Thanksgiving

So, I stopped by and saw my loan officer friend yesterday. He was introduced to me by Diamond Jim many years ago. As we were talking, he discovered that no, I had never lived in Birmingham. Apparently he assumed that was why I had bought a gazillion homes there. Nope.

After giving him the Reader's Digest version of how we ended up investing there and explaining I was frantically working on a Wayback Machine so I could go warn my 2002 self what I was in for, he said, "You are probably the only property investor I know who owns more than five rental homes and still has them since the collapse. Do you know how extraordinary you are to have made every mortgage payment?"

Extraordinary? I don't feel extraordinary. I feel exhausted. The extraordinary hat really doesn't seem to fit.

Yes. we have made all of our payments--sometimes at the expense of our personal grocery budget. We have made every payment on time too. I know there are investors out there who for one reason or another did not survive. I know what they went through. I don't think they gave up or took the easy way out. If we hadn't gone halfsies with Mr. Partner on our expenses we would be one of those folks. The odds were against us in 2008 and 2009. In fact, the only reason we survived in 2008 is someone bought one of our rentals. The money we made gave us enough cash to carry us through the summer of our seven simultaneous vacancies and one tenant bankruptcy.

I don't talk much about my faith. But if you know me personally, you know it is an important part of who I am. About 2009 Marty Sunshine and I started a family prayer routine with our kids. I believe in my heart it has been the cornerstone of what has kept us going with our accidental business. There have been many prayers for Alabama. For Mr. Partner. For the rest of the folks we work with in Alabama and beyond who have helped us along the way. We have prayed endlessly for our tenants. We still pray for a few past tenants--wherever they might be. And, we thank God for His continued blessings, the courage to embrace hard work and to recognize opportunities to fix our undercapitalized issues. Because we aren't truly extraordinary. We have just been blessed.