Hello my name is Brett and I like to think that I have a great eye for opportunities in life and so I am starting this to be able to write my ideas. It will allow me to focus or refine them and to remember and later tweak or bring to life these ideas.
I believe completely in real estate and the investment potential there is. I grew up the son of a plumber "Steve" who had his own company and the ups and downs that come with small business ownership. He taught me hard work and how to deal with pushy builders and crazy home owners. I love him and owe much of my vision for deals or opportunities to my father. He still inspires me daily with new ideas. One of my fathers builders was a mister Baily who would scrimp and work hard on his own houses being built. He at first did as much as he could and then after several at a time did a little less on each house, but did a lot still. One day he was talking to me and he said that he builds his houses for rentals and that the first one he built had all of the payment the renters made go to the payment and any extra went to the principal each month and he would never touch it. At the time I couldn't see why he would do that but then he explained that on each house he made after that he would not touch the extra that the rent would bring in he simply took it and applied it to the principal on the mortgage for the first rental he built; always living on a strict budget and the money his day job brought in. Compounding the payoff he said and what would take some one 30 years to payoff only took him 7 years from start to finish and the 2nd home paid off even quicker. Recently I found out that Keven had 23 houses and was building them out of his own account.
There were several builders who did the same type of thing. Ray another one would buy old houses during the boom years that people needed moved so they could build on them and he would buy a junk lot some where clean it up and move the house on it. He would do $40- $60,000 per house. The boom died and he recently saw my pops at the post office where he was mailing packages for his eBay business which he claimed he made $4,000 a month with less work then before. He claimed that he had three keys to his eBay success 1. Always keep your rating up at a gold status.
2. Always have 100- 200 items at all times for sale. He would hit auctions or the thrifty nickel for inventory
3. It must be listed the day it comes in
Now eBay has always intrigued me. I own a plumbing company now and the town I live in had a store opened up a very busy area that was called "sale it on eBay" and it went out of business during the crash because the owner was way overstretched on 3 big spec homes that sunk him. But I talked with the manager after it closed down and she said that it was doing very well other then the owner wasn't on his other investments. I was in there at least 6 times dropping off things that were too good to be thrown away but not good enough to store in my garage. One example was a olive green Kohler Toilet seat bowl and lid. With the odd color I had an idea that someone would buy it and some one across the country did and after my 2/3rds I got a $87 check from them. Better then the land fill I thought. The thing that keep hitting me was that each time there was a line of people three deep waiting to list there stuff. The idea is perfect for the American people in so many ways and this is why. We are a lazy society as a whole just look at 30 percent of America is obese were lazy and we want it right now. When the store closed I was really bummed out that my drop it off easy money was gone. Sure I could have done it by myself and made the full amount but I did and still don't have time, or better won't make time. I did a experiment about a year later on my theory that the store was a good idea. I put a small add in the Thrifty Nickle "Looking to get rid of the junk in your closet or garage? Let us list it for you on line and you'll have cash in a little over a week simple and easy. Well I received at least 2 calls a day and 4-5 on the weekends from people wanting to get rid of this and that. I would simply tell them that I wasn't all the way up and running and I would call them back in just a bit when I was going full speed. Several people called me for months. It was the summer time when I did the add and some of the stuff was simply to big to list other then local area pick up. Also somethings were very technical and hard to promote. I tried the add during January of this year and the calls were far less 4-5 a week so I would suspect that people have less gumption during the cold times of the year, it is the same with plumbing calls during January - march it is a slower season.
Opening a "We sale for you online" company is a money maker if you have good writers for the adds and good back drops for the pictures and know how to key word these listings. It is also one that you could get vast numbers of people to work on writing the descriptions. Some would be better then others but a house wife could get the pictures of the items emailed to her at home and during nap time for the kiddo's write a great description of the product and then get a very small 1-2% commission of the sale when it goes threw. Any retired teacher or student would love to do it also. You just need the front man at the counter greeting and listening to how grandma gave her that vase when she was a kid but now its got to go. He will need to see if there is a minimum that they will take and let them know that we take a third of all the sales and that it will be listed for 5- 7 days before it sales and that with in 3 days the check will be in the mail. Then you could use a part time kid or the front man if its slow to set up back drops/ staging for the pictures, then email them to the writers and post the item.
Its almost midnight and I need to sleep so I will write later about the Kearney property and project that was the title of this post.
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