December 2014 Dinner with Damon

Last week was my dinner with Damon. We haven’t done this in a while due to me skipping the Investors Club (IC) meetings and him being busy with his job.

We first talked about the meetings that I missed. I let him know that I probably won’t be going to the IC meetings as frequently as I did this year. They just don’t seem to fit in with my plans. Everyone is complaining about this and that, and they bring up the same information over and over again. I don’t like the idea of paying $10 per meeting on top of the $85 annual fee just to hear the same things. I get more information from our dinners than I get at those meetings.

I then let him know that we should probably stay on the topic of real estate when we talk. Too many times I’ve noticed him try to talk to me about different things like Wicca and subjects that have nothing to do with real estate. Here's one example with a text he sent me in October:

10/28/2014 at 1:45pm: Hey... taking a Wicca class... some interesting concepts... remind me to tell u abt the moon cycle"

I told him that I did a great job of getting useless people out of my life this year. I ranted about everyone knowing their place and not wanting to go into next year with more useless people. I said all this in a roundabout way, but I could tell that he knew who I was talking about. He seemed a little miffed by my diatribe, but said he understood and he wasn't lying. Since that dinner all of his texts have been about real estate, and that's good news. Any more texts about Wicca and non-real estate issues and I’ll end these dinners immediately.

We then discussed our real estate prospects for 2015. Damon is going through with his plan to buy a really cheap property for $10,000, fix it up, and then rent it out. I decided to go with him the very next day to take a look at it. It’s a single family home located on a quiet but slightly run-down block. It’s right next to a major highway, but that’s about the only good thing it’s close to. The inside of the place wasn’t bad, and I estimate it will cost another $10,000 to fix up. So that’s $20,000 to buy a place and then rent it out for $850 a month. The taxes there are very low (around $1200 a month), so I figure he can pull in $600 a month after taxes, insurance, and maintenance. That adds up to $7200 a year, which is a massive 36% return on the initial investment. That is pretty damned good!

I’ll follow him through the process to see how this whole Vacancy Bank purchase works out. If it does, then I’ll have more options to consider the further I go in real estate.