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Commercial Roof Inspection Gainesville
Gainesville Home Inspection Group offers expert commercial roof inspection services in Gainesville. Our thorough inspections help identify potential issues early, ensuring the longevity of your commercial property’s roof. With detailed reports and professional recommendations, we help you avoid costly repairs. Trust us for reliable commercial roof inspection Gainesville services to keep your business protected.
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talonabraxas · 5 months
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Monas Hieroglyphica (The Hieroglyphic Monad)
Written by John Dee and published in Antwerp in 1564, the Monas Hieroglyphica (‘Hieroglyphic Monad’) was conceived in 12 days, a period, so claimed the author, of Divine Revelation. It presents Dee’s unified glyph, the Monad, by way of 24 theorems, each demonstrating a variety of mathematical, geometric, cabalistic, and cosmological principles gleaned from the ancient world. Highly influential, the titular glyph was later adopted into Rosecrutianism by way of the works of Paracelcian alchemist Heinrich Khunrath, with whom Dee was acquainted.
Chiefly a work of alchemy, it is perhaps best understood as a preeminent form of ‘diagrammatic alchemy’. The inception of the Diagram, a visual representation of information to accompany text, goes back to antiquity, but saw great use thanks to the printing technology of the 15th century. Dee took this a step further, with elaborate frontispieces brimming with cryptic symbolism. In theorem 18 he states, "it is not Aesop but Oedipus who prompts me," hinting at the presence of riddles within the text (just as Oedipus was challenged by the Sphinx).
Though still a devout Christian, Dee’s thinking was heavily informed by Pythagorean, Hermetic, and Neo-Platonic traditions which each posited that the universe was comprised of linguistic and numerical laws. Thus the symbols and images of Dee’s Monas were not mere representations of processes, but the manifestation of Truth itself. As such, meditative study of this truth would work the necessary alchemical transformation upon its student.
Given closer inspection, we see the Monad is a composite of other symbols. Indeed, it was designed such that all associated symbols, be they cosmological, alchemical, metallurgical, and chiefly, numerological, could be formulated, along with their governing principles. Together they form the ‘Unit’, or Monad; a key scientific concept of the many-in-one.
At the base we have the double crescent of Aries, the celestial fire of transformation; next the Solar Cross, the four elements, the cardinal directions, the Crucifixion, and the Hermetic mystery of the ‘quaternary in the ternary’, the ‘4 in the 3’. Dee believed in the Holy Trinity, but also that all creation was embodied in the number 4, the Trinity plus One (the One being manifest reality). Though seemingly mystical and arbitrary, the 4 in the 3 was a mathematical principle describing a Platonic solid called the Cuboctahedron, a shape made up of 8 triangles and 4 squares. This structure provides great supporting strength at little cost to weight, and was popularized in the 20th century by American architect Buckminster Fuller in the development of high-rise construction cranes as well as Geodesic Domes such as the one at Epcot, Florida.
Moving up, we have the point and the circle, two basic principles of geometry from which all others follow. Together they become the Sun with the Earth at its centre (a pre-Copernican worldview), over which we have the horned Moon. These horns combine with the circle to present the Earth sign of Taurus, as well as symbolising the alchemical wedding of the Active (Sun) and Passive (Moon). Joined with the circle and cross we find the symbol for Mercury, that the ancient Greeks called Stilbon (the God of the Wandering Star), which they considered the prime planet and metal. All seven classical planets, and the metals of the ancient world, are also revealed.
Considered as a whole, we can view the Monad as the alchemical process, with the transformative, Promethean fire of Aries at the base, and silver (the Moon) and gold (the Sun) at the top, forming the Cornucopian horns of wisdom. It also has an anthropomorphic aspect of a contemplative, kneeling figure. This finds a natural comparison in the spiritual concept of the Kundalini, the upward progression of energy points through the body, from the root through to the Divine light of revelatory experience; as well as in the Buddhist practice of meditation, in which fiery Desire fades with the awakening to our true, wise nature.
Despite Dee’s somewhat tarnished reputation as a magician and necromancer, even his critic, the pious Andrestius Babius, capitulated to recognising the Monad’s importance as a standardising tool that transcended language; a true, universal, scientific notation. That it so keenly marries Science with Spiritual wisdom presents an opportunity of revelatory understanding for those who would still take the time to study it.
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vanita95 · 27 days
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How to Negotiate Boat Prices in Jacksonville After a Marine Survey
If you are in the market for a boat in Jacksonville, getting a marine survey before negotiating the price is crucial. Marine surveyors Jacksonville specialize in assessing the condition of boats and providing valuable information to buyers. Once you have received a thorough marine survey from experts like Sun Coast Marine Surveying & Consulting, it's time to negotiate the boat prices. Before diving into negotiations, it's essential to understand the importance of a marine survey. A comprehensive inspection by marine surveyors in Jacksonville Florida can uncover hidden issues that may not be apparent during a casual inspection. This information gives you leverage when negotiating the price of the boat. After receiving the survey report from Sun Coast Marine Surveying & Consulting, carefully review the findings. Look for any major concerns or deficiencies that could potentially affect the value of the boat. Use this information as a basis for your negotiation strategy. When it comes to negotiating boat prices, here are some tips to keep in mind: 1. **Highlight the Findings from the Marine Survey**: During negotiations, make sure to bring up specific details from the marine survey report. Point out any areas that may need attention or repairs and use this as a bargaining tool to lower the price. 2. **Request Repairs or Adjustments**: If the marine survey reveals any significant issues, consider asking the seller to make necessary repairs or adjustments before finalizing the deal. This can help offset the cost of repairs and ensure you are getting a fair price for the boat. 3. **Compare Market Prices**: Do some research on comparable boats in the market to determine if the asking price is reasonable. Use this information to negotiate a better deal based on the current market value of similar vessels. 4. **Be Willing to Walk Away**: Sometimes, the best negotiation tactic is being willing to walk away if you can't reach a mutually agreeable price. Don't feel pressured to make a deal if it doesn't meet your expectations or budget. 5. **Consider Additional Costs**: In addition to the purchase price, factor in any additional costs such as insurance, maintenance, docking fees, and upgrades when negotiating the final price. Make sure you have a clear understanding of all expenses involved in owning the boat. 6. **Seek Professional Advice**: If you're unsure about how to negotiate effectively, consider seeking advice from experienced marine surveyors in Jacksonville Florida like Sun Coast Marine Surveying & Consulting. They can provide valuable insights and guidance to help you navigate the negotiation process successfully. Remember that negotiation is an important part of the boat buying process, and having a marine survey from reputable marine surveyors Jacksonville can give you a competitive edge. By following these tips and using the information from the survey report wisely, you can secure a great deal on your dream boat in Jacksonville.
marine surveyors jacksonville
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faircontractorsales · 1 month
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Your Home's First Line of Defense: Essential Roof Care in Broward County
Broward County is famous for its sunny skies and beautiful coastlines, but as locals know all too well, it's also home to some of Florida's most challenging weather, including sudden storms and high winds. That’s why taking good care of your roof is critical. Here at Fair Contractor Sales Roofing, we understand the importance of a durable, well-maintained roof, and we’re passionate about helping our neighbors keep their homes safe and secure.
Simple Steps to Ensure Your Roof Stays in Top Condition
Maintaining your roof doesn't have to be complicated. Here are a few easy-to-follow tips that can help you avoid common issues and extend the life of your roof:
1. Keep an Eye Out for Damage: Regularly check your roof for signs of wear and tear. Look for cracked, missing, or warped shingles and damaged sealant around vents and chimneys. Early detection of these problems can make repairs more manageable and less costly.
2. Clean Your Gutters: This might seem like a chore, but keeping your gutters clear is essential for preventing water buildup on your roof, which can lead to leaks and water damage inside your home. Make it a routine to clean your gutters at least twice a year.
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3. Schedule Professional Inspections: Even if you're handy around the house, it's a good idea to bring in a professional to inspect your roof at least once a year. They can spot potential issues that are not obvious to the untrained eye and can provide essential maintenance that will help prevent future problems.
4. Address Repairs Promptly: If an inspection uncovers any issues, it's crucial to address them quickly. Delaying roof repairs can lead to more significant problems, including severe structural damage to your home.
5. Invest in Preventative Measures: Consider investing in preventative solutions like waterproofing or installing hurricane straps if you live in a particularly storm-prone area of Broward County. These measures can help mitigate the effects of severe weather and can save you from more extensive repairs in the future.
Why Roof Maintenance is a Smart Investment
Regular roof maintenance not only protects your home from immediate weather-related damages but also contributes to the overall longevity and efficiency of your home. A well-cared-for roof helps maintain your home’s internal temperature, reducing energy costs, and preventing moisture-related issues like mold and mildew.
Partner with Fair Contractor Sales Roofing
At Fair Contractor Sales Roofing, we’re more than just a roofing company; we're part of the Broward County community. We’re committed to providing our neighbors with reliable, high-quality roofing services because we understand just how critical a sound roof is to your home's safety and your family's comfort.
If you're concerned about your roof or simply want to ensure it's in the best possible shape, don’t hesitate to reach out to us. Whether you need a routine inspection, urgent repairs, or are considering upgrading your roof for better storm protection, Fair Contractor Sales Roofing is here to help. Contact us today, and let's make sure your roof is ready to protect your home from whatever the Florida weather throws its way.
Find Roofing Services in Broward County Areas Mentioned Below:
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treeremovalpensacola · 2 months
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Takeuchi expands its product line with a new wheeled excavator
If you're in the Pensacola area, then you have probably already experienced the need for having to remove a tree or stump or getting your tree's trimmed. The cost of tree removal varies depending on a few factors, such as: - The type of tree that needs to be removed - The size of the tree - The location of the tree - The condition of the tree Pensacola Tree Removal offers competitive pricing for our tree removal services. For a full list of services Tree removal services visit Pensacola Florida Tree Removal for a fast, friendly and reliable quote that you can count on. This will help not only beautify your property but also is the safest way to do it. Takeuchi-US added the TB395W, a new wheeled excavator model, to its product line in North America. The new model provides a versatile option combining excavating performance with on-road capabilities. “Wheeled excavators have become increasingly common in Europe over the years, and they’re gaining popularity in other regions as well,” said Lee Padgett, product manager for Takeuchi. “That’s one reason we’re introducing the TB395W to North America. It’s a high-performing excavator that provides all the unique benefits of a wheeled unit, including higher travel speeds and the ability to handle both on- and off-road applications.” The TB395W weighs 23,424 lbs. when equipped with outriggers and a blade. It’s powered by a Tier 4 Final-compliant diesel engine delivering 114 hp at 2,200 rpm. The new unit features 2WS (two-wheel steering) and 4WSC (four-wheel with crab steering). A two-piece boom with long arm allows for greater clearance between the bucket and dozer blade due to arm-mount position. The design allows operators to pull the bucket all the way back to the dozer blade. Additionally, the auto cruise feature enables operators to set and adjust their travel speeds with a toggle switch. The excavator’s digging depth is 13 feet 5.2 inches. It offers a maximum bucket breakout force of 13,241 lbs., a maximum arm digging force of 8,925 lbs. and a traction force of 12,994 lbs. The cab includes multifunctional, 8-inch color touchscreen monitors with integrated air conditioning. The machine’s jog dial allows operators to navigate and control the product’s monitor, including its HVAC and DAB radio functions. The standard 270-degree camera provides operators with a bird’s-eye view. One-touch control switches operate other machine functions such as work lights, standard and ECO working modes, primary auxiliary detent, manual regen and regen inhibit, low and high-speed gear box, swing boom and second boom select, differential lock and lift overload alarm. Takeuchi’s Fleet Management (TFM) telematics system is standard on the TB395W, reducing downtime and control costs. “We know from experience that machine owners are more likely to properly service and maintain their machines at the correct intervals when those tasks are simpler to perform,” Padgett said. “That’s why the TB395W’s design ensures easy access to key daily inspection points like the engine oil dipstick, engine oil filter, engine oil fill and more.” The post Takeuchi expands its product line with a new wheeled excavator first appeared on Landscape Management.
