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hakesbros · 2 years ago

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New Homes & Developments For Sale In Stone Oak, Tx

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ryttu3k · 4 years ago

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could you post the ending where you side with the SI and Julian gets pissed off by your decision? I also noticed that Julian never really introduces himself to anyone or says a simple goodbye to the courier, like, ever. I mean even after ten years or so he just resumes the conversation as if nothing happened. Not even the courier calls him out on this. I wonder why that is lol

Heh, regarding Julian’s conversational patterns, there’s a really interesting post here on friendship degradation mechanisms with ADHD! And Julian absolutely has ADHD.

And for the SI ending, ooh, I haven't got that one written down. I do want it handy for reference, so time for a speedrun with my SI-affiliated Toreador! Here's all the dialogue from the SI attack onwards.

Before you can speak, Lettow jumps up.

"What?" Julian says.

Your phone chimes. You run, throwing yourself out the door just as the missile hits.

Fragments of stone and metal fly over your head. You get clear, reaching your Escalade, and look back at the blown-apart warehouse.

Flames are everywhere. Your Beast screams in wild terror and only the greatest exercise of Willpower keeps you under control, but your body shakes uncontrollably. You have only one clear thought—run! Still, you grit your teeth and force yourself to look around.

Only the vampires survived the blast, and they look badly hurt. Prince Lettow took a direct hit; his clothes hang in tatters, like a shroud, and his skin is blackened. Julian and his helmeted assistant, Z, are burned and stunned. Julian's servants are gone.

Hunters are inbound. You see Bearcats and Humvees, police cruisers and Buick Avenirs. The floodlights turn on, illuminating the burning warehouse and hiding almost a hundred hunters in the glare as they advance.

A bullet zips past your head as a hunter in militia gear opens fire. An FBI agent waves for him to stop—it looks like there are orders for you not to be harmed—but that's hardly a perfect defense. You duck behind the Sprinter van. It might be time to get out of here.

There's just one problem: Julian is standing between you and your Escalade, a karambit in both hands. He spins the little blades.

"You did this," he says. "You betrayed us all."

[The sight of so much fire means that you are now in a fear frenzy and cannot think clearly unless you focus your Willpower or escape.]

> "I tried to warn you! I told you we were monsters, and I told you I would stop you."

Another explosion obliterates the computer shop. Bricks and pieces of rebar rain down.

Julian screams and rushes you, quick as the wind. Then he breaks away before he gets into karambit range. Even as he moves, his silhouette breaks up, becoming a pixelated gray blur as he fades from sight and circles you, looking for a chance to strike.

> I need to talk him down. "You can still escape, Julian. Don't let them kill you here." [CHA/MAN+Persuasion]

"How could you do this?" Julian cries.

"To save people!" you say. "And I'm trying to save you. Run, before it's too late!"

He looks at the raging inferno all around him, the ruins of his project, then back at you. Then he fades away.

That's the last time you see him.

More gunfire arcs around you and hammers the Sprinter van. You duck, then get into your Escalade and get away from the burning warehouse.

So I thought that was it, but hey! Apparently Lettow wanted his say, too!

You slide into heavy traffic, scanning the late-night vehicles for signs of pursuit. No hunters, no cops. Good. You have a moment to think as you scan the streets.

Front, back, left, right. Nothing. If you breathed, you'd be breathing a little easier. You're just turning your thoughts to the next step of this desperate plan when a shadow passes over you.

You look up. Riga.

Then you crane your head out of your window.

Something like Riga, but with a wingspan like a light aircraft.

Lettow is following you, and it looks like he cares more about revenge for your "betrayal" than about preserving the Masquerade.

And here come the hunters: Buick SUVs close in on your location. Others are on a nearby bridge. They're tracking Lettow, trying to get close enough to open fire with rifles or even heavier munitions. You're not sure Donati cares about collateral damage anymore. The SI will blow holes in Tucson to take down its Prince.

This is it, you realize. The Eagle Prince plans to destroy you here and now. But with so many hunters around him, he'll only have one shot at you. If you can buy yourself a few seconds and slip out of his sight, he won't be able to try again.

But how?

