Wa wa wee wa!!

So I reposted the ad for the loft room in the place I tried to sell this summer, and, predictably, received several hilariously bad responses. Here's a smattering (I've bolded the best parts)...

Hi,>Am Joseph,26,I am self employed...i work as an affliate partner of the computer associates - sales/marketing . I love travelling, >sporting and enjoy meeting new people.I am cool headed and easy going person with no criminal record.its a great pleasure to inform you that im highly interested in renting the place before i return back to states. i'm currently out of states now,working as a volunteer health worker...currently in the United state for hiv/aids awareness program.But i need the place before i return to states.tell me more about the >place:full description of the place, size, and the equipments in there,the rent fee per month plus the utilities, parking space,the total cost for the my initial move as in first month rent and if i can make advance payment to show commitment(one month rent plus utilities).I will also be coming with some of my furniture&electronics,if allowed. i will appreciate if you can get me the place pics and yours if available.please try and be honest & sincere with me because you know i'll not be able to check it out in person.when is the place will be available?If your is still available,please e-mail me

[Commentary: I forgot to put in my ad that I wanted a "cool-headed" person, so I'm glad "Joseph" mentioned that. Also, I'm pretty sure the scheme he's working constitutes a criminal act??]

Hello Roomie,How was ur day? I hope you are having a wonderful day. Thanks for getting back to me. My name is Melina Crawford I am writing just to confirm if you still have the room for rent. I will like to have the description of the room, size, and the equipments in there. Lastly, I will like to know more about you and also I will like to have your pics as for me to know how my roommate to be looks like. I will like to have the rent fee per month plus the utilities. Also I will like to know if there is any garage or parking space cos I will have my own car come over. I will also be coming with some of my furniture, that is if the room is not funished and if furnitures are allowed, like bed, book shelf cos I read alot, shoe rank etc. I will also like to ! know i! f I can make an advance payment ahead my arrival that will be stand as a kind of commitment that I am truely coming over and for you to hold the room down for me. I will like to know the total cost for the my initial move as in first month rent and if you accept deposit. Here is all I can say about my self for now. I am 26 years old female and I work full time, Monday through Friday and have weekends off exept for once a month. I was born in Ft. Worth, Texas, but I was brought up in Phoenix, AZ, I moved to West african 4month ago after the death of my father, Am a proffessional fashion designer but presently in West Africa (Nigeria) for a program which will be ending soon. It is very interesting to get more knowledge about the new countries, new people and traditions. It's great to have such a possibility. I work in a fashion home as a designer director. I am not really a sports person, BUT I do love Hockey Games. I am a very out going person and fun to be with. I do play the organ and piano,, and I do have BOTH piano and organ here at my house.I am not a drinker and I don't smoke and I don't do drugs. I think you will like living here and YES I would like to go out with you onweekends and weeknights when we are both free.I like going to movies,, concerts ,, plays,,I like camping, hiking, bike ridding, swimming, and I love to travel. I am a very dedicated individual who is totally committed to human development, friendly, very trustworthy and value relationship above anything.I love travelling,sporting and enjoy meeting people around the world.I am an easy going person and like to have an apartment/roommate or Studio who is very responsible and understanding, someone I can! really get along with. I will take my time to get you one of my pics in my next email ,so you can know how I look like, I am sure you will like me. I am presently in CALABA STATES, NIGERIA, and I will be moving to the state to fully to start a new life and get my own business. I will be staying in your apartment for a A YEAR or More or less depending on how the lease is draw I will be arriving to the states as soon as possible......Fortunately, I saw your advert and I amsincerely interested in the room as advertised to arrange for you to get the money prior for my arrival as the company client I worked in the states for before I quit wants to arrnage for the payment. As I will like to make an advance payment ahead my arrival so that you can be rest assured that this is real since I am not in the state presently. If you think I will be agood roommate to you and you! are interested in roomie with meThanks and have a good time.Warmest RegardsMelina Crawford

[Commentary: Where to begin? First off - this represents about the 20th email I've received from "Melina Crawford" in the past year and a half. She's really hard-up for a place! Second, notice the similarities between these two emails ("equipments"). Third, what is a "shoe rank"? Fourthly, I'm glad I will like living here. Fifthly, I'm not sure how much longer I can "hold the room down" - it's pretty feisty!! And finally, she plays the organ and piano, HAS an organ and piano, and is totally committed to human development?!?! SOLD!!!!]

