Yesterday was a hookie day from the bank job. Whenever Sandra downloads the security wand, it doesn't start recording until I hit the first chip in the garage. And if I don’t hit any chips, then it doesn’t record anything and I can do whatever I want for the day. So I borrowed Sha’s pickup truck and went driving around.
Both of my properties are on the North Side of Smalltown, where many immigrants come to when they arrive in America. They don’t care where they live, as long as they live on the north side where they can be close to their families, the immigration programs, and other foreign communities. Whenever I drove through a bad neighborhood, I noticed that the houses rented to the immigrants were usually in excellent condition, landscaping in particular. I mean, it was so obvious that it was sad. The street would go like this: awful house, shitty house, crack house, BEAUTIFUL house, shitty house. It’s weird to see. How is it that the people who have lived here for decades turn their neighborhoods into crap while immigrants that have yet to acquire their citizenship can make the same neighborhood look absolutely beautiful? I think one of the answers is that the people that are born and raised here have a different view of America that immigrants do.
I make no secret of how much I love immigrants. I cut my immigrant tenants much more slack than my American tenants, and there’s a damned good reason for that. Immigrants still see this country as the land of opportunity and they don’t complain. The immigrants that work as package handlers at the shipping depot jobs are the only ones that never complain. For them, it’s an opportunity to save up and do something with that money, whether it is to send money home or to buy a house and build a life for their families. The non-immigrants have too much nonsense in front of them to see what they can accomplish with a little hard work. They don’t see America as the land of opportunity because to them, opportunity is how to get on welfare and stay on it for as long as possible. I’m speaking mostly about those bad neighborhoods, where everyone seems to have some stupid hard-luck story about how they ended up in whatever situation they’re in now. They always fail to mention that they’re comfortable in the mess that they created for themselves. It’s the reason why they bring good neighborhoods down. They’ll complain that they live in a crappy neighborhood but, once they move into a nicer one, they bring the same bad habits and drama that they claimed they were a victim to.
Take Lex and the Indians for example, the former tenants of property Alpha’s upstairs apartment. A few months ago, Lex called me to ask if I can sign a form. Since he wasn’t my tenant anymore, I had no idea what he was talking about but decided to meet with him anyway. He drove up in a brand new Prius and told me that he’s applying to purchase a home and needed my recommendation in order to get it. I gladly filled out my section and two months later he has his own home. It was a good feeling to see him move up from renter to homeowner in a little under 3 years. I would sometimes overhear the downstairs Indians talk on the phone with classmates, talking about engineering homework and stuff. Shit, I may even sell them property Alpha when I don’t need it anymore. Immigrants aren’t just living for the present, they’re living for the future and the families they hope to bring here. That’s what makes them better tenants and better people in general. I remember my second REIG meeting (Real Estate Investor Group) where they complained that the immigrants were taking housing away from the minorities. I just read that sentence again. Hmm. No wonder I haven't gone back to that damned group yet.
This only encourages me to continue doing business in Smalltown, especially with immigrants. It may even turn buying in a bad neighborhood into a profitable idea. Once I start making real money in this business, I might test out my theory and buy a line of cheap properties in a bad neighborhood on the north side, then rent it out to immigrants only. I’ll have some kind of down-payment program where a certain percentage of the rent will be used towards their down-payment to purchase the property. Once they have established themselves, I sell it to them and that’s that. I don’t have to keep the bad area properties, make a substantial profit, and they get their own home in a neighborhood that is getting better thanks to their increased presence. Who knows? Maybe I’ll do it, maybe I won’t. I just like the idea that I have that option, and it’s all thanks to non-Americans keeping the American Dream alive. Crazy.
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