the mario blog

Neighbors. Everybody has them. I have a few myself. There is the older lady next door, whose toenails Otto is obsessed with. And then there is the artist lady two windows down who is only seen wearing white gowns. Don’t forget the couple down the hall who oftentimes takes on the duty of sitting other people’s dogs by simply locking them out into the hallway. But one surely stands out amongst the people I share a trash chute with.

My immediate next door neighbor and the single biggest detriment to the long-term value of my real estate investment. The guy works from home and can’t be seen or heard of for weeks at a time. Then one night, he heads to one of our local watering holes and goes big. And by goes big, I mean he comes back at about two in the morning with a group of other crazy people who then accompany his guitar solos and smoke on his rooftop patio, which coincidentally is not a patio at all but rather the roof in front of my living room window, until the wee hours of the morning. While this occurrence usually wakes me up, reminds me why I don’t smoke and robs me of any level of privacy, I just can’t get myself to be truly mad.

I mean how cool is it that the guy brings back a bunch of strangers from the bars to sing songs in his apartment. While I might never be able to sell my loft, at least I have a funny story to tell about my neighbor. Who, no doubt, will still be my neighbor and probably the president, founder and host of the Pearl District Choir Club.

This past week, I was able to extend job offers to two gentlemen who started as interns at our company just a few months ago. While this may not seem like a big deal to some, it is for me. I firmly believe that the best way to get your career started is to choose the right company in a field that truly interests you, and then do whatever it takes to your foot in the door. This is compared to just sending out a bunch of resumes and then accepting whatever job comes along first.

The single most important career decision I have made so far was to quit my dead-end job with an agency in Montana to become the (albeit unpaid) intern of a highly-renown ad agency president in Seattle. Hence, it comes as no surprise that half of my staff members actually started their careers as interns. Here’s too much success in years to come, Mike and Scott.

Also, congrats to my friend Kemble, who a few years ago, I was able to hook up with an internship with a famous ad agency in Los Angeles. Kemble just graduated college and was offered a full-time, permanent position with that very same agency. Congrats Kemble.

Below is a picture of myself and former intern colleague, Brian, at a bbq in Seattle. Here’s to being interns.

 

Remind me to never try and set up my own wireless network again. Two routers, seven hours and three beers later; I finally configured my new Linksys router to wirelessly spread my Internet connection all across my loft. I can now lay on my bathroom carpet and cruise the net at the same time. Actually, that’s gross. Good night.

For those of you in the housing business, you’ll be happy to hear that yesterday I completed the sale of another mortgage. No I am not contemplating a career change. The mortgage on my condo just continues to get sold and bought by different companies. It really makes my month long effort of finding the perfect reputable mortgage company appear rather useless.

I am not quite sure why, but not only has the path to homeownership been rocky, but the first couple weeks have been no cake walk either.

Enter last Tuesday. I was gearing up for a late-summer picnic. My picnic date continued to  try and get me to hurry up to make the most out of the upcoming picnic. Well, I hurried up alright. And I forgot my keys on the kitchen counter.

Now, it’s always important to have a backup key for your apartment, especially when nobody else has a key to your apartment. Fortunately, I had a backup key made just a couple of days ago. Unfortunately, that key was also in my apartment.

Since I now was also locked out of my office, I was depending on my cell phone to find a qualified locksmith to let me back in. A few 1-800 numbers and the threat of various $50 connection/call fees later, a locksmith was on his way. Or so I thought.

About an hour after expected, a long-haired Persian dude drove up in his sports car. At first I thought that there’s no way that this guy could be a locksmith. Then I saw that the t-shirt he was putting on in the car had some sort of locksmith lingo written upon it. Note to self, be wary when the locksmith assigned to your case is carrying all his tools in his jeans’ pockets. After asking him if he needed any other tools, he reluctantly grabbed a tool box out his trunk. I felt relieved. Somewhat.

Once upstairs, the Persian locksmith spent about an hour trying to pick my lock. He didn’t succeed. Now I apparently had two choices.
1. Drill out the lock and put in a new one. Since he didn’t have any of those locks with him, he was going to have to come back later to install it. Apparently, his buddy had one at home. Total cost = $250. l; his job and then have him try to pick my lock. In retrospect, his friend might havebeen a real locksmith.  Total Cost = $150.

I chose option #2, and Mr. Persian locksmith dissapeared to go on another job. Him and his buddy were coming back in an hour to finish the job. Me, I was going to now picnic in front of the apartment. Lovely.

90 minutes later, after having met all my neightbors,  I still hadn’t heard from the locksmith. He went off on another job, thinking that I was going to wait around for him. No way. I hate being screwed over.

With a six-pack of beer, cheese and baguette and a brand new toothbrush; the picnic continued at the El Cabana motel on Portland’s east side. Who says that you can’t get a $39 hotel room in Portland? Granted, it took a little while for the lady at the reception to run her propietary background check to make sure that I hadn’t priorely been involved in the drug or prostitution business in any of her properties.

Seriously, that might have been the sketchiest hotel room I’ve ever seen and definitely stayed in. The next day,  a real locksmith opened my door for $60. Factoring in my hotel room, I had just saved 33% on locksmith services. What’s not to like about that?

After a long and agonizing process, I became a homeowner on Friday. Once I get all the moving boxes out of the way, I am going to take some pictures and post them. It’s a big industrial loft with hardwood floors and super high ceilings. I have large window doors that lead one onto a roof, which I am probably not supposed to be on.  There’s also a club in near proximity, so one can listen to a variety of music while trying to fall asleep. Note to self, check out the back of the building next time around.

Going through this process has taught me a few things.

1. There are too many people involved in the process of buying and selling a
   house. Communication is too often an afterthought and blame is easily pushed
   on some other party involved. In the end, it’s always the buyer and seller who
   carry the consequences. For example, the reason my first mortgage fell
   through was because my broker didn’t properly communicate with my lender.
   The second mortgage fell through because my agent didn’t properly
   communicate with my broker.
2. People don’t double-check their work. Maybe because there are so many
   parties involved, some assume that they don’t have to double-check their
   work. Example, if my second broker had double-checked the loan documents
   prior to closing (as I had asked), I wouldn’t have to deal with a three-year
   pre-payment penalty on my mortgage now.
3. A lot of real estate people are good sales people, which doesn’t help the
   customer from a service perspective. It appears that everybody in the
   process is somehow compensated by commission. They get paid if things close,
   not if closes according to the customer’s needs. Quality control isn’t
   necessarily the greatest concern of someone who’s working on some sort of
   sales commission. There are too many salesmen and too few workers in the
   real estate industry.

The Real Estate business is still a great business opportunity. Maybe not just for the guy sells insurance, but rather for the fellow who has been proofreading the policies.

With the being said, I need to thank my agent Scott without who I would have quit the process after the second mortgage fell through. Thank you Tere for finally getting the loan wrapped up. Third time’s a charme. Last but not least, thanks to Brianna, my first broker. Even though she didn’t have any luck in closing those first two mortgages, nobody worked harder throughout this process than Brianna.