I should ask Melina for her picture, I wonder what she would look like....[HINT: see two posts below!]

A Case of the Mooondays

That's what I've got.

The Washington Bullets are in first place in the Eastern Conference. UVA beat Clemson AT Clemson yesterday. The Nationals now own the rights to every Dominican human being living and dead. On a pesonal note, thanks to an impending hefty tax refund (more on this later), I've finally recovered from the financial duldrums I'd been in for several months since the failed sale. In fact, I'm back in the positive column for the month (by $1.59!!), and might be able to finally get some damn restful sleep for once (unless, of course, the Disgruntled Dog decides to bark at evil again at 2 AM). My company is inexplicably sending me on an all-expenses paid four day vacation...er...I mean, "training conference" in Las Vegas this March! Since today's "pick-up dry-cleaning day," I'm wearing comfortable khakis instead of restrictive around the crotch slacks. And finally, I've just made a delicious pot of Dragonwell green tea and I'm listening to one of my favorite songs (St. Germaine - "Soul Salsa Soul").

Anyway, the point is, what reason do I have to be so disgruntled??

Is it because someone took my stapler??

Well, yes and no. But mostly no. I made three resolutions this year: 1.) get my financial shit in order (mostly done); 2.) get in some kind of decent physical shape (mostly in progress); 3.) get a new job that actually has something to do with either degree I've obtained (not even close).

When I'm not analyzing the local real estate market (current level = Ass) or dealing with the problems of my tenants (this past weekends highlights included installing a new doorbell, learning that one of the dryers isn't drying clothes at all, and interviewing several potential tenants for what I thought would be the easiest room of all to rent - the loft room with the sweet balcony in the place I tried to sell over the summer), I work as a Freedom of Information Act analyst contracting for a federal agency.

What this means is that when people submit FOIA requests, I gather up the requested information and review it to see if any of the information falls under one or more of the eight or nine exemptions that would preclude their release to the general public. At one point, I worked for a certain government agency that's been in the news a lot lately (let's say for the past four years) and was able to review fascinating documents with a lot of sensitive information, which was, frankly, cool as hell. Now, however, I work at a smaller office with far fewer FOIA requests of a much more mundane nature. Needless to say, I have a lot of downtime (hence me starting this blog!!)

Anyway, my educational background is international business and in no way can I say that this current job (I've been a FOIA Analyst for almost five years now) is furthering my career in that field. But here's the rub: to break into the international business field, you have to have work experience in the international business field. The only way to gain work experience in the international business field is to be able to break into the international business field. Make sense to you???

So, basically, every day that I work here, I make it that much harder to do what I actually want to do.

And what is it that I actually want to do??

Two chicks at the same time.

I Need Your Room - Here Is My Picture!!

When I post an ad on Craigslist for potential tenants for an open room in one of the two places, the first 5 responses I get, and probably 75% of the responses overall, fall under the ol' Nigerian wirefraud scam. Basically, the way this works is that over in some African country (again, I think Nigeria is the big one), someone pays a group of people to go into a computer lab and respond to Craigslist ads. They respond posing as either a model, a doctor, or a mining company employee saying they need a "nice, cool room" to stay in when they come to the United States from Africa/England/Spain/etc. To prove how much they want the room and how trustworthy they are, they offer to get their American "agent" (either their former boss, their friend in the US, or some combination of that) to pay the landlord their deposit and first month's rent. Sounds great, but, usually the way they do this is to claim that this agent owes them money, and so will pay that money to me, the naive landlord. I deposit this money, and then send them a check (or wire) with the money they're owed minus the deposit/rent money. At this point, they, of course, now have my banking information, and can clean me out. Of course, the joke's on them - I'm broke!! Anyway, this is basically an offshoot of the ol' "Deposed Royal Family" scam, and, although I can't believe this ever works, it must or they wouldn't keep doing it, right?

