TylerCruz.com: An Internet Entrepreneur's JourneyThe journal of a web entrepreneur on his journey to wealth.

I Am Finally on Facebook: Follow Me!

A couple of months ago I announced how I finally signed up to Instagram. While it took me a long time to do that, it took me even longer to sign up to Facebook!

Sure, I have a couple accounts for advertising, as well as a personal account that has always been inactive with like 4 friends, but I never made a Facebook account for my blog or business side of things believe it or not.

That is, until now.

So, why the sudden change? Well, now that I am more or less actively blogging again, I want to start sharing my posts and build up my audience a bit. I also always wanted to keep separate accounts for personal and work and just never got around to making one for work.

And… I’m simply not the biggest fan of Facebook. In fact, to be honest, I will not be terribly active on Facebook – but my account there will be.

I’ve set things up so that my blog posts as well as my Instagram and Twitter posts will automatically display on my Facebook Timeline so friending me on Facebook is a good way to stay informed of my posts and updates.

So, follow me on Facebook. My Facebook profile can be found at http://www.facebook.com/tylercruzdotcom.

I do not have a page yet, just an account. I am not sure if I will create a page or not but if I do it won’t be until sometime down the road.

Added Facebook to My Blog

I’ve added Facebook icons and buttons to my blog, located on the top right section.

I actually also added these for Instagram when I signed up to Instagram as well:

And I also updated my e-mail newsletter template footer:

Automating Posting WordPress Posts to Facebook

I spent too much time on this, but ended up getting exactly what I wanted.

Again, one of the main reasons it took me so long to sign up to Facebook is because I didn’t want yet another social network where I would need to spend my time posting and staying active.

It was very important to me, then, to be able to automate posting on Facebook as much as I could.

This proved to be very easy for Instagram since it was already a built-in option (in Instagram), but I wanted for my blog posts to automatically appear on Facebook.

I did a lot of searching through various WordPress plugins that would do this, but all of them had inherent flaws which I did not like.

A bunch of people and websites suggested the plugin Jetpack to me, but I found it to be extremely bloated and it ended up putting a huge strain on my server for some reason (I have issues with my Heartbeat API [/wp-admin/admin-ajax.php] so it was probably that).

I also tried NextScripts: Social Networks Auto-Poster but it too caused some issues.

Another thing I didn’t really like about these WordPress plugins is that most of them would only post to Facebook once you physically hit the Publish button in WordPress. The problem with that, for me, is that I actually don’t use WordPress to write, edit, and publish my blog posts. For the past 10 years I’ve been using Windows Live Writer.

I was willing to give that up and just use the standard WordPress editor, but fortunately I found a better solution (for me anyway).

Thanks to Kevin Muldoon for the tip – he mentioned that I could alternatively use HootSuite or dlvr.it which are 3rd party services which let you manage your social networking sites. One of the things they can do is automatically post your blog posts to Facebook, and the way they do it is simple – through your RSS feed.

I ended up using dlvr.it even though it’s way smaller than HootSuite mainly because it looked to be a lot more simplified to me; all I wanted to do after all was have my WordPress posts automatically post to Facebook, nothing else.

I actually set it up do both Facebook and Twitter – the whole process only took a minute!

Here it is in action:

I love how it automatically includes a photo from the blog post too!

Feel free to set the same thing up if you haven’t already!

Anyhow, I’m now on Facebook, so please follow me there at http://www.facebook.com/tylercruzdotcom.

Setting Up Property Management, The Smell of Marijuana, and a Scare

It’s been a week since my last post and since I’ve been getting slightly better with the post frequency over the past 2-3 months, I thought I’d better throw a new post up.

There hasn’t been a whole lot that happened over the past week. I guess I took it a little bit easy once I got the keys in my hand which marked the completion of the property purchase. And of course, my health issues have really forced me to take it as easy as I can whenever I have the chance to do so.

That being said, I did make some progress in setting up the property management of the property, with the help of knowledge regarding current market value explained by Perth Property Valuers.

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Contacting the Tenants

When I received the keys to the property from my realtor, I also received the contact information of the tenants.

Before agreeing to take the property on, the property manager I chose (after a lot of shortlisting and research), told me that it was her policy to physically view the interior of the property.

So, I contacted the 3 tenants to schedule a time for her to go take a look. I only managed to reach one of the tenants and left voicemails for the other 2, but upon reflection I probably should have tried making contact with the other 2 one more time first.

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Showing the Property

Anyhow, a few days later I met with the property manager at the property and after a bit of conversation I proceeded to the bottom unit. It was a really surreal feeling having the keys in hand and knocking and then announcing myself before going in, like I was suddenly a realtor or something. A landlord, I guess. It brought upon a strong sense of both power and responsibility.

I was also terrified that the tenant maybe didn’t get my voicemail and that she was still in the unit sleeping or taking a shower. I was really scared of that happening.

