Real Estate

Apparently the US Postal service did deliver my Chicago condo application.  They just forgot to scan it so it kept saying it wasn’t delivered.  We figured it out because someone cashed the cashier’s check that was in the package.

First, the condo in Chicago charged me a full month’s rent ($1750) because my tenant stayed less than a year and she had a 2 year lease.  According to the newly adopted HOA’s, if a tenant leaves early, I must apply for a hardship waiver in order to be able to re-lease the unit out again.  If the waiver is approved, I have to pay a one month penalty.  Those fucking bastards.  I hope that building burns down one day.  I did talk to a real estate attorney and he told me that what they are doing is legal.  However, my lease could be grandfathered in since it was signed prior to this new rule.  However, the cost of fighting it and the possibility of losing wasn’t worth the $1750.

Houston Apartment #1 has a capital call.  We have been trying to refinance this property for about 8 months now.  It currently has a 2 year loan that is due in a few months.  Financing has dried up and there aren’t that many loan options out there.  The reason for the capital call is because the HUD loan that we are getting is requiring that we put $250,000 into escrow to use for building maintenance over the next 35 years.  This capital call is purely due to this escrow amount and is not because the property is bleeding.  The property has been about break even for the past 6 months.   The good news is that once this loan has closed, the apartment complex will cashflow.  The bad news is that each shareholder has to come up with about $10,000.

E-Businesses

The 3 ebusiness stores I have are doing ok I guess.  Cumulatively, they bring in halfway decent income even in this poor economy.  Hopefully things will get better.  I’m hoping for a decent second half of 2009.  So far, my first store is about 20% below last year’s first half of 2008 revenue.   But the good news is that I now have 3 stores.

The yoga bag store actually did pretty decent in June.  Not too bad for its 2nd month.  PPC prices are too high for the yoga industry so I need to work on its SEO some more.

I have another store waiting in the wings, but I’m torn between opening it and putting my efforts in a different direction.  The stores are great and fairly easy to run, but the bigger and easier money is to move up the food chain, to become a wholesaler to retail stores, or becoming a dropshipper, or to manufacture a product.  I’ve been looking into prototyping companies to see how much they cost to build some samples of whatever.

I feel like I have the knowledge to successfully sell a product online, either to consumers or other retailers.  I just need to come up with a product.

Vegas

I was in Vegas a few weeks ago with the Bluefire folks.  I had a decent run at the blackjack tables.  I ran hot during one shoe and actually lost only 5 hands during an entire 7 deck shoe.  In fact, I won my first 15 hands! Needless to say, I came back from Vegas a winner!

One funny hand, There were 4 of us at the blackjack table.  A random guy sits down in the middle seat.  He thinks he knows how to play, but clearly doesn’t because he tells me I’m not supposed to double down on an 11 against a face card.  So anyway, it’s me, 3 pro poker players AKA pro gamblers and this guy.  We are doubling down on 9’s, soft 15’s, soft 16’s.  The random guy looks baffled and probably thinks we’re crazy.

So one hand the dealer is showing a 3 and this guy has 13.  Granted its a marginal stay and this guy tanks.  He’s sitting there thinking and we think he can’t decide between a hit or a stay.  You should have seen the look on my friend Jason’s face when this guy doubles down!  It was priceless.  The guy spikes an 8!  The rest of us stay and the dealer flips over a 13 and proceeds to bust.  If that guy stayed, the dealer would have hit 21.

BTW, playing with professional poker players is alot more fun because they know that there is no such thing as someone taking the dealer’s bust card.  They don’t care if the person on 3rd base can’t play.  The cards are the cards and the money is just money.  You win some and lose some.

We were eating dinner in the Rio and Jason says I can’t decide if I want to hang out with you guys tonight or go to work.  Work meaning go to the poker room next door!  It’s just funny to hear someone say it!

Gold

I had promised to myself earlier this year that I would start taking my online poker winnings and using them to purchase some gold.  Last week I received a check from my poker account and I want to go purchase a shiny gold coin.  I’m leaning towards a 1 oz. Gold Eagle or Canadian Maple Leaf.  Originally, I was going to purchase an ingot but I’ve read that the coins are actually more liquid than ingots.

Miscellaneous

Last week, I rented an excavator to dig my koi pond.  I am building a 18′x13′x2′ koi pond in the backyard.  It took me and my cousin 2 weeks to dig the first foot of the pond.  Then the temperature went up to over 100 and we basically were doing 10 minutes a day.  So I got the excavator on a cloudy day and within two hours had the whole pond dug down to 6 foot deep!  I sort of went overboard, but operating construction equipment is really fun.  After I returned the excavator I had to fill the pond back up to 3-4 ft.  I got the liner on order but I probably won’t get the whole pond done until August.

That’s because next week I’m going to Colorado for our annual mountain biking trip.  This year is Breckenridge!

I just got back from a 3 day camping trip in the Grand Canyon.  I did the rim to rim hike from the north rim to the south rim which is about 24 miles.  I camped for 2 nights at the bottom of the canyon.  It was nice to have no internet or cell phone access for 3 days.  It was a tough hike and we were lucky because the weather which is usually 105-115 degrees at the bottom, was only 75 degrees and it was overcast.  It started raining and got cold when I was about 2 miles from the top of the rim.  I can’t imagine doing that hike in the heat, it would have taken me twice as long.

Leaving for 3 days made me realize that I need a plan for my ebiz stores when I’m gone.  For this time I basically decided to process the orders once I got back and hope that nobody needed an order shipped ASAP.  It all worked out.  It’s always nice to go away for 3 days and still be making money.