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pestcontrolpowers · 2 months
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Six Benefits Of Hiring Specialist Pest Control Oviedo
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Choosing qualified parasite control companies in Oviedo, Florida, is actually a smart selection for residents and also companies equally. These companies use even more than only the elimination of bugs; they provide extensive remedies that ensure lasting parasite control, health care, and also comfort. With the know-how and progressed techniques that specialist pest control companies take, locals of Oviedo may efficiently guard their residential or commercial properties from the persistent and possibly harmful existence of insects.
Tapping the services of qualified Oviedo exterminator, Florida, is actually a smart decision for property owners and also companies equally. These services use greater than merely the eradication of parasites; they give comprehensive options that make certain long-lasting insect management, health care, and assurance. Along with the competence and progressed procedures that specialist insect control companies deliver, individuals of Oviedo can efficiently protect their buildings from the constant and also possibly unsafe presence of parasites.
1. Expertise and also Knowledge
Expert pest control service technicians possess substantial instruction as well as know-how about various bugs, their habits, and also the most effective approaches to remove them. This competence enables all of them to precisely identify the kind of invasion and also carry out the very most proper treatment program. Unlike DIY options, qualified Oviedo pest control services utilize technically shown strategies and also industry-specific tools, ensuring much more reliable as well as efficient bug elimination.
2. Custom-made Treatment Plans
Every insect complication is distinct, needing adapted solutions to deal with the details necessities of the influenced residential property. Expert insect control companies in Oviedo provide tailored treatment strategies that serve the certain bug issues encountered through each customer. These plannings take into consideration variables such as the kind of bug, the extent of the infestation, and the layout of the residential or commercial property, ensuring a targeted as well as effective strategy to pest management.
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3. Health and wellness
Insects may present considerable wellness threats to humans and also animals, broadcasting health conditions and triggering allergic reactions. Qualified insect control companies focus on the health and also security of their clients by utilizing green and also risk-free insect control products. These items are actually developed to reduce damage to the setting while efficiently removing pests. Additionally, service technicians are actually educated to deal with unsafe chemicals safely, minimizing the danger of direct exposure to harmful drugs.
4. Long-term Prevention
Some of the key benefits of hiring specialist insect control services is their concentrate on long-lasting protection. Service technicians certainly not just take care of the instant invasion yet also implement measures to stop future occurrences. This might include sealing off entry points, advising on proper hygiene methods, and also conducting regular inspections. By proactively addressing the origin of pest concerns, qualified solutions assist ensure that pests do certainly not come back, giving comfort for home owner.
5. Cost-Effective Solutions
While DIY bug control strategies may seem cost-efficient in the beginning, they frequently stop working to resolve the source of the infestation, bring about reoccuring concerns as well as additional costs. Expert pest control Oviedo solutions offer cost-efficient services by addressing the underlying concerns as well as preventing future problems. Their expertise and also efficient techniques spare property owners coming from the continuous prices related to unproductive DIY treatments.
6. Time and Convenience
Working along with a pest infestation can easily be lengthy and also taxing, especially for those unknown with effective pest control procedures. Specialist parasite control solutions offer a practical service through handling all facets of pest management, coming from inspection and treatment to follow-up sees. This enables homeowner to pay attention to their day-to-day tasks without the incorporated worry of pest control, guaranteeing a problem-free experience.
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Choosing professional bug control services in Oviedo supplies many advantages, coming from professional know-how and individualized treatment plans to health and wellness guarantees and also lasting protection methods. Through choosing qualified services, homeowner can effectively secure their homes and also businesses coming from the hazardous effects of parasites, making sure a much healthier, more secure, and also much more relaxed residing setting.
All American Pest Control
Oviedo, FL 32765
(321) 296-8999
Pest Control Oviedo
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jimitjain · 3 months
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The Role of Flanges in Industrial Applications: Insights from US Manufacturers
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Pipingprojects.us is a significant Flanges Manufacturer in USA. We manufacture and sell a variety of flanges, including lap joint flanges, weld neck flanges, orifice flanges, slip-on flanges, and others. We use a variety of materials to produce high-quality flanges. Alloy steel flanges are typically made up of chromium, molybdenum, and nickel. Chrome Moly Flanges are noted for their high corrosion and oxidation resistance. We are a top Flanges Supplier in USA.
1. Understanding Flanges and Their Function
Flanges are mechanical components designed to join two or more sections of a piping system, allowing for easy assembly, disassembly, and maintenance. They serve as a crucial point of connection, ensuring that the system remains leak-proof and structurally sound under varying pressures and temperatures.
2. Types of Flanges and Their Applications
US flanges manufacturers produce a variety of flange types to meet diverse industrial needs. Some of the most common types include:
Weld Neck Flanges
These flanges are characterized by a long, tapered hub that provides reinforcement and helps reduce stress concentration at the base of the flange. They are ideal for high-pressure applications and are commonly used in the oil and gas industry.
Slip-On Flanges
Slip-on flanges are designed to slide over the end of a pipe and are then welded in place. They are easier to install and align compared to other flanges and are used in low-pressure, non-critical applications.
Blind Flanges
Blind flanges are used to close off the ends of a piping system, preventing the flow of fluids. They are essential for maintenance and inspection purposes and are widely used in chemical processing plants.
d. Socket Weld Flanges
These flanges are welded on one side to the pipe, with the other side remaining unwelded. They are typically used in high-pressure systems and provide a strong, leak-proof connection.
Threaded Flanges
Threaded flanges feature a thread that matches the pipe's threading, allowing for a secure, non-welded connection. They are often used in low-pressure applications where welding is impractical.
We are Flanges Supplier In:
Flanges Supplier in Texas
Flanges Supplier in California
Flanges Supplier in Florida
3. Key Benefits of Using Flanges in Industrial Applications
Flanges offer several benefits that make them indispensable in industrial settings. Here are some key advantages:
Ease of Installation and Maintenance
One of the primary benefits of flanges is their ease of installation and maintenance. They allow for quick assembly and disassembly of piping systems, making it easier to perform maintenance and repairs without extensive downtime.
Flexibility in System Design
Flanges provide flexibility in system design, enabling easy modification and expansion of existing piping systems. This is particularly important in industries that require frequent upgrades or changes to their infrastructure.
Leak Prevention and Safety
Flanges help prevent leaks in piping systems, which is critical for maintaining safety and preventing environmental contamination. High-quality flanges, such as those produced by flanges manufacturers in the USA, are designed to withstand high pressures and temperatures, ensuring a secure and reliable connection.
Cost-Effective Solutions
Using flanges can be a cost-effective solution for many industries. They reduce the need for complex and expensive welding processes, making it easier and more affordable to assemble and maintain piping systems.
4. Insights from Leading US Flanges Manufacturers
Flanges manufacturers in the USA play a crucial role in ensuring the quality and reliability of flanges used in industrial applications. Here are some insights from industry leaders:
Commitment to Quality and Standards
US manufacturers are committed to producing high-quality flanges that meet or exceed industry standards. This ensures that the flanges are durable, reliable, and capable of performing under demanding conditions.
Focus on Innovation and Technology
Leading manufacturers invest in advanced manufacturing technologies and continuous innovation to produce flanges that meet the evolving needs of various industries. This includes the development of new materials and designs that enhance the performance and longevity of flanges.
Emphasis on Customization
Many US manufacturers offer customization services to meet the specific requirements of their clients. This includes producing flanges in unique sizes, materials, and configurations to ensure a perfect fit for any application.
Flanges Manufacturer In USA
We are an outstanding flange manufacturer. These flanges can be made by forging or casting. These components, available from reputable stainless steel flange manufacturers, are used to reinforce or connect beams and columns. Installing stainless steel pipe flanges is specific to the flange type, guaranteeing a precise and secure fit for seamless integration into the piping network.
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straightedgepainting · 8 months
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How To Choose The Right Painters In Jacksonville FL?
Do you want to change your interior or exterior but need to know where you get the right painter? Or what to consider when choosing professional painters in Jacksonville FL? Don't worry! Here, we will discuss what can be useful when choosing the perfect painters for interior or exterior painting because we know that choosing the right painters for your project is important. Here are some tips to help you make the best choice.
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Consider These Points When Choosing The Painter In Jacksonville FL
Do you want to give your home a new look? And you are thinking of hiring professionals for this? But finding painting contractors Jacksonville Florida can be daunting because of the need to gain knowledge of painters. Right! No issues! We will discuss how you can find the right painters for your dream home to care for your house properly. Continue reading this for more information.
1. Get Recommendations - Ask friends, family, or neighbors who have recently had their interiors and house exterior in Jacksonville FL painted for recommendations. You can also inspect online reviews for local painters.
2. Interview Potential Painters - Once you have a few names of potential painters, interview them to learn more about their experience, qualifications, and rates. Be sure to ask for references.
3. Check Their Insurance - Ensure the painters you hire are insured for liability and workers' compensation. It will rescue you in case of any accidents or damages happen while they work on your home.
4. Get A Documented Estimate - Before you hire any painters, be sure to get a written estimate of the cost of the job. The estimate should have the cost of materials, labor, and any other charges.
5. Be Clear About Your Expectations - Ensure you communicate them to the painters before they start work. It includes the colors you want, the finish you want, and the timeline for the project.
6. Be Prepared To Pay A Deposit - Most painters require a deposit before starting work. This deposit is usually a percentage of the total cost of the job.
7. Be Patient - Painting a house can take time, especially if the job is complex. So you must be patient and allow the painters to do their work properly, and when the job is done, check your home looks like new.
Consider These Tips For A Beautiful Home!
Following these tips can help you choose the right painters for your project and get the desired results. Additionally, if you are looking for the best painters in Jacksonville FL consider Straight Edge Painting because they have the professionals who can make your home a dream come true. So, please don't wait! Visit their website for more information.
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ACC implosion revisited.
I am going to follow reporter David Hale’s thinking on the options facing the ACC as those points seem logical to me even if the conclusions reached seem off to me.  Consider this another highly speculative analysis of what may come of the biggest tidal wave yet in conference realignment.
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1) The ACC teams are not going to wait 13 years for the conclusion of the contract. 
Why? 
Because in that time span, SEC members will make a ton more than the ACC elite.  To put a fine point on it, SEC doormats Vanderbilt will make $600M more from ESPN than the ACC’s football power schools, UNC, Miami, FSU, and Clemson!  Big Ten doormats Rutgers and Illinois are poised to exceed that number.
There are probably 20 schools in the Big 2 conferences that a fan might consider “unspectacular” who are going to roll over FSU and Clemson financially.
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Everyone is thinking the SEC and Big Ten media money is going to be used to pay players.  That could literally destroy Miami, Clemson, and Florida State as national title contenders.
