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Friday, July 01, 2005

Trailer Gone And New Cabinets Moving Forward

I got a call from the new cabinet guy last night. He's faxed his drawing to the countertop guy who will need to visit the house and make a template. He (Countertop Guy) thinks he can get this done by the 15th, so that's pretty good - only two weeks, and one of those days is a holiday. Cabinet Guy thinks he can be done by then as well - good when you consider he's leaving on a 1 week vacation today. I don't have a quote yet, but I'm told it will be fair. Countertop Guy will be calling me to get instructions on entering the house sometime soon so he can make his template.

I also swung by the place yesterday and confirmed the trailer was taken away, along with the trash on it. Yay! The property looks better already!

Relating to the trailer - I had about 100 responses to the offer I posted on craigslist come in within an hour. I responded to the first 10, telling them I was offering it to people in the order their responses were received. I gave each person 24 hours to go check out the trailer and haul it away. The first responder didn't get to it in time, so I offered it to the second, who took it. Once I confirmed it was taken, I then spent about 1.5 hours emailing all 90+ people telling them the trailer was no longer available. This was about 48 hours after I posted the offer. I got many responses back from people thanking me for following up but one idiot actually complained that I didn't respond fast enough to suit him! He accused me of leaving him hanging, proceeded to call me names, and said I probably didn't go in order, but sold the trailer to whoever offered me money for it. He said he responded within minutes of my ad going up and apparently he couldn't comprehend that he wasn't fast enough. (He was the 53rd responder.) And no one offered me money for the trailer. Anyway, I'm just appalled that some people can get so snotty when someone offers them something for free!

3 comments:

Trisha#1 said...

Well, ya know, Responder 53 might be worried about his welfare check being late due to the holiday this month.

Good for you, though! And, I'm sure the neighbors are appreciative.

Steve said...

That's too funny, Shaun! Especially the disgruntled character. I'm willing to bet the "winner" turns around and sells it on eBay or something. But I think you did the smart thing by just unloading it for nothing as the additional time spent trying to sell it may have proven more costly.

BTW, did you happen to mention to the people in your responding email that you pay $xxx for referrals that you close on? ;-)

Best of luck getting this completed in the next couple of weeks!

Shaun said...

Nikki - Yes, I related the story and he is taking care of me. In fact, he's said a couple of times that he just wants to keep in touch to make sure I don't feel like I'm dealing with another incompetent contractor.

Eddie - That's like asking if apples or oranges are better. Real estate has several advantages that stocks do not - more leverage (more so than just buying on margin), big tax breaks, and you can improve the value of your investment by fixing up the property. Stocks offer some advantages over real estate - they are highly liquid, for one. The stocks I own tend to be high dividend-paying REITs. I wrote briefly about them at http://shaunsre.blogspot.com/2004/10/how-reits-are-helping-me-reach-my-ira.html.

Trisha - The neighbors were actually a concern of mine. I didn't want the place to make the neighborhood look bad. I also think I spotted a bag of trash someone placed on the trailer, so I wanted the trailer gone before it became the neighborhood trash dump. Now I need to take care of the tree.

Steve - Ha! No, I forgot to do that. I missed a great opportunity! But one of the responders did say he could do drywall work for me.

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