Chandler Properties Blog

Here’s a link to an interview Becky Quick of CNBC did with Warren Buffett today.  The video is about 10 minutes and covers his view on the current economy, what he was doing the weekend that Lehman Brothers failed, and what key economic indicators he looks at to determine the health of the economy.

 A couple interesting points I got from the interview were as follows:

1.  Becky asked him what he looked at to determine how the economy was doing.  He responded that he looks at the daily results of a lot of the businesses that Berkshire owns.  He also looks at the Fed’s balance sheet, etc.  When Becky followed up and asked him what one report he would want to get if he were stranded on a desert island and had to gauge the economy.  I thought he gave an insightful answer.  He said train freight car loadings and truck tonnage moved.  That’s pretty interesting.  I guess that gives him a good understanding of how much goods are getting sold/produced at any given time.

2.  He also spoke about the economy.  He basically said things had leveled out, but there had been no bounce.  He seemed to be somewhat lukewarm on his answer.  He felt things were much better than a year ago, but not back to normal.

I always enjoy hearing Buffett’s take on financial matters.  If you want to watch the full interview, here is the link.

 http://www.cnbc.com/id/32873440/

Today has been a typical property management day for me.  I do most of my work on my rental properties on the weekends.  I’ll field phone calls and set up appointments during the week, but most of my meetings and work projects are done on the weekend.  Today, I mowed grass and signed a new lease.

My dad and I got up and mowed the triplex, duplex, and the vacant lot this morning.  This took a couple hours.  While I was at the duplex mowing a prospective renter stopped by to look at the property.  I told him I was supposed to sign a lease tomorrow with another prospect, but I was willing to talk to him since the person scheduled for tomorrow’s lease signing had cancelled last week and I wasn’t 100% sure he’d make it tomorrow since he cancelled last week.  The new prospect sounded very good and was willing to put a deposit down today so I told him I’d think about it.  Anyway, I called the original lease prospect and convinced him to move the lease signing from Sunday to Saturday.  This made me feel better.  I didn’t want to risk losing both tenants.  So now I sit waiting to sign the lease with the original prospect in about 30 minutes. 

It’s amazing how good prospects come in groups.  I will sit with a property open for weeks with no good prospects.  Then in the course of a day or two I’ll get 2 or 3 that are excellent prospects and all want the property.  I don’t know why this happens?