5th Annual Parry-Furlo Camping Trip: MONSOON Edition!

I supposed it was bound to happen.

You go camping in late September / early October long enough, you're bound to run into some rain. On the previous 4 trips, only one had light rain the first night. Well... Murphy's Law caught up with us on this trip. The good news is that it shouldn't rain for the next 8 years!

Seriously, it was a monsoon outside! According to Wunderground, it rained 0.42" on Friday, 1.31" on Saturday and then 1.63" on Sunday. Not only that, the wind was pretty intense and so most of the time the rain came in sideways. There was also thunder and lightening Sunday morning.

BUT, we had a yurt.

Which meant we were able to stay dry and still enjoy the weekend. We played games, cooked meals on the stove, puzzled, visited both the Oregon Coast Aquarium & the OSU Hatfield Marine Science Center, and ate at the Rogue Brewery. All in all, it was fun. Check out what we did below.

 Here are some seahorses. They sure are weird!

You can walk in a glass tunnel through the shark tank. It was awesome!

PROOF! Smiles inside the shark tank.

The gang, hiding inside a rock cave attempting to avoid rain. There's actually a really cool outside part to the aquarium with sea lions and otters.

 There's a section where you can touch starfish and other sea creatures.

Jellyfish are weird.

Apparently, these are still in use today for really deep underwater adventures.

Pretty scary!

This is at the Marine Science Center. I feel like I'm watching Pirates of the Caribbean II.

They also have a cool wave machine. You build Lego structures, and then see if they can withstand different sizes of waves.

We also decided to have dinner at the Rogue Brewery since our fire pit was flooded. They had games there too and we played Hedbandz while eating dinner.

Another perk of yurting is that you can borrow puzzles. Jessi and Kellie are great at puzzling!

So that was our trip. See, you can still have fun even if it's raining.

A Day Hike At Tumalo Falls

Last weekend I went on a camping trip with a bunch of men from my church called "Man Camp". We stayed at Tumalo State Park in Bend, OR. On one of the days part of the group went for a hike to Tumalo Falls. There are a bunch of waterfalls (duh) within a short hike. If you find yourself in Bend looking for something to do, I recommend a day hike at Tumalo Falls.

This was the view on the way back. The large waterfall is right below me.

If you're still looking for something to do, check out Smith Rock State Park in Terrebonne, OR. The hike is pretty intense - they actually call it Misery Trail - but the view is breath taking. That rock sticking up on the right is called "Monkey Face".

You can also watch people do crazy things like walk across a slack line with a 100 foot drop below them. Yes, they're tied in, but still. It does kind of look like he's running away from the Monkey's mouth.

The Benefits of Mowing Lawns

Sometimes owning real estate means you need to mow the lawn. In my case, it's starting to add up to a LOT of lawns. For example, yesterday I mowed 4 sets of lawns (front & back).

In contrast to my childhood, that's a lot of mowing. You see, growing up, my Dad's idea of yard maintenance consisted of 2 steps: Roundup in the spring and Roundup in the fall. Done. No mowing required.

When we bought our first place I was excited to finally do this thing that so many people talk about: mow my own lawn. Since it was a duplex, I got a double dose.

A few properties later, I still enjoy mowing lawns. Sure, takes a lot of work and time - about an hour per lawn, once every other week on average - but I still like it.

It's for a few reasons:

1) It's an opportunity to get exercise. I take a lot of steps and push & pull a lot. It's great for my health. I'm not quite extreme enough to use a push mower (I do live in Oregon after all), but I still get a good workout.

2) I listen to audiobooks while mowing. I got a pair of ear muffs that block out the sound of the motor and I get lost in story. Right now I'm listening to book 2 of The Hunger Games. It's a fantastic use of time. I often switch off between fantasy, biographies and self-help books.

3) At one time I did the research & it's anywhere from $40-$70 per lawn to pay someone else to take care of your lawn. So I'm getting paid to exercise & read! I think about this a lot when I'm hot, sweaty and still have one more set of lawns to go. $200 more dollars to the student loan pot!

4) It's a great excuse to check out the property and check in on tenants. It's let's them know I care about the property AND them.

I know my time is finite and eventually we will own enough properties I won't be able to keep up, but for now I really enjoy it.

Mapping Out Real Estate Sales

I talked about this map on a recent podcast and wanted to share it here as well. If you click on it, you should get to see the large version of it. It's meant to be printed on a 17"x11" sheet of paper.

