Happy Hannukah 2013

Hanukkah Rainbow    
by Eva Grant

Eight little candles in a row,
Gaily colored,
All aglow.
Scarlet, purple,
Green, white, blue,
Pink and yellow,
Orange, too.
The menorah,
Shining bright,
Holds a rainbow
Hanukkah night.

5 Things You May Not Know About the Pilgrims

It’s Thanksgiving week in America, and families across the country will soon enjoy a meal that harkens back to the harvest feast held in 1621 by the residents of Plymouth Colony. But even as we remember the Pilgrims this Thursday, our image of the English settlers remains largely based on myth rather than fact. Below, discover five things about the hosts of the original Thanksgiving that might come as a surprise.

 

1. Not all of the Mayflower’s passengers were motivated by religion.
The Mayflower actually carried three distinct groups of passengers within the walls of its curving hull. About half were in fact Separatists, the people we now know as the Pilgrims. Another handful of those on board were sympathetic to the Separatist cause but weren’t actually part of that core group of dissidents. The remaining passengers were really just hired hands—laborers, soldiers and craftsmen of various stripes whose skills were required for both the transatlantic crossing and those vital first few months ashore. Community leader John Alden, for instance, was originally a cooper, brought along to make and repair barrels on board the ship. Myles Standish, who would eventually become the military leader of Plymouth Colony, was a soldier hired for protection against whatever natives the settlers might encounter.

2. The Mayflower didn’t land in Plymouth first.
The Mayflower first landed at the tip of Cape Cod, in what is now Provincetown. The settlers had originally hoped to make for the mouth of the Hudson River and find fertile farmland somewhere north of present-day New York City, but bad weather forced them to retreat. They intended to try again for the Hudson, but the approaching winter and dwindling supplies eventually convinced them to continue on across Cape Cod Bay to Plymouth.

3. The Pilgrims didn’t name Plymouth, Massachusetts, for Plymouth, England.
In fact, the Pilgrims didn’t name Plymouth, Massachusetts, at all. It had been dubbed that years earlier by previous explorers to the region, and was clearly marked as Plymouth (or Plimoth—spellings varied somewhat) on maps that the Mayflower’s captain surely had on hand. It’s sheer coincidence that the Mayflower ended up sailing from a town called Plymouth in England and then landing in a town called Plymouth in America. And it’s unlikely that the Mayflower’s passengers felt any emotional connection to Plymouth, England, at all. Most of the Separatists had been living in exile in Holland for 10 years before sailing for America, and the rest of the passengers were drawn from the greater London area. The Mayflower only ended up departing from Plymouth because bad weather and misfortune had prevented the settlers from making the crossing on two earlier attempts—first from Southampton and then from Dartmouth—before they finally succeeded in sailing from the port of Plymouth.

4. Some of the Mayflower’s passengers had been to America before.
Several of the Mayflower’s crew had made the journey at least once before, on either fishing or exploration trips. One notable figure, Stephen Hopkins, had even tried to settle in the New World 10 years earlier, in the Jamestown colony of Virginia. On his way to join the settlement, his ship was wrecked off the coast of Bermuda, stranding him and his fellow passengers for several months. The story of the Virginia settlers’ shipwreck and rescue made waves back home in England, and William Shakespeare freely admitted that he based his play “The Tempest” on the tale. He even may have named one of the characters, Stephano, after Stephen Hopkins, who was once one of Shakespeare’s neighbors. Hopkins eventually returned to England and later joined the Mayflower as a member of the sympathetic group of supporters from London.

5. The Pilgrims were relatively tolerant of other religious beliefs.
The Puritans, who settled the region north of Plymouth, were known for their strict approach to how religion was practiced within their borders. The Pilgrims, on the other hand, never made any attempts to convert outsiders to their faith, including the Native Americans they encountered in America and the nonbelievers who’d joined them as laborers in England. Generally speaking, they didn’t even try to impose their unique observances on their friends and neighbors. For instance, while the Pilgrims themselves didn’t themselves Christmas, they didn’t stop others from taking the day off and celebrating it as they wished. They also allowed men who were not part of their faith to hold public office, and they apparently had no problem with the intermarriage of believers and nonbelievers. As a matter of fact, they didn’t consider marriage to be a religious matter at all, preferring instead to view it as a civil contract outside the church’s jurisdiction.

