Morgan

Perhaps I don’t understand M2 completely, but the price of everything I bought in 2020 for my company (plumbing and electric supplies, lumber, tools, etc) has gone up by at least 10%. Frequently 20% - 100% increases in prices. Lumber in particular has been completely insane. This is anecdotal of course, but everything is getting more expensive!

Agreed. Lol wut. That’s the most ridiculous thing I’ve heard in a long time. Trump should be praised because his policy allowed more people to be infected and die so more studies could be done? Seriously? If ten times more people died would that be ten times better? Don’t you think we could have come to the same conclusion had only half or a quarter of the people got infected and died? By your logic, Mao should be praised for reducing the population in China so there’s be enough food to eat after the cultural revolution and famines? Have a famine, millions die. Now the little food we have is enough for the smaller population. Thanks Mao! /s Please tell me you’re being sarcastic? or I simply don’t know enough about vaccine development...

I read it and enjoyed most of it. It got kind of boring as it got into the failures of canary wharf project. But over all it was enjoyable.

u Excellent link to site. Thanks!

Just finished the book. It was easy to read and had lots of good info. It sounds like it would be great to work at Blackstone and learn their analysis process. He has been wildly successful (obviously) and it's fun to "go through" those experiences if you will.

Thank you for the recommendation. I ordered it, read it, and enjoyed it. If you have read other Buffett books and letters, you've read about all these investments before. That's ok though. This provided a different angle. That being said, all of the detailed financial info was very fun to review. It was interesting to read about the problems he had trying to expand the insurance businesses (Home State). Overall, a good book for Buffett junkies!

Very cool!

There are mods. There are also different boards. Focus on the investment board and ignore or mute the others. Also we’ve had a bit of a rally the last few years so there are fewer names that appear cheap...more time to talk about other topics I suppose.

Congratulations on your investments and your travels! I’m looking forward to reading more.

Holy cow that's incredible. -------------------------------------- I'll add some about my experience with a personal solar power system. I've been thinking about putting solar power on one of my apartment buildings to cover the laundry machines, hallway lights, and fire alarm system. When we run the electric furnace in the basement the bill skyrockets so I haven't been planning to cover that. We also renovated all of the basement into apartments and the tenants pay the heat, so the furnace issue may be a moot point now. Anyways, it's always been too expensive to make solar panels worth it, but in 3-5 years when I redo the roof, I'll reevaluate the prices. As soon as it's economical, I'll probably do it. If it goes well on that building, I'll add it to the others as well. I have another building where I pay the utilities, but I'm not going to add solar to cover the cost of electric there. Separating the utilities is a much better investment and also aligns incentives properly. People use less energy when they pay for it.

I’m in the Pittsburgh - Columbus area and I have seen one multi family portfolio that was reasonable, but the properties were pretty junky and not in a good area. Other than that one, I don’t recall seeing a property on LoopNet that appeared to be a reasonable deal in the last ten years or so. CBRE tends to be similar. Obviously they both sell tons of property as they’re both big companies, so someone must be buying. All of my best deals have been from contacting landlords directly when the property isn’t listed or from distressed sellers. Hopefully someone with a different experience can chime in as well.

Thanks for sharing! I’ll give it a listen tomorrow. Cheers!

I received a survey from a theater that I like in Dallas called Alamo Drafthouse (it's like Studio Movie Grill, basically they serve food & drinks while you watch your movie) that asked how we would feel about things like (a) two ticket minimums, (b) a minimum guarantee on food & drink orders, etc. Basically making sure that it's worth it for them to open again. What do you feel about the questions they asked?

