Flip Thy House

Make That a Boatload of Money AND a Boatload of Time

Gearing myself up for making a serious run at House #2 in the next few weeks, as far as putting in many, many hours over there. I’m going to be in Las Vegas December 12th-19th for another poker reporting gig, and I’m hoping to have all the work I plan on doing personally finished by then. Which means lots and lots of tile work (about 1000 sq. ft of tile flooring, tiling two  shower enclosures, and tiling the kitchen countertops and backsplashes) as well as much exterior/interior painting as I can knock out. I may have to break down and call in friendly reinforcements, which I hate doing (as I’ve run up a slight deficit in the favors from friends department this year) but I can’t let this house sit around.

Planning on doing a recap of the whole experience with House #1, with detailed figures and what-not, but as far as the biggest lesson and takeaway so far, the necessity of speed is pretty high on the list. Letting repairs on House #1 drag out for months pretty much killed my bottom line, not just in carrying costs but in general timing of market conditions. I justified the delays in all sorts of ways (getting the Austin house ready and sold, taking nearly a month off in July to make cash covering the World Series of Poker) but they were no reason to let the house sit there, untouched. All that money I “saved” by doing everything myself just got handed back over in carrying costs, resulting in lots of sweat and work for me but little profit to show for it.

That’s not to say that there isn’t value in doing work yourself, as that’s going to be the only reason I show a profit of any sort on House #1. Just that you need to be smart about the battles that you pick and stick to the things that you know will make you money, as far as the time you invest, and let others go in the interest of getting the thing done and on the market.

My newfound determination to stay on top of budget matters for House #2 is spilling over a bit to other areas, as I’ve spent the last few days going over the numbers for the year so far for my business stuff, which is a strange hodgepodge of affiliate marketing websites, a few hosted websites for various folks, the freelance poker content work, and the independent contracting I did on the side for my day job.

I think I discussed this a bit in early posts here, but I’ve been doing the affiliate marketing/SEO thing for years now, and managed to be in the right place at the right time as far as having a bunch of poker and casino websites floating around, when everyone was jumping on those wagons a few years back during the poker boom. Long story short, I made a boatload of money for about a year and a half, and while I was dumb and didn’t diversify into other areas that would have softened the blow in October 2006 when the US basically kneecapped my business by passing the UIGEA (which attempted to prevent US citizens from gambling online), I wasn’t dumb enough to spend all that money I made. That windfall is basically what funds my real estate ventures.

But with the poker and casino affiliate business basically going poof in late 2006, I was kind of dreading 2007 on the business side of things, faced with the depressing reality of all my previous revenue streams completely drying up. I contemplated throwing in the towel completely and just focusing on real estate, but finally talked myself into forging on in the affiliate website world, as well as trying to drum up work on the freelance content side. I haven’t had the time to go at it guns blazing, but I have steadily chipped away at it over the year, building sites when I can, reviving some older sites, trying a bit of this, a little of that, etc.

The poker reporting work definitely boosted the bottom line, but I was pretty shocked to add up the totals for the year, as I’m looking at coming in at about 2/3rd’s of my day job salary for earnings for the year, if you add up all my assorted ventures. I’d have been happy as hell if you’d told me back in January that I’d be able to build that up to even 1/2 my day job salary, as I really was largely starting from scratch. It’s also pretty encouraging because the revenue is much more widely diversified this time, so no massive change in any one industry is going to wipe me out again.

So, you know, yay. While extra money is always nice, it does, in a backkwards way, put a little more pressure on me on the real estate front. I’m within shouting distance of being able to bid adieu to the day job, but I do still have a bit of a gap to make up, and right now I’m looking real estate’s way to make up that gap. If it turns out that that’s the wrong direction to look (or the wrong direction to look in this particular market and economy), well, at a certain point it’ll be time to look elsewhere.