All Forum Posts by: Account Closed

in chicago, for $750, a 1 bedroom in a moderate neighborhood.

When I was in college, the department I was in had a lot of eccentric characters. There was this one professor that is so old he could've been fully tenured 3 times over. And then there were this bunch of newly tenured professors that liked to play jokes and, among other things, smoke weed. I recall this story - they would smoke in the stairwell and holdtheir breath, run to his office and blow the smoke under the door to piss off the other guy! Surprisingly (or perhaps not surprisingly), this is a major econ dept and at least one of these people (who is a mentor of mine) has made a fortune in RE, and is a prominent scholar. Some people have a drink when they get home after a long day, others have a smoke.

One of his recent jokes included running into the classroom of a brand new young teacher and throwing a chicken at them. I guess the life of an academic is not too bad.

And lots of general contractors here use the iphone so I wouldn't exactly call it "metrosexual." Especially this mason fellow I am working with right now... Tall (like 1.5 heads taller than me) and skinny, thick polish accent, pointy moustache... commands an army to get 7 weeks worth of work done in 3 (and I'm sure he's not just running my project right now).

I used to have a Blackjack and it was actually a very good phone! I now use an iphone and it has so many functionalities it is almost endless. Sometimes I just sit in wonder at this marvelous piece of technology (blackberries too!) and can you imagine what kind of tech we will have in 5 years? imagine an iphone half the thickness and with the surface area of a small book. Incredible! my friend that works in the wifi biz mentioned that there is currently technology available for bendable monitors and computers.

I use ATT in chicago but when I have travel to places like Boston and Seattle, my reception has been less than stellar. I think a lot of this has to do with local networks and I bet searching on the internet will yield much discussion on where particular phone services are strong.

If you are not finished with your contract, however, I would just stick around. The costs of switching are quite severe.

I use a company that I found online that offers local or 1800 numbers that have a variety of features. Including a computerized voicemail (press 1 for ... press 2 for...), forwarding, customized times, and my favorite bit, a web interface to see all the calls that you've received. Some include fax as well that you will receive in your email.

What I do is I have the custom number as my office number and have it forward to my mobile phone during office hours. It shows up on my phone screen in a way that I can tell that it is being forwarded from that number.

Searching virtual pbx in google will yield many of these companies.

Recently, there was data indicating that home sales, especially in pre-owned homes, shot up 5% or something. New constructions are still down. The purchases in pre-owned homes is largely due to investors picking up foreclosures that are good deals. It is very difficult to say, objectively, what is the bottom or what does it constitute? Many investors here are looking to buy their way to the bottom, if the numbers of the property work out.

Also, I guess... I don't have any idea of what I should be looking at to predict the market, though it looks like the gobbling up of foreclosures is the movement towards the equilibrium, and inflows into the system, clearing up a lot of the bad debt. But if you're looking for a deal, I think its really been the time to look for the last few months.

I have used credit card services in my other business and have found it heart breaking when after we get the money through the credit card transactions we have to pay the fees, and each week is like a few hundred dollars (a few thousand dollars total all year) and you're thinking wtf this is not worth it! Even in a business with 30 clients and 200k in revenue, it was not worth the 3 percent just for the convenience of them paying me online. When I go into quickbooks and see how much I have paid in credit card transaction fees it is so depressing. Nothing is better than a check.

One time, the credit card company claimed that some of the charges were fraudulent! They withheld the money. I called my clients and asked them to call them to clear it up. After they called them it took the company 3 days to give us our money! We called them every day and faxed them whatever they wanted, and it was so embarrassing when we couldn't pay our vendors the big check that we promised on that date. Horrible customer service! They just want your money!

Kevin, the illinois secretary of state charged me a processing fee just the other day. Not that I would argue with the machine.

The rental property market in Chicago is showing signs of slowdown. There seems to be less people inquiring and more units for selection. There has been significant condo development all around Chicago, and now many cannot be sold. So we are seeing beautiful brand new condos being rented out at decent prices. I believe this trend is happening in other urban areas, notably New York. Lots more selection for renters out there in the same price ranges that older apartments rent for.

I have one unit in a 3 flat (2br/1bath) that has been rented for $2000 - 2100 over the years. Its quite nice actually, though now we have competitors around the corner like:
http://chicago.craigslist.org/chc/apa/1102426928.html

The guy across the street from me that is a good comparison to my property lowered his rents to $1900 and has had his place on the market for about 2 weeks. I have a few months until my tenants move out, so I think I might do a renovation that I have been thinking about for a few years. People now are looking for a better deal for everything and may prefer to stay in the same place than to move. Construction costs here have gone down so it is a good time to build for the future and deliver value to customers. Just my thoughts.

Some states have a LLC structure named "Series LLC" by which you can hold LLCs as subsidiaries of a parent LLC. All individual LLCs continue have separate liability as long as you keep financials very clean. The benefit is that you can maintain limited liability, staying under a single name, lower fees, and you file your taxes in a single tax return. My tenants write checks out to the parent company and I just have to make sure to deposit them in the correct bank accounts for each LLC series.

I am not sure if they have this in TX, but it may be worth checking into. Actually the Series LLC page on Wikipedia is not bad.

In Illinois, for example, I have a company that is the LLC parent named Johnson Real Estate Company, LLC (not a real company)... each property I hold is held in a subsidiary Series, for example, Johnson Real Estate Company, LLC, Series Fullerton or whatever series name you like. The price of a parent LLC is $750, and after that it is $50 for each series. Compared to $500 for a single regular LLC. I believe I can have unlimited number of series, and they do not have to be in the same field. So if I wanted to start a real estate brokerage (which is what I would like to do), for example, I could keep the same name and just add a series. Cheers ~