> My supernaturally keen eyes will let me spot alleys, vacant lots, and other places where I can hide my SUV from Lettow. [Auspex]

You drive slowly, looking for little-used routes that Lettow won't be able to track from above.

Tucson is a low, flat city, but finally you spot a messy construction site next to a parking garage.

You turn hard, cutting off oncoming traffic and racing into the construction site as Lettow dives for you.

But just as you planned, he has to back off. Tarps cover most of the site, and he'd get tangled if he dove. You keep moving, weaving through narrow alleys, then blowing through a Chevron station—the covering over the pumps prevents Lettow from reaching you easily.

Then you reverse right into an unfinished apartment complex that you saw last week, going straight through the building itself.

And he's lost you.

You roll out with your lights off and look up. Lettow is on a nearby building, scanning the darkness with his golden eyes.

That's when the SI lights him up. Heedless that they're operating in the middle of Tucson, dozens of agents and soldiers open fire with rifles and truck-mounted weapons.

Lettow lurches in midair. But he's still an elder vampire. The huge eagle dives, scythes through a truck full of agents, killing five in a single pass, and then rises into the air, higher, higher, until he and Riga disappear into the clouds.

The last you see of Prince Lettow, he's flying east, away from Tucson, out of his fallen domain.

You disappear into traffic, getting away from the SI as quickly as you can.

An inescapable element of existing as a vampire is ignorance. The Masquerade is a shadow that swallows clarity and understanding. People suspect and imply, but they rarely know for certain.

Your final nights in Tucson are frightening but uninteresting. You check the news, divest from your real estate holdings, and listen to word on the street.

Over the next few nights, during which time the news reports a few strange acts of violence, a terrorist attack, and a zoo escape, you learn that Prince Lettow was almost certainly destroyed. Dove perished in a midday raid on her haven, and nothing remains of the Viper but a gutted heap.

The city's Kindred are scattered and leaderless, easy pickings for hunters that are now free to operate during the day, dragging vampires out of their havens and destroying them.

Despite the chaos in the shadow-world you inhabit, Tucson looks the same. The city's downtown is not ablaze, the national guard hasn't been mobilized. It's just another shadow-war for vampires to fight.

And it's time to leave.

Your plans to escape Tucson run into surprisingly little red tape as you sell your bungalow and liquidate your other assets.

You got what you could out of your deal with the SI, but now it's time to go.

Go where? Tucson never felt like home, but it was, at least, a base of operations. You can't just stick to the road forever; the highways are too dangerous right now, with the SI active and your bridges with the Camarilla burned. You see a few possible futures.

From what you hear, Seattle is a key city for the Camarilla's blood trade. You could head up north and, if you have enough venture capital, try to strike it rich, really establish yourself.

But maybe money isn't everything. Could you work with hunters to stop more Cainite depredations? From what you hear, Dallas/Fort Worth is now completely out of control, with open fighting in the streets among different vampire factions. If the SI trusts you enough, you could return there and try to protect humanity from the predators in their midst.

But you still feel the alien vitae inside of you: the 2100 Formula. You've heard that a scholar of the Blood dwells in Denver, someone who could answer a lot of your questions. With the briefcase full of Julian's Program research, you should be able to make inroads there. The only difficulty will be finding this scholar, and avoiding the hunters who suspect what kind of power you carry in your Blood. If you head for Denver, you'll have to hope that you've left the Masquerade intact enough here that you can reach Colorado without an army of hunters following you.

Finally…maybe you could just try to live a life. You're dead, of course, but you could try existing as a person, if only for a few years. You've heard that San Francisco is a good place for that sort of thing ever since the old Prince left for LA. Maybe you could cultivate your Humanity and try to live, instead of simply exist.

> I drive east to Dallas/Fort Worth. I'll use my Inquisition contacts to fight the vampires there. [Second Inquisition Hostility]

One month later...

Dallas is burning.

Not literally, not really. From your vantage atop this parking garage, you can't see any fires. But you know that the Inquisition has torn through the city, scattered its warring factions, dragged predators screaming into sunlight every day for the past two weeks. You know all this because you've commanded them from the shadows.

