The Successful Landlord Blog

Recently I went to the IZEAFest blogger conference which was held in downtown Orlando. I probably shouldn’t have been, but was surprised at the number of “Space Available” signs on what seemed like ALL the high-rise office buildings in the downtown area. I mean, I know times are tough but you would think that the tenants looking to rent in these building would be a little more averse to the recent ups-and-downs in the economy.

Also interesting is the occupancy of the large national banks in these buildings. My hotel room faced a building having at least 40 floors with the name Wachovia emblazoned across the top. If banks are failing left and right, how can they afford to occupy enough of a 40-story building to have their name on it?

I know that Orlando is a major city in Florida and the big banks feel the need to have a presence and all major city centers but business is business. According to the Orlando Business Journal , “Wachovia posts $8.9 billion loss, will cut 10,7500 jobs.” I guess it’s better for the company’s bottom-line to cut jobs than relinquish real estate in a major city center.

So, this past weekend I discovered a really cool service you can use for property scouting. The service is called Jott.com. This free (my favorite kind) service converts your voice into lists, reminders, notes to self, notes to others, etc.

Where the cool part comes in is when you link Jott to Zillow.com. Now, seeing that Zillow is not super accurate, you want to use it to just get an idea of the price of a property. Basically, you call up Jott.com at 866-JOTT123 from your cell phone and say”Zillow Melbourne Beach” for instance. Then say the street number and spell out the street name.

At that point Jott.com will text message you with a Zestimate^® from Zillow. How cool is that!!??

Jott.com also offers a “custom” link where you can have Jott query your own web service (if you’re programatically inclined) and return the web service response to you. Now I’m going to be awake all night thinking about what I can do with this thing!

First off, sorry for the posting drought. Being a landlord is but one of my attempts at creating other streams of income. In the mean time, I’ve been working on the other streams, none of which are within the scope of this blog.

But as an aside, I have been reading the blogs of a couple of other people who are on this same path. They are very interesting and informative so you should check them out of you haven’t already. They are www.livelearninvest.com and www.livingoffdividends.com

So back to the matter at hand. Recently, I’ve been on a total take-no-prisoners campaign to cut my insurance costs. I’ve been attacking the insurance policies on my rental property mostly because the premiums are completely ridiculous compared to what they were when I bought these houses. I mean, I did allow for some increase in the cost of insurance (and taxes) but not DOUBLE or TRIPLE the amount. And of course, my insurance agent is not going to call and say, “You know if you did this and this with your coverage, you could save some money.”

Here’s the interesting turn of events: As a result of these efforts, two of the rental properties are (freaking finally) back in the black. This means barring of course, the need to fix a plumbing waste line or god forbid a complete re-pipe due to a slab leak. And it’s only February……

So if you’re close to something wooden, please knock it for good luck for me.

Also, I promise to post more often in the near future. Thanks for reading.

Something occurred to me the other day. We (the American consumer) are totally expected to be lazy and undisciplined. I mean, really, there are even business models built on that expectation and fact.

Have you ever seen financing deals directed at consumers and/or homeowners that sport advertising tag lines like “12 months, same as cash financing?” I have bought many items with this kind of financing and never paid a penny in interest. These items range from smaller items like my iPod ($500 with three months, same as cash financing) to larger items like my new air conditioning system ($8,000 with 12 months, same as cash financing.)

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