Archive for December, 2010

Merry Christmas!

Hope everyone has a great Christmas, try not to work too hard.

Crash Course In Re-Renting Apartments

For many people, the Christmas season is a crazy time of year, but I like to try and take some time to take a look back at the past year and take a tally of what I did right and what I did wrong. More importantly at what I did wrong.

This year my biggest failure was at managing my vacancies. I could explain to myself that the reason I didn’t have more time to dedicate to re-renting my vacant apartments was because I was too busy focusing on renovating an apartment that I couldn’t rent until it was finished. I could explain to myself that the reason I had to do all the renovations myself was because the bank wouldn’t lend me money to go hire people to do the renovations for me. I could… but that would be counterproductive. The real explanation was that I messed up by not focussing on the most important aspect of a property manager’s job… filling vacancies. Read more…

Wanna Buy Three French Hens? 2010 PNC Christmas Index

Every year since 1984, PNC Financial Services Group compiles the Christmas Index which is what it would cost to buy all of the gifts in the song The Twelve Days of Christmas. I’m not sure how much value it has as a financial indicator, but it sure is fun to look at. You can view the 2010 PNC Christmas Index here.

Let’s take a look at how the cost of these items compared to last year… Read more…