You finish your work tonight.

"We're the masters of this city," one of D'Espine's beautiful ghouls says through bloody teeth. "Even if you kill me, we'll always be here. Feeding and taking and ruling from the shadows. We are immortal! We—"

The other hunters have heard enough. They toss him off the roof and head to their van.

You get back in your SUV because your final target is on the move. D'Espine—the last Cainite of any real power in Dallas—has left the Cinderblock.

This is how you've succeeded in Dallas: not just through your network of hunters, but because you know how to move through a city. As the Cainites have crawled into their holes, believing themselves safe, you've never stopped moving, never stopped striking. And now you're almost done.

You roll out of the parking garage and point your Escalade at the Cinderblock. By tomorrow night you'll be done here, and you'll hit the road.

RIP Lettow and Dove. Julian did get out, though!

#vampire the masquerade #vtm night road #vtmnr spoilers #baron of 2100

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rjzimmerman · 5 years ago

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Excerpt from this EcoWatch story:

The Texan city of Houston is about to grow in unexpected ways, thanks to the rising tides. So will Dallas. Real estate agents in Atlanta, Georgia; Denver, Colorado; and Las Vegas, Nevada could expect to do roaring business.

The inland counties around Los Angeles, and close to New Orleans in Louisiana, will suddenly get a little more crowded. And from Boston in the north-east to the tip of Florida, Americans will be on the move.

That is because an estimated 13 million U.S. citizens could some time in this century become climate refugees, driven from their seaside homes by sea level rise of possibly 1.8 meters (approximately 5.9 feet), according to new research.

And they will have to move home in a poorer economic climate, worldwide. If governments and city authorities do not take the right steps, sea level rise could erode 4% of the global annual economy, says a separate study. That is, coast-dwellers could witness not just their towns and even cities washed away: they could see their prosperity go under as well.

Californian scientists report in the Public Library of Science journal PLOS One that they used machine learning techniques – in effect, artificial intelligence systems – to calculate what is most likely to happen as U.S. citizens desert Delaware Bay, slip away from the cities of North and South Carolina, and flee Florida in the face of rising sea levels, coastal flooding and increasingly catastrophic windstorms.

In the year 2000, a third of all the planet's urban land was in a zone vulnerable to flood. By 2040, this could rise to 40%. In 2010, in the U.S., more than 120 million citizens – that is nearly 40% of the entire population – lived in coastal counties. By 2020, this proportion could already be higher.

#sea level rise #climate migration

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hakesbrother · 2 years ago

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San Antonio To Sell Vacant Lots For Affordable Housing

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ccohanlon · 3 years ago

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not a homecoming

Home is the place where, when you have to go there, They have to take you in Robert Frost, from The Death of the Hired Man I rented the house the way I did most things back then – remotely. I Googled real estate agents in the beachside suburbs north of Sydney and found illustrated listings of available properties online.

There was an older-style, white clapboard, two-storied house overlooking the south end of Palm Beach: two flights of sandstone steps led down from it to the seawater rock pool next to the beach itself. A reasonable rent for the winter was agreed via email, and I wired an advance for a month along with a fee for a weekly cleaning and linen service. The key was left above the front doorframe, a copy of the rental contract slid under the door.

The house was what the agent called a duplex: actually half a house, separate, self-contained, with its own entrance. I had the lower floor; the landlords, an elderly couple who, the agent assured me, used the house no more than a couple of times a month, had the rest. There were two bedrooms, each with a queen-sized bed and aside table, a small living room with a cane two-seater settee, two armchairs and a coffee table, all of Seventies’ vintage, and a narrow galley kitchen next to what used to be called a breakfast nook in which there were a linoleum covered aluminium table and four vinyl-upholstered aluminium chairs. The decor was chintzy retro’, faux- tropical-Fifties’-resort-lounge-meets-American-truck-stop-diner.

But there was the view: from the glass sliding doors that opened onto a terrace that ran the width of the house, I could look out along a kilometre of beach to the lighthouse atop the high, rocky knuckle at the far end of the peninsula and beyond, the national park and beaches on the coast further north, and from north-east to south- east, several miles of uninterrupted ocean horizon.