Anyhow, the very first thing the property manager said when she walked in was “Do you smell that? That’s marijuana.” I didn’t really smell it, but I’m not all that familiar with the smell in the first place. She didn’t really comment too much further, as I’m assuming it’s pretty damn common for tenants to smoke here (I live in BC, Canada after all) – she did seem a little bit surprised though and I think she mentioned it more to see if I was okay with it or not.

As an aside, she noticed cigarettes in an ashtray on the outdoor “patio” area as well, but it seems like the tenant smokes outside since there is absolutely no sign of a smoker living there on the inside.

When we went to take a peak at the bedroom, we noticed a dog sleeping on the bed (he/she looked really scared!). The tenant didn’t have a pet on her lease so we discussed the raising of the rental price and/or adding in a pet security deposit.

The property manager really liked the unit and I proceeded to show her the upper unit which she also really liked. I couldn’t manage to open one of the bedrooms there though… it’s possible it was just a bit stiff (there was no lock), but I didn’t want to brake anything so I just didn’t go in there.

Anyhow, she really liked the property and was fine with taking it on. I guess she has run into a lot of extremely scary properties in the past with crack addicts, hoarders, and whatnot which is why she now demands to see the property in person first. In fact, she had a lot of interesting (and scary) stories to tell me as we went through the property.

The Scare

After the showing of the property I picked up some Greek and Lebanese food, went home, and had a nap.

When I woke up, I saw I had a voicemail from one of the upstairs tenants. Listening to it, he said that when he got home he noticed that the door of the lower unit was left wide open!

My heart exploded and I was both terrified and pissed off at myself. I was pretty sure I had locked both the doors… but maybe I didn’t? Or maybe I thought I had locked them but didn’t properly?

There are 3 reasons why I was terrified:

First, I was 99.9% sure I had at least closed both doors which means that if the door was found to be left wide open, that somebody must have opened it; the wind wouldn’t open it for example.

Secondly, while the property itself is quite nice, the location itself is in downtown area which means that it’s definitely not the safest area in town.

Lastly, the lower unit is the unit where the dog was! As a huge dog lover and owner myself, I was terrified that the dog may have run away or been stolen on top of a burglary or vandalism. And it would have been all my fault!

I immediately phoned the tenant back and fortunately it was just a scare! The girl in the lower unit had simply left the door open herself after she got home! Ahhhh!

This is just one of the many reasons why I’ve hired property lawyers brisbane and a property manager – I do NOT want to be responsible and have to deal with this stuff! I’m not used to that kind of drama.

The Paperwork

As we left the property, the property manager gave me a pile of paperwork to fill out.

I did so the following day and then made copies of the keys and dropped them all off at her office.

It was my first time visiting the building where she worked actually. It’s a new company (just a little over a year old) but is already quite large and growing rapidly. From the outside the building looks pretty drab, so I was really surprised when I went in to find it like a high class resort! It’s actually the nicest business building I’ve been in in my city.

Afterwards, I e-mailed her a comprehensive list of the repairs and improvements so that she can manage that as well (she’ll just send me the quote for the items and I’ll select which I decide to go through with).

So, this “passive income” is almost completely set up and ready to rock!

I Have The Keys To My First Income Property!

Nearly one year ago exactly, I announced how I was interested in investing (or rather, having the company of which I am the sole shareholder – gotta keep the lawyers happy) in buy-and-hold real estate property for “passive income” generation. And to ensure a smooth and legally sound process, I engaged the services of a conveyancing solicitor similar to these conveyancing solicitors london. Meet with realtors Greensboro if you decide to invest in real estate.

Yesterday my realtor confirmed that the lawyers said everything went through fine and he handed over the keys to me! I was consulting a reputed law firm, and you can contact Flagler Personal Injury Group here too if you want legal advice on anything, you can view more.

I also requested and received the tenants’ contact information so that I could arrange for them to meet with my property manager. I have yet to do that because of the weekend, but plan on doing so on Monday or Tuesday, we need to go over home warranty coverage.

With the keys and contact information in hand, everything is now 100% complete! At least, ownership-wise anyway – I still need to have the tenants renew their leases with my property manager, and I need to greenlight the fixes and improvements to the property.

I find it a little bit mind boggling that it took me an entire year to obtain a property (why does the conveyancing process take so long?) the market here was just really dead and hardly anything was coming on the market. And I also spent a lot of time learning and researching, as well as unimaginable hours working and programming my analysis spreadsheet.

As I mentioned in a previous post though, all the hard work is done – the only thing stopping me from purchasing property #2 is money. I drained a pretty damn big chunk out of the corporation’s bank account on this property, and I still need money to pay for taxes, accountant’s, lawyers, and myself in dividends, so it will be quite a while before I purchase another property to be honest.

More Photos:

Here are a couple of more photos of the property for you guys.