It would cost an ACC school 460-760M today to violate the ACC Grant of Rights and leave the conference when you figure in the cost of a school’s media rights for a period of time.  
Today even an irate ACC member like Florida State wouldn’t consider that...but 7 years from now, when the penalty amount is less, when the anger is a 1000 times hotter, and the payoff from joining the Big 12 is greater?  We’ll come back to this.
2)  I do not think Notre Dame will join the ACC.  Why?   Well first of all Notre Dame loves playing a national schedule in football.   If they don’t HAVE to give that up, which they don’t just yet, I don’t think they will. 
Secondly, because the ACC members have all just realized how badly ESPN has screwed them.  Notre Dame joining would force ESPN to the table to renegotiate, but do the ACC schools really want that?  Not so sure.
3) ESPN will not renegotiate now.  ESPN made this bed by them and Fox paying the Big 12 $31M per school per season.   If the new Big 12 is worth that, then the ACC is likely worth about $50M per school.  Does ESPN have any desire to go to their corporate bosses at Disney and say they need another (~$20M X 14 schools =) $280M+ annually for the ACC?
I once had a job where I did licensing for Disney through another company.  When money comes up Disney is ruthless.
I don’t think this is happening on any significant scale TODAY....We will come back to this.
4) Dissolving the entire ACC.  Now this is interesting.  The ACC Grant of Rights is a mystery to the public as it is locked away from public inspection in North Carolina, but we know the big points.  We know that there is a toothy exit fee and a loss of media rights component that together would total a loss of as much as $760M per school today.
Most conference grant of rights deals are kind of intentionally vague and that vagueness makes those deals too risky to challenge until the very end of the term.
But one way that a Grant of Rights could be taken out is if the conference suddenly no longer existed.   There is apparently no clause in the ACC bylaws that allow the ACC to be dissolved. 
Now in theory that would mean the state laws in North Carolina MIGHT provide  guidance. I am not a lawyer, but the gist of the idea that is floating out there is that as the type of organization that they are is based out of North Carolina and has voting members, the law in NC suggests a majority of members could simply vote to dissolve the conference.  So in the 14 and a half member AAC conference, 8 members. 
That is the logic that fans have seized upon and the veiled threat to ESPN that the 7 ACC schools have made.
Should that occur, the Grant of RIghts would disappear as would the ACC’s contract with ESPN.
Now per Hale, none of the AD’s would confirm that their lawyers that this theorized option was actually viable.  Hale therefore assumed --- perhaps presumptively --- that this was a dead end. May not be... More on this in a minute.
Hale also quickly and almost without question incorrectly assumes that no more than 5 ACC schools and possibly less would receive invites from the SEC and Big Ten.
He is almost certainly assuming those 5 schools are Florida State, Clemson, Virginia, Miami, and North Carolina. 
It seems highly unlikely if the ACC schools were available on the open market only 5 of them would be offered deals.
Why?  Because the Big Ten TV deal after that league signed after pulling in USC and UCLA specificially had clauses that would allow the Big Ten to expand.  If you do the math, it is clear that FOX gave the Big Ten a “shopping budget” that equated to enough to add six to seven more members at the current Big Ten payouts.
Washinton and Oregon, the two most valueable brands in the east were evaluated financially and found to fall far far short of enough value to merit a Big Ten payout.  I do not think this was an unexpected conclusion to the Big Ten’s media partners.
To me it seems fairly clear that the 6+ slot budget was set aside specifically for an east coast collection of schools.
so....Which schools are likely on their radar?
1) Virginia (AAU, strong brand) state population 9M
2) North Carolina (AAU, strong brand) state population 10.5M
3) Georgia Tech (AAU, Atlanta is the media hub of the deep south)  state population 11M
4) Florida State (Elite brand, Florida recruiting, Peer academically of Nebraska) state population 22M
5) Clemson (Elite brand, Peer academically of Nebraska) state population 5M
6) Miami (Florida recruiting.  Strong media brand, AAU caliber academic school) state population 22M
7) Pitt (AAU, strong basketball brand. strong football brand in Big Ten. Research powerhouse)
8) Duke (AAU, Basketball powerhouse)
Adding the top six schools on this list would add 62M people to the Big Ten Conference, 2 legit football title contenders, 1 annual basketball title contender, and a handful of programs competent at both revenue sports.  No wonder the Big Ten has been given a 6+ school shopping budget. 
All of the states these listed ACC schools exist in are strong recruiting territories and a lack of supplemental recruiting had been a niggling historic problem for the Big Ten’s power schools competitively over the last 15 years... outside of Ohio State. 
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But the Big Ten could also potentially successfully pull targets from the SEC --- Florida (AAU), Texas (AAU), Texas A&M (AAU), and Vanderbilt (AAU).
Assuming that the SEC retains their members, the SEC is likely going to want to go after pretty much at least the first 6 of those 8 schools.  All of those schools are likely to prefer an academic association with the research minded Big Ten.
It might seem to SEC fans that Clemson, Florida State, and Miami might prefer SEC admission.  That may or may not be true, (especially in the case of Miami, which is much more a Big Ten school in character).  The ACC is a VERY academically proud conference. It is tough to imagine Virginia and UNC joining UT in choosing an academically inferior conference. 
Plus there is the question of competitiveness.  The SEC is not likely to add more than 2 to 4 members at the most due to the financial constraints of that conference...more on that in a minute... 
What does it do to the FSU and Clemson Status quo if they are suddenly dropped into a brutal SEC schedule every year.  Is Clemson still another “Georgia”? Does FSU implode into say “South Carolina part 2″?  How does Miami not devolve into “Vanderbilt part 2″?  I think those are questions to consider...
Moving to the SEC might permanently turn any of that trio into also rans like it did to Arkansas and Oklahoma.
Moving to the Big Ten with several of their ACC rivals likely would maintain the current recruiting status quo that has allowed FSU and Clemson to compete for titles by continuing to have the SEC schools on the outside of their footprint looking in..  
Putting all three of the ACC football powers in the same division, likely with Penn State, in an era with an expanded playoff, could also do a lot to elevate the Miami brand back to where they were from 1980-2001;
Additionally,  There is the question of money that I mentioned earlier.  
Where the Big Ten has the money on hand to add any six schools they want, the SEC doesn’t have that expansion clause.... because ESPN already has the ACC under contract.
The question in adding schools is do they add the value to make the expansion worthwhile.  Part of the problem for the SEC is that landing UT moved the per school payout up to stupid money.
ESPN will desperately want to retain Clemson and Florida State, and moving those two brands into the SEC could, in the short term, potentially be worth that stupid money.  
Clemson vs. Tennessee after all is just as awesome as Georgia vs, Tennessee.  And in real terms Clemson or FSU vs. almost any SEC school is multiple times more valuable than Clemson or FSU vs. an ACC school.
One would think EPSN could make that work for FSU and Clemson.
But for other ACC brands ESPN highly values like UNC, Duke, and Virginia?  It is tough seeing ESPN being willing to pay SEC payouts for those brands.
The University of Texas is certainly not going to sign off on taking a smaller share to fund expansion.  They won’t take PAYCUTS to fuel SEC expansion.  They might in fact get Oklahoma and possibly other schools to vote against expansion if ESPN won’t match their current payouts.   
Don’t think UT would have the allies to do this?  If UT tells Alabama “UT and OU are leaving if the conference expands and they have to take pay cuts”, Alabama I believe would vote with UT.  UT is the SEC’s golden goose.
And that is the rub.
I believe the Big Ten has responded to the SEC’s check (adding UT) and checkmated the SEC.
Consider that the Big Ten pays more, The Big Ten media partner, Fox, is not currently screwing the ACC schools like ESPN is, and the Big Ten is a better academic conference which will actually enhance a school’s academic brand.
There are a lot of schools that make financial sense for the SEC that the Big Ten probably doesn’t want and the SEC probably do--- Assuming that the top 6 are off the board.
Here’s my take of the SEC’s “second choice” list.
1) Virginia Tech
2) Duke / NC State
3) West Virginia
4) Pitt
5) Louisville
The SEC athletic directors likely love candidate schools like Virginia Tech and West Virginia (and probably also NC state).  They could go after Duke or Pitt for academic prestige, but is ESPN going to want to pay for more than 2 of those schools, at the most, at that UT raised rate?
I mean all of those schools have great aspects for the SEC.  Va Tech and West Virginia are absolutely peers of Tennesssee or Arkansas.  NC State is a similar asset.
How much is Duke basketball worth long term now that coach K has retired?  ESPN is certainly going to want to keep the brand, but are they going to want to pay SEC money for it?  ...Unlikely. 
While it could make sense to pair Pitt with the much more valuable and SEC-like West Virginia brand, is that a pair ESPN wants to pay to elevate?
As I mentioned in my last article, I think the SEC wants to maintain an argument of shared leadership in college football.  I think the member schools want to keep the Big Ten out of their overabundant Florida and Georgia recruiting grounds.  I think the “expansion to 25″ plan is a real SEC thought.
But I think reality is when the SEC added Texas they pushed their payments to the ceiling and added a cancer to the conference.   And I think ESPN is not going to want to pay a ton of schools SEC money.  Texas is NEVER going to take a pay cut and ESPN is not going to add 50% to their SEC bill, regardless of the fact that Virginia Tech/NC state/West Virginia vs. any SEC school is a very defensible SEC level matchup.
When you start looking at it like this, it looks like 6-12 schools might move up...if they end up available.
But is dissolvement of the league possible?
5) The ACC powers are absolutely going to fight the Grant of Rights in court. Why?  Again, not a lawyer, but I would think that is what they need to do to avoid a breach of contract lawsuit from ESPN.  Challenge it in court while abiding by their existing contract.
I think the goal would be to show how ESPN has a history of underhanded dealings.  To show how ESPN instructed the ACC to repeatedly attack the Big East...that was also under contract with ESPN.  How ESPN manipulated them into a situation where they felt no option but to renew their contract for an unheard of length of term in their industry.  I think they may even try to nail ESPN using monopoly laws....
Now I don’t expect any of that to stick.
I think it is designed to paint the ACC schools as manipulated parties and paint ESPN in the worst possible light.  I think is in part to make their fans HATE ESPN, making passing on the SEC that much easier to do.
Then when all of this winds down I think they will figure out a way to seek legal clarification from the courts whether they can dissolve the ACC by a vote.  Possibly by announcing a vote and daring ESPN to sue them to prevent the vote.
Then even if they lose the suit, UNC can push their legislatures to write a law that makes it very clear that the question of dissolving the ACC is very much allowed by a vote.
I think that is the end game of legal action... but would we get there...? Is there any return from that? 
I think there is a 6th option that is maybe more likely.
6) Notre Dame is asked by Florida State through a third party to leave the conference.
Now Florida State was on record as only being willing to sign the GOR because Notre Dame joined the conference.  If Notre Dame left, the value of the ACC would be inherently reduced and I think that the GOR would likely crumble under legal pressure from FSU’s lawyers.
Now Notre Dame is unique in the ACC that their football media rights would not be owned.  David Hale covers it in detail here....
Now why would Notre Dame do that?  
Well, to start, they might do it if they KNEW they had the votes to settle on a reasonable value for their Olympic sport media rights. Why would FSU, Clemson, and all the others back ESPN’s desire to hurt Notre Dame if the Irish left?  If ESPN drops the member schools’ payouts that potentially fuels the FSU legal battle.