So, as I said before I get tons of these, and, although they are getting better at making their emails seem more legit, it's still pretty easy to spot. Occasionally, however, I get a rare treat. Sometimes, the "models" send pictures along with their email, to further entice me into renting the room to them. So, what I've done this fine Friday morning, is provided, verbatim (and verpicturetem) the latest email I've received, under the subject line: "I need your room - Here is my picture!!" (That's her picture above - yowza!!!) If/when I get more funny fake responses, or picturegrams, I'll post those as well. Enjoy!!

HELLO OWNER
MY NAME IS TESSY SMITH, AM FROM (LONDON),INUNITED KINGDOM AND TO BE PRECISED I LIVE IN OLYMPIA ALL MY LIFE AND I ALSO STUDIED IN OLYMPIA .I MODEL FOR MY OCCUPATION AND I AM A PROFESSIONAL MODEL ,AM CURENTLY IN WEST AFRICA MODELING FOR HUGO BOSS AND I WILL BE BACK AS SOON AS MYCONTRACT WILL BE OVER AND I WILL BE SO HAPPY TO RENTYOUR ROOM BEFORE THEN CUS I WILL LOVE TO COME IN DIRECT THERE AND HAVE THE ROOM RENT ALREADY..........ABOUT THE PAYMENT ,MY LAST BOSS IS READY TO MAKE THE PAYMENT TO YOU HE HIS ALSO IN THE STATE THERE WITH YOU I WILL JUST INFORM HIM THAT I HAVE SEEN A PLACE TO RENT I PROMISE YOU HE WE MAKE THE PAY OUT TO YOUR LOCATION.I MODELLED FOR HIM AND IS OWING ME SO I WILL JUST TELL HIM TO SEND YOU A CHECK FOR THE PAYMENT OF THE ROOM.I WILL ALSO LOVE TO KNOW MORE ABOUT THE ROOM,THE THING YOU HAVE THERE WHEN I WILL RENT IT AND HOW MUCH I SHOULD PAY IN FULL ,AND I WILL ALSO L OVE IF YOU CAN PLS HELP ME SEND THE PIX OF THE ROOM TO ME I WILL BE SO HAPPY TO RENT THE ROOM .THX SO MUCH LOOKING FORWARD FOR YOUR REPLY PLZ I WILL LIKE U TO REPLY ME BACK ON MY EMAIL. YOU CAN CALL ME AT ANYTIME ON THIS NUMBER(2348026648944 )I WILL LIKE TO HEAR GOOD FROM YOU SOON

Yours Faithfully

Tessy

Neil Hamburger

It's Wednesday, so I'm putting this up for all of my loyal readers. Or...reader. Anyway, this guy is awesome.

Part The Last, aka, "I'm lazy and haven't had time to finish this string, dammit"

So one of my readers, let's call him Ete Packley, recently complained that I hadn't posted anything in a while. Well, Ete, the reason is that I've been dealing with getting new weiner tenants into my places to replace two of the old weiners.

But I thought you were selling one of your places, Disgruntled????

Part III - "The Sale That Wasn't" aka "Why I Hate Water"

So, there I was, back from vacation, and I'm immediately confronted with a $5000+ AC replacement. Fuck.

So, after replacing that, the tenants finally moved out. I strolled through the now-empty house and surveyed the scene, much like Lewis and Clark admiring the Pacific Northwest. And, like Lewis and Clark, I found that I was surrounded by filth, pet shit/piss, and a terrible smell! I immediately set out to get the carpet de-pet-stinked and de-stained.

When I first bought the place 10 months before, I, for some reason, decided that the soon-to-be new tenants needed a carpet that had just been shampooed and whatnot. Quite possibly the worst $150 I have ever spent. But, I was happy with the service this particular company (Absolute Carpet Care for those scoring at home) did on my carpet. So, I cheerfully called them up and asked when the earliest they could come was.

"In about three weeks."

