Well Happy New Year, Race Fans! Here’s what’s going down.

Our little project on Main has been wracked to and fro by myriad issues since inception. The last such being the permit process that included new drawings, new engineer letters, new hundred dollar bills, etc. This has been our longest start to not-even-close-to-finish in our history. But some progress has been made. This includes an ominous looking black front door and the beginnings of a beautiful ceiling on the first floor. Our contractor sent over some blurry photos -posted here for your own home-brewed version of a sobriety test. (If some of this looks blurry, you are not drunk. If the ceiling shot is crystal clear, you are drunk.)

Now, as we turn the page on the final and 12th chapter of the year, we are taking a little time to reflect upon not only our year, but our history.

As some of our erstwhile readers may know, this thing of ours started on a small island off the coast of Italy. The island was called, “Earth’s Pull” and was actually a website. So, fogeddaaboutit, it isn’t a real island like Sicily, Salvatore, and this isn’t the mob. When we discuss this thing of ours, that is. We started Earth’s Pull to document our pursuit of escaping gravity (the rat race) and entering that rarified air of a life on more favorable terms than 9 to 5.

As we became more involved in flipping, and very early on into the whole Earth’s Pull effort, we decided to start an LLC or two and get a different name (other than Earth’s Pull) cranking away. After a search or two online, a couple of food inspired naps, and some serious polling of family members, we came up with Box Bend. After all, this is what we do. We take little boxes and pull them and push them and bend them into new and rejuvenated Box forms. And although the domain of www.littleboxespulledpushedandbendedintonewforms.com was available on Go Daddy, we went with www.boxbend.com. And then www.boxbendcrew.com for this blog.

And through it all all we had the goal of being a profitable little LLC. This is not always possible, but so be it. For the most part, two or three exceptions noted, we have been profitable. And this has been good. And fun. However, there are two dark spots on our sun.

The first problem that all renovators and flippers go through, or maybe it would be better to say that the first realization one comes to in the flipping game is, tomorrow you will have to drag your carcass out of bed and go do this thing all over again if you want to maintain the lifestyle you hope to become accustomed to. This is a dairy farm gig. Every stinking day someone has to milk the cows. Granted, it is a good gig when done correctly. And for all the obstacles and hurdles and gymnastics and disappearing materials, it can be a fun gig. Each project holds the genesis of a new adventure. But it is a one-and-done deal if one buys, renovates and then sells.

The second dark dark spot or problem is what we will call the HGTV Paradigm. This is the underlying theory that one can watch someone flip a house on HGTV, then buy, then renovate in one week, then sell, and then get an HGTV deal of one’s own. Subsequent results are an influx of neophytes overpaying for projects, or “lipsticking” over serious problems, and then making a small profit and thinking that this is the way to play the game. Stardom awaits. All that whiny little narrative to say that, at least in parts of our market, people are overpaying for property. Or at least we think so.

So what does this have to do with the price of tea on earth or even on the moon -beyond the gravitational pull? Well, hopefully bringing it all together, we got into this in part to become independent. And, given the current situation coupled with that overarching goal, we are tending more and more towards a model of buy-renovate-hold and lease. We feel that this is where real wealth can be found. We have been slowly doing this with different deals. East Main may be the next such deal. Our new goal being to build up our commercial and residential rental portfolio to greater heights.

Now don’t get us wrong. We will still buy-renovate-sell if we can find a deal that gives us the safety room we need. We will also sell out of necessity if need be, but our strategy is to buy and hold whenever this new direction is conducive to our rental criteria.

Box Bend 2.0 is all about portfolio building and strategic investments married up to old school land and building flips. We’re looking for the ratio to be 51% or higher in favor of portfolio building.

Now all we we need is a good recession. Everything will be on sale and the neophytes will evaporate in a cloud of bad deals and iffy TV.

Oops. Did we say that out loud?

​Stay tuned.

Want to make a million dollars or more?

Invent a pre-poop detector for baby bouncers.

Possibly more financial reward depending upon the inverse ratio of the amount of SC Johnson products, specifically “Shout,” that one uses for the poop cleanup/pre-treat that has mushroomed out of the top of the elastic pants due to excessive bouncing. The same poop that explodes into the shirt, and then spreads across the expensive sheets where one, in admitted haste, may go to change the poopy baby. The same baby that may grab the poop with her ninja-baby death grip and then grab the duvet cover. Even more reward for a machine that notifies a father that there are no baby wipes within reach.

Big, big dollars. Big.