Talking theoretically like fans... if 6 ACC schools joined the Big Ten, they would collectively have at least $3.6B in additional revenue over the next 13 years to use to make Notre Dame whole for any exit fees.
Now that sounds like collusion and probably has it’s own legal ramifications, but if we have already gone to war in the courts with ESPN...
Notre Dame doesn’t need ESPN. They don’t fear ESPN. It is unclear that ESPN has any significant leverage on Notre Dame at all.
More to the point Notre Dame moved their hockey into the Big Ten a few years back.  I believe they did this in large part to open normal communications with the Big Ten in preparation for eventually joining as Olympic members with a football scheduling agreement. 
It would seem like Notre Dame has the leverage to ask whatever they want from the Big Ten today.  That is likely WORTH $100M to the Irish.
Let’s say Notre Dame gets an Olympic member share payout for joining the Big Ten and the Big Ten pays Notre Dame’s exit fees/settement to the ACC. Then The ACC potentially collapes and the 6 ACC schools are added as “junior members” much like has been rumored as a potential way to get Washington and Oregon into the conference.  Instead of the those schools earning $3.6B more collectively in the Big Ten, they get split $3.5B more....offsetting the Big Ten paying off the Notre Dame escape.  
The 6 ACC schools would also represent a very strong pro-Notre Dame voting block in the Big Ten.  They could literally be the voice that gets Notre Dame into the Big Ten as Olympic members with a custom Notre Dame-friendly football schedule filled with Big Ten rivals and traditional Notre Dame favorites like the academies.
I could see Notre Dame getting a Big Ten Olympic share and the Big Ten just split profits on the football matchups. Notre Dame would possibly be able to “leapfrog” any championship game participant with a lower ranking to play in the conference title game.
Final thought....
Remember how I said ESPN would not pay more money out today?  I do think that is the case.  But it isn’t smart.
The ACC is a cash cow for ESPN.  It could easily crumble.
I think the smart play is to pay the ACC.  I don’t think ESPN will do that for a few years.
If I were ESPN I would simply renegotiate my payouts to the ACC in a very clear way.  ESPN pays a bonus of $20M annually directly to any ACC school that has won a football championship in the last 40 years or $10M to any ACC school that has won a basketball national championship in the last 40 years. 
In football, that would be Clemson, FSU, Miami, and Georgia Tech.  In Basketball, that would be Virginia, North Carolina, Duke, Louisville.  
It would elevate the ACC football royalty back on par with the SEC schools.
And it would drive competitiveness, making the ACC a happy conference again.
It would cost ESPN $120M annually, which, if you look at ESPN’s down the road ACC options, is quite reasonable.  Your key assets have the money to continue to compete and none of that would be subject to a league vote. 
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thesirlancelotgroup · 2 years
Text
Got pre-approved and found a home? What’s next?
I have streamlined the process for you and will go over it right now.
Step 1 get your offer accepted.
Step 2 deposit escrow or in another name the good faith deposit.
Step 3 get an inspection 4 point wind mitigation and general.
Step 4 negotiate after inspection if necessary.
Step 5 secure Insurence for your new home.
Step 6 review the appraisal with your lender and provide additional documents requested by the underwriter.
Step 7 final walk through.
Step 8 closing day.
If you don’t fallow the steps you can loose the deal and end up with lots of head aches. Not getting an inspection can cost you a lot down the road.
But if you do fallow through with these steps you will have a smooth transition and will close with ease.
Hit the Fallow or Subscribe button and message us if you have any questions!
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thelistingteammiami · 2 years
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Dealing With Storm Damage in Your Vacation Home
Hurricane season threatens Florida residents every year with debilitating tropical storms. Most years, people make it through the season unscathed, but the occasional storm like Hurricane Ian sweeps through and destroys thousands of houses. Coastal vacation homes often face the heaviest damage. 
Here are six tips for dealing with storm damage in your vacation home.
1. Photograph the Damage
Once the storm blows over and it’s safe to return to your home, walk around the property and photograph the various forms of damage. Gathering this information will help you file a successful insurance claim. The photos will also be useful for the professional repair services your provider chooses.
Start by taking pictures of the roof, siding, windows and doors. Chances are those exterior features took the majority of the damage, so your insurance provider needs to see specific details. Here are some things you must be sure to photograph:
Holes, cracks and dents
Split seams
Missing shingles
Broken glass
Discoloration
Make sure your home is safe to enter before going inside for pictures. Unstable structures or invisible gas leaks could be lingering threats. Once it’s safe, take photos of standing water, broken appliances and other interior damage.
2. Make Your Insurance Claim ASAP
Call to make your insurance claim as soon as you document your home’s substantial damage. Many other people in your area will be doing the same thing in the next few days, so you need to get ahead of the crowd to receive timely coverage. If you had to wait out the storm at a hotel, keep the receipts so your provider can cover the costs.
3. Dry Out the Interior
Start the repair process by opening the windows and drying out the interior. If wet furniture is salvageable, take it outside and let it air-dry. Fire up some house fans and increase air circulation to prevent mold growth on the floors and walls. Mold appears days or weeks after water damage goes unchecked, so your insurance provider isn’t likely to cover it.
4. Determine if DIY Repairs Are Possible
Some DIY repair jobs might be possible without a professional service. You could clean up the yard, patch broken windows or make minor roof repairs. Clogged gutters make your home more susceptible to flooding, so you should unclog them immediately to prevent further damage over the next few weeks. These small fixes can help simplify your insurance claim.
However, as a general rule, it’s best to leave electrical repairs to the professionals. Check with your provider before starting any major projects, because they may want to hire a specialist for the job.
5. Inspect Appliances One at a Time
As you inspect your electrical appliances, make sure to turn them on one at a time. Using many electronics simultaneously after a power outage could harm the machines and your house’s wiring system. Take things slowly, and don’t use anything with apparent water damage. 
Pay extra close attention to your HVAC system. It might seem fine on the surface, but it could be hiding mold, bacteria and other water damage that will ruin your home’s air quality. It’s better to rely on different air conditioning sources until a professional confirms the system’s safety.
6. Make Preparations for the Next Storm
Now that you know your home’s greatest vulnerabilities, you can prepare better for the next storm. Here are some crucial steps you should take to protect your home:
Reinforce the most exposed areas, including the roof, entry points, garage, basement, pipes and cables. 
Put all loose outdoor objects, such as lawn furniture and potted plants, in a safe indoor space, or anchor them to the ground with a secure device.
Trim the vegetation to prevent damage from tree branches.
Invest in a second energy source, such as a surge protector, in case your home loses power for an extended period.
Coastal Florida homes get at least one nasty thunderstorm every hurricane season, so your efforts won’t go to waste. 
Keep Your Vacation Home Safe
You won’t be able to stop a hurricane from bludgeoning your vacation home, but you can take steps to minimize the damage. If and when a storm like Hurricane Ian hits again, remember these key tips to protect your assets and get your house back to normal.
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btghfl · 2 years
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4 Mistakes While Flipping A House In Florida
4 Common Mistakes While Flipping A House In Florida
Florida has great weather, a growing population, low unemployment rates, and a great housing market. These factors make the state an ideal candidate for wholesale real estate investors. The booming population creates high demand in the housing markets. Rehab and Flip, a Tampa real estate investment company, points out the hurdles investors face while trying to rehab and flip a house. 
1. Handling money/expense
It is not advisable to pay too much money for an investment property. Every dollar spent will add to the selling price of the property. All other costs such as taxes, rehab expenses, and insurance costs should also be taken into account before fixing a deal with the vendor. Also, the right property insurance is extremely important in Florida real estate, where hurricanes are common. When it is time for the property to be sold, it should be ensured that the price is set high enough to yield the expected returns, yet low enough to attract buyers. Hence, it is all about striking the right balance. It is a good idea to get professional help to get the goals right. 
2. Handling time
Flipping houses is a time-consuming task. Time has to be invested in readying the house, scheduling inspections to ensure that the property complies with building codes, scheduling open houses for prospective buyers, and commuting to and fro till the sale is done. This will be an additional burden for an investor who already has a day job that gives a steady income. 
3. Skills
If the investor who wants to flip the house is good with carpentry and plumbing skills, a lot of money can be saved as many tasks can be DIY. Otherwise, skilled professionals will have to be hired to fix the house up for a sale. This will eat into the investor’s budget.
4. Experience and knowledge 
Another important factor in flipping a house is to get the right leads. The art of picking the right property at the right time and right place is a skill earned generally through experience. A professional firm waits for the right time and right property before investing and does not rush in to buy a property. Also, it is important to not take emotional decisions while buying an investment property. 
Why do Rehab and Flip work the best for both sellers and investors?
Rehab and Flip are experts at acquiring homes at the best prices and passing them on to investors worldwide for wholesale opportunities. Their specialized team provides services in investment property deals, quick closing of deals, fast rehab, and quick flips. Rehab and Flip deals in various properties, including discount homes, distressed properties, historic properties, and bank-owned foreclosures, to name a few. 
The company also attracts customers who want to sell their homes for quick cash with their fast deal-closing techniques. 
To ensure that you get the best deals and the largest customer reach, call Rehab and Flip, a real estate investor for immediate deals in Tampa, Florida real estate, at (813) 476-3199 today.
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source https://btgh.com/press-releases/4-mistakes-while-flipping-a-house-in-florida/
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notebooknebula · 3 years
Video
youtube
Flip Real Estate Virtually with Paul Lizell & Jay Conner, The Private Money Authority
https://www.jayconner.com/flip-real-estate-virtually-with-paul-lizell-jay-conner-the-private-money-authority/
Jay Conner and his special guest Paul Lizell talk about how to utilize systems and processes that simplify the buying process of real estate.
Paul is the founder of The Virtual Investor, JP Homes, Inc & www.housedealsamerica.com He has been flipping properties since 2001 and is the original virtual wholesaler having purchased all over the U.S. since 2009. He has bought and sold properties in 44 out of 50 states and will continue to look at expanding into new markets.
Paul is a graduate of Drexel University in 1998, holds a degree in Finance and a minor in Economics, he now teaches at www.ReoAuctionAcademy.com. He focused exclusively on online auctions, bank REO’s, buying off the MLS and wholesalers across the country since 2013.
Timestamps:
0:01 – Get Ready To Be Plugged Into The Money
1:42 – Jay’s New Book: “Where To Get The Money Now”- https://www.JayConner.com/Book
3:20 – Today’s guest: Paul Lizell
4:57 – How Paul Lizell gets started on the real estate business.
6:58 – What is wholesaling?
8:01 – What is the advantage of buying a house vs getting it under contract?
10:28 – When you buy a house in today’s market are you primarily selling them to other real estate investors at a profit or are you selling them to the people who are going to live in the property?
11:16 – What kinds of profit are you seeing in today’s market while doing your business virtually?
11:57 – Wholesaling vs. Wholesaling
13:01 – Do you think that Wholetailing is more popular now because of the lack of inventory?
13:58 – When you’re wholesaling a house to an end buyer, what’re your criteria for pricing that home versus a complete rehab?
14:52 – In today’s real estate market as long as it’s clean and smells good that property is okay.
15:34 – How do you find your buyer?
16:07 – How do you find deals given the low inventory in today’s real estate market?
17:35 – How do you get the leads?
19:29 – How to connect with Paul Lizell: https://www.REOauctionAcademy.com & https://www.FlipRealEstateVirtually.com
20:30 – How do you manage your people on the grounds to inspect the property?
24:21 – Do you give additional compensation to your bank-owned real estate agents?
