The Most Overlooked Part of a Rental Agreement or Lease
Every experienced landlord has a good rental agreement or lease with all of their favorite protective clauses. But most landlords forget the most important protection of all: the other stuff you give to your new tenant or resident along with the lease. Just look at the above picture of a local pharmacy. They’re selling nails. […]
Steely Eyes Toward the Future: Why POSCO is My Favorite Stock
(The following was written on July 25 as the first part of an entry to the Value Investing Challenge. It was just an exercise, as I didn’t meet the criteria for entry. I never developed the figures to go along with the text. Maybe you’ll find it useful. Remember that it’s not about the stock, […]
How Many Landlords are Good at Customer Service?
Here’s an interesting, true story with a moral. I went into a tenant’s apartment to examine their garbage disposal, which had stopped working. It was just a piece of broken glass wedged into the grinder, so I removed that, reset the trip switch, and said, “Let me know if there’s anything else I can do!” […]
Busier than a one-legged man at a butt-kicking contest
Yes, I guess I am, but I don’t feel that way. Below are some fun statistics from my personal task list, and one big surprise at the end. (For those of you that don’t know, I follow David Allen’s Getting Things Done to stay in control and Making it All Work to keep perspective. The gist […]
Is Real Estate a Gruesome Business?
Warren Buffett defines a “gruesome business” as one that requires a lot of capital and produces a low rate of return. Is real estate gruesome? Let’s see: Does it “require significant capital to engender … growth” (WB, 2007; PB p. 14)? Yes. The median home price in America is about $220,000. The average rent is […]
Five Reasons why Entrepreneurship Isn’t Quite Business
Good entrepreneurship eventually leads to good business. But here are five reasons why the two start out different: 1. Framework Startups may be inventing either a new product or a new service, but quite often they’re also reinventing a business model. Good businesses, on the other hand, already know how they’re going to make money. […]
Millionaire to Entrepreneur: Death by Climate Change
Last night I saw Robin Chase, Co-Founder and former CEO of zipcar, speak at the Merrimack Valley Sandbox Summit. She told some very engaging stories of the ups and downs of startups. She said that the number one thing was to be intellectually honest with yourself and with your customers, especially if your business wasn’t […]
Landlord Forms: A Checklist for your Lease or Rental Agreement
If you have rental property in Massachusetts, here’s a quick way you can check the health and currency of your rental forms. You should have: A primary agreement (be it a “lease” or a “tenancy-at-will”), that specifies Which space is being rented To whom How much Who pays for utilities (you can’t charge for water […]
