$2,500 Lunch!

I worked about 4 hours yesterday doing routine maintenance. I started the day with about one hour of painting at the Pink Elephant. Then, I had lunch with another investor in town. The topic of our lunch was both the coming DEPRESSION in this country and how to deal with it, and more importantly, an advertising agreement that we're putting together to save a LOT of money!

The advertising topic got started when I received a call last week from the local newspaper saying that my ad rates were going from $134 per month to $260 per month (wow - talk about inflation)! That means that my newspaper advertising budget would be jumping from $1,608 per year to $3,120 per year, WHICH I THINK IS OUTRAGEOUS! I called my friend, who is another member of our REIA and a successful landlord, to give him the news. We discussed the issue and decided that we would set up an advertising system that would allow up to 5 REIA members to run one ad that would drive traffic to a phone tree and our REIA website. With 5 members sharing the cost, that would save me $2,500 per year on advertising and provide access to a phone tree that will help pre-screen potential tenants. My friend will be administering the phone tree and I will handle the advertisements and the billing. I don't think that having 5 landlords on the phone tree will affect my call volume at all, because people generally call all of the ads in the paper when they're looking for a rental anyway. We'll see! I'm looking forward to trying it out. Anytime you can save or make $2,500 at lunch, you're having a good day!

After lunch, I installed a new handrail (made out of 2 X 4's) for the stairs at the Pink Elephant and I also installed emergency lighting in the hallway.

That was all the work I wanted to do for the day. After a nice dinner, I took a nice bike ride. All in all, a great day!