I have been plugging away at getting a flip finished.  This part of the flip always kills me and I never remember how hard it is.  You can see the end.  It is SOOOO close!

But to keep my sanity, I am taking time in the evenings to watch the Marvel movies in chronological order.  I found the image that accompanies this blog, somewhere on the internet, and am using it to guide my evening viewing.  I am not getting all of the TV shows watched, just the movies, but someday…

I have seen all but the Hulk movie before, so nothing is really new, but I am seeing new facets by watching it this way.  For instance there is a Mark Ruffalo (Hulk)  line in the Avengers, “last time I was in New York, I kind of broke Harlem.”  I had no idea what that was about.  Now I do.  Another example is Samuel L Jackson (Nick Fury) saying to Captain America, “”The last time I trusted someone, I lost an eye.” Lots of things I thought were just lines turned out to be jokes, who knew?!  Script writers, that’s who.

What does this have to do with being a real estate investor?  There are always more things to do.  There are always potential deals, that you don’t have time to vet.  There will be time later.  Sometimes you go through looking at a project or even investing in it and you don’t see the whole picture at the time.  Why did that one work?  Why didn’t the other one that was almost the same?

We need a wider perspective.  We have to go back through what was going on in the area historically.  What was the area like 5 years ago? 10?  What is coming down the pipeline for 3 years from now.  There is a city or county plan for that area.  If you don’t know what it is you are missing the inside jokes.

My most successful project was successful in part because one of my partners had an intimate knowledge of the history of the area: he had sued the city requiring them to clean up the local lake before it became permanently unusable.  The city had used the area in a primarily hispanic part of town as a waste management site, without proper cleanup.  It was then cleaned up and made into a wildlife sanctuary run by the National Audubon Society.  Without his knowledge of the broader history and the specific challenges we would not have been able to get the project off the ground, get city, county, and other governmental support.  With all of that backstory we built a thriving community that is continuing to grow.

We also paid close attention to the county and city planning maps that involved our project.  We heard about a large university wanting to open a branch in the town and helped to show them the advantages of our area.  We knew that the city was wooing a vehicle manufacturing company and helped to nudge it our way.  By doing this we did our little part to bring 2 major employers to an area that hadn’t had major development in over 50 years, and brought a high level collegiate experience to our residents and their neighbors.  We looked inside the screen writers’ heads and saw the possible directions for the future and nudged it so that our little project had all the tools and support it needed to emerge victorious!

So watch the movies in order,  learn the history and  get hints of what is coming in the future.  It can make all the difference!