25:23 – How do you find your REO agents?
26:56 – When you become the winner in the online auction how long do you have before you got a close? Do you make a house inspection before you take it down?
28:34 – Paul Lizell’s parting message: In my business model my time is my only marketing cost.
Private Money Academy Conference:
https://jaysliveevent.com/live/?oprid=&ref=42135
Have you read Jay’s new book: Where to Get The Money Now? It is available FREE (all you pay is the shipping and handling) at https://www.JayConner.com/Book
Free Webinar: http://bit.ly/jaymoneypodcast
Jay Conner is a proven real estate investment leader. Without using his own money or credit, Jay maximizes creative methods to buy and sell properties with profits averaging $64,000 per deal.
What is Real Estate Investing? Live Private Money Academy Conference
https://youtu.be/QyeBbDOF4wo
YouTube Channel
https://www.youtube.com/c/RealEstateInvestingWithJayConner
iTunes:
https://podcasts.apple.com/ca/podcast/private-money-academy-real-estate-investing-jay-conner/id1377723034
Listen to our Podcast:
https://realestateinvestingdeals.mypodcastworld.com/11279/flip-real-estate-virtually-with-paul-lizell-jay-conner-the-private-money-authority
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Flip Real Estate Virtually with Paul Lizell & Jay Conner
Jay Conner
00:02:57
My guest is a good friend. We’re in a mastermind together. Well, he is the founder of The Virtual Investor. That’s right. He is a virtual investor and virtual wholesaler. He’s been flipping properties all the way back since 2001. And he actually is the original virtual wholesaler. And he’s purchased all over the US since 2009 virtually. In addition to that, my guest has bought and sold properties in 44 out of 50 states and continues to look at expanding into new markets. Now, in addition to that, he contributes his success to utilizing systems and processes that simplify the online buying process. He’s focused exclusively on online auctions bank REOs, buying off of the MLS, and wholesalers across the country since 2013. I’m so excited to have my friend and fellow mastermind member, Paul Lizell. Paul, welcome to the podcast.
Paul Lizell
00:04:32
Thanks for having me, man. I really appreciate it.
Jay Conner
00:04:34
Absolutely. I’m excited to have you on here, Paul. And of course, we’re going to be seeing each other again here pretty soon at one of our upcoming mastermind meetings. And today we want to hear all about what it’s like to be a virtual wholesaler. What in the world does that mean? And what’s that process look like? But before you get started on all that, tell us, how’d you get into real estate?
Paul Lizell
00:04:58
Interesting story. So let’s go back to the 1990s when I was in college. I was working for my uncle who’s a general contractor and he bought a quadplex, a 4-unit building. We fixed it up, renovated it. He turned around and rented it out. He was making pretty good profits on this property, too, and still had a lot of equity in it. So that kind of stoked my interest in real estate. And that point on, after he bought a few more and we renovated them and I was going through college, I decided this is something I got to get into. It’s gotta be my long-term goal. So I did and basically in 2001, I started my first property. Unlike his, it was a fix and flip. I got into that so I could build up some cash. Eventually, I did build up, got some rentals as well, but stuck with the wholesaling, the fix and flip game owner-finance game, and I’d been doing that ever since.
Jay Conner
00:05:46
That’s awesome. So, were you doing fix and flips a while before you started doing wholesaling? Or were you doing wholesaling and fixing flips simultaneously, like right out the gate?
Paul Lizell
00:05:59
Well, I really started in the fix and flip game and then when I had too many flip deals going on, I did a couple of wholesale deals. And I started to realize it was kind of easy doing these wholesale deals. So after the crash of 2008, 2009, when all the marketing was just tanking, and you probably remember that well, I’m sure, I decided, all right, let’s go more to the wholesale game and turn them and burn them, and we did that. And we still did fix and flips, don’t get me wrong. We kept those good deals, did fix and flips on them, kept some good deals, rentals, some owner-financing, but we basically became virtual wholesalers at that point. We started expanding. We started in Pennsylvania where I was originally from. I just moved here to Florida this past month, but originally I’m from about 45 minutes north of Philadelphia. And so I started in that market, expanded out, went to Pittsburgh, New Jersey, Delaware, Ohio, Indiana, the Carolinas, which I love and where you’re from. And then I started going down to Florida, Texas, before you know it, I bought and sold in 44 to 50 states.
Jay Conner
00:06:57
First of all, let’s make sure everybody understands what we’re talking about when we say wholesale a deal. There’s more than one way to wholesale a deal. So, what’s your definition of wholesaling? And what’s that look like?
Paul Lizell
00:07:11
So for most people, they think wholesaling is getting a property under contract from a seller and assigning that contract and collecting assignment fee. So for us buying bank-owned properties, and we do a few of those, don’t get me wrong. We do a few of those deals, we get some of those referrals. But, primarily, what we do with auction properties or bank-owned or HUD properties, we have to buy them, take them down and then resell them. So, it’s a wholesale, it’s just we actually have to take down the property. So we do need the funds to be able to purchase it, whether we use transactional funding, private lending, as you’re great at, at raising money, we do as well. We love the raising money game and using private lending for that. But yeah, it’s kind of the same deal as it is with assignment of contract, it’s  just we actually take it down so we show ownership at one point.
Jay Conner
00:07:59
So, what’s the advantage of actually buying the house instead of getting it under contract and then collecting an assignment fee?
Paul Lizell
00:08:09
You know in certain states there’s been a crackdown, I think Tennessee and Illinois have had a crackdown on wholesalers where they’re making them become licensed realtors. So I think this kind of negates that because you’re actually purchasing the property, right? You’re showing you have the vested interest, not just the vested interest or equitable interest, you actually purchased it and took it down. So you have the right to do what you want to afterwards, and nothing can come back. So from a legal standpoint, we’re probably the safest and best. I am licensed in Pennsylvania. I probably will get licensed in Florida. And occasionally we’ll do some of those assignment deals, but for the most part, we just take them down, resell them. And in this market, as you know, wholetailing has been unbelievable, just getting the property in decent enough shape to be mortgageable reselling it, not sitting on it for 6, 7 months while the rehab is getting done, while the showings are going on. It’s much quicker, you’re in and out 30 days at the most, and you’re hopefully selling it in 30 to 45 days in this market right now.
So, it’s been much quicker and better.
Jay Conner
00:09:08
Right. So the reason you actually buy the house and take ownership of it is, that way, regardless of where you’re doing business, you don’t have to worry about there being issues with just collecting an assignment fee. Am I hearing you right on that?
Paul Lizell
00:09:27
Yeah, absolutely. I mean, we would prefer to do it without having to have all the cash and buy it, but the banks don’t allow you. So if you buy a property from the bank, you can’t just assign it to another buyer, you must take it down in your name and you can do things with it. We’ve done things in trust. You know trusts are great. But the problem with that is, unless it’s an investor that’s a buyer investor, that trusts in you and understands what you’re doing, that they know what you’re doing, they usually don’t want to buy your trust, or if you put it in an LLC and sell them that LLC, they don’t usually want to buy it. And I totally understand that, they’re going to want to put it in their own name. We’ve run into that in the past with Fannie Mae. Fannie Mae had that anti-flipping where you couldn’t sell it for more than 20% of what you paid for. I think it was 90 days after the deed was recorded, not when you purchased, but when the deed was recorded. So with those properties, it either had to do something off the HUD, or we just had to wait those 90 days and then just sell it to them at that point, which has other risks. But, overall, if you’re making profits, I’m alright with that.
Jay Conner
00:10:26
There you go. So when you’re buying the houses in today’s market, are you primarily selling them to other real estate investors at a profit? Or are you selling them to people that are actually going to move in and own the home themselves and live in it?
Paul Lizell
00:10:44
In this market, we’ve done more to end-buyers. More people are going to live there than in the past. Typically, we sell to other investors for the most part, but in this market, the way it’s been and the kind of properties that we targeted, we’ve kind of pivoted and go on into less of the trainwreck properties, the ones that need everything and more to the ones that just need a little bit enhancing to get it back to become mortgageable and then resell them. So we’ve kind of pivoted a little bit just in this market to try to take advantage of what’s there. Go after the low-lying fruit rather than everything else.
Jay Conner
00:11:14
I got it. I know it’s going to depend on the market. I mean, you’re in all kinds of markets all over the nation, but what kind of profits are you seeing in today’s market doing the business the way you do it?
Paul Lizell
00:11:26
So our wholesale profits are generally around $12,000 per deal, and that’s your standard wholesale. If we’re wholetailing it, we’re around $32,000 and the full-scale fix and flip we’re into anywhere from probably close to your number, the $67,000, but we’ve had plenty of that have been $80,000, $100,000, even $120,000, especially in this market over the past year. So it’s been nice, but those are your full-scale rehabs. And those were the home runs, obviously, they’re not your average.
Jay Conner
00:11:55
Right. And we’ve already said it, but I want to make sure our audience understands it. Tell everybody what wholetailing is versus wholesaling.
Paul Lizell
00:12:05
Yeah, great point. So wholetailing is more or less where you’re getting a property and it just needs some paint, some carpet, it doesn’t need a full kitchen gut. Maybe you just repaint the cabinets. Maybe you put new cabinet poles on them, or maybe put countertops on them. With bathrooms, you’re okay with them but maybe you just put a new toilet in, or a new vanity or even easier sometimes, just a new faucet on a sink. And then you’re reworking your painting and carpeting. Usually, you don’t have to do roof siding, windows, things like that. So wholetailing has really just been super profitable. It’s more so than the fix and flip, believe it or not, for us. When you look at it from a time standpoint, we’re selling those so quickly, as quickly as our full-scale fix and flip, but we’re putting less effort in, and our holding costs are so much lower. It’s been worthwhile for us and less management of contractors because it can be one of the most difficult, taxing things in this business.
Jay Conner
00:13:00
Do you think that wholetailing, or in other words, “not doing a full rehab,” but you just make it okay and nicer? Do you think wholetailing is so much more popular now and working so well because there’s just no inventory?
Paul Lizell
00:13:16
That’s it. You hit the nail on the head with that, Jay. We go back to 2009 when I was doing fix and flips. If I didn’t do a full-scale, redo everything, you didn’t have that many buyers interested in the property unless it was the first-time home buyer. But as the market has gotten hotter and hotter and has lesser and lesser inventory, people are being less picky figuring they’ll do some of the work themselves. So it’s really just kind of taking what the market gives you. We follow it in our business. We follow the “Keep it simple, stupid” theory, and I think that’s the best thing to do in any business. Whatever the market is giving you, take that, right? If you don’t need to do the full-scale rehab, don’t, unless it’s going to warrant you getting an additional $50,000 or $60,000 where it becomes worthwhile, just take what the market gives you.
Jay Conner
00:13:56
Yeah. So how do you determine how to price? Like if you’re wholetailing a house to an end-buyer, what’s your criteria for pricing that home at the stage you got it in versus a complete rehab?
Paul Lizell
00:14:15
So basically what we do now with the wholetailing, we’re discounting it at 10-15% off what the normal end, full-scale rehab would be, which is still giving some equity to the buyer, should they want to do something there. And still it makes them fly off the shelves, I tell you, they don’t last very long when you’re just doing the basics and people see it’s clean and easy. I can change the carpet. I can change the paint color or whatever, I can do this or that. So people aren’t as picky as they used to be because there’s just no inventory. It’s hard to be picky. You take what’s there, basically, more or less.
