What More Can the City Of Dallas Take From Us?

Today We received a letter from Gary Fitzsimmons Dallas District Clerk

The letter is an order to reinstate to docket and reads as such:
On Nov 17,2008 the Court considered the City of Dallas' Motion to Reinstate to Docket this matter upon the docket of the Court. The Court having been made aware that the bankruptcy estate herto filed by Defendant Hewitt REI LLC no longer includes 2828 Cleveland Street Dallas , Texas based on Trustee's filling of Notice of Abandonment and no objections to such abandonment were filed with the clerk of the United States bankruptcy Court, for the District of New Jersey, Newark Division grants Plaintiff's motion.

It is therefore ordered that this matter be reinstated on the active docket of this court.


The City of Dallas has sunk their teeth in and have not let go. We have filed Bankruptcy and have no money the property is in the process of going into foreclosure. What more does the City of Dallas want?!

Our bankruptcy attorneys have told us that this is a time for us to start over, but it doesn't feel that way at all.

"Greetings, You have been sued. " Thats what the paper work says that I just signed for delivered by courier.

No Credit Card Debt

No Credit Card Debt Yet Still Bankrupt

I have always viewed having a credit card and using a credit card as a privilege. I still view this as a privilege, a privilege that has been taken away from me by Mary Supino the city of Dallas attorney and a few other Dallas city officials. I have ZERO credit card debt, something that in this day and age is a rare case. I only had 3 credit cards each from a different credit card company American express, visa, MasterCard so that I would have the flexibility to use visa when American express wasn’t excepted which happened more often that I thought it would as the American Express card was my primary card I used most often which I had a history with for over 15 years all of which always had a zero balance. It’s not that I wouldn’t use my card mind you, I’d actually use it every month but I would pay each bill in full when it came in on all 3 cards. You se in addition to seeing credit as a privilege that was given to me for being responsible I also view credit cards very differently than the average person. Credit cards are like a small monthly loan. A micro load if you will that gave me a feeling of safety and honor. I never had to worry if I had enough cash with me to make a purchase with a small instant monthly loan that I could use knowing that I had the self control and discipline to never let it get out of hand and charge something that I could not pay off in full right away. But this is not to say that my credit card bills were not always small, occasionally my monthly bill was upwards of a few thousand dollars which, yes even then I stuck to my credit card rules and paid in full several thousand dollars in one shot, for example when I purchased my now wife’s diamond engagement ring and a few other times in my life of the occasional large spending. This is the way that one can live when they are frugal and conscious of their financial situation on a month-to-month basis.

This privilege however as I said earlier has been taken away from me. For recently all three of my credit card companies have sent me letters notifying me they are canceling my cards and I am to cut them up and send back my cards to them in pieces. They have been canceled on me despite a zero balance because I am forced to file bankruptcy due to an impassable compromise between me and Mary Supino Dallas City Attorney and the city of Dallas Texas. How can someone how is responsible with ZERO credit card debt, frugal with their money with a credit score of over 800 have their credit cards taken away from them? I have the city of Dallas and Mary Supino Dallas City Attorney to thank for that.

Good Bye Tenants

Dear Tenants,

The city of Dallas and the Dallas Police Department has forced us to abandon the Blue Ridge apartments where you currently live. What this means is that we will no longer be collecting rent or paying for trash removal, electric, utility or any other bills. Eventually the electricity in the common areas will be turned off.

For your own safety and security we highly recommend that you leave the property as soon as possible.

We have no idea what steps the city will be taking with this apartment. The City may try to continue to improve the apartment and rent it out, or they will just demolish the entire building and turn it into a vacant lot.

Best of Luck and God Bless

Bankruptcy

I fell in love and married my wife and we bought a property (a 15 unit apartment in Dallas TX) as an investment to secure our future and for our plan to have a family. A crime was committed on my property and I live over 100 miles away. The crime could have happened on the street but because it didn't the justice for us was to force us into bankruptcy. That's what i said Bankruptcy! I live in the United States of America and am a citizen so why is it my fault? Why should I have to be punished? I have been frugal and hard working my entire life and the result is destruction. This is a nightmare and I want to tell my story to protect the next person who will be bullied by the city of Dallas City Attorneys and threatened with extortion by the City of Dallas police department.

Beaten But Not Broken

The road to financial freedom is difficult. Don't let anyone tell you otherwise. We no longer have the property in Dallas, we've officially filed bankruptcy both personally and for the LLC that held the property. The city of Dallas has driven us to this as no other options were available to us. We have been beaten but are not broken we shall recover and achieve our goal of financial freedom. Nothing will stop us.