The Mayflower and the First Thanksgiving

The Mayflower

First, the Separatists returned to London to get organized. A prominent merchant agreed to advance the money for their journey. The Virginia Company gave them permission to establish a settlement, or “plantation,” on the East Coast between 38 and 41 degrees north latitude (roughly between the Chesapeake Bay and the mouth of the Hudson River). And the King of England gave them permission to leave the Church of England, “provided they carried themselves peaceably.”

In August 1620, a group of about 40 Saints joined a much larger group of (comparatively) secular colonists–“Strangers,” to the Saints–and set sail from England on two merchant ships: the Mayflower and the Speedwell. The Speedwell began to leak almost immediately, however, and the ships headed back to port. The travelers squeezed themselves and their belongings onto the Mayflower and set sail once again.

Because of the delay caused by the leaky Speedwell, the Mayflower had to cross the Atlantic at the height of storm season. As a result, the journey was horribly unpleasant. Many of the passengers were so seasick they could scarcely get up, and the waves were so rough that one “Stranger” was swept overboard and drowned. (It was “the just hand of God upon him,” Bradford wrote later, for the young sailor had been “a proud and very profane yonge man.”)

The Mayflower Compact

After two miserable months at sea, the ship finally reached the New World. There, the Mayflower’s passengers found an abandoned Indian village and not much else. They also found that they were in the wrong place: Cape Cod was located at 42 degrees north latitude, well north of the Virginia Company’s territory. Technically, the Mayflower colonists had no right to be there at all. In order to establish themselves as a legitimate colony (“Plymouth,” named after the English port from which they had departed) under these dubious circumstances, 41 of the Saints and Strangers drafted and signed a document they called the Mayflower Compact. This Compact promised to create a “civil Body Politick” governed by elected officials and “just and equal laws.” It also swore allegiance to the English king.

Plymouth Colony and the First Thanksgiving

The colonists spent the first winter, which only 53 passengers and half the crew survived, living onboard the Mayflower. (The Mayflower sailed back to England in April 1621.) Once they moved ashore, the colonists faced even more challenges. During their first winter in America, more than half of the Plymouth colonists died from malnutrition, disease and exposure to the harsh New England weather. In fact, without the help of the area’s native people, it is likely that none of the colonists would have survived. An English-speaking Pawtuxet named Samoset helped the colonists form an alliance with the local Wampanoags, who taught them how to hunt local animals, gather shellfish and grow corn, beans and squash. At the end of the next summer, the Plymouth colonists celebrated their first successful harvest with a three-day festival of thanksgiving. We still commemorate this feast today.

Eventually, the Plymouth colonists were absorbed into the Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony. Still, the Mayflower Saints and their descendants remained convinced that they alone had been specially chosen by God to act as a beacon for Christians around the world. “As one small candle may light a thousand,” Bradford wrote, “so the light here kindled hath shone to many, yea in some sort to our whole nation.”

November Newsletter

 

 

Your Investment Property Shopping Criteria

It's time to start looking for a property. Before you do you need to define your selection criteria. This section will focus on what your criteria is, why it matters, and how to define it.
Imagine that you want to use a new recipe in making your dinner tonight . You take out a cookbook to find a recipe that looks good, discover a great baked chicken meal, and make your shopping list of ingredients in order to make the meal for your family. You head to the store and begin picking up the items on your list. Chicken, basil, olive oil, and other items begin to fill your cart. Suddenly - you see the spaghetti and remember another recipe that you once wanted to try with spaghetti. You begin to reach for the spaghetti but then remember your shopping list. Spaghetti isn't on the list for tonight's dinner, so you put back the distraction and continue on your way home to make a perfect dinner for your family.
Real estate is no different. Your selection criteria list is just like your ingredient list in the example above. It is designed to keep you focused on shopping for the things you need, and not waste money on other good looking things along the way. Real estate is an exciting field with a lot of different niches and strategies - so it is easy to get distracted by the next big thing or trend. Having a clearly defined selection criteria can help you stay focused, avoid "analysis paralysis" and keep you on track to buy a great investment property. By defining your criteria, you will be able to narrow down the choices in the market, and you will then eliminate the vast majority of deals that are only distractions. Instead, you'll focus on finding just the kind of deals that you are interested in buying.