The house was as temporary and impersonal as a hotel room and that suited me. It was not meant to be a home. In a couple of weeks, only a little more of me would be visible there than when I first arrived.

This was not a homecoming.

‘Home’– or even the sense of place, of belonging, which passed for it – had nothing to do with it. I was born about 10 miles from this house but I grew up everywhere else. If I ever had a home, it was one that I had invented – and I had invented so many over the past forty years that the whole idea of ‘home’ no longer had any meaning for me. The same could be said of a lot of things in my life.

Three days ago, I was waiting for a taxi on the front lawn of the large house in Tulsa, Oklahoma, that I had bought for my wife during one of those infrequent times when I was making a lot of money. I had lived in it with our three kids and her for three years, off and on, without trying to pretend it was our home. Now she wanted me to leave. “What can I believe anymore?” she asked. “I'm so tired of your secrets.”

She had come across some old emails from a Japanese girl whom she had suspected of being my lover. I had last seen the girl at the departure gate at Tokyo’s Narita airport before I boarded a flight for Los Angeles three months ago. “There's been so many secrets, so many things you've never told me – and it hurt so bad,” the Japanese girl had told me then. After she had left me at the airport, she went back to an apartment I rented in Nishi-Azabu, another non-home, and packed her belongings. The secrets she referred to had nothing to do with my wife. I suspected the secrets my wife referred to had nothing to do with the Japanese girl. There was just this continuous white noise of confused or contradictory indications, punctuated by resorbent nulls; it was as if I was trying to elude substance, to become a ghost. Prolonged exposure to it had exhausted them both.

I flew coach on American Airlines to Los Angeles via Dallas, with the thought of staying for a while in a city that sustained itself through its transients. I took a cab to Sunset, and checked into a large room on the third floor of The Standard Hotel, overlooking the pool. Young bodies were arranged around it like MTV extras, sprawling on white plastic lounge chairs scattered across an expanse of blue Astro- turf. One corner was taken over by a photo shoot, and chain-smoking assistants arranged a tripod, lights, battery packs and reflectors as a model, dull-eyed, barely a teenager, suffered the final touch-ups to her make-up. Loud hip-hop and a visceral human hum reverberated within the walls.

I phoned a woman I used to date when I lived in the city. Blonde, in her late twenties, she had played a bit part as a stripper in a Nicholas Cage movie; now she was married, with a nine-month-old baby, her ambition to be an actress fading. We met late that night at a sushi restaurant on Third Street and afterwards, fucked on a silver beanbag in my room. The hotel was now quiet, except for the occasional creak of beds and floorboards in other rooms. The lounge chairs and Astro-turf were empty. An old, ornate, red neon sign atop a Spanish-style apartment block nearby flickered against the starless sky: Mirador.

When she left, it struck me that staying any longer in Los Angeles would be a mistake. It was too easy to re-invent yourself for the moment there; no-one questioned it, and you could forget in an instant who you really were. I had already crossed and re-crossed the fine line between delusion and lie too many times to risk it again.

It was the beginning of the rainy season in Tokyo, sticky and hot. In the eery, pre-apocalyptic stillness that precedes dawn in Los Angeles, I thought of Sydney.

Despite the years I had been on the move, I still found it hard to remember time zones in a conventional way. I relied on short-cuts I had first come up with as a kid being dragged around the world by my parents. If you asked me if Tulsa was sixteen hours behind Sydney, I would tell you something like “It’s eight hours ahead, the day before.” Or “It’s four hours behind, at the opposite end of the day”. It was easier, somehow.

It was midday in Palm Beach, eight in the evening, yesterday, in Tulsa. The kids would be getting ready to go to bed. I wondered whether I should leave it another day before trying to negotiate the trip-wires of my wife’s anger. As in every war, hot zones flared, then subsided into uneasy stand-offs as each side dug in and assessed the attrition. My wife would not attack again, not for a few days; we were both worn out from the last fight, and maybe she was as nervous as I was about pushing the slim chance for peace over an ill-defined brink.

She picked up after several rings, and waited for me to say hello first. I might have been wrong about the possibility of attack.

