And yes, it is hot out. Likely to be humid too. And sunny. Because it’s summer. I was reading my rural electricity co-op provider’s magazine while at the BOL, and had grabbed one out of the stack from LAST summer. Guess what it said? Yeah, conserve electricity because of the high heat. Also they were raising our rates because of inflation. So this year is pretty much just like last year. Hot.
Somehow we forget. Like the pain of childbirth.
Despite the heat I ran a couple of loads to my local auction house. Picked up one lot I’d won in a more industrial auction. That was for resale. I will try to run at least one more good load to the auction today before heading over to my rent house to start work on it. The ceiling needs repair. I’m going to end up doing the patch in the wall, instead of the painter… and the porch floor has some rotten boards that will need to be replaced. I have to do that every couple of years.
Then I have to seriously consider what to do about the fence. Some of it is pretty worn, as I discovered when the strange neighbor drew my attention to it. I’m tempted to do the absolute minimum, just add a board so I can re-nail the rotten bottoms of the pickets. That will buy a couple of more years for the fence. I don’t want to put thousands or even hundreds of dollars into it. I’ve power washed it a couple of times though, and it’s pretty worn out. Western red cedar 5 inch pickets on pressure treated posts and rails is the default fencing here, and it holds up pretty well, better with washing and sealing, but it doesn’t last forever and that fence is over 15 years old. The joy of property ownership. It’ll be hot out, no matter what I choose to do.
I do think that having a revenue stream from a rental property is a good idea, and a decent hedge against inflation. As long as you can count on .gov to honor property rights, and insist that tenants pay you what you are owed, that is. We’ve seen that we can’t actually count on that in most places. Still a good investment in theory, and for us, in practice. I’d prefer to have some commercial rental property too. It’s easier to get rid of bad tenants, but if the economy goes south, it’s harder to keep good ones. Everyone needs a place to live, businesses can condense down to ‘home based’ if needed, or they go broke completely leaving commercial landlords with empty properties. Every investment involves trade offs, and different risks.
Even cash buried in jars involves risk.
The only way I know to reduce the risk is to diversify, and I don’t mean by holding 10 different stocks. Diversify your investments. Diversify your income. Diversify your suppliers and sources. Diversify what you stack. And hope that the whole thing doesn’t come crashing down all at the same time.
Even if it does, if you’ve stacked, you’ll still be able to eat. Stack it up.
nick