Best and Worst Cities For Renters

I recently read an article on Forbes.com by Matt Woolsey called Best and Worst Cities for Renters, that I am summarizing here. I have found the Forbes website to be a valuable source of information, and an amusing place to find some top 20 lists. (I like looking at the lists of the top billionaires in the world. It helps me daydream.)But the article about the Best and Worst Cities for Renters had a lot of good information that I wanted to share with other investors. It was no surprise to read that the highest rents are paid in New York City and San Francisco. The 2.8% vacancy rate in NYC is partially responsible for keeping the rents so high. The sales prices of homes are much higher in the city, but so are the incomes. So those people who cannot afford to buy a home and need to rent, have a higher income than in other areas of the country. Therefore they can afford the higher rents as long as the cost is still less than that of buying a home.

In places like Cincinnati, that are expecting 100% more new homes this year will see a slow down in rental prices of only 2.7% (the lowest increase nationwide). More inventory slows the growth of prices and rents in the city. This rental increase is predicted to be the slowest nationwide. For a comparison, a 2% raise in construction in Washington DC is expected to lead to a 5% increase in rents there.

Job growth also plays an important part in rental rates. Salt Lake City boasts one of the most rapid new construction rates, but it still cannot keep up with the rate of job growth in the area of 3.1% in 2008. Of course more jobs means more people and higher wages and increases in sales prices and rents.

“Slow sales countrywide means more opportunities for renters as developers and homeowners look to lease their properties while waiting for buyers.” This is happening in Miami, but a lot of the new rental units here are unsold condos that are not really affecting the overall rental market.

Those are the basics of the article. I hope it was informative.

What real estate to buy in 2008.

This week we attended a meeting of the New Jersey Real Estate Investment Club. The topic this week was What real estate to buy in 2008. The founder of the club, Christopher Goodson, was going to talk to us about his recommendation for investing in the New Year. Since it is a real estate investing club, it was no surprise that he recommended investing in real estate. It is also important to point out that he recommended buying real estate for the long term, and not flipping or short sales. He had a lot of good things to say about flipping and short sales, but he believes that it is vital to invest in real estate for the long term.

He believes, as a lot of economists currently do, that we are in a recession. A recession is simply defined as “A period of general economic decline, specifically, a decline in GDP for two or more consecutive quarters.” I have never followed the GDP levels, but from what I have heard, it is easy to believe that we are in a recession. But being in a recession is not necessarily a bad thing, especially for people just starting to invest in real estate. I am a big believer in going back to the basics. Everything that we do is based off of some basic facts and ideas. It is vital to never forget those basics, or any new knowledge gained is baseless. These are some of the basics that were reviewed before Mr. Goodson made any investing suggestions:

There are 4 ways to make money in real estate:
1- Rental Income (cash flow)
2- Depreciation (phantom cash flow)
3- Amortization
4- Appreciation

Mr. Goodson believes that a lot of the problems that investors are having is because they bought real estate based on appreciation only. We were in a long period of time that saw unprecedented increases in real estate appreciation. A lot of investors were buying real estate based solely on the appreciation. They were willing to lose some money every month in hopes to make it all back plus extra when they finally sold. Those who did not sell prior to the downturn of the market have not been getting the returns they expected, and I am sure that a number of them have lost money.

The main thing that he stressed throughout the whole meeting was that you should only buy real estate that is cash flow positive, even if your goal is appreciation. In a nutshell this is what he was recommending to all of us for 2008. Only buy real estate that cash flows. He also recommended buying 2-3 family houses. (Please keep in mind that he is only speaking about buying real estate in the New York/New Jersey/Pennsylvania Metropolitan Area. The rest of the country was not discussed.) He made this recommendation because of the abundance of these types of properties, and the ease of using alternate types of creative financing, such as seller financing. Since real estate has not been selling quickly in this area, sellers are going to be more willing to make creative deals now, in order to make the sale.

Keeping Financial Records

Filing taxes should be considered an illegal form of torture. It seems to just get worse and worse every year. I spent years struggling to file them myself and I was never sure that I did them correctly. Since I have switched over to professional accountants, I have never been happier.

I have been trying to keep close track of all of the expenses that we have had for this property, because we will need to file soon. I wanted to make sure that I was organized ahead of the game to save time. Of course, the accountant will be filing for us, but we are the ones that will be supplying him with all of the numbers that he needs. We used this same accountant for the past few years. When we were filing last year, and knew then that we would be buying an investment, I should have asked him how he wanted the information organized. I have it all in a excel file now, so sorting it into different views will be relatively easy. I know a lot of people use Quicken, or other similar software, but I have never found the need. A few spreadsheets have been easy enough to set up to keep all of the records that I have.