“Where are you?” she asked.

“I’m here. Just arrived.”

“Yes, but where?”

“Still at the airport. I haven’t figured out what to do yet.”

And there was another of my inexplicable deceptions. I didn’t know why, but I was not ready to tell her about the house, or about my plan to stay for a month or so. She sensed the secretiveness, and it irked her.

“Will you stay with your mother?”

“I don’t know. I’ll call you later and let you know what I’m up to.”

A long pause.

“I’ll get the kids,” she said.

My daughters, aged four and ten, were used to pretending that the harsh words they heard their parents exchange had not happened. They chirruped happy goodnights, and made exaggerated kissing sounds into the handset before passing it to my eleven-year-old son. He was on the verge of tears.

“Hi Dadda. Where are you?”

“Are you OK, son?”

“No.”

“I’m so sorry. I really am.”

“Mum says you’re going to Australia.”

“I’m already here.”

“Are you going to come back?”

“We’ll see each other soon. And I’ll call every day.”

“It’s so hard.”

“I know.”

“Does it have to keep being this way?”

“No. We’ll get through this. Just know I love you, OK?”

“I know. I love you too, Dadda. But come back soon. Please.”

There was nothing more I could say. I had told enough lies for one day. My body was sticky with the accumulated grime of a long day’s travel. I found an old, two-bar electric heater in a hallway closet and set it up to warm the air between my bedroom and the bathroom before I showered and changed my clothes. A faint chemical odour rose from the elements as they reddened.

I studied myself naked in a full-length mirror behind the bedroom door – a brief physical audit of nearly forty-nine years of self-indulgence and neglect. I was morbidly obese. My skin was still elastic, even where it hung in a fold over my hips, but pale and discoloured with age. My cock was receding into a fattening pubis; I could no longer see it over my stomach, except when it was erect. My ankles and knees were swollen and there were striations of cellulite beneath my buttocks. My hands were misshapen with arthritis. My hair was cropped close to my skull but it had become so grey and patchy that it resembled the mottled flesh of a corpse. The rest of my body was overtaken with hair and benign growths. My teeth were yellowing and there was an after-taste of decay beneath my tongue. My eyes were bloodshot, a combination of tiredness and high blood-pressure, and my sight was failing. I had to wear glasses to read anything smaller than 14-point.

It wasn’t pretty, but it was the real me. Like someone with a heart condition who monitored their blood pressure each day, I was disciplined about reality checks. I got a compact camera from my backpack. Still naked, I stood in front of the mirror again and pointed it at my reflection, holding it one-handed just to the right of my chest, my thumb on the shutter release. I exposed three or four frames in the cool, diffused daylight that filled the room.

I printed very few of my photos, although I started taking photographs several years ago to keep track of where I had been, and with whom. It felt, somehow, more reliable than writing a diary and in some ways, it turned out to be a more accurate reflection of the way in which I assembled memories: not so much as a structured narrative but as a collage, or a series of random snapshots. I proofed each roll of 35mm film six frames by six on 10” x 8” glossy paper which I stored with the negatives in large ring binders organized by date. I had left the binders at the house in Tulsa. I was not a photographer, but the images were a way of keeping track, of corroborating what I remembered: this is how it was then.

I showered then dried myself, shivering, in front of the heater. I put on a fresh, black t-shirt and underwear and the same jeans I wore on the ‘plane.

Barefoot, I found sandstone steps down to the beach.

A surfer was paddling seaward on an outgoing rip at the south end of the beach. Clear of the surf, he turned northwards, paddling parallel to the swell to bigger waves peaking on an offshore sandbank and breaking left. He sat upright on his half- submerged board to gauge an incoming set. A wave rose beneath him and just as it was about to rushed past, he turned, pulled his board back between his legs and let buoyancy slingshot its nose down its face. The wave began to hollow and break. The surfer sprang to his feet and with a slight repositioning of his body, drove the board across its throat like a blade. The board slashed through a foaming lip as the wave collapsed. The surfer arched back and kicked the board through an arc of empty air to regain the face. White water tumbled beneath him. It looked like the ride was over, but he rocked the board up and down, pumping it to sustain some momentum until the wave rebuilt over an inshore bank. He rode it to the beach without flourish.