Here it is. --- I was at the mailbox today & a neighbor was passing by. He stopped & asked me if I'd gotten a stimulus check yet & I waved the envelope at him. He started pissing & moaning about how Pelosi is holding up the checks. I said yes, it's a disgrace that she's held up the checks just so she could get Trumps name on them. He started to bristle & I asked him if he'd knew that Pelosi & Trump were having an affair & that she had to be mean to him in public for the sake of the democratic party but that her work getting his name on the checks proves that she really loves him. I think I had him believing it by the end of the conversation. We rarely talk because he's pretty much a dipshit. Hopefully we won't talk again any time soon. Aahahahaha

The ones I’m referring to do include the property. Mostly they are mom and pop type establishments and the sellers are retiring. Typically 40-200 unit type places. Generally not big enough for publicly traded companies to care about. Around here, they are a building on the road, sometimes a few buildings, occasionally fenced in. There are almost no climate controlled units here. I suppose the market can’t support it. That being said, in this case the self storage owner does seem to be at the mercy of the landlord. If he’s had the building for 20 years, its likely paid off so he can hold out if necessary. I guess we’d really need to see the books to know the whole situation.

I’ll just add this for general info. I’ve seen self storage properties selling at 7% to 25% cap rates. Lower rates more recently as the market has heated up (until covid 19). I never bought any because they’ve not been attractive enough for me, but I may have some some errors of omissions.

We don’t have all the details about everything but - - - - $250,000 for 400 units is WILDLY, WILDLY cheap. That’s $625 per unit. Way, way below cost to build. The least expensive per unit cost I’ve seen in my local deals (between Columbus OH and Pittsburgh PA) is $2700 unit. Many are in $4000-$5000 range and going up to $9000 per unit (crazy high). If you don’t buy this, let me know where it is and I’ll buy it.

If the federal and state governments make everyone take a financial pause for 2-4 months until this passes, it’s fine (I guess). If evictions are banned and landlords must pay all of their bills then there will be serious problems for everyone eventually. At a minimum tenants won’t pay now and they absolutely won’t pay a lump sum of 2-4 months rent at the end. They won’t have had a job to have saved up the money obviously. They won’t pay and then they’ll abandon their apartment for a new one as soon as they can be evicted. If everyone pauses it’ll be ok. If the landlords (or one part of the chain) have to bear the brunt of it it’ll be a problem. Ironically, NYC still demands to be paid water, sewage and property taxes. What a bunch of dopes.

minten, I think the fear is that the virus will could get out of control and kill huge numbers of people. After all, it is spreading exponentially. I'd rather the government be harsh and do what they can to limit the spread and damage, than say it is like the flu and not do too much. I am seeing headlines everyday of famous people who have died from the corona virus. It is real, and it seems to kill all kinds of people. We're just starting this in the US. We probably have quite a bit more to go unfortunately.

Where are your apartments located primarily? They're in the northern panhandle of West Virginia - about an hour west of Pittsburgh.

I'm not sure what the banks are doing in my area yet, but I wouldn't be surprised if they're stopping everything except for top quality borrowers with lots of cash. I haven't tried to get a loan since all this corona virus stuff started. That being said, I have three cheap fixer-up houses that were listed just before this began. They're all a little bit below what I think they're actually worth, but still basically no interest. My realtor told me there has been a "drastic slow down" in everything real estate. We shall see, but I don't anticipate selling those anytime soon. I've been looking at some other deals and people haven't really started to drop their prices yet. Some have just been too high to begin with, but others don't seem to realize what kind of recession we're going into. The US is due for a slow down or recession. 10 years of growth quite a bit longer than average. My memory says five to seven years is the average. Anyways, I have a few hundred apartments and only five or six tenants have said anything about not paying. We'll see what happens in the next two or three days.

It seemed very alarming that they shut down so many cities so quickly. It’s up to like 30 million people “quarantined” in their cities. China doesn’t mess around, so I wouldn’t be surprised at all if it’s much bigger than the government is saying. You don’t just shut down 30 million people for no reason.

I agree. Keep the politics on the politics board. I don’t have anything muted and read a fair amount on this site everyday, but the culture seems to be changing as more hostility from political discussions spreads to other areas - mostly the result is people posting less in general. This site is very important to me and I really don’t want it to decline because of politics. (This is isn’t a slight against moderators. Sometimes it just leaks out and is hard to control.)

Good lord guys. At least read the book before commenting... that's how book discussions work.

That dude is gonna have a bad day.