All Forum Posts by: Richard C.

I don't have a dog in the suburban/urban fight at all.  I'm in rural villages whose population has remained very stable for over a hundred years, and are unlikely to either grow or shrink by any significant amount.

But I've been reading about the New Urbanist revolution that is always, "Just around the corner" for 30 years.  And it ain't here.  So at this point, I am naturally very skeptical.

http://fivethirtyeight.com/datalab/think-millennia...

 http://www.wsj.com/articles/millennials-prefer-sin...

http://www.forbes.com/sites/joelkotkin/2013/12/09/...

http://www.newgeography.com/content/004532-millenn...

As any data analyst can tell you, BEWARE CONFIRMATION BIAS!

Duplicate post, sorry.

 That has actually been done, and the trend toward urban is largely a myth.  I don't have the link handy, but Forbes magazine did an article on it a while back.

Two answers, both serious, but only one that SOUNDS serious.

First, check and see if you are paying by the "tip" (individual pickup at a flat rate) or by the ton.  Sounds like you might be paying by the ton.  This often actually works out cheaper, by the way, so don't immediately switch to by the tip without doing the analysis.

Second, while I don't think it is likely to be true in Alabama, in large parts of the Northeast, garbage hauling is controlled by certain families of Italian extraction, and pricing is what they say it is.

I grew up in Boston.  There are not 10s of thousands of Brownstones.  There are not even 10s of hundreds.

But yes I take your point about scale.

The flip side is that if your one million dollar project goes sideways, you're in trouble, where if one of your 10 $100k projects goes sideways, you could be OK.

 What makes you think you can add "millions" in value for a $200k rehab?

You can possibly add significant value if you can do condo conversions, but understand that doing so is not simple.

Professionally cleaned.  Always.  Would you want to move into a place that the last tenant "maybe" cleaned?

This isn't a "don't let the tenant take advantage/it's not essential/don't get pushed around" question.

The only question you need concern yourself with is this:  Is the siding dirty?

If it is, wash it.  If it is not, don't wash it.

I always err on the side of neater and better maintained, myself.  Helps with both the tenants and the neighbors.

The only advantage I can see to individual sheds as opposed to self storage steel and masonry buildings is that you can scale slowly, by buying new sheds only as you need them.

In every other way, cheap wooden sheds are going to be inferior to a storage building, and that will probably be reflected in the rent you can charge.