My condo in Chicago was rented last month, but the HOA never got back to me on my rental application.  That’s because my application packet has been sitting at the post office awaiting pickup since May 23rd.  I sent it Priority Mail and have no idea why the USPS is not delivering it.  I’ve talked to the HOA and they have to go pick it up at the post office.  WTF???  Anyway, I talked to the building manager and he’ll help me fast track my application and get my tenant moved in on time.

The AC unit went out on one of my SLC townhomes.  That’s another $650 down the tubes.  The tenants are moving out in my other SLC townhome at the end of this month.

David Heinemeier Hansson, creator of the Ruby on Rails framework and Partner at 37Signals gives insight into creating a profitable startup company.

Everything was going as planned as we stepped up to the plate in the final inning down 8-16.  To make a long story short, we finished the inning with 11 runs and held a 19-16 lead going into the bottom of the inning.  Our lead held up and we were advancing to the next round.  We then won the 2nd round game 17-7 and it was on to the championship game.

The team we played in the championship was 14-0 and had just won their playoff game 20-0.  After the 3rd inning we were down only 5-2.  Now, I wish I could say that we had a miracle comeback and won the league championship, but we were unable to pull off our 3rd win and finished in 2nd place.

We all went to celebrate at a local restaurant and called it a night at around 12:30am.  Needless to say, we didn’t get to see the movie and none of us woke up at 6am the next morning to go mountain biking.

DONE
* Input my financials for all stores into Quicken (Bought Quickbooks but still can’t use it properly)
* Fixing shipping tables on Ebiz #2 (50% of orders are now international, so my shipping tables need to be more accurate)
* SEO Ebiz 1 (Wasn’t on the list but done anyway)

Unfortunately this blog is pretty low on my priority list.  I have been putting off a bunch of things that I need to do with my ecommerce stores.  So I’ve been slowly catching up with my list of stuff to do.  Problem is that since I set my own deadlines, they tend to slip and slip.  But this week I decided to hunker down and knock these things out.

Ebiz To Do List

• Input my financials for all stores into Quicken (Bought Quickbooks but still can’t use it properly)
• Upgrade Ebiz #1 to Interspire (Almost finished it last weekend but then Interspire came out with a new version that I need to upload)
• Fixing shipping tables on Ebiz #2 (50% of orders are now international, so my shipping tables need to be more accurate)
• Make 3 posts on Yoga store (Ebiz 3) blog
• Add new products to Ebiz 1 and 2
• Make 1 post on Ebiz 1 and 2 blogs announcing new products
• SEO Yoga store
• Add reciprocal link software for Ebiz 2
• SEO Ebiz 2
• Open Ebiz 4 (which is a combo of Ebiz 1 and 2)

OTHER TO DO List

• Work on the Circuit Board site
• Work on the Chicago pizza site
• Update my Vacation Site
• Build my Koi Pond :-)

Last weekend I went Canyoneering at the Salome Jug.  He are a few pictures from the trip.  I hate the way the wide angle lens makes me look all round.

So this is me floating in the water with the helmet camera.  Notice the blue sky and sunshine.

This is how we go from a high point to a low point… only after someone else tells us if the water is deep enough.

Later on the clouds rolled in and it started hailing.  The hail was maybe about 3/8″ in diameter.  I managed to get a 4 second video of it below (my camera ran out of batteries).

I saw a bunch of waterfalls, but after a while a waterfall is a waterfall.  I still think that Havasu and Mooney Falls are both alot prettier.

I was able to fulfill orders and answer customer emails at night.  Every place we stayed had free internet access, even in Hana!

So what’s new?

SLC Townhome

I found out that I had been paying my tenants’ electricity bill for 3 months in SLC.  I had an empty SLC townhome which I was paying the electric bill while it was empty.  As you know, that townhome got rented on May 1st so when I got another electric bill I noticed.  I found out that my tenants in my other SLC townhome had cancelled their electric on Feb 9th.  The electricity reverted back into my name and I was unknowingly paying it.

Now, here’s why I was paying it.  The bills were only $23-$27.  I had just assumed that this was the monthly bill for my empty unit.  After looking closer, my empty unit was at $6/mo only.  Now I don’t understand how 3 girls living in a 1500ft place can spend only $23-$27 a month on electric!  Electricity is apparently very cheap in SLC.  I told my PM about this and the tenants have put the electric back into their name and are going to pay me back.

Also, they are leaving on June 30th, so my PM needs to find new tenants!

Chicago Condo

I got my Chicago condo rented again, thus keeping my streak of no vacancy days ever.  I had to lower the rent by $75/mo.

Every time I rent out this condo I get mad at my HOA.  The fees are just criminal and if I ever move into this condo I’m going to run for the board and shake up the place.  I have to pay $100 for a new tenant application which includes a shit load of paperwork.  Then I spent $15 on photo copies and another $5 to send them the application.  I wish I could bill them for my time.  On top of that, there is a $200 elevator rental fee for move-in and move-out.

Peoria House

Finally got the loan mod package.  Unfortunately, I can’t talk about it on here.  They offered to drop my payment by 60%!  However, there are alot of strings attached and it’s unclear as to whether this mod is for my 1st mortgage only.  It states nothing about the 2nd mortgage.  I’m also not sure if it includes escrow and taxes.  It’s also not clear if the missing interest will be added to your balance.  You are also required to send in a bunch of financials.  It feels just like you are getting a new loan.  I have so many questions about it.

I have a Samsung instinct which I supposedly can tether to my netbook for internet access.  But since I just got the netbook I haven’t been able to figure out how to do it yet.

See you all in a week!