All Forum Posts by: Ryan R.

1.) Finding a long-term tenant:

• A tenant who has lived in that city/town for many years.
• A tenant who has limited economic opportunity or interests in career improvement.

2.) Keeping long-term tenant:

• Take away any incentive for them to move. AKA provide a better value than any competitor.

@Joe Delia , I retract my claim that Duggan is a fool. I'll sit back and patiently observe from afar.

Best of luck Detroit.

@Aaron Yates it's apparent that your posts lack one thing; passion! (read facetiously)

While you reject my proposal that a political ideology was the major principle in Detroit's demise, you agree with Rob K. that "the three biggest problems with the city are crime, taxes, and schools. Until you fix those three, there's no hope."

If political ideology affects anything, I think it fair to say, it affects a community's stance on crime, taxes and public education. I agree that the ingredients implicit in Detroit's fall are too numerous to consider and are only hypothesis at best. But, someone or something must be held accountable, and if we do not hold the Leadership of Detroit accountable, whom are pawns in a political ideology, then who is responsible?

One need not be intimate with the inner-workings of Detroit to understand in whole what contributed and lead to this mess; one only needs to look at the City's balance sheet.

While it was a brief visit, I have been to Detroit. Just like I've been to L.A., Spokane, Phoenix, Vegas, Dallas, Houston, Montgomery, Birmingham, Jacksonville, Charleston, Nashville, Knoxville, Lexington, Richmond, NJ, Chicago, Lincoln, Kansas City, Minneapolis and on and on.. And I agree that every city is the same; there's the good and the bad.

I'm sure Detroit has the potential to flourish, but it can't do that at the hands of fools. And thus far, the people of Detroit refuse to elect anyone to the contrary.

@J Scott would you be willing to expound on how you use it?

I'm going to purchase an iPad today for my project foreman in hopes that it will improve our efficiency.

I'm thinking that we can share calendars and to-do lists on our iPads and this should cut down on some of the frequent communications; such as when I call him to find out when a contractor is scheduled and associated details of his scope of work. I'm thinking I'll interrupt him less if I can see these up to the minute details on my iPad.

I also think it will help us visually monitor and track our goals to accomplish, which I think helps any person or group better achieve that goal; when it's visually measurable.

Do you have the Numbers app and do you actively enter expenses in as they're purchased?

@Carl Schmitt I never stated that savvy investors don't need to be sold. "Sold" is a relative term and simply means that someone bought in to you or your product (obviously this has to occur). Captured, sold, partnered, convinced etc. The point is to get the investor to believe in you.

Your argument that people make decisions based on emotion fails to realize that investors aren't average people and they most certainly DO NOT make investment decisions based on emotions; maybe their instincts but not on emotion.

Your analogy between bibles and alcohol reveals nothing and we can draw no value from it. Alcohol is a consumable product that must continually be purchased, whereas a Bible last for decades; especially considering how often most of us actually open them up and read them. So comparing the sales of both of them to emotions is meaningless and tells us nothing about investors methodology.

A few months ago, I presented an opportunity to a group of high-level executives on the 11th floor of their national headquarters. The presentation and subsequent meetings resulted in a (7) figure contract. I can assure you that these guys did not make the decision based on emotion. Their decision was based on calculated, proven and measurable results.

Some months later, I secured an investor willing to commit more money than I have time to invest right now. He also has rich acquaintances, whom he said are also ready to invest with me.

I ran into an old colleague a few weeks ago and he too now is interested in doing some deals with me.

When talking about your business and what you're doing, keep it simple: Be real. Be honest. Be open and stick to the facts.

Here's an interesting read on Detroit:

http://www.freep.com/interactive/article/20130915/NEWS01/130801004/Detroit-Bankruptcy-history-1950-debt-pension-revenue

No. And there's no magic fairy that caused it's demise. It was the result of a political ideology. Until they reverse that, it will never will turnaround.

@Duncan Taylor can you give us an exact example of how this data would lead to influencing a decision you would make; or even better, it making the decision for you?

I'm familiar with this type of framework. Taking millions and millions of data points, putting them into a drone farm and then running algorithms against the data to give the desired output.

We do this on large scale with over 75,000,000 (yes million) unique outputs defined last year; each output a result of thousands of unique data points. I can say that this only works on a large-scale platform. To justify this type of system, I'd say it would only have value to the biggest funds out there holding thousands of assets, the Macro seekers, not the Micro.

We've spent years developing this system and we still have anomalies and output failures (false positives) when you look at individual outputs. But as a whole, when looking at everything, it's pretty amazing how accurate it is.

People whom have money to invest are smart, and these one-liners asking if they know anyone who wants to make 15% ROI will portray you as a phony.

Investors don't put their money into sales pitches about potential; old ladies may do this but not real investors, the kind you are seeking. They put their money into proven, calculated and measurable investments.

If you really are a savvy real estate investor, you shouldn't have problems securing money.

"Sit, Walk, Stand" by Watchman Nee.

"Enemies Foreign and Domestic" by Matthew Bracken