Creating Your Selection Criteria

In chapter three, we looked at a number of different niches you could invest in, as well as multiple strategies you can use to invest. It's now time to choose the niche and strategy and come up with a list of criteria to narrow down your selection further.
There are a number of different items you will want to consider to add to your "criteria list." These could include:

• Town
• Neighborhood
• Property Size (Square Ft)
• Lot Size
• Property Conditions
• Number of Units
• Cap Rate
• Cashflow
• Appreciation Potential

No one can tell you exactly what your investment property criteria should or should not include. Some of it will come down to personal preference, such as "I only want to buy in Seattle" or "I only want houses with basements," but most of your chosen criteria will revolve around the kind of investment you are getting into. For example, if you are looking to become a "buy and hold" investor of small multifamily units, your criteria is going to include small multifamily properties and will exclude old commercial buildings.
By specifying, ahead of time, what criteria you are willing to look at, your search becomes much more manageable. In the same way, you are able to more effectively communicate your desires to others who may help you buy property. If you simply told people "I am looking for real estate," the most likely response would be "good for you..." However, if you instead mentioned that you were looking "to buy a small single family house in the Rockford neighborhood for under $150,000," you enable others to think of properties that might match that description and get you connected with the deal.

Understanding "The Rules" of Investment Property

Perhaps the most important part of the criteria you put together is the financial component. If a deal doesn't make sense financially, it's not going to be a strong investment for you. In chapter two we looked at some of the basic math surrounding real estate investing, such as income, cashflow, and return on investment. However, generally speaking, a listing is not going to tell you the important information you want to know about the financials of a property. Yes, you can generally determine the amount of income the property makes - but you won't know immediately how much monthly cashflow the property produces, how overpriced the property is, or what you should offer. Additionally - it's not going to make sense to get out your spreadsheet and do a full property evaluation on every single deal you glance at. This is when "rules" come into play.
A "rule" is short for "rule of thumb." Rules can help give you a quick way to evaluate a property's financials on the fly. As with any "rule of thumb" using rules is not an exact science and should never be relied on entirely to decide if a property is a good investment. However - they can help you quickly filter a property and decide if it's worth further evaluation. Let's take a look at a few of these rules:

The 2% rule states that your monthly rent should be approximately 2% of the purchase price. In other words, a $100,000 home should rent for $2,000 per month; a $50,000 home should rent for $1,000 per month. This is a very conservative estimate that is very simplistic but can help in deciding if a property warrants a deeper look. In most parts of the country, the 2% is very difficult to achieve, but the closer you can get to that, the better cashflow you'll receive.
Real World Example: An average three bedroom home rents for $800 per month in your neighborhood. According to the 2% rule - you should be looking to spend around $40,000 for that property ($800 / .02 = $40,000)

The 50% rule is a great rule-of-thumb that helps you to fairly-accurately predict how much your expenses are going to cost you each month for a property. The 50% rule simply states that 50% of your income will be spent on expenses -- not including the mortgage payment. As mentioned above - most real estate listings will let you know what the monthly income of a property is. By dividing that number in half, you are able to easily see how much you'll have left to pay the monthly mortgage (principle and interest). Any income left over, after the 50% of expenses and the mortgage payment are taken out, is your cashflow. The 50% of expenses includes all expenses, including repairs, vacancies, utilities, taxes, insurance, management, turnover costs, and the occasional "big ticket" repairs that must be saved up for -- aka. CapEx or Capital Expenses like roofs, parking lots, furnaces.
Real World Example: An apartment building brings in $8,000 per month in income. Using the 50% rule, we are left with $4,000 to make the mortgage payment. If the monthly mortgage payment on the property was $3,500 per month, you can reasonably assume a monthly cashflow of $500 per month.
The 50% rule is especially helpful in teaching that expenses are almost always more than one might think. One common mistake that new investors make is under-estimating how much the expenses are going to cost. The 50% rule helps to show that there are always costs that are unexpected, so plan for them.

The 70% rule is used by investors to quickly determine the maximum price one should pay for a property based on the after repair value (ARV). Though most-often used by house flippers, the 70% rule can actually be used for any strategy when you want to find a good deal. The 70% rule says that you should only pay 70% of what the after repair value is, less the repair costs.
Real World Example: A home which, after being fixed up, should sell for approximately $200,000, needs approximately $35,000 worth of work. Using the 70% rule, a person should multiply $200,000 by 70% to get $140,000 - and then subtract the $35,000 in repairs. The most a person should pay for this property, therefore, should be $105,000.
Remember, a rule of thumb like the ones above are used only to quickly and efficiently screen a property and decide if it's worth further investigation. Never use a "rule of thumb" to decide exactly how much to pay or if you should invest or not. If a property passes the above rules (or gets close) it may be worth a more detailed analysis on paper or via a computer spreadsheet. Don't confuse a rule of thumb for a license to skip doing your homework.