Unfortunately, I had it in my mind that I would have sold it by around then (having figured on doing about two weeks worth of painting, etc. and then having an open house get flooded - foreshadowing - by bidders), so I decided to go with someone else. Since I'm only going to mention companies I recommend by name, and not ones who suck, I won't name this company, but let's just say that even though our NATION is WIDE, I doubt you could find a less inspired carpet cleaning job done. Still, I was pretty confident about the market, despite what the Washington Compost (real original Disgruntled...) was spewing.

I spent about two weeks repainting the place, being careful not to spill anything on the carpet (this will be important later), and undertook a grueling de-wallpapering of the kitchen (just grueling), and finally got the place in, what I thought, was selling shape. My realtor put the place up for sale at $509,000 ($55,000 more than I paid for it - I have no idea what he based this on), and we planned an open house. I began allocating the profits in my mind. $100,000 Crack Party, here we come!!!

Except that only one person showed up to the Open House.

My realtor attributed the poor showing to a number of factors: bad time of the year to sell (Christ I could have strangled him when he said that), needs new carpet, possibly repaint the bathrooms, new deck maybe. I thought perhaps it was the lack of a For Sale sign in the front yard, or the lack of directional signs, or the fact that it was advertised mostly on Craigslist (good for rentals, not as much for sales).

I decided, reluctantly, to replace the carpet and put hardwood floors in the living room/dining room area. I went with Empire Today. Why?

(in a singing woman's voice) "800-588-2300 EMPIIIRE (today)"

Not to drag this thing out, but basically, I paid up the ass for the flooring and the carpet, but, honestly, it looked good. Killed my leave at work while waiting on them to finish it, but, hey, it is what it is.

So, now I had brand-new carpets and flooring, the dog shit and cat piss smell was gone, and the place was clearly showable. As a matter of fact, it looked freaking spectacular. My realtor set up an open house on a beautiful Sunday, and I was in quite a happy mood. I went out to brunch at Cracker Barrel (the Disgruntled Investor's favorite restaurant) with the Disgruntled Girlfriend and the Disgruntled Girlfriend's Disgruntled Mother. I ordered Big Sam's Breakfast Special or something, and made sure they gave me extra gravy for the biscuits.

As we were leaving the Greatest Restaurant On Earth, about fifteen minutes before the open house was to begin, I received this phone call from my realtor:

"Um..hi, soon-to-be-Disgruntled Investor...I think you might want to come over here. I'm at the place. There's a bit of a...um...problem. Bring a mop if you have one."

In some previous life, I must have donkey-punched a nun or something, because this was getting ridiculous. When I painted the kitchen, I had pulled the refrigerator out a bit to get behind it, and, evidently, had pulled too hard, because at some point, a slow drip developed from the water line. And in the week since I had been at the place, the drips had accumulated into a lake. Lake Fuck You Disgruntled Investor. All this wouldn't have been so bad, except that water and hardwood flooring do not mix. Hardwood flooring is a bit of a tender bitch, and buckles like the Atlanta Braves in the playoffs (sigh). This is precisely the scene I was confronted with on the beautiful, hope-filled Sunday Open House day.

So, I got a contractor to fix the foyer hardwood flooring, and Empire to fix the laminate flooring in the dining/living room. The day Empire came out to fix the flooring, I happened to glance out the window. It looked like some people were doing work on a fellow townhome's garden. Except...

Wait a minute, they don't have any gardening tools. And those don't look like illegal aliens.

What the, what the hell are they putting up??? Wait...NOOOOOOO!!!!!

FOR SALE!!!!

The one thing I had counted on, the one saving grace, was the lack of competition in the neighborhood. Well, as long as they weren't trying to undersell me (I had lowered the price to $480,000 at this point) I'd be alright. I went home and checked out the realtor's website and quickly found the listing for this place, which was in most ways comparable to mine.

"Beautiful, spacious Arlington 3-level TH for sale - $445,000"


Six months later, I'm trying to find a replacement for one of the weiner tenants in the place.

I'm quite disgruntled.

Under construction...

Under construction...

Holy Crap!!!!

