🏠 3 Tweet Sunday 🏠
I fell in love with an Argentinian girl who doesn’t really speak English. I won’t bore you with the details, but it wasn’t meant to be.
I prefer the layout of Buenos Aires much more than my hometown Phoenix. Buenos Aires is very walkable, and has tons of parks and plazas where people hang out. Phoenix is the opposite. Urban sprawl is trash. In his book Happy City, Charles Montgomery says the system of urban sprawl has created more income and wealth, but has significantly reduced happiness. This is because urban sprawl has negatively impacted our social networks. The more people are spread out, the less they see each other. Even with friends. Proximity is powerful. Relationships have a huge influence on our happiness. Much more than income does.
So what should we do about this problem? I just started reading Happy City, so I couldn’t tell you. But I came across this real estate developer James Rouse who I found very interesting. After he popularized malls in the ‘50s, he turned his focus to planned communities. He said, "There is a real need for residential development, in which can meet as many as possible of the needs of the people who live there; which can bring these people into natural contact with one another; which can produce out of these relationships a spirit and feeling of neighborliness and a rich sense of belonging to a community." He eventually built the city of Columbia, MD. The 1970 census recorded 8,815 people. Over 105k people live there now. Moral of the story is, I’m going to create a city and mold the world in my image. Or I’m going to retire at the end of this week, and live in Buenos Aires for the rest of my life.
Let’s get to it:
#1 🏠
I’ve changed my mind. Instead of building a town, lets just buy one. That’s much easier. 50 miles outside of San Diego. Previously home to a 300 bed Italian prisoner of war camp. I was totally joking, and initially only read the tweet. Now that I’m Googling this place, I wonder if it makes money. Wikipedia says 2900 people still live in this area. Population has increased 10% in the last 10 years.
#2 🏠
Everything is perception. This tweet is about this guy Rafi Toledano, who has had a wild career. He bought a $140 million building at age 26. He got sued by his uncle. An investigation found he had ties to a fake law firm he was using to source deals. He paid $4+ million to settle claims of tenant harassment. He ended up losing most of his properties, and was banned from the New York real estate industry for 5 yrs. That was over 2 years ago. Now he has these ads running under his name on Google. So when you Google him, he looks like a baller.
#3 🏠
I’ve been thinking a lot about mobile home parks lately. I may switch my focus from multifamily to MHPs. I love cash flow. MHPs cash flow better than any multifamily property I have seen recently, that I could feasibly buy. Residential and multifamily properties are easier to finance through conventional lenders than MHPs. But this isn’t an issue if most sellers are willing to offer financing. The big negative with MHPs is they seem to be a lot of work. On the bright side, that also means less competition and burnt out owners.
Refer a friend, and I’ll pay you $3!