Getting out of Real Estate

Most of the people I know who have made BIG money in Miami have done so with real estate.  Often their grandparents bought land when it was strawberry fields and sold to developers who turned the fields into malls.  Alas, my in laws were given that opportunity when they moved here in 1972.


A group of the Holocaust Survivor "Card Players"(my father in law was careful to tell me he never considered them "friends") each came up with savings of about 15K, and decided to pool their money to buy land off Kendall Drive which is now near the Florida Turnpike Extension.  My father in law, may he rest in peace, was always a man who thought he knew more than the average bear.  To him, in 1972, Miami was already over built", and the future lay in Cocoa Beach, where the Space Program was going to turn that area into the next big thing.  So the rest of the card players went ahead with their purchase, and my father in law bought two lots, for $10 K each, in Cocoa.


Twenty years hence, the rest of the group sold to a developer.  Their $10K investments became about $600K.  My father in law asked me to help him sell his lots.  We did -- for $12K each.  Alas, the Space Coast became full of, well, space...along with a lot of trailer parks.  Kendall became Kendall.  That was that.


I can't really criticize my in laws' real estate investing prowess, though, as I did a dumb thing, too: I listened to my friend Vince who has been as good with money as a drunken sailor.  He convinced me we had to grab a condo conversion lest our kids be priced out of Miami real estate after they went to college, and I bought a unit I knew was worth at most $100K for $235K.


Yesterday we listed it for sale -- for $149.9.  The unit DID house my mother in law for nearly a year -- so there's that.  But we've decided it's time for us to exit the real estate business -- after we sell, the only thing we'll own is our house.


We already arranged to give away most of the furniture -- my mother in law's bedroom set ought to be hauled away today, and the suegra's aide is taking a lot of her things.


Wifey thought she wanted her parents' break front, but Edna convinced her it's not her style, so Wifey is going to try to sell it at a consignment shop.


The unit is priced to sell fast, and hopefully it will.  The fewer properties you have to worry about during Hurricane season, to my opinion, the better.


As for future investments, well, as I told my partner Paul, I will look for experiential" opportunities.  First up, the Big, Fat, Colombian Wedding we're throwing in September.  That investment won't generate dollar returns, but it ought to be very rich in the memory department.