This map shows sales in Corvallis, Albany, Lebanon and Philomath in the last 12 months. People often talk about price differences in Corvallis and Albany, and this map shows it perfectly. Of course, this map takes it a another step and shows the differences in neighborhoods too. Often North Albany is said to be more expensive, and South Corvallis is thought to be less expensive. With the map, you can clearly see that.

What's also fun is finding the place you recently bought or sold on the map. We bought two in the last 12 months and I was able to pick them out (one yellow and one green dot).

I don't know if this will become a regular thing, but it sure was fun to make once I figured out all the tools I needed to combine to make it happen.

Want to make a map yourself? Here's how to do it:

• I created a grey map using MapBox. They have all sorts of cool styles to choose from. It requires a free account.
• I installed an app of their's called TileMill. It took a while to figure out how to use this. It's not as intuitive as I would like.
• I imported a reference layer from map I made in MapBox to TileMill (under setting, link to your map's MapBox ID).
• Then, I went to the MLS database and exported all the sales in the last 12 months, including their price. This could, in theory, be anything geographic.
• I went to GPS Visualizer and geocoded all the address (1,700 of them!) to latitude and longitude using their javascript tool.
• Once I had that, I made a .CSV file of the data and imported that into TileMill as another map layer.
• TileMill is cool because then I could style the markers any way I wanted using code similar to CSS. I chose plain dots that differed in color based on the price. I could also change the size of the dots if I wanted based on some other criteria.
• Then I created a 17"x11" image at 300 ppi in Pixelmator. This is like Photoshop for Mac, but much more affordable and just as powerful in my opinion.
• Then it was a laborious task of taking screen shots of TileMill, cropping them down to only the map using Mac's build in Preview app and lining up the layers in Pixelmator. Since a screen's resolution is 72 ppi, I essentially had to blow everything up 3 times the size so it printed normally. I had more than 30 layers to cover the entire canvas.
• I couldn't fit Lebanon inline with the other cities, so I broke it out into it's own box. It happens.
• I could also, if I wanted, upload my dots layer back to MapBox and then have something to embed on a website. Like so:

So there you go. A cool map that shows sales and a really quick guide on how to make it. Or at least, the tools to make it happen.

How To Finance Commercial Real Estate

I was recently doing some research for a real estate investor's club meeting on how to fund commercial real estate and had trouble finding this information online. So... Here it is as of August 2013.

Let's say you want to buy an apartment complex larger than 4 units (that was one of the properties we practiced analyzing as a group). Those, whether it's 5 or 500 are considered commercial real estate. That means you need to get a commercial loan. When you go to a business-based bank, like Citizens Bank, here's what they'll tell you. Again... this is all subject to change, but these should work as general lending rules.

• First, the downpayment minimum is 30%! That could come from the seller (or anyone really) as long as they're willing to take 2nd position to the main loan.
• Second you can only get a loan for 20-25 years.
• That loan will probably have an variable rate, which can adjust every 3-5 years.
• Your personal credit score, though looked at, doesn't matter as much. If you're buying with a bunch of investors as an LLC then the majority owners would have to guarantee the loan payment.
• Instead, they'll look critically at the income and expenses of the property. The income must be at least 1.24 (call it one and a quarter) of all expenses, including all debt repayment.
• Closing costs will be the fairly standard loan fee: 1% of mortgage. Plus the fairly standard 4% of the purchase price for title insurance. Plus recording fees of course, but those are minimal.
• Often times, since these are larger properties with considerably more risk, the lender will want to do an environment impact report to make sure nothing comes up.
• That's it. Gather your funds and paperwork and you can buy a commercial property.

This means you need a TON of capital to buy a property though. The specific one I was analyzing met all the criteria if I had enough money for a downpayment and closing costs. Well... except that I don't have $200,000 to invest... So I guess I don't meet all the criteria! I did officially find out that not having enough money is the #1 reason why people don't qualify. No kidding!

Now, if the seller was willing to take back a 2nd for the down payment, and even though it would still have positive cash-flow, the rent-to-expense ratio would become less than 1.24 in this case and I wouldn't be able to finance the rest of the purchase. Bummer. But... if the right property came along that still met the criteria, it would be totally cool. Good luck finding that deal on the MLS.

It could also work, in theory, with a group of investors adding up to the $200,000 minimum down. Of course, I don't exactly know how to find people with lots of cash waiting to be invested... Plus, I'd have to have a very clear exist strategy, somehow prove my credibility, and put in a ton of work... but it could be worth it. I know some people do this full-time with larger properties where the scale makes it worth the effort. They find deals, find investors, property managers and get part of the equity for pulling it all together. I actually would like to learn more about this style of investing.