Jay Conner
00:14:50
So in this market, as long as it’s clean and it smells good, if it’s dated, that’s okay, right?
Paul Lizell
00:15:03
Yes, dated, okay. You go do the ’80s, ’90s style. People can live with that as long as things aren’t broken, right? As long as you don’t have holes in the roof and things like that. Roofing is definitely a big issue, HVAC system for people. We just did one in Laurinburg, North Carolina, and unfortunately it did need a new HVAC system, so we did install that. We’re still gonna do pretty well. His property is still gonna net around $32,000, even though we had to do the roof and the HVAC system and the rest of it was a wholetail.
Jay Conner
00:15:32
Gotcha. So when you’re wholetailing to an end-user, are you finding the buyer by listing it with a real estate agent in the MLS?
Paul Lizell
00:15:42
We are. So, 90% of the time we do that. And occasionally like we did in one in Charleston, Tennessee, which is a very rural area, I had my disposition manager reach out to a bunch of agents in that area to just let them know we have a property and we offered them 2% commission. And the only thing we had to do was put it in a hot water heater in that one. That was literally it.
Jay Conner
00:16:05
That’s amazing. So first of all, to be virtually wholesaling, you have to find these deals and there ain’t no inventory to speak of. So everybody wants to know, well, if there isn’t any inventory, how in the world are you finding the deals?
Paul Lizell
00:16:27
Well, we got a little bit of an advantage over a lot of other people in the market. Most real estate investors out there stick with certain territories, maybe one or two markets out there. Occasionally somebody does three or four, but for us, the whole country is our oyster, really. That’s what we look at. We got inventory anywhere. We have preferred states where we’d like to do business, don’t get me wrong, but if there’s a great deal in another state where we don’t typically do business, we will go there. Just to give you an example, we’ve done 5 deals in New Mexico this year. We hadn’t done a deal in New Mexico in I think the previous 6 years before that, so we just kind of take what the market gives you. If there’s a deal there, we’ll take it. And we also hit those tertiary markets, and the second-tier markets that if you’re looking at a town or a city like Charlotte, go an hour outside, like a town like Kannapolis, Gastonia, and then go another hour outside that loop there. And then you’re in like a third-tier market. We target those markets because people do want to live there, especially now with what’s going on with the pandemic and everything. People are looking to be more and more rural. So it kind of fits right into what we’ve done all these years, which is a big advantage for us.
Jay Conner
00:17:33
Right! So how do you get the leads?
Paul Lizell
00:17:35
So for us, it’s our own time. So we pay no marketing fees, right? We don’t have any marketing costs whatsoever. I had turned off the direct mail marketing in 2013 and I just buy exclusively off of these auctions. For me, it’s really looking at what’s on the auction sites right now. We use VAs. We have several VAs that do this for each different auction site, whether it’s Auction.com, Xome, the Hudson & Marshall, Hubzu, Realty Bid, Auction Network, HUD Home Store, Fannie and Freddie. We have them go through and they do what I call “First-level fig.” They look at it and we give them the criteria of what we look out for – square footage, repair amount – and then they’ll send me a spreadsheet on Excel. Yes, yes, no, no, no. So, let’s say there’s 250 properties on this particular auction that’s coming up.
We might weed that down to about 20 to 25 that we’ll actually bid on. And then as the bidding process goes, if we’re getting out there and we just let those go off and again, we pick the low-lying fruit there. We’re not going to get into a bidding war. Today, for example, there’s a property in Florida that was in Sarasota, which is a red-hot market. It’s a nice market. My maximum allowable offer is 141 because there’s a buyer’s premium on this property. So the most I would spend was 150 because the ARV was 350 tops. This thing ends up getting bid up to 203 with a buyer’s premium. It was over 210 that that person is purchasing a property for, plus it needed everything. This thing needed at least 125 and work. So basically whoever bought this is probably an end-buyer, but they’re going to be upside down when all is said and done. So we fall off that, we have our maximum viable offers that will go up to, and you can’t get emotional with it, right? That’s a nice market. I would have liked to have been in there, but it didn’t fit our criteria. So I let it go.
Jay Conner
00:19:27
Paul, in case we’ve got some listeners that need to leave the show a little early, go ahead and let folks know how they can get in contact with you and continue the conversation.
Paul Lizell
00:19:38
Sure, absolutely. So we have a couple of different websites. www.REOAuctionAcademy.com is one of them. And also FlipRealEstateVirtually.com is another one. Both URLs work. You can contact us, and if you want to learn more about our coaching program, which we teach people how to do exactly what we do. As a matter of fact, we teach a lot of other investors who do direct mail, postcards, and PPC. They want to learn this aspect of the business. They actually hire somebody or have somebody who doesn’t have as much going on and let them handle this whole new arm of the business for them.
Jay Conner
00:20:13
Again, those 2 websites are REOAuctionAcademy.com, and the other one is FlipRealEstateVirtually.com. All right, so you got the leads coming in. You got your VAs researching all the houses that are coming up on all these different auction sites. How in the world do you have boots on the ground, eyes on the ground, in all these different markets, taking a look at these houses to even know what a close estimation of repairs would be that you need to do? Because, obviously, you don’t want to bid on a property until you know what kind of repairs you’re looking at.
Paul Lizell
00:21:02
Absolutely. And this is one of the most important things. So how you develop these kinds of relationships and these relationships end up blossoming and give you more deals throughout the years. I’ll give you an example of it. So in Tucson, Arizona, there was an REO agent who I bought a bunch of properties through over the years from 2010, all the way through now, we still currently do. Basically, he saw I was a serious player in Tucson, Arizona. We wholesaled a bunch of them. And then he was starting to bring me deals and bring me leads and bring me properties. So he was my boots on the ground. And how that started was I just reached out to him initially after I was bidding on some properties, and this is what you need to do if you’re entering any new market, you need to contact the realtor or the REO agent for that property.
If it’s a bank-owned property, get some details. You’re trying to get the BPO, which is the “Broker’s Price Opinion” of the property. And if you can get that, that’ll tell you basically what they think the “as is value” is, the 30-day sale price, the 90-day sale price,  the 120-day sale price. And they’ll show comps on there, and that’s like, that’s gold. That’s gold when you get that. So you utilize them for that. You also try to get additional pictures from them. And then you’re trying to get what kind of repairs are needed because they generally know, again, the utilities usually aren’t on, but they know what repairs were needed. They know if the roof’s leaking, they know if the air conditioner or heater looks really bad and it looks like it needs replacing, the hot water heater. They’ll tell you if the kitchen needs to be replaced. And the best referrals I get for contractors, hands down, is from these agents.
And the big reason is these contractors who work for these agents get referrals and they get a lot of referrals. So they do not want to screw over these agents when they’re giving them, basically, free marketing. So the guys that we’ve used from all the agent referrals have all been good, and I’m going to knock on wood when I say that, the ones that I run into that have been bad are ones that I picked on my own. I’ve also gotten great ones, but the best referrals from people who are there, who have boots on our ground and have local people, you know how to do those repairs. So we relied big time on the agents on these properties. If there is no agent, we use a company called BPO Photo Flow that’ll go out there and take some pictures of the property.
And if we have a lockbox, they can usually get inside, take more pictures. And we kind of tell them what to look for, like take pictures of the exterior, make sure there’s no cracks in the foundation, take a picture of the basement, the systems, make sure the HVACs are right, hot water heater, kitchens and bathrooms are important. You know, anything that they noticed cracks or issues with flooring, whatever, anything off-level. We want to know that kind of thing. If there’s moisture in the basement, just so we know what we’re in for an aid, generally do a pretty good job and they’re fairly inexpensive to utilize.
Jay Conner
00:23:49
And what’s the name of that service? One more time.
Paul Lizell
00:23:54
It’s BPO Photo Flow, like “Broker’s Price Opinion.” BPOPhotoFlow.com. And they do a really good job. They’re not in every market, so sometimes we actually have to reach out to other local agents and send them out there. And then we just pay them basically more or less to go out there and take some pictures for us and then tell them if we buy it, we’re going to list it through you. We do offer that. And if we do buy, we do end up listing it with them or having them help us sell the property if they know some investors.
Jay Conner
00:24:20
So these REO real estate agents, also known as bank-owned real estate agents, have the listing for these properties that are going up for auction. So obviously if you buy it, you don’t have to pay them anything for the purchase because the bank, the REO, is paying their commission. But do you compensate these agents in any additional way other than when you make a purchase, the bank pays them?
Paul Lizell
00:24:46
We do at times, like if we know they’re going to be doing above and beyond, and they’re not going to get the listing, we will definitely pay them. We’ll say, “What do you want for this? Or what free one for that service?” They usually are very, very fair with the prices and we’re glad to do it. We just Venmo them most of the time. I’ve never really run into any issues with that. Most of the time, they’re really happy to just hand the listing for you. I even have thought of them managing my rehabs for me because they know the contractors, they kind of manage, oversee, and take pictures. They’re happy to go do that. They see the progress and they want it listed so that they can get their permission when all is said and done.
Jay Conner
00:25:21
Awesome. And how do you find these REO agents? I suppose one way you could find them is, well, your VAs are looking at auctions coming up. They go research the property and right there, they see who’s got the real estate listing on it. Right?
Paul Lizell
00:25:37
Absolutely. And you get a lot of these agents who will have 5, 10, 15, 20 different properties. And they’ll cover a huge geographical region, which is crazy. I mean, they’re running around all the time. Nobody works harder than an REO agent, that I can tell you. Those guys and gals, they work their butts off and they are good. Their numbers are so spot on. For example, on a property we had in Ohio a few years back, I was talking to the agent, “What do you think the value of this property is, as is?” And she’s like, it had to be somewhere between 17 and 20. Sure enough, we picked it up for like $7,500. We sold that for $17,500. She was just right on the money with it. And that happens time and time and time again, the only time, if you’re in with a newer agent, that’s where you want to be careful.
If it is a newer real estate agent, they’re not going to be as experienced. You’re going to want to try to lean on a secondary agent. Hopefully somebody that’s in one of these towns that has their own brokerage that’s been there for 10, 20 years and really knows the market. Well, those have been our best sources. Far and away, the people that are in small mom & pop shops, they just know the market. They know everybody in town. They usually know who lived in that property, especially if it’s a smaller town, like you live in, Jay, they know people, right? And they’ve been our greatest source all over every market that we’ve ever been in.
Jay Conner
00:26:55
Let’s say that you make a bid and you win the bid at the auction and all these auctions are online, right?
Paul Lizell
00:27:04
Yes. They’re all online.
Jay Conner
00:27:05
So you win the bid. So now you’re the winning bidder. On average, how long do you have before you get close? In addition to that, do you sometimes, or always get a home inspection before you take it down?
Paul Lizell
00:27:22
So, Jay, I’ll answer the first question first. 30 to 45 days usually is what you got, time-wise. Sometimes a little bit longer. If the title is a little cloudy or there’s past issues or where something wasn’t done right at the Sheriff’s sale. That’s the answer to the first question. The second one, we never get a home inspection. We’ll just send a contractor out there. I don’t have too much faith in the home inspection field, business, people. Most of these guys learn out of a book and never swung a hammer a day in their life. So the people I rely on are the contractors. I try to find general contractors that really know everything, as many aspects of it. And yeah, if they miss some stuff, sure, they’re gonna miss some stuff here and there, but they’re going to see the big stuff. And they’ve been a great source for me and are far less expensive because you’re just gonna pay $400 or $500 for these home inspections when I can send a guy out there for a hundred bucks to give me a pretty good inspection, you know.