I walked towards the lighthouse, keeping to the damp, compacted sand below the high water mark.

I sat atop the dunes at the far end of the beach, and watched the transmuting surface of the sea. On calmer days, it heaved and undulated like the body of a prehistoric beast at rest, drawing slow breaths, but now its long, sinewy swells thrashed at the fractured reef and high cliffs below the lighthouse as if it was trying to erode the stubborn solidity of the shore.

“There are places you always come back to,” a psychiatrist once told me. “They’re like a refuge or a hideout, somewhere you feel safe.”

Seventeen years ago, I rented another white clapboard house above the ocean. It faced northwards towards this same lighthouse, but from a headland sheltering another beach just a couple of kilometres to the south. I lived in it with another wife.

The real estate agent who showed it to us had warned of its notoriety. A year earlier, the previous tenants, a pair of local drug dealers, had been shot dead on the front doorstep. The walls had since been re-painted and the carpet repaired – but not replaced – where stray steel loads from a 12-gauge shell had torn up the pile. Otherwise, the house had been left untouched. The exterior paint had begun to peel and the garden was overgrown with lantana. But there, again, was the view, and the sibilant rushing of the surf against the sandstone ledges below the headland. The patches of decay could be ignored, along with the ghosts of the murdered dealers. Even then, I had already lived in more houses and apartments than there were years in my life, and that wasn’t counting the houses in which I had spent my childhood years with my family, or the distant boarding schools to which I had been consigned before I was a teenager. I had owned three houses, in three countries. I’d rented the rest and each had been as different as the seven or eight countries in which they were located.

I had never thought of any of them as a ‘home’. A few were the loci of disjointed recollections, like the rundown old house on the headland, but my occupation of most of them, including the houses I had owned, had been deliberately transitory and unsentimental. I rested in them. I re-grouped, recovered or re-invented myself in them. I worked, slept and ate in them. I used them to store my books and clothes. But I rarely ever lived in them. I just didn’t get the idea of settlement. I didn’t get the emotional investment in structures and furnishings and decorations that, together, were supposed to support the idea of ‘home’ with an illusory impression of permanence – for me, all they did was absorb the corrosive residue of the everyday into their surfaces.

Yet I did understand how geography could exert a spiritual hold. It was true: there were places to which I always returned, although not always because they were refuges or hideouts. My migratory patterns were as constant if not quite as predictable or sacramental as those of a traditional nomad, and because I was disinterested in being a tourist, I might re-map the patterns occasionally, diverting them to add a new waypoint or to eliminate an old one, but I didn’t often wander far from them. The slow, unceasing circumnavigation that had occupied my life could be plotted with a series of long rhumb lines from one familiar destination to another.

Which is not to say I was incurious about the rest of the world. It was just that my experience of it was measured, with each place in my personal atlas having a meaning or purpose even before I found my way to it.

Ever since I came back to Australia in my adolescent years, and again in my early twenties, I had been trying to figure out the meaning to me of this small part of it, this long, gnarled finger of suburbanized sub-tropical forest, rock and sand stubbed into the sea. When I was younger, when my days were shaped by surfing, and with it a sensitivity to the mutable, wind-driven swells and the semi-diurnal ebb and flow of the tide, I would paddle my board out beyond the break, and sit up to survey the shore behind me as the rising sun turned the tangled scrub, tall palms and crooked eucalypti beyond the beach the same orange as the sand. And as I floated there, I imagined that I was tethered to the shore by an improbable length of polyurethane, not unlike my leg-rope, that would pull me back not matter how far I drifted out to sea. I could never make up my mind if the idea consoled or frustrated me.

Either way, there I was again, with faded images of my past replaying in my head like the shaky, over-exposed home movies on eight millimeter Kodachrome that my parents used to project onto a wall. An overcast sky diluted a fleeting twilight as the black hills inland eclipsed the sun. Watery shadows flooded the house. I considered whether it was too late to ‘phone my wife again. She would probably be irritated and I didn’t have the stomach for a fight. I resolved to call her if jet lag roused me in the early hours of the morning. I sat at the computer on the linoleum-topped table near the kitchen, the gritty chafe of coral sand was still on the soles of my feet.

