Wisconsin’s Act 143 Landlord Omnibus bill has been of great concern to owners that have read the content as well those who have read the Legislative Council memo on the bill.
AASEW Attorney Heiner Geise had researched this a bit and came to the conclusion it is not quite as bad as originally thought. He received an opinion consistent with his view from the Leg Council.
This post is being written for a couple of purposes.
Those of us with any significant amount of real estate need to plan better for what will happen if you suddenly die. Your spouse and kids probably will not enjoy landlording as much as you. Wait, few people “enjoy” landlording, so let’s use the word tolerate instead. You need to have a list of people in the industry that you trust. Keep that list handy for your family so they can get their hands on it if they need to.
My other purpose is to acknowledge real estate broker Graig Goldman who pulled off what many thought would be the impossible. He sold over 100 properties at a good price in less than two months. If you attended the March Apartment Association meeting, Graig was the presenter on buying foreclosures.
HUD is reporting
Rental housing markets in major metropolitan areas of the Midwest region are balanced to tight, with rent increases reported in all major markets, continuing a year- long trend of strengthening conditions.
http://www.huduser.org/portal/periodicals/ushmc/winter11/USHMC_4q11_regional.pdf
(The linked document contains rental and housing stats for the entire nation)
http://www.twincities.com/stpaul/ci_20410240/u-s-house-committee-seeking-details-over-st
We recently expanded my wife’s Event Decorating Academy to sell wedding and event decorating supplies to students and professional decorators. We were buying from distributors who supply various retailers and small wholesalers such as ourselves.
End of last month my wife and I attended the ASD retail merchant trade show. This trade show is held in March and August in Vegas. They also have one in NYC in September.
As a result of attending the ASD show are now buying directly from the same sources as many of our suppliers, cutting 35-40% off the distributor price we were paying. Many of these items we buy by the pallet so savings is huge. The largest example is curtains used for fabric draping at weddings and events. We sell thousands of these a month.
A lot actually. At the show I found a number of products that we buy in quantity for the properties we own and mange at prices that were surprising. For example passage sets and deadbolt locks for $3.00 a piece. These are steel latch ANSI Grade 3, similar to the Defiant or Legacy brands at Menards and Home Depot. We actually upgraded to the “off brand” a number of years ago when Kwikset changed to a plastic latch in their 200 series that would break and lock tenants in their room.