I have one spreadsheet for expenses that are not directly related to the property that we bought, but that we still might be able to use as a deduction. There are phone and internet expenses, FedEx bills for some of the bidding and closing paperwork that we needed to send overnight, and just some general office supplies. I do not yet know how much of these things we can use as deductions, but I have them all on my list anyway.

Then I have a sheet for the expenses that directly relate to the property in Dallas. On this sheet I have separated the closing costs from the operating costs. Linked to this sheet is one for the income the property generates. I have it broken down by apartment numbers, that I transferred from the monthly statements from the property managers. But I also just have the monthly totals that then are linked back to the operating costs page to give a running total of the profits.

Once we meet with our accountant I will know how good or bad my record keeping has been. Then I will come back and share any insights into better record keeping.

My goals for the New Year

1-Buy a second real estate investment
2-Create information products related to investing
3-Have more blog content and expand the information on it
4-Start a second website with other information products as source of income (topic not yet determined)
5-Write a business plan and create prototype for one new product (item not yet determined)

Those are the basics of my business and financial goals for the year. I also have certain goals for the one investment property that we now one, but I will review that separately.

1-Buy a second real estate investment. There is a lot more to this than just this one sentence. Our first property we bought rather conventionally. This was a unique experience that taught us a lot. But for our next investment, we are going to try to purchase it with different methods.

2- Create information products related to investing. I have so much information inside me, and I just keep picking up more. I want to put it all down on paper and see if it will sell. Secondary sources of income are also essential to my overall goals of becoming wealthy. A lot of the information will come from my personal experiences and opinions, as well as market and general information. I want to go beyond the “rah rah-you can do it” that is currently on the market.

3- Have more blog content and expand the information on it. This is pretty self-explanatory. I feel guilty about not writing on my blog as much as I should. I have re-prioritized my time to allow for more time to create content. I also have more time to research and learn about different investment topics that I want to share with the world.

4- Start a second website with other information products as source of income. This is sort of a vague goal at this point, and I have yet to decide what the service is that I will offer. I have some other interests in my life that I am passionate about. The site may be an interactive community of sorts, or a reseller of a niche product or something entirely different. My first step is to take my top two or three ideas for this site and do a little bit of market research to see if how plausible the idea is. Then I will develop a marketing plan for promoting the site, and set up a simple site to launch it.

5- Write a business plan and create prototype for one new product. My husband and I are big fans of the show “The Big Idea”. The Donny Deutsche show features entrepreneurs who have had simple ideas and made them into million dollar businesses. A lot of the ideas come out of simple frustrations in daily life. So, we have examined our daily lives and come up with a few new products. We understand that bringing a product to market can take more than a year. So my goals for this year are simply to pick one of the products that seems most feasible, write a business and marketing plan for it, and create a prototype. That sentence makes it all sound so simple, but it will actually be a lot of work.

Now, not only in my list of goals written with pen and paper, posted on my desk, but the whole world can now read about it. I am not getting away from this now!

A NEW YEAR!!!!!!

I will be the first to admit that I have been delinquent in my blog writing duties. But since it is a new year, I have been reviewing my goals not only for the year, but for my entire future. The good news is that I still plan on becoming wealthy.

Every January gyms across the country are loaded with new people trying to keep their New Year’s Resolutions to lose weight. By early spring, most of those people will not go to the gym again until next January when they make the same resolution.

Setting goals is a daunting task for me that I have never enjoyed. I always have the ideas in my head, but I have never been comfortable putting pen to paper to document it. The fear for me has always been having the proof at the end of the year that I have not accomplished the goals. Once I put pen to paper I become accountable for those goals. But last year I bought my first real estate investment and it has changed my perspective quite a lot. A lot of the fear that I one felt is gone. I am now officially accountable for every single one of the goals on my list.

The first few items are personal items that will not directly affect my financial future. After living in my house for two years I need to make a decision about how the living room should be furnished before another year goes by. I think it is important to have personal, family and business goals on the same list. We can all define ourselves in more than one way. All the aspects of life need to be tended to in order for us to grow as a whole. Too often we spend so much time and effort on one thing in life that all of the secondary and tertiary roles get lost.

Be reasonable when you make your list. If you think there is not enough time to accomplish an item on the list, then break it down into smaller components and set the goal for just the beginning steps. I don’t mean to tell anyone that they cannot accomplish anything they set their minds to do. I am just advising to keep in mind that some things are harder to accomplish over night then others. Time is also a limiting factor for all of these things that we do. Hours in the day are limited, and I tend to lose functioning after a certain hour of the night.