But first, a recap, part deux (or, how I gained a new appreciation of my college landlord)

So, I started 2006 feeling pretty good about my decision to enter into the real estate market. I received an incredible tax refund in February, and that was just with one place for five months! Gotta love those fully deductible interest-only mortgage payments. To be honest, I still feel like it was a good investment decision, despite a bit of bad luck. Having said that, however, the bad luck was pretty bad...

March 2006: After another housing search, and following some intense negotiating with the seller, I close on my second investment property. I end up getting the house for less than the seller was asking, and was still able to get the seller to pay all closing costs. How did this happen (especially after my experience in the earlier bidding war)?? Two words - cooling market. After our initial bid was rejected by the seller, she held an open house. A day after the open house, she accepted my offer. This, of course, did not set off any warning lights, and I celebrated my good luck. I spent most of March looking for tenants and upgrading the appliances in the kitchen.

April 2006: I finally get all three rooms rented out in the new property. Two of the tenants are pretty much model tenants, who fit the ideal characteristics - mid/late 20's, clean, non-smokers, steady jobs. Then there was Hillary (note: not her real name).

Hillary marked the beginning of what was a difficult real estate/landlording year. In my hurry to fill the third and final room in the property, I pretty much let in the first person who agreed to the place. Hillary was in her mid/late 40's, a smoker, without a steady job, and, oh yea....a psychotic raging alcoholic. One story perfectly sums up the nightmare that was Hillary (for me and my other tenants): The guy who was living in the second bedroom (we'll call him George) had come back to the house with his girlfriend, and they were downstairs in the living room watching TV. Suddenly, upstairs, they hear Hillary screaming and stomping around. Somewhat distressed by this (at this point, they were on to Hillary's personality), George and his girlfriend retreated to his bedroom (which was actually closer to Hillary's room, so I'm not sure it was much of a retreat). At this point they start hearing Hillary screaming again - "The power of Jesus Christ compels you, the power of Jesus Christ compels you!!" As the two huddled, confused, in George's room, Hillary stomped down the stairs, and began screaming outside his door. Then, George's door opened.

"Oh, hello George, how are you doing?" Hillary calmly and politely asked, AS IF NOTHING HAD HAPPENED.

Needless to say, Hillary's stint in my place lasted about a month, after which a slew of other tenants have come and gone from that room. I think that room might be cursed, as a matter of fact. But, the lesson here is, BE SELECTIVE with tenants. Credit check at least. If she shows up smelling of booze, DON'T RENT HER THE ROOM.

God, I'm such an idiot sometimes.

Meanwhile, at the other property....
I had decided, upon advice from my realtor (helpful guy, he says sarcastically), that I should try to sell the place to another investor. He brought a few people by, but none seemed interested, at least not at the price we were advertising it at. Why??

Possibly because of the dog and cat shit that littered the carpets. Or maybe because of the smell that came with dog and cat shit littering the carpets. Hmm...we may never unravel that mystery.

My relationship with the tenants in that place began deteriorating rather quickly after those fiascos, and I vowed to sell the place as soon as my girlfriend and I returned from a previously planned vacation in Greece (side note: If there is a more spectacular locale than the volcanic island of Santorini, I sure as hell haven't found it.)

I giddily typed up their 30 day notices, set them aside, and had an incredible time in Greece. Excellent food.

I came back home at the end of May 2006 feeling relaxed, confident, and anxious to sell the place. I knew I was going to have to spend a good deal of time, money, and effort rehabilitating the house after the zoo left, but I even looked forward to that. I handed the tenants their 30-day notices on June 1, and slept great that night. In fact, I felt better than I had in a while...until the freak storm hit...

TO BE CONCLUDED IN PART THREE (TROIX?)...