Jay Conner
00:28:14
And again, as you said, you find these general contractors by referral from the bank-owned real estate agents, right?
Paul Lizell
00:28:21
Yup. And about 95% of the time, they don’t charge you a penny to go out there. They’re hoping to get the work.
Jay Conner
00:28:26
That’s fantastic. Well, this is a fantastic business model you’ve got, Paul. Any parting comments?
Paul Lizell
00:28:35
I love it. It’s a great business model. The one thing I really like about it is that I can turn a business on or off anytime I want, unlike the direct mail marketing or the PPC where you gotta be on those calls right away. On a PPC lead or direct mail, it’s constantly going. If I want to go on vacation, I shut down for 2 weeks or a month. If I want to go overseas, I can do that and just stop operations and start right back up when I get back. So I do love that. That is my favorite aspect of the business. I also don’t have to deal with home sellers 99% of the time. So those are 2 facets. I really like how it’s really simple. It’s not turnkey, but your time is your marketing costs, right? Your time and energy, which is your most valuable asset. Your time is all your costs involved.
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faircontractorsales · 3 months
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classyfoxdestiny · 3 years
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Inside the Turbulent Origins of the Miami Building Collapse
Inside the Turbulent Origins of the Miami Building Collapse
It was in the middle of summer in 1980 when developers raising a pair of luxury condominium towers in Surfside, Fla., went to town officials with an unusual request: They wanted to add an extra floor to each building.
The application to go higher was almost unheard-of for an ambitious development whose construction was already well underway. The builders had not mentioned the added stories in their original plans. It was not clear how much consideration they had given to how the extra floors would affect the structures overall. And, most galling for town officials, the added penthouses would violate height limits designed to prevent laid-back Surfside from becoming another Miami Beach.
At one point, the town building department issued a terse stop-work order. But records show that in the face of an intense campaign that saw lawyers for the developers threaten lawsuits and argue with officials deep into the night, the opposition folded — and the developers got their way.
Frank Filiberto, who was on the Town Commission at the time, recalled feeling as if the developers regarded him and the other officials as “local yokels.”
“They were bullies,” Mr. Filiberto said. “There was a lot of anger.”
Although there is no indication that the catastrophic collapse of the Champlain Towers South building in June was related to the tacked-on penthouse, the alteration was just one of many contentious parts of a project that was pushed through by aggressive developers at a time when the local government seemed wholly unprepared for a new era of soaring condo projects.
Surfside had only a part-time building inspector, George Desharnais, who worked at the same time for Bal Harbour, Bay Harbor Islands and North Bay Village. Records show that the Surfside building department delegated inspections of the towers back to the Champlain Towers builders, who tapped their own engineer to sign off on construction work. The town manager was unable to resolve the penthouse issue because, just as the issue came before the city, he was arrested on charges — later dismissed — of peeping into the window of a 13-year-old girl and abruptly resigned.
The development team itself had a dubious record. The architect had been disciplined previously for designing a building with a sign structure that later collapsed in a hurricane. The structural engineer had run into trouble on an earlier project, too, when he signed off on a parking garage with steel reinforcement that was later found to be dangerously insufficient.
The early 1980s was a freewheeling period for construction in the Miami area, known at the time for its uneven enforcement of regulations, but the Champlain Towers project stood apart — both for the tumult that occurred on the job site and the brazenness of the developers behind the project.
Investigators with the National Institute of Standards and Technology are still in the early days of examining the building’s collapse, with ongoing examinations of the integrity of the foundations and the strength of the materials used to support the building. The investigation will include a review of how the building was designed and constructed, including the building’s modifications, the agency said on Wednesday.
Troubled pasts
By the late 1970s, Surfside was still a humble corner of South Florida, so popular with Canadian snowbirds looking for a discounted slice of paradise that the town dedicated a week to celebrating the connection. Winners of the festival’s beauty pageant could receive a trip to Canada.
One of the Canadians with an eye on the town was the lead developer of Champlain Towers, Nathan Reiber, who brought a grand vision to reshape Surfside’s waterfront at a time when the town was eager to find new sources of tax revenue to keep taxes low for full-time residents. As Mr. Reiber’s team filed for the first Champlain Towers permits in August 1979 — with no 13th-story penthouses — city officials were struggling with serious inadequacies in the water and sewer systems that had led to a moratorium on new development.
The Champlain Towers developers came up with a plan: They would provide $200,000 toward the needed upgrades — covering half the cost — if they could get to work on construction. The town agreed.
“It was exciting,” said Mitchell Kinzer, who was the mayor at the time. “Here we are, little Surfside, a tiny town getting first-class luxury buildings.”
Mr. Reiber pursued the project even as he was dealing with legal troubles in Canada. A lawyer from Ontario who had ventured into real estate, Mr. Reiber and two partners were accused by Canadian prosecutors of dodging taxes in the 1970s by plundering the proceeds of coin-operated laundry machines in their buildings in a scheme to lessen their taxable income. The prosecutor also accused the group of using the expenses of a fake building project to avoid taxes on some $120,000 in rent payments.
After court proceedings that dragged on for years, Mr. Reiber pleaded guilty to one count of tax evasion in 1996. Family members of Mr. Reiber, who died in 2014, did not respond to messages seeking comment.
Mr. Reiber’s lawyer, Stanley J. Levine, also figured prominently in the development of Champlain Towers, handling corporate work for some of the companies involved.
About a decade earlier, Mr. Levine and a member of the Miami Beach City Council had been charged with soliciting an $8,000 bribe from a woman who wanted a zoning variance to build a 47-unit apartment building, according to news coverage from the time. The charge was later dropped. Mr. Levine died in 1999, and a member of his family could not be reached for comment.
Allegations of influence-peddling also dogged the Champlain Towers project. In early 1980, the developers had made campaign contributions that were significant at the time — $100 to one commissioner, $200 to another. Mayor Kinzer objected, and the developers tried to take the money back.
Rick Aiken, the town manager who later had to step down, said the Champlain Towers builders were constantly pressing the town to move faster on permits.
“They’d call me on the phone, want to take me to lunch so that I would push the commission toward giving them a permit,” Mr. Aiken said. He told them that they needed to follow the rules, he said, adding that he could not recall any instances of the developers engaging in improper activity.
On Nov. 13, 1979, the town approved the overall plans for the project.
‘Grossly inadequate’
As the construction got underway at the Champlain Towers sites, both at their North and South properties, turmoil was emerging and plans were changing.
By May, the project’s lead contractor, Jorge Batievsky, had resigned. He soon filed a lawsuit, though records from the case have since been destroyed and Mr. Batievsky has died.
The developers brought in a new contractor, Alfred Weisbrod, but problems continued.
As the first levels of the South building were rising above the ground, a crane on site collapsed so violently that its steel was contorted, according to archived video. A week later, crews discovered that more than $10,000 in wood had been stolen from the site.
Frequently Asked Questions
Why did Champlain Towers South collapse?
It could take months for investigators to determine precisely why a significant portion of the Surfside, Fla., building collapsed. But there are already some clues about potential reasons for the disaster, including design or construction flaws. Three years before the collapse, a consultant found evidence of “major structural damage” to the concrete slab below the pool deck and “abundant” cracking and crumbling of the columns, beams and walls of the parking garage. Engineers who have visited the wreckage or viewed photos of it say that damaged columns at the building’s base may have less steel reinforcement than was originally planned.
Were residents previously concerned with the building?
Condo boards and homeowners’ associations often struggle to convince residents to pay for needed repairs, and most of Champlain Towers South’s board members resigned in 2019 because of their frustrations. In April, the new board chair wrote to residents that conditions in the building had “gotten significantly worse” in the past several years and that the construction would now cost $15 million instead of $9 million. There had also been complaints from residents that the construction of a massive, Renzo Piano-designed residential tower next door was shaking Champlain Towers South.
Are other buildings in Florida at risk?
What do we know about those who died?
Entire family units died because the collapse happened in the middle of the night, when people were sleeping. The parents and children killed in Unit 802, for example, were Marcus Joseph Guara, 52, a fan of the rock band Kiss and the University of Miami Hurricanes; Anaely Rodriguez, 42, who embraced tango and salsa dancing; Lucia Guara, 11, who found astronomy and outer space fascinating; and Emma Guara, 4, who loved the world of princesses. A floor-by-floor look at the victims shows the extent of the devastation.
Did anyone survive the collapse?
But public anticipation was building. A newspaper ad for the unfinished buildings claimed that only 27 residences remained available. “Get the best — while they last,” it advised.
By the end of the summer, the developers hired a new permanent contractor, Arnold Neckman, and in August they applied to add the new “penthouse” floor to each property, raising the buildings from 12 stories to 13.
The added weight brought by the penthouse had the potential to exacerbate a failure and contribute to the progressive collapse that killed 98 people this year, said Mehrdad Sasani, a professor of civil and environmental engineering at Northeastern University who reviewed the building’s design plans. He also said the decision to add a new floor to the top of a previous design was not an accepted practice.
But the penthouse addition would not explain the cause of the collapse, Dr. Sasani said, since buildings are designed with large safety margins. “The relative weight of the penthouse compared to the weight of the structure is not so significant that it could have been an initial cause,” Dr. Sasani said.
There is no record of an objection from the architect on the project, William Friedman, or the structural engineer, Sergio Breiterman.
Both had come to the project after some criticism of their past work. State regulators suspended Mr. Friedman’s license for six months in 1967 after an investigation determined that he had designed a “grossly inadequate” sign structure that fell over during Hurricane Betsy two years prior, damaging the structure of a Miami commercial building, according to records from the Florida Department of Business and Professional Regulation.
About five years before the Champlain Towers project, Mr. Breiterman had been responsible for inspections on a $5 million parking garage in Coral Gables, where officials later found that the walls in the building lacked steel reinforcing rods that would prevent cars from crashing through, according to a 1976 article in The Miami Herald.
Mr. Breiterman also got the job of inspecting work at Champlain Towers. He gave his seal of approval to the work in October 1980, before the penthouse dispute began.
‘A violation of the code’
A month later, in November, the town appeared to approve the added-on penthouse permit, although it is unclear who signed off on the idea. Two weeks later, the police chief, serving as the interim town manager, sent a curt memo ordering the contractors to halt work, revoking their penthouse permits.
The memo, sternly warning that the penthouses were in fact a violation of Surfside’s codes, came on town letterhead, with the name of Mr. Aiken, the town manager who by that time had been arrested on the peeping charge, crossed off with a series of X’s. (The case against him was later dismissed, with Mr. Aiken saying he had been looking for his dog behind people’s homes.)
Then, a week later, the Town Commission voted to allow the penthouses after all.
Mr. Filiberto, the former commissioner, said he believed that some of the penthouse construction was already completed by then. He said the town was left with a tough choice: Grant a variance or order the builder to demolish the penthouse work — and face a lawsuit.
Years later, Mr. Filiberto wondered whether the developers played equally loose with other aspects of the building project. “If they are that overt in violating the height orders,” he said, “think about all the little intricacies that go into building the building.”
Adam Playford and Michael Majchrowicz contributed reporting. Jack Begg and Kitty Bennett contributed research.
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loquaciousquark · 4 years
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I hope you're doing well! I know you posted about a stressful situation last month, and I hope it's resolved itself. Sending good wishes you you and Hamlet!
