We Are Still Here

Everything Has Slooooowed Down

Hey Race Fans,

We are still here.  Sorry for the hiatus.  It has been a long, long time.  Everything for us, much like many, many others, has slowed way down.  

So what are we up to?

We are currently marketing our "Main" Avenue project which burned through four separate contractors and employed a handyman at the end to fix the items that were wrong from the last contractor.  But that bad boy is finally on the market -just in time for the Pandemic.  It is too bad that times have to get tough before good contractors can be had.  When things are really roaring, the bad apples seem to be abundant among the crop.  One of our contractors was really good, but had some money issues, and therefore the job lagged.  We are fortunate enough that we saw this before with the recession of 2008-2010.  We have already received one offer to "fix or work on anything you might have."  That being said, we know a lot of contractors that are still very, very busy.  May the bad apples go into another line of work.  

At any rate, we are now talking about renting "Main."  Renting properties is the long term plan for wealth creation, and we are fortunate to have built up a few rentals, as well as some properties that we sold by seller financing them to the buyers.  We would prefer to sell Main due to the size and tax bill, but are okay with renting it if need be.  

In the past year, we also finished selling off the last parcel of our 72 acres of land in Sanford, NC.  This was after the utility power that is made it very difficult for our potential partner from Spain to get their solar farm development off the ground.  They pulled stumps and headed out for California.  That is saying something when California regs and working environment is more favorable than the local one.   <slow head shake>  But, all in all, the ROI on that land was fantastic.  We didn't get the twenty years of escalating rent that we were hoping for, but no complaining here.  

Now we are working on our other businesses...   The rentals we just spoke of, our motorcycle lifestyle business, our architectural products business, and a new double-secret-probation project that cannot be shared at this time.  The architectural products business has slowed down with the Pandemic.  The housing and commercial rentals are going good with one or two possible default coming up, but the diversification is good enough to cover those kind of draw downs if that happens. (A little lesson for anyone looking to get into the rental business -diversify!)  We'll see what happens.  The motorcycle lifestyle business is moving forward because, surprise (!), we have the time to work on it now.    

We are currently looking for the next Box Bend project or Box Bend rental property -other than "Main," that is.  We have leased out our Washington, DC area property, and are thinking in terms of looking for projects in other markets.  The property in Maryland  taught us that we can do things from afar with the right people in place.  Of course, as stated earlier, we would like to sell "Main" before we buy the next project or two.  And again, we shall see.  There is no telling what the fall out will be from the second wave of the Pandemic that we guess is coming.  We are on standby for a window order that is now approaching four weeks.  

The one thing we can say with absolute certainty today is that we are glad we are no longer in the corporate world.  This has to be incredibly stressful for those companies with big overheads and slowing revenue.  If you are there, we offer our thoughts and prayers.

The other thing we can say, although it is a bet right now, is that the deflationary climate of printing money will probably give way, in a very big way, to an inflationary period that hasn't been seen in quite some time.  Depending on the marketplace that one is in, this may be a great time to stock up on renovation buildings -if one can swing the insurance, property tax and other carrying costs.  The same can be said of other assets.  We were betting on this slow down in the economy due to the economic cycle (the bull market) being over due from a cyclical point of view, but we were not prepared for the way in which it actually showed up on our doorsteps -sporting death and face masks.  Interesting times.  

​Well, that is enough rambling for now.  As you can probably tell, we are waaaaaay out of practice when it comes to the old blog.  We'll try to pick it back up again in the days and weeks to come.  

Stay safe and please stay tuned.