Opportunity's Bad Timing

Cardio Power and Resistance (Monday)
22 out of 39 minutes. I don’t know why but I was out of leg strength after the second round of power jumps, but was able to do 2 straight warm ups without a break. 7 minutes less than last week. Win some lose some.

Pure Cardio (Tuesday)
39 out of 39 minutes with breaks. Immobile for 20 minutes after the workout. Switch kicks are very difficult to do. Did two straight warm ups, then made it through the jumping jacks on the third warm up. First full workout completed.

No Workout Today

My mom Rita, the owner of property Chi, called me up to ask me a question. After last week’s family affair I decided to let it go to voicemail. She wanted to know if my credit was good because she wants to buy an apartment in the co-op building where we lived in Brooklyn, and use my name to buy it.

Ocean Avenue in Brooklyn is going through some renovations, where you have many of the old black people either dying or selling their properties, making way for the white people to swoop in and buy the properties cheap and wait for the values to go up. This is the same thing they did in Harlem. The apartment building that I grew up in is right in the middle of this change and could be very profitable to anyone on the ground floor. However, even if I DID have good credit, I still wouldn’t do it, and I have three reasons why.

I can’t do business with family or anyone else just yet. I don’t like the idea of doing business when I’m not retired. I want to have something substantial on my own before I start making deals with people for more money. Right now, I like having my own thing and I need to build it up to be at least a 10k a month operation before I can start branching out.

The second reason is Rita. For the last couple months she hasn’t been herself. I’ve asked her to send me my W-2s from Brooklyn since the middle of January and she has yet to do it. She’s usually very efficient when it comes to deadlines and taking care of business but it hasn’t been like that lately. Rumor is going around the family that she’s getting re-married to someone, and told everyone not to tell me who it is or I’d be pissed. I really don’t care who it is either way, but I’m guessing this whole marriage thing is playing into her change in behavior. Believe me; I’m very happy that she’s getting re-married. With someone new in her life she’ll have less time to bother me, and I could never get pissed off about that. But if this is the new Rita that I would be doing business with, combined with the way she “manages” property Chi (have me do all the work then give her a monthly check), then I am happy to say “no thank you”.

Giving up on a deal like this will cost me. By just lending out my name, I could have a property on record that can be worth over 200k easy. An old college friend of mine, Nino, and his mom bought a property in Bushwick for 230k back in 2005. They held onto it for 3 years and sold it for 560k, a profit of over 300k. It’s very possible that could happen with this condo deal so I really am giving up a great opportunity. But all this holding onto property and waiting stuff is not my kind of business. I like monthly rent and that’s what I do. I especially hate the idea of having rental property in Brooklyn dealing with evictions that can take up to 6 months and taxes that are among the highest in the country.

My place is in Smalltown. This is the foundation for everything. It’s easy money, cheap properties, and the chance to make it big without too much competition. First the foundation needs to be built here. Maybe once business is up and running I can take chances like this, but for now I’ll have to turn these opportunities down.