The Icarus Kids

So, I just got back from the Wizards/Bulls game (Wiz 113, Bulls 103), and I'm pretty flabergasted at the state of our nation's underage drinkers. I was definitely sitting in cheap enough seats that, in theory, it could get working-class rough at any time, but this was ridiculous. We were barely into the first quarter, and this faux-thuggish kid in front of me (18 at the oldest), and his six faux-thuggish friends were in rare form. Someone clearly had a fake ID, and based on their extremely loud claims, they were pretty stoned as well. I really didn't have a problem with that per se, but the dude in front of me ("Naughty by Nature" we'll call him) stood up and pumped his fist after EVERY WIZARDS MADE SHOT. Now, I'm a fairly big Wiz fan personally, and I happen to think Gilbert Arenas might be the best player in the NBA from the beginning to the end of games (yes, better than LeBron, who can't finish, and better than D-Wade, who's injured too often). However, I think there is a such thing as overdoing it. Naughty was overdoing it. So, in that he was blocking not only my view, but also my girlfriend (Disgruntled Gal - yes I'm stealing blatantly from the Sports Guy), I decided after the 20th time that I should say something to him. Needless to say, he didn't take the suggestion to only stand up after dunks or a great shot very well. He, and his nerdish cohort next to him started talking trash, until we finally got him to sit down. He stood up again after the next shot (clearly trying to establish himself), so I intimated that perhaps I should pour my beer on his head. He tried to pick a fight, yet again (me being a row above him, not only did I have age and weight on my side, but also leverage - are kids today learning basic physics??). Disgruntled Gal tried to calm the situation, leading Naughty to remark (and I quote):

"Shut the fuck up you stupid bitch!"

Now, I may be many things, but a short-fused man is not one of them. I try to handle situations as calmly and logically as possible. But, one thing you do NOT do is disrespect the Disgruntled Gal. I gave Naughty a shove, and dared him to respond. His friends rightfully got Naughty to sit down, and apologized for him. Later, Naughty and the Nerd tried to pick a fight with a Bulls fan below them, and the whole group got kicked out and/or arrested.

Now, setting aside the fact that this was clearly the most entertaining game I had ever been to (Wizards win, near-fight, cops getting surly), I grew quite downtrodden (maybe even...disgruntled) at the state of underage drinkers these days. When my friends and I drank underage in high school, we did it incognito (or at parties that were quickly busted by the cops), and, more importantly DID NOT DRAW UNWANTED ATTENTION TO OURSELVES. These kids could have CLEARLY gotten away with drinking at this game, but flew too close to the sun and now are probably spending the night in jail. Flew too close to the sun.

On a side note, Gil only scored 20, but 6 Wizards scored in double-figures. Still didn't play any D, but it's good to see that Hibachi doesn't have to score 60 for the Wiz to win. The question remains, can they get past the Heat or the Cavs in the playoffs??

What do you think, Gil??

Wednesday Morning

God, I hate waking up early. If this real estate investing thing ends up working out, the first thing I'm going to do is take time off and do nothing but sleep. Perhaps play some Nintendo, but mostly sleep.

Anyway, I'll continue on my timeline of investments soon. For now, though, I feel that the middle of the week deserves this:

But first...a recap (part 1)

Just to get the blog up to speed, here's a brief timeline of relevant events in the year and a half long real estate investing experiment (I'll go into some of these into greater detail in future posts):

Summer 2005: Cubicle-mate points out our office's resident realtor, says he's made millions in real estate investing [then why in the hell is he working here, I wonder...], and has a huge house and three cars (two Jags!). I go, "Hmm, you know, I've always wanted to get into real estate investing, but have no money at all, oh well..." Cubicle-mate takes this as a sign he needs to set up a meeting with me and said realtor. Meeting goes down, realtor/co-worker explains how if my credit is alright, I can buy a house with no money down (getting the seller to pay all closing costs) and would qualify for a 100% financed, interest-only loan. At this time, you may recall (dear reader), the U.S. real estate market was absolutely insane, but people thought it would continue to rise.

Meanwhile, in a secret underground lair, Alan "Cobra Commander" Greenspan cackled with glee at his evil thoughts...

