Rants and Raves

Off-Topic Friday: A Hedge Fund Roach Motel?

Since this blog is dedicated to the pursuit of commercial and residential cash flow properties, I want to introduce a new feature this week that will let me stray and post my observations on various things that have happened throughout the week that don’t relate to real estate. I’m calling it Off-Topic Friday, although because of the holiday I’m posting a day early. Today there are a couple of items to review: Item #1: Rush…

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Apartment Buildings

Brass Tacks, Brass Balls, Whatever. It’s Time to Decide

It’s been a while since I’ve posted an update to my Apartment Quest series.   It hasn’t been due to any lack of motivation or activity on my part. Nope. Our lack of progress has been due to Mr. Seller. It seems that he’s been hitting the crack pipe lately – hard!   He somehow got the idea that he can call all the shots and sell a $1 million building on his own terms…

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Rants and Raves

Screw It – Because Fear Sucks

I think that we’d all agree that the last couple of weeks have been brutal ones for our various markets: the stock market closed Friday at 2004 levels, Oil is at an all-time high, and the real estate market here in Michigan continues to plunge to new lows. And all I keep hearing is doom and gloom from the chicken-littles here. And it’s not just the media that’s perpetuating and worse yet – AMPLIFYING these…

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Cash Flow Real Estate Investing

These Market Returns Suck

Captain Obvious reporting. I was reading the Wall Street Journal yesterday and saw how bad things are right now in terms of available returns on investment. You can tell the bad news by just reading the headlines and some of the charts: Steep Fall for High-Flyers  (China and India stock markets are down over 50%) Even Defensive Names Take Hits  (Merck and Pfizer at multi-year lows) The Dow is down 10.7% this year and 11.7%…

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Cash Flow Real Estate Investing

The Credit Crunch is Hurting Commercial Real Estate

Thomson financial published a good article** on this this morning. Commercial real estate is (and has been) dead here in southeastern Michigan now for a while, except for apartments, which keep going strong. I’m seeing low vacancies, strong rental demand, and healthy rents. This combined with fantastic cap rates and upside potential make this a great time to own apartment buildings here – if you can get them financed or buy them on a land contract. (You can…

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Rants and Raves

The Journey is THE Thing

Call it blinding flash of the obvious number, what? 87 or 88 for me at least? But after spending the last 25 years or so always looking out toward the future, I figured out a couple of weeks ago that the journey is really the thing.   Those of you that have already figured that out are wondering what the big deal is and why I’m writing about it.   Those that haven’t figured it…

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