Thank you so very much for checking in on me! I really do appreciate it. An update to that post under the cut.
Carol, who moved in with me on May 28, is still here. Right now, we have set a tentative move-out goal of the first or second week of August, but this is pending an apartment application that she hopes to finalize on Monday and a job situation that is a complete mess.
Basically, according to my limited understanding, Carol is licensed to teach in Florida. Alabama has a reciprocity clause with Florida, but it must be applied for. Carol has recently begun this process, but her teaching license(s?) is (are?) set to expire in December unless she passes certain exams. She’s already passed one for...general middle and high school teaching, I think, but failed a math exam. She has an art history exam Monday afternoon and expects to pass. I hope so, because she’s been doing nothing but watching Netflix and shopping for houses for the last few days in her new 2017 Jeep Cherokee.
I remain unspeakably grateful to my parents for teaching me financial literacy, because until I witnessed Carol’s decision-making, I had no idea how hard it was for some people to not spend money unwisely. 
As a reminder, Carol is dead broke. She has $153,000 in debt across student loans, medical bills, Czech and US taxes, and some personal loans she would like to repay to friends for helping her. She is unemployed and has no support from her family and has relied on couch surfing at friends’ and acquaintances’ homes since last summer for housing. Since moving in with me, she has been trying to find somewhere to live that would accept her with all her debt and her nonexistent US employment history for the last ten years. Based on what she’s said, I think she has about $9k in the bank--or did, until last week.
In short, she needs a car, a job, and a home, and as far as I can tell she doesn’t care which order they come in.
Two weeks ago, she was offered a position in a rural town about 30 minutes from where I live. It’s a small, very country town which desperately needs a special education teacher, something I think Carol really does have a passion for. However, because she hasn’t finished the reciprocity licensure application yet, they’re having a lot of roadblocks with her paperwork, compounded by the fact that when she left Prague last year, she left all her important documentation behind: things like her birth certificate, her social security card, and her letters of recommendation, which for some reason she did not have electronic backups of. The principal has been trying to get what she needs from Carol for two weeks. Carol is constantly saying that things are “in process” but has nothing to show for it.
As far as we can tell, the job is still hers, but the school year starts August 13th and she still hasn’t been approved by the Board of Education because the paperwork is still not finished on her end. She did not attempt to replace her birth certificate or social security card until they needed it for the application. (Her friend in Prague--and I am beginning to realize she uses the word “friend” for anyone she’s met longer than sixty seconds), who frantically packed up all her belongings when she realized she would not be able to go back to the city, cannot ship her belongings or go through them for the important paperwork until next summer, as she and her husband are currently vacationing in Rome for a year.
Carol decided last night she is also going to apply for some online Department of Defense position--I didn’t understand the details and don’t really want to know, except that it’s also teaching and some administration. We’ll see how it works out. She is growing increasingly annoyed at the principal’s requests for paperwork completion, which baffles me.
So, job: shrug? Maybe?
Car next, then, but this whole mess also goes back to the financial literacy thing. My parents have always been extremely frugal (pennywise, as my dad would say), and from childhood they made it very clear to us to not buy things you couldn’t afford. They’ve never had a car payment in my memory, and they paid off their house about ten years ago. This means they drove a lot of junkers for a very long time, and for a very long time we had very few vacations, but now they’re fully financially stable and debt-free and my mom has a car that she drove off the lot brand new that they paid cash in hand for. 
If I had been in Carol’s situation, I would have found a cheap, mostly reliable used car that probably wasn’t going to explode on me and drive that as long as I could while saving up for housing. I did in fact drive her to look at several used cars, most of which would have been even outside my expected budget (hers, as it happens, is larger even than that, because one of her overseas friends was willing to contribute $5000 to the cost of a vehicle). (I paid $6500 for my current car, a 2004, in college in 2012 with 70,000 miles on it at the time, and have driven it ever since.)
She rejected all of them because they did not have good “energy” and “feelings.” One she was willing to buy at $3700, but told the seller to go pay for his own inspection (once I explained to her what mechanical inspections were as a concept), so they ghosted her. She also is extremely afraid of head gasket failure--I don’t know why, since she knows nothing about cars--and has assumed all vehicles she has driven are on the verge of it, so after the first week she refused to even look at a vehicle without a warranty.
This means she exclusively limited herself to used dealership options, which I’m just going to come right out and say was monumentally stupid. I don’t know if any car dealers follow me, so I’m sorry if I am misperceiving this, but in my experience almost every dealer I’ve gone to has been aggressive, manipulative, and extremely predatory in their interest rates. I cannot think of a riskier course of action in abject debt than to try to cut a deal with a car dealer for the sake of a warranty I doubt will cover that much truly expensive failure in the long run anyway.
On Thursday, Carol bought a $20,000 2017 Jeep Cherokee from a dealership down the road. I don’t know what she put down. I do know she did not use her friend’s money (why not??) and I know her interest rate on the car loan is 4%, which she is extremely proud of and which horrifies me. She also “persuaded” them into a limited warranty that will cover the vehicle up to 100,000 miles (currently at 42k, and they ~only offer it for cars under 40,000 miles~). I can’t tell you how bad an idea I think all this is.
Thursday night, as she was regaling me with stories of her negotiating prowess, she also tells me she has decided to buy a house. She’s sick of renting, and somehow, someone somewhere managed to get her approved for up to $120,000 in a home loan. She already has $150k in debt, another $20k from the car, and now wants to buy a house. She was delighted that she could make the minimum 7% down payment, even though it would wipe out every cent she has left and leave her less than $500 to her name for moving expenses, utilities, food, title registration, etc. afterwards.
She doesn’t even have a secure job yet.
However, this plan seems to have fallen through. She went out with a realtor several times this weekend and came home the last time in great, heaving sobs, because she can’t find the 3bed 2bath she wanted in her price range. (For reference, most homes in this area go between 200k - 250k right now for 2-3bed 2ba, and the closer you get to the city--I have about a 20 minute commute--the higher it gets. My next door neighbor sold her 3bed 2.5ba for >300k three months ago, and Carol knew this.) She was absolutely devastated that the only things in her range were “tiny little ugly flipped houses” and “the ghetto.” The realtor basically said she wasn’t going to waste any more of her time. Carol repeatedly told me how grateful I should be that I got in at the price point I did a few years back, because no “normal people” could ever afford to break into the market again.
I tried to tell her that it was because I lived in with a roommate in very cheap housing and then a cell of a 1bed 1ba apartment for eight years while I saved money, but if nothing else, I’ve learned I’m not allowed to compare our situations or histories or offer advice of any kind except “go ahead and buy what you want,” because that only makes her cry harder. In the end, she has decided to give up on the house for now and settle for the absolute last thing in the world she wanted, an apartment with a lease.
To be honest, until she has a signed contract in hand, I half-expect this lease to fall through as well. I have tried to offer what I think is sensible advice and been ignored or rebuffed. I have tried to offer a sympathetic ear and ended up with her sobbing uncontrollably on me--heaving, body-wracking sobs--over and over again with me trapped in my own home, providing endless emotional support for a girl I don’t even like. I have tried to encourage her to do the things she wants to do, since she’s going to do them anyway, and when she gets “negative energy” after the purchases (buyer’s remorse, I think, that one little inkling of sense saying maybe it wasn’t a great idea to buy a $20,000 car or an $1100 brand new iPhone without a job), she blames it on the exact thing I said I thought might be good and makes me feel like I have now directly contributed to a negative outcome after poor decision-making.
For the record, when she says these things to me she is not saying, and has never said, them directly at me. She has never blamed me in any way for a negative outcome. She is not consciously trying to manipulate me or abuse me or take advantage of my help. She has never once asked me for money or job connections or for me to use any of my stability to unfairly or unethically get her something she needs. She is just completely absorbed in her own (rightfully absorbing) mess of a situation, and I think just completely unaware of how much of an emotional black hole she has become. There are no problems except her problems. There are no needs except her needs, and everyone around her has to understand how hard she has it at all times. 
So, we’ll see. I am praying that the apartment works out next week. The owner seems to want to work with her, which is a hopeful sign. Good thoughts would be appreciated.
--
Aside from all of this, work has gotten extremely complicated. I’m not going to go into all of it now, but one of my jobs is to create an extremely detailed schedule for students in clinic. This is used to schedule patients in each service--if we have this many students, we can have this many patient slots per half-day, etc. Last week, two students were out unexpectedly, one who broke her arm the day before she was supposed to begin, and one who had a terrible anxiety attack and thought the symptoms were actually COVID. That student was tested and cleared negative, but Student Health requires a two-week quarantine anyway, so she was not allowed to return.
This meant that we now had multiple patients per day with no one to see them. We tried to reschedule as many as we could, but we still ended up with multiple overbooks. This is extremely stressful for me as both a provider, an instructor, and a human being who hates having other people wait on her in a professional capacity. We got through the week, but not without several painful bumps, and it’s looking like there will be more soon.
I also woke up to an email this morning that one of my favorite students (yes, I have favorites, I’m sorry), had a completely unexpected death in the immediate family and had to rush home. This is a very, very sweet, very smart girl who has worked unbelievably hard over the past year to do well in this program and in my courses, and I am just devastated for her. One of her friends is willing to cover her clinic, so the impact will be minimal on that side, but to have this happen during this country’s hellhole handling of this pandemic...I can’t even imagine it.
All of this isn’t even touching COVID. The President’s side has won in that sense--I don’t even register the numbers anymore--but as of last week our dean sent out messaging that implied that with our state’s failure to contain the spread, new discussions were going to be happening soon regarding our August start. We already had committed to full hybrid scheduling: all lectures online, in-person labs only where absolutely necessary to continue advancement in the program, and those labs limited to two per room with full PPE, but if they decide even that can’t happen, I don’t know what the fuck I’m going to do. I cannot make competent doctors over Zoom. I can’t. At some point they have to touch other people and look at other people’s eyes. They have to be able to check real, in-person blood pressure. They have to look at genuine eye movements and ocular surfaces in person and I cannot and will not let them enter clinic until they have the practice and the time and the practicals behind them. I fucking refuse to endanger the public for sixty years because someone in an office somewhere decided a timetable is more important than a patient keeping their ability to see, and I’m ready to fight administration on this if they try to push it.
But if I win the fight, what next? They just...don’t enter clinic next year. They don’t enter my program. I don’t know what they do in the meantime, as this lab meets four mornings a week and the lecture twice. The course is delayed until next year or whenever we have the virus under control again, and suddenly my fall semester sure looks like I’ll be being paid to stay at home and count carpet fibers. I don’t think they’ll fire me--no one else wants to teach my course anyway--but if I win this fight I might put myself right into furlough in the process.
I could be borrowing trouble, I know. They could come back and say that after review, our system and safety protocols (all extremely conservative) are indeed safe enough and we can proceed as we want. They could say that our limited in-person option for lectures (we have several gigantic lecture halls that could easily socially distance) is the only thing that needs to go. They could say that we just need to have smaller lab groups--hellish on me, but doable.
But it’s one more element of stress in my life that I just can’t handle worrying about right now, which is why I’ve been bouncing back and forth between random fics and oneshots (that mermaid one was feverishly written on a single evening Carol spent at her mom’s house) and pouring an ungodly amount of hours into Animal Crossing. At least there I have some control over what happens next.
Sorry, guys. I know this is not the happy update I was hoping for. I’ll try to check in again next month and we’ll see where things end up.
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