There was an email from a close friend, David, an English telecom’ marketing savant who sold his company for several million in cash to an over-confident Internet services group at the apex of the dot.com frenzy. When he retired a year later, in his late thirties, his first impulse was to free himself of every obligation and become a gypsy; I had grown used to receiving his sporadic, rambling notes from Nairobi or Dar Es Salaam or Barcelona. In recent months, the rootlessness and random incidents of self-revelation had gotten to him; depressed, he had flown to London to re-boot.

His latest note was subdued and contemplative: With regard to the idea of returning home, I found that coming back to England was the right thing for me to do and the past eighteen months have been about re-charging and re-examination. It can be good just to get back to the familiar, to slow everything down a bit, and to leave the high- adrenaline lifestyle alone for a while. Part of the process for me (and I think I detect some of this in you) has been to let go of my own expectations of myself, as well as the ‘I shoulds’ – those insidious bits of self-perception which lead to a lot of unhappiness because they are, typically, someone else's perspective or belief which you have imposed upon yourself.

How could I explain to him that I could not let go of anything? Not while I picked among the debris of this psychic crash site, looking for hard facts from which to reconstruct a life.

Massive claws of cold, grey water rolled in from the southeast to tear at the beach, air blasting from the crumbling surf to hang as a sticky, saline haze above the sand. The house was cold, and the rooms had a whiff of briny dampness that clung to the skin.

This was not a homecoming. However, it was a return to the beginning. Whatever I thought I knew or understood about myself was moot – too many irresolvable fragments and jagged shards of half-remembered incident – except this: by the simplest definition, my life started here, on this narrow peninsula, even if it continued (and parts of it were abandoned or lost) somewhere else. This, at least, was reassuring to me.

First published in Griffith Review, Australia, 2005

#homecoming #memoir #surfing #relationships #rootlessness #sydney #tokyo #losangeles

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hakesbros · 2 years ago

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Alamo Heights Homes For Sale

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inaayapress · 4 years ago

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JP & Associates Says Licensed Real Estate Agents Needed In DFW – CBS Dallas / Fort Worth

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larry-lynch-blog · 5 years ago

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Affordable Properties Available At Tyler, Texas - White House Homes for Sale

The word real estate means the land, which includes the air above and the ground below, also the structure or building upon it. It covers the housing complex, commercial offices, hotels, restaurants, retail outlets, industrial buildings, factories, etc. It also involves the purchasing of land and developing it as a residential or non-residential building.

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Chapel Hill

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Author Bio

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mortgagebrokerplanotx · 5 years ago

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Mortgage Broker Rhome Texas

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realtor20plusyears · 7 years ago

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melvinfellerstuff · 6 years ago

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Melvin Feller Looks at Why Buying Texas Real Estate is Smart

Melvin Feller Business Ministries Group in Burkburnett and Dallas Texas and Lawton Oklahoma. Our mission is to call and equip a generation of Christian entrepreneurs to do business as ministry. We provide workshops and resources that help companies discover how to do business God’s way. When the heart of a business is service rather than self it can be transformed into a fruitful business ministry earning a profit and being of service to the community and their customers. Melvin Feller is currently pursuing another graduate degree in business organizations.

Currently, Texas is experiencing an economic boom, making it an attractive place for in state, out-of-state, and even foreign real estate investors.

From 2016 to 2018, five of the ten fastest-growing U.S. cities were in Texas. In 2018, more than a quarter of Texas' growth was concentrated in the state's cities. North Texas is a particular hot spot for growth.

Cities like Frisco, Denton, Flower Mound, McKinney, Plano, Grapevine and Keller are all experiencing unparalleled residential growth, mostly due to the emergency of a high-tech industry and complementary businesses. Some cities have even expanded their borders to accommodate the new residents.

The job market is strong and growing, the cost of living is affordable, land is easy to purchase for non-residents, and the tax incentives are attractive. It's "big city living" with plenty of space. There are plenty of opportunities for smart investors looking to start or expand their portfolios.

