He is Breathing and He is Alive

I’ve been home for a few weeks now after surviving another working trip to Vegas to cover the World Series of Poker. While these trips are actually a ton of work, this year was as enjoyable as working 14-16 hour days for two weeks straight can be, as it’s the first trip like this I’ve done without a pending house flip hanging over my head. And I have to say it felt good, damn good.

That’s been a common refrain of late, as far as enjoying what seems like my newfound freedom from the world of real estate. Free weekends are nice things, as is not having to constantly write out big fat checks and juggle money, appointments, deadlines, you name it. That’s a half-lie, as we’ve been busy working on our own house and writing plenty of big fat checks, but it’s a much different sort of beast.

One of the things I struggled with the most as far as flipping was being relatively undercapitalized. I say “relatively” as I was careful enough to always have enough available funds (via savings and, as a last resort, IRA/401k money) to fund all repairs and pay carrying costs for 6 months, but it was a fairly tight situation, especially with House #2. But a good bulk of our net worth was tied up in houses, and that weighed pretty heavily on my mind at all times. I didn’t spend sleepless nights worrying about it, but it never completely left my head,  and that’s not a fun weight to carry around.  If I’d instead had  plenty of capital to play around with, instead of bootstrapping the load entirely myself, it’d have been a much more  comfortable experience.

I also can’t say that current economic conditions leave me that excited about tackling another flip house at this time. Real estate is still holding up fairly well here but I still don’t see us being much closer to lenders loosening up anytime soon. Until the banks completely capitulate on the whole CDO mess and just eat the losses once and for all, it’s hard to see the situation improving on the lending front, which is what we need to start working away at the glut of houses on the market, which is what has to happen for hosuing prices to stabilize.

Long story short, I can’t see another flip occurring in my near future. And likely not even another rental, unless it’s a screaming good deal. Mostly due to market conditions, but also because my wife and I have been floating around the somewhat crazy idea of picking up and moving to Sweden for a few years.

My day job is a complete and utter dead-end, and while I could tolerate it while flipping houses and planning other things (seeing it as a source of income to pursue other meaningful projects), confronting it head-on as my primary endeavor is far too depressing and unfulfilling. I’m applying for some SEO/Web designer positions in Austin but there’s also the chance that I might be able to work full-time for PokerRoom (based in Stockholm), which is who I’ve done freelance work for the past few years.

It’s still very much up in the air (the Sweden possibility),  but who knows. If it did become a reality, we’d likely put both houses on the market, conditions be damned, which is another reason to focus on renovating our current home and avoiding any new purchases.

There’s also the slightly petty (and political, be forewarned) issue of what happens if McCain is actually elected president. Both my wife and I are in agreement that if such a thing happens, flying in the face of eight years of one of the most inept, catastrophic presidencies in the history of the US, occurring solely because Obama is viewed by the general population as too black or too Muslim, well, shit, I think it’s time to get the hell out of this country.

But that’s getting way ahead of myself in many different ways. For the moment, I’m kicking back a bit and relaxing, relatively speaking, and most sticking to flipping our own house. Which is nice, and I’m definitely enjoying it, and will hopefully have some updates and projects to share here, as there’s actually a ton of work to tackle and it’s essentially a flip, as we haven’t done much to it since moving in.