I’ve been competing with my brother Rex and my
friend Sha to see who will become a “millionaire” first. Sha has no idea this
competition even exists and I like it that way. Rex knows about it though, and
here’s a status update.
On Wednesday, Sha and I hung out after work. He was
supposed to pay for lunch but later said he could only pay for lunch if it was
under $20. So I paid for lunch at Pizzeria Uno. While there, we talked about a
lot of things and I tried to get a gauge on how his real estate business is
going (although when you own about 15 properties and don’t have the money to
cover a $20 lunch, that can’t be a good sign). He lamented about his marriage,
talking about how much money his wife Sonya spends and how he has to buy her a lot of
useless shit, like jewelry and stuff. When I asked him why he has to buy her
these things he simply said, “Because she’s a fucking wife.” He’s also paying
for a 2 and a half week trip to Guyana that they’ll be taking soon. He
continues to deal with mortgage foreclosures and continues to warn me not to bother with mortgages anymore. He's no longer trying to repair his credit, stating that he's "done with that shit" and his "credit is universally fucked". After lunch we went driving around to some of
his properties for various reasons.
One tenant had no hot water tank and therefore no
water. His handymen are still a bunch of creepy looking bastards, one who was
actually arrested this week for felony kidnapping, burglary, and robbery. In
his commercial property, he’s evicting the barbershop tenants who haven’t paid
in 3 months and has decided to take it over. He plans to keep all the tenants’ barber
booths and rent them out while his wife runs the salon in the back. Seems like
a good idea, but I see some problems ahead. The business of buying properties
and renting them out for profit is simple and straightforward. Taking over and
then running a barbershop and hair salon when you have no experience in the
field seems like a really bad idea, with a myriad of things that can go wrong.
Overall, I think he’s doing about the same that he was doing before, only now
he’s taking bigger risks.
As far as my brother Rex goes, he’s back on his feet
after stumbling in February due to lack of income. On his blog he wrote “Made
10% Thursday morning. Friday was NFP and I decided not to trade, though in the
future I will trade NFP. I’m treating it like a business new and my head is
screwed on straight.” I have no idea what that first part meant as I know very
little about Forex trading, but that last part makes me think that he’s doing
good business again—which is bad for me competition-wise. Getting property
Charlie this year will put me in the running, but right now I’m just refining
my business strategy and saving up money. Speaking of property Charlie, I went
to the code enforcement offices to get a copy of any code violations for
Prospective Property Charlie #1, and received a full 13 PAGES worth! Most of
the issues seemed easy to fix and my initial estimate of 10k to get the place
rental ready seems to be accurate. At least I know I won’t have much
competition in buying the place. Once I can get my first commercial property
and rent it out fully, I can start pulling ahead of Sha and start catching up
with Rex.
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