Anyways, that's what it takes to finance a commercial property. It's way out of my league today, but still fun to think about.

Sweat Equity: Columbus Final Pictures

As promised, here are some pictures of the remodel we did. It turned out to be a massive project, but looks great (especially now that we're done). Let's start with a couple before-ish photos.

The kitchen. The refrigerator used to sit in the empty spot.

The living room. There used to be wall-to-wall carpet where the hardwood is. Unfortunately, that wood was in horrible shape.

The hole in the wall. The trick is to seal it up while allowing for future access to the pipes.

These sections were rotted away and the whole subfloor needed to be replaced.

OK. Now for the final after pictures.


We didn't do anything on the outside except fix a couple spots where the water didn't drain the way I wanted.

The living room. Boom.

We moved the fridge and my dad built this cabinet & counter.

 New sink. new counters. New dishwasher. All refinished cabinets. Just stop for half a second and admire what took us MONTHS to do.

Custom chop block.

Custom countertop too.

MEGA thanks to my dad for coming up TWO weekends to help make these.

Without the fridge here, we added a mini counter for a microwave.

NEW garbage disposal.

What hole? It now also has an access panel just in case...

We changed the sink facet in the bathroom.

We repaired the subfloor. With carpet, you would never know.

We didn't do anything in the backyard, but I like this panorama.

Don't worry, we didn't work 100% of the time. I did my best attempt at Pottering using a paint roller.

We're ready to relax for a bit before taking on any new projects. It'll be nice to get back to a semi-normal routine too.

I Think It's Time For a New Pair of Shoes

There are certain things in life I destroy. What can I say? It's usually a combination of buying the wrong (read: cheap) tool for the job, and then using it to it's fullest.

Almost 1 year ago I bought these shoes. It was a last minute purchase because I forgot my normal pair at home. When I finally got back, these shoes became my "work shoes". I did construction, mowed lawns, painted, and climbed around on roofs with them.

Clearly these $30 shoes from Walmart were not made for that level of abuse.

So, I think I'm ready to replace them. Normally I would demote my current "everyday shoes" to work shoes and get new "everyday shoes"... Which double as  running shoes - their intended purpose.

But now that I'm mowing lawns a lot, and it tends to be wet where I live, I'm second guessing that decision. Does anyone have advice when it comes to buying work shoes?

Harbor Freight Tools Aluminum Mobility Wheelchair And Scooter Carrier

Owning multiple lawns in Oregon is tough, especially during the spring when you can watch the grass growing because it's so fast! I found myself putting off mowing because I knew I would have to take the trailer out, put it back, etc. It's not hard, but it's just enough work that I wanted another solution.

I researched into hiring someone to mow my lawns, but decided it was too expensive & that I actually like the exercise (and listening to my audiobooks). I also thought about requiring our tenants to mow their own lawns, but unless they live in a house they don't tend to actually do it.

So, I started looking into carriers that I could quickly attach to the back of the Jeep.

Harbor Freight Tools is the best place to get hardware deals. I'll admit that it's not the highest quality products, but that's fine for a weekend-warrior like myself who actually takes care of my equipment.

At first I wanted to get the standard 500lb Aluminum Cargo Carrier, but it wasn't wide enough by 2" for my standard sized mower! Seriously? Who designed that?

The next option was the Aluminum Mobility Wheelchair and Scooter Carrier. It also carried 500lbs, had a ramp, and most importantly was wide enough for my mower. The only problem was that it was twice as expensive.

So, I did what I normally do: I patiently waited for an inevitable deal. One finally came where I was able to knock a little over 50% off the price... within $10 of what I was willing to pay for the other carrier.

Putting it together was super simple. It came in 4 large pieces and I just had to attach them together with nuts and bolts. I was able to do it all in a couple hours. I actually planned on taking a bunch of pictures to show how to make it, but the picture above kind of spells it out entirely.

I do have two changes I'll eventually make from the original design.

First, I'm going to make the ramp a quick-release so I can completely remove it. That will make it easier to move around and store. The carrier is just heavy enough, and the ramp sticks out just enough that it's really awkward to move around and store. A couple wing-nuts on the ramps bolts will solve that.

Second, I'm thinking about creating a wooden box I can put in the carrier. Then I'll be able to put tools and other goodies in the back without worrying about them falling out. I still need to think through the design, but knowing myself it'll be a foldable box so I can store it easily.

Until then, it'll be great to quickly put in on the back and go.