Archive for September, 2007

Get Ready for the Tidal Wave . . . .

I received an interesting call yesterday.
Turns out the caller, who’s part of a fairly large and well known real estate company (at least around the Detroit News classified ads), had just picked up a block of 100 foreclosures directly from a lender without going through a realtor.
Big deal you say. Happens all the time.
Maybe, but [...]

Filed in Real Estate One Response so far

Michigan out 28,000 jobs - August’s 7.4% jobless rate is 14-year high.

Excerpted from the Detroit News this morning. . . .  

Michigan’s unemployment rate in August was the worst since since September 1993.  
Massive automotive buyouts and a sharp decline in residential construction were cited as factors for the state’s jobless rate. 
Last month 28,000 jobs were lost in Michigan, bringing the total number lost since this time last year [...]

Filed in Economics One Response so far

A Tale of Two Painters

I am perplexed.
If you read the paper you can tell how bad the housing market is here. With that comes the decline in home improvement which hits the trades people hard. Very hard. I know of at least three crews that I had bid jobs over the winter that are no longer in the business.
It’s [...]

Filed in Real Estate One Response so far

My Buy-and-Hold Performance Metric – Cost per Equity Dollar

If you’re even a semi-regular reader of this blog, then you already know that I’m a huge fan of buying and holding properties as rentals, because it can yield and infinite ROI (See the post on NOOP).
In a nutshell, NOOP demonstrated a repeatable process where you buy a property for cash (business credit, private investor, [...]

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You Never Could Tax Your Way to Prosperity

Lest you think that this is a diatribe related to politics, relax. Long, long ago I gave up letting the micro-brains in government (both elected and unelected) impact by disposition.
No, this is a post about economics. And basic economics at that.
I have long believed that the framers of our constitution should have included a minimum [...]

Filed in Economics One Response so far