I’ve looked at thousands of houses over the years, and one of the fastest ways to get a conversation sideways is to start with the sentence, “My house is worth $X.” Sometimes the number came from an online estimate. Sometimes a neighbor sold for that amount. Sometimes an agent mentioned what the house might bring after it was cleaned up and listed. Sometimes it is simply the number the owner needs in order for the…
The court website will tell you what forms to file. It will show you the steps. The sequence. The structure. If you follow it carefully, you can get through the process. What it won’t tell you is what this actually feels like. Because the hardest part of probate in Wayne County isn’t the paperwork. It’s everything happening around it at the same time. The Role Nobody Really Explains On paper, the role is simple. You’re the personal…
I wrote about this back in 2009. The idea was simple then, and it hasn’t changed: most people confuse activity with accomplishment. If anything, it’s worse now. We have more tools, more systems, and more ways to organize, track, and optimize how we work. You can build an entire environment around your productivity – apps, dashboards, workflows—and still end the day with nothing meaningful to show for it. That’s the trap. Busy feels like progress…
You’ll hear people say: “Nobody quits being a landlord after one bad tenant.” That sounds good. It also isn’t true. I’ve seen people get out after one. In Detroit. And in a lot of cases? They had no idea what they were walking into. What They Saw (And Why It Looked So Good) They saw the numbers. They saw the rent. They saw the return on paper. And the numbers looked spectacular. You can buy…
I’ve always loved this quote first uttered by a Prussian Field Marshal 155 years ago and often repeated: “No battle plan survives first contact with the enemy.” Everyone nods when they hear it. Then they go right back to treating the plan like it’s gospel. Especially the less experienced crowd. You see it all the time—perfectly formatted plans, color-coded timelines, dependencies mapped out like it’s a NASA launch. And underneath it, this quiet assumption: “If…
Let’s Stop Pretending This Is Harmless Here’s what most people tell themselves: “It’s just sitting there.” No it’s not. It’s deteriorating. It’s costing you money. And it’s quietly getting harder to deal with every single month. The reality is, vacant property costs in Detroit don’t stay flat—they stack. Fast. A vacant house isn’t paused. It’s moving, just in the wrong direction. And the longer you wait, the more expensive that movement becomes. TL;DR — Read This First…