The walk through is done, the keys are handed over, the rent is collected.

My first real estate/rental venture is complete. Or at least officially in progress.  Now all I have to do is wait for that mailbox money each month, and make sure the neighbors are kept happy…

I had a pleasant phone conversation with David Houle the other day, stemming from some email problems we’ve been having for the last few days.

I’d run across his Evolution Shift blog by way of the Freakonomics site, and after reading a few paragraphs of his posts, found myself sucked in.

David is a “Futurist”, and you need not dig too deep in his blog to figure out what a “Futurist” is.  Contrary to the concept of “Thinking Ahead”, David starts ahead, and thinks in reverse.

A few days ago I wrote about the new “Forever Stamp” proposed by the US Postal Service, and how you could effectively hedge your postage against future increases in postage.

Then I thought a little deeper and contemplated how this move could really affect the postal service.

Currently there is no true market for postage.  The rate is what it is; you pay the same price for stamps in Georgia as your buddy does in New York.  It costs the same amount to send an envelope across the country as it does to send that same envelope across town.

That will change with the Forever Stamp, whether the postal service realizes it or not.

A recent article on MSN Money revealed the accuracy of online appraisal engines such as Zillow and RealtyTrac, and the results are interesting, but not surprising.

The study put a 5% variance on what a home sold for and what online AVM’s (automated valuation models) suggest the house might sell for.  They looked at Zillow, RealtyTrac, HomeSmart, and Domania, among others, and how they compare to actual sales prices.

It turns out that none of the AVM’s are exactly stellar at what they do.  In fact, …

I had a meeting with my small town banker friend yesterday to discuss some future investment avenues.

He has a lot of experience in oil and gas investments and operations, and suggested that oil and gas has more upside than real estate, at least in the short term. Of course, he is a bit biased, as he has extensive experience in the oil and gas business, and very limited experience in real estate.

However he did say he would be willing to write loans for real estate ventures, as their bank does it all the time.

If you’re a business owner, your clients associate your face with the business.  But what do they associate your business with?

A business logo is the key to establishing an identity for your business.  It is a visual cue that associates your business with the type of service it performs.

A BusinessWeek article revealed Logoworks.com, a site that is in business to give your business a flashy new eye catching logo.  They target small businesses that need an identity to help get their advertising campaign going, and advertise that they can keep costs down because everything is done online.

For the time being, my MS Word …

All in all, we made about $100 on our garage sale this weekend.  I’m a bit disappointed, but considering that 90% of the stuff we sold was priced at $0.50 or less, we got rid of a bunch of stuff, which means we have to haul less stuff to the Goodwill and Salvation Army.

It probably wasn’t worth the time to do a garage sale, and I’m convinced that it’s all in what you sell, but making an extra $100 in a weekend isn’t too bad.

We made more money on Friday than we did on Saturday, which was …

Our neighborhood garage sale started today, and for a Friday the turnout wasn’t bad.  We had about 60 people stop by, and ended up bringing in about $60.

Even better, though, is that we’re that much closer to getting rid of all the stuff we’ve been stockpiling in our extra bedroom for the last year.

We should see a little better traffic tomorrow due to the weekend, and by Sunday all our old stuff should be gone.  If it doesn’t disappear, it’ll find a new home at the Salvation Army!

I ran across improvenet.com last night in an attempt to find a good project cost estimator for a future rehab project.

Improvenet not only can hook you up with a local contractor to get the job done, but they have a bunch of useful tools such as a project estimator for all different kinds of projects, from kitchen remodeling to flooring replacement to roof replacement.

Naturally, they won’t provide quotes online, but their project estimator gives a reasonable first guess as to how much a certain project might cost given the area you are working in.

They even have a …

Thanks to Chadh for his comment on my second possible RE candidate listing an article he found on emongoo.com.  The new emongoo.com will list your “For Sale By Owner” (FSBO) for free, allowing you to post pictures and unlimited descriptions for your home listing.  There are no commissions or fees, and you can update your listing as often as you want.

I’ve always thought that there should be a single place on the internet that will service the FSBO community, much like the MLS database.

emongoo.com has a good thing going, particularly because it’s free.  If you’re selling your property on your own, you are trying to get away from commissions, listing fees, and marketing gouges.  So this pricing structure fits right in with your budget.