This one is the kitchen upstairs:

And another angle of the kitchen and eating nook:

Now if you’re a really longtime reader of my blog (I’m going back nearly 10 years now), you may remember how I used to income my monthly earnings on the side column and update it once a month. The place might need a cleaning at times or a pressure washing.

I was actually considering adding a section like this again, but this time solely to include rental income, so that it’d look something like this:

Door #1: $1,100
Door #2: $900
Door #3: $1,050
——————
Total: $3,050

… but then the realization that I currently only have 2 doors made me decide to cancel the idea. Well, at least until I have another property.

But it does lead me to my next point…

Money For Life

You know those scratch-and-win lottery tickets that give you money for life? Like $1,000 a week for as long as you live? Well this is how I view income property. To me, having an income property is just like winning one of these lottery tickets.

My local real estate market is actually rather horrible in terms of buy-and-hold investing; cap rates are horrid. The average $400,000 property will only yield around $2,200 a month in rent.

But even so, that’s for life. The property I just purchased only brings in $1,650 a month in rent, and after expenses (of which there are plenty), I’m only walking away with a very small portion of that.

… but it’s for life! It’s not a campaign that can die tomorrow or a website that dwindles off after years of hard work.

And then of course there are the major benefits such as property appreciation, rent appreciation, leveraging options, and equity gain/payoff.

Yes, there are other ways to make money for life such as GIC’s, but I like the rate of return and the level of control I have with real estate. I have also been looking at properties in Spain and there are some awesome beachfront apartments and villas for sale in Marbella so have a look at those as they’re sublime!

I can’t wait to acquire more property. I just need to make some more serious cash before I can do so. And for that, I need to look back towards the Internet!

Signing Final Paperwork Today, Receiving Keys in 48 Hours

And the road to Merendi Holdings Inc. first income property (of which I am the sole shareholder) is coming to an end. Later today I will be meeting with my real estate lawyer (I use a different lawyer for this stuff than I do for my corporate stuff for some reason) to sign the final (and most crucial) paperwork, is good to have different lawyers I found thanks to lawyer SEO services they use to promote, you can learn more about this here. Your trusted lawyer can also help explain to you what a talk and die syndrome is.

I only slept around 1-2 hours last night, probably due to excitement/anxiety/anticipation so I’m a bit groggy right now.

I’m actually still waiting to hear back from the lawyer’s assistant; she’s supposed to be contacting me to know the exact dollar amount I need to pay. I will then go to the bank to get a bank draft for it.

It will be weird… getting a bank draft for around $150,000.00, putting it in my wallet, and then trotting off to the firm to drop it off. It even felt weird when I went to the bank to transfer those funds from OpCo to HoldCo. The banks certainly treat you differently when they see you have money… it’s kind of nice…

More Photos

Here are a couple more photos of the property.

The upper suite living room:

The upper suite bathroom:

Insurance Done

I had previously already inquired about the property insurance, but once subjects were removed I went back and finalized all the insurance paperwork and paid for it (a year in advance).

Repairs & Improvements

As mentioned in other posts, there is some work I’d like done to this property. Overall, it’s in superb shape. There’s just a few small things that I’d like to have done as were suggested to me in the inspection report.

And there are a few improvements I’d like to have done such as adding a superior cedar round fence post to split the yard into two, adding a dishwasher, etc. I’m also planning to contact a professional roofer for expert roofing services.

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I contacted a general handyman who offers Best handyman services Toronto that was referred to me by the inspection company and had him give me ballpark quotes on the items. He did say that they are general ballpark numbers and that he’d need to see the issues in person before he could give accurate quotes, but even so some of his prices seemed pretty expensive…

For example, he quoted $210 to fix a leaky faucet. The faucet barely drips (only when you press the handle hard and is only a drip) and I’m pretty sure it likely just needs a new washer. He said it probably needs a new cartridge which could be the case too, but even so, replacing a cartridge in a kitchen faucet isn’t very difficult.

The $210 was just his labour costs too. So… I’m not too sure what to think. His other quotes weren’t too bad – his fence quote was actually pretty good.

I may just have my property manager handle all of this for me and have her use “her guys”. She will charge me an additional 10% as a contractor type fee, but she probably gets better rates using her own people so it might still be worth it.

I haven’t decided yet.

Keys on Friday

Completion and possession is in 2 days on Friday! The nice thing about income property is that you can usually get immediate possession since the owners often don’t live there themselves.

This is in comparison to a 30-60 day waiting period when you’re buying a residential property for personal use – it can be hard to wait after you’ve done all the stressful paperwork and paid a lot of money!

The main downside though, is that I won’t be able to do anything with the property since it’s tenanted both upstairs and down so I have to respect the tenants’ privacy…

Anyhow, that’s where things sit for now. I’ll have another post for you guys once I have the keys in hand!