August 2005: After a whirlwind housing market search with my realtor/co-worker, I settle on a three-level, three-bedroom townhouse with a rooftop deck in the Arlington (VA) area. The seller has it listed for $409,000. I get into somewhat of a bidding war with a kindly old Asian gentleman (NOTE: MISTAKE/LESSON #1 - DON'T GET INTO A BIDDING WAR WHEN REAL ESTATE INVESTING). We artificially inflated the price to $444,900, with the difference between the $420,000 winning bid representing the money back I would be getting from the seller, for closing costs and for blow, hookers, and an XBox (just kidding, I'm a Nintendo man). Closing day comes and goes, and I officially become a real estate investor. Hot Damn! I take my new house keys over to the place, and, in what would be a harbinger of things to come, notice that the air conditioner has broken.

September 2005 (Don't worry, I'm not going month by month here): As Alan Greenspan laughs maniacally and raises rates (I blame the blow and hookers), I begin my search for tenants. Having zero experience in this realm, I turn to Craigslist, and eventually find three willing subjects. They each rent a room in the place, for varying rents depending on their rooms. None of the three know each other, but are perfectly willing to throw caution to the wind and move in together, without meeting at all. Who knew people did this?? Not me. Anyway, two of them have pets (one girl had a dog and a cat, and the other girl had a kitten), so I charge them a pet deposit, and think little of it.

October - December 2005: The tenants are paying everything on time, and, aside from the A/C, little to no maintenance is needed. Greenie raises the rates again, but, hell, they're still low. Real estate investing is easy!!!

Christmas-ish 2005: So easy, in fact, and so potentially profitable (according to my realtor, the price of comparable houses in my zip code (or, "comps") had gone up significantly, meaning my house was now worth $465,000, at least! I decide I need to ring in 2006 with a new house (or two or three). I mean, if it doesn't cost anything. I also start telling everybody about my newfound money making scheme, trying to recruit others into my little game (much like how a heroin addict will try to bring others into their addiction - I'm looking your way Pete Doherty!) Oh, anyway MISTAKE/LESSON #2 - KEEP YOUR DUMB-ASS SCHEMES TO YOURSELF, THIS WAY YOUR SUCCESSES SEEM GREATER AND YOUR FAILURES ARE LESS PUBLIC.

To be continued in part II, in which our hero discovers a foppish bit of flim-flammery and has an epic showdown with Baron von Greenspan...

Enter Blogman...

Most everyone has noticed the ad, usually on the back page of a mid-week newspaper. A guy in glasses and a plaid button-down shirt, giving the thumbs-up (he's the "everyman," you see), and below him is the story about how his real estate investing shit doesn't stink. Smells, in fact, like roses...and money. To prove how great he and his methods of no-fail real estate investing are, he offers this proof:

"Woweee!! I challenged the Moscow Polonium Times Daily to push me out of an airplane, without a parachute, with no money, or clothes, and the first house I landed on I'd buy and make millions on! I landed on 123 Myballsitch Drive, kicked the family living there out, bought the house for $0, and sold it for one jillion dollars, all with [wait for it...] NO MONEY DOWN!!!"

And then, the kicker:

"And you can too!!!"

I've been challenging the Disgruntled family mantra ("The Disgruntleds will never make money the easy way, they'll always have to work for it") for years, with zero success. However, I am both stubborn and an idiot, so when a coworker of mine introduced to me the idea of real estate investing (specifically "flipping"), I decided to give it a whirl. After all, he (a realtor on the side who had become quite wealthy doing this) promised that I could do this with no money down (in fact I'd get money back), would be easily approved for a 100% financed, interest-only loan (at the time, I had pretty good credit), and would never even really have to make any mortgage payments since I'd have tenants in the property paying it for me. Fucking A, right?

A year and a half, and two houses, and one housing market "downturn" (aka "market correction," aka "soft-landing," aka "crash"), here I am, barely afloat (the tenants aren't exactly covering the mortgage payment...or even coming that close - thanks to the suddenly supply-heavy rental market), with enormous potentially profitable assets, waiting it all out. This is my story...this is my blog. This is how one guy tragically and hilariously (well, not to me) got a bit in over his head, but godammit decided to stick it out (and is still doing so). I'll be posting bits of this story as the day/week/month goes on. Feel free to commiserate with me.