetrate for a minute, and brush it with the deck brush. You will probably need to do this multiple times, and you will need to soak the deck brush in a bucket filled with dish soap solution and comb it out with a paintbrush comb to remove the tar residue in the brush bristles between cleanings.. The last time, just spray your ceiling with a lot of water and use the deck brush to get just as much of the visible tar residue off as possible. The idea is to rinse the very soapy and slimy TSP residue off with the water you're using in the process.

Allow the ceiling to dry and paint with Kilz Original oil-based and a thick-nap roller, like a 1 1/4 nap for a heavily-textured ceiling.

As has been mentioned earlier in the thread, scraping the texture off is a possibility IF it's the right kind of spray-on texture, if it hasn't been painted over, if, if, if. Try this first on a small section of the ceiling. Because if it isn't the right kind of textured ceiling, fuhgeddaboudit!

However you go about successfully doing this job, it will smell disgusting and probably get you sick if you're not careful. Wear a respirator with VOC cartridges topped with P95 filters. You won't be able to smell anything.

Pampanella is roast pork, isn't it?

Growth Unlimited Ltd. makes me immediately think of botched penis enlargement surgery. Is it just me?

" May your check out to LDR, Liver-Devouring Raptor..." Since we are going for the literary references today.

A Fiat to me is a Fiat Uno. So a Fiat Lux is therefore a tricked-out Fiat Uno. Really not saying much.

You should also be aware that the Vulgate Bible does not, in point of fact, begin with "fiat lux."

That would be Genesis 1:3: "Dixitque Deus fiat lux et facta est lux."

Of course I think it sounds more impressive in the Septuagint: <<Γενηθήτω φῶς>>> which actually means "Let Light Be Born."

I can't read Hebrew, so I have no gloss on that.

@Caroline Gerardo

Thank you for such a lovely post.

By the way, Ryan, that might not work out how you think, either. I was over at one of my properties once, recaulking old windows. My tenant yelled from inside, and I rushed in to find him distraught, with no phone, bleeding all over the place. The medical port in his arm had fallen out. I had to hold his arm together until the paramedics showed up. I wrote about it here on BP when it happened. So hold on to your bedside manner -- you just might need it in your new position.