{"id":292,"date":"2006-09-05T19:52:42","date_gmt":"2006-09-06T02:52:42","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/?p=292"},"modified":"2009-03-06T18:55:49","modified_gmt":"2009-03-07T01:55:49","slug":"realty-reality-lous-lament-in-22-unhappy-photos","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/292\/realty-reality-lous-lament-in-22-unhappy-photos\/","title":{"rendered":"Realty Reality: Lou’s lament in 22 unhappy photos . . ."},"content":{"rendered":"

I’ve written a bunch of these stories, and I’ve got a bunch more in me — I did CRS the hard way. Most of them have happy endings. This one does, too, I suppose, but the middle gets pretty morose. I’m telling the story to illustrate how badly things can go wrong in real estate despite the best preparation, despite the best of intentions.<\/p>\n

This is a story about Lou, a long-time client whom I admire very deeply but have never met in person. He found us on the internet, and he’s been with us through thick and thin for coming on three years. In that time we have bought five houses, failed to buy many more, and we’ve sold three. There’s one more out there that we’re trying to sell right now<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Lou is a cop, a detective for a police department in a big California city. He makes a good living in his forty-hour week, then double that or more on over-time that never seems to end. Because of this, he has been able to invest in real estate for years, buying, fixing and flipping properties in California. He came to me when the prices in California got too high.<\/p>\n

In the midst of the price boom here, we bought five rental properties — one condo and four single-family-homes. Lou was most interested in buying homes with tenants already under lease, but this put us into very competitive bidding situations. We were careful to buy into properties that were either cash-flow positive or at least neutral, so we wrote a whole lot more contracts than we got accepted.<\/p>\n

I was working by myself on my end. I don’t know if Lou has ever been to Phoenix, but I’ve never caught a glimpse of the man. He would review listings I had sent by email and ask me to follow-up on those that seemed promising. I would do drive-bys, taking photos and looking for red flags. Then we would run the numbers on the property, and, if it made sense, write the contract. I have worked with a lot of game investors, but none Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I’ve written a bunch of these stories, and I’ve got a bunch more in me — I did CRS the hard way. Most of them have happy endings. This one does, too, I suppose, but the middle gets pretty morose. I’m telling the story to illustrate how badly things can go wrong in real estate […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_crdt_document":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[6,5,10],"tags":[],"class_list":{"0":"post-292","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"hentry","6":"category-marketing","7":"category-real-estate","8":"category-realty-reality","10":"no-featured-image"},"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"jetpack-related-posts":[{"id":927,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/927\/a-few-good-expenses-a-defense-of-the-salespersons-art\/","url_meta":{"origin":292,"position":0},"title":"A few good expenses: A defense of the salesperson’s art","author":"Greg Swann","date":"January 22, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"My friend Richard Nikoley dug this up. I've never bought a lap dance, but I've expensed a lot of meals. Technorati Tags: blogging, real estate, real estate marketing","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":224,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/224\/realty-reality-my-friend-andy-is-a-student-a-landlord-and-an-american-hero\/","url_meta":{"origin":292,"position":1},"title":"Realty reality: My friend Andy is a student, a landlord — and an American hero . . .","author":"Greg Swann","date":"August 19, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"I've known Andy since he was a teenager, and Cathy has known his mother, Sally, since before Andy was a gleam in anyone's eye. I've always liked him, and it's not always easy for me to like teenage boys. But Andy has been an earnest young man for as long\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Marketing"","block_context":{"text":"Marketing","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/marketing\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":629,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/629\/links-for-a-very-busy-saturday\/","url_meta":{"origin":292,"position":2},"title":"Links for a very busy Saturday . . .","author":"Greg Swann","date":"November 11, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"I'm selling at least two houses this weekend, so I'm catch as catch can. I want to write a very involved Realty Reality story, too, so my Saturday is much enriched. Here are some other riches: Realty Thoughts ponders the differences between the Inman shows and NARdiGRAS. Here's one that\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1533,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/1533\/another-happy-customer-for-robson\/","url_meta":{"origin":292,"position":3},"title":"Another Happy Customer For Robson?","author":"Russell Shaw","date":"June 13, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"I happened to stumble into finding out about the website, robsonunfair.com by receiving an email. The people who put up the site are more than a little unhappy with their attempts to resolve their grievances with their homebuilder. The link from their site I found most interesting was this one.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Marketing"","block_context":{"text":"Marketing","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/marketing\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"Kathy_Robson","src":"https:\/\/i0.wp.com\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2007\/06\/Kathy_Robson.jpg?resize=350%2C200","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]},{"id":210,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/210\/realty-reality-when-life-hands-you-a-lemon-remodel\/","url_meta":{"origin":292,"position":4},"title":"Realty reality: When life hands you a lemon — remodel . . .","author":"Greg Swann","date":"August 14, 2006","format":false,"excerpt":"Sonia came to us from our web site in mid-April, 2005. Young, unmarried, working very diligently at a job that should have paid better than it did. She was pre-qualified at $115,000, which was a very hard number to hit at that time and would be virtually impossible by now.\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Marketing"","block_context":{"text":"Marketing","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/marketing\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"","width":0,"height":0},"classes":[]},{"id":1044,"url":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/1044\/book-review-realty-blogging-a-comprehensive-introduction-to-real-estate-weblogging\/","url_meta":{"origin":292,"position":5},"title":"Book Review: Realty Blogging a comprehensive introduction to real estate weblogging . . .","author":"Greg Swann","date":"February 14, 2007","format":false,"excerpt":"Back when I used to have a job, I was a complete Insufferable Bastard of a boss. I wouldn't let people take notes about jobs to be done or how to resolve hardware or software problems. \"If you don't know it in your brain, you don't know it.\" Nobody bought\u2026","rel":"","context":"In "Blogging"","block_context":{"text":"Blogging","link":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/category\/blogging\/"},"img":{"alt_text":"","src":"http:\/\/www.assoc-amazon.com\/e\/ir?t=gregswann-20&l=as2&o=1&a=0071478957","width":350,"height":200},"classes":[]}],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=292"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":7361,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/292\/revisions\/7361"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=292"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=292"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.bloodhoundrealty.com\/BloodhoundBlog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=292"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}