If you’re at all a regular reader of this space, you know that I’m a hawk for cash flow. Regular, boring, methodical cash flow. Not only that, but I have been boldly proclaiming far and wide now for over a year that southeastern Michigan is THE best investment real estate market in the country for buy-and-hold cash flow investors. And it continues to get BETTER. The real estate market here is still in absolute gridlock.…
Category: Real Estate
Part II of Finding the Perfect Deadbeat
Yesterday I started a discussion on how finding, screening, and selecting tenants is Critical Success Factor #2 for being successful at owning rental properties. And I began to discuss the four steps that need to be taken to screen and select successfully. I talked about step 1 yesterday. That was Set expectations up front. I’ll finish up with the rest of the steps today. 2. Do not advertise your unit for rent too early. You heard that right. You can advertise…
Critical Success Factor #2 – Selecting the Perfect Deadbeat to Give Your House To
That’s harsh I know. And the way that I run my business it’s not at all accurate, because I have some of the best renters that you could imagine. But think about it – you have a house that’s worth, say $100,000. You’ve bought it, done some work to it, and you’ve made sure that you’ve complied with the rental-unit laws in your city. Then you spend time looking for someone to GIVE the house to.…
Talk About the Law of Unintended Consequences
As I look at the stock market, at the moment the DOW is at 10,844, down another 215 points today. Do you know what this means? That as of right now the market is only 476 points above where it was eight years ago after the internet bubble burst. It’s still above the lows that we saw after 911, but when you look at the market as a whole? Over the last eight years the…
CRITICAL Success Factor #1
Here we go again.  Don’t you just love it when someone asks your opinion of something that you actually happen to know a LOT about, you give them the answer, then they proceed to argue with you?  It happened to me again last week.  And unfortunately it was one of those I-already-made-the-decision-so-I’m-only-asking-you-because-I-want-to-validate-in-my-own-mind-that-I-was-right kind of questions.  I’ll spare you the details, but the person bought a trashed out house in a marginal area that he’s…
The Curse of OPM
How many times have you heard that OPM is the key to all the riches in real estate? Seriously – you can’t turn on a single late-night real estate tv infomercial without some fly-by-night “guru” with a Bentley and a bevy of blonde babes screeching at you about using OPM to make you rich beyond your wildest dreams. I should know – I’ve watched them all. (For the information only. Not the babes. Really) The…