However, in Texas, there are great opportunities for creative real estate financing and wide-open spaces as well as great residential and commercial opportunities.

If you are a beginning investor, first, recognize that it will probably take several years of real estate investing before you will reach your personal financial goal. Assuming that you want to have enough income from your investments to not have to work for money, I estimate about 10-15 years, if you work part-time at it while having “a day job.”

If you get to a point where you can do it full time, it may take a few years less. Some investors disagree with me on this. They apparently are very success in a much shorter period. If you can imitate them, fine. However, the average investor will take; it seems to me, the kind of time that I just indicated.

Some people have other suggestions about how to get started. They often say, “Just do it.” Go out, start trying, and learn as you go. Maybe that will work for you. My opinion is that it is better to know more before you start paying out your money. You might try to avoid mistakes by reading many books before you start—I did—but you will still make your own mistakes—I did, anyway. However, you will probably avoid many of the more common mistakes.

The “secret of success” is persistence. If you want to reach a goal, you have to keep going until you reach it. Financial independence with real estate means you have to keep going for years, usually. Thus, while you want an investing approach that makes you money, you also want an investing approach that makes you happy as you go along. If you do not get emotional rewards, you will probably stop before you are successful.

YES FOR SUCCESS:

Y----You---------------Enough said about that

E----Environment-----Where you invest, and when

S----Strategy-----------How you extract money from the environment

The strategy you employ has to suit you. My strategy could be completely wrong for you, unless you are a lot like me. If it is comfortable, you will continue with it. If it is not comfortable, you will chaff and will want to quit. In addition, might quit, long before you get to your financial goal.

The strategy has to work in the environment in which you invest. Here is a strategy: buy 200-acre farms and subdivide them down into 5-acre “ranchettes” which you sell to homebuilders or people who will live on them. Now, try using this strategy in San Francisco or Manhattan. Not going to work. What might work in San Francisco is to build a 15-story condominium complex and sell the condominiums to the owner-occupants. However, would you expect success if you were to build another 15-story complex 12 miles east of Winnemucca, NV? I don’t think so. Maybe 5-acre ranchettes there? Possibly.

If you are not doing too well with your investment program, you can change the strategy, or you can move it to a different environment, where you expect it to perform better.

Your strategy has to give you a competitive advantage, as the economists say. Investing in real estate is competitive. If there is a good deal to be bought, there will be several people interested in buying it. You need to develop an approach that takes advantage of your strengths, and requires few activities at which you are weak. You need a strategy that uses the resources you have.

What are the resources you can bring to bear on real estate investing? They will vary from person to person. They include such factors as amount of cash you have saved, how good is your credit rating, amount of income you have, particularly that above what you need for living expenses. How much time do you have, and in what part of the week, month, or year? Resources include the contacts you have—people you can call on for advice, money, help, or encouragement. Your knowledge is important—what you know about the environment in which you invest the market value of properties, what your customers want either renters or buyers. What experiences can you bring to bear? How about repair skills, decorating skills, sales ability, imagination, guts, cautious evaluation? All these can be part of your resources. Go with your personality, tastes, beliefs, values, interests, and passions. Do not get involved with approaches that irritate you or make you feel unhappy. For instance, suppose you think landlords are rip-off artists. Do not become a rental property owner. There is no law that you must. Instead, consider rehabilitating rundown properties and selling them to poor people with special government loans.

As an example, I like helping people. I like to invest in lower-income areas, helping people have a clean, nice, safe, comfortable house in which to live. I rent properties to them. When I sell some property, I am happy that I am able to help a first-time homeowner get into a part of the American Dream. Some other people like to find rundown homes in higher-income areas. They spiff them up to be beautiful and then make a profit selling for much more than they paid for the properties. That does not interest me. The buyers of those properties could buy many different properties. They do not need me. In addition, I do not need them.

I also like to do research. I do not like to negotiate. I buy bargain properties at auctions, usually delinquent property tax auctions. I do not have a real estate agent to show me properties and to assure me that the property is in good condition. I have to do research on the location of the property, the condition of the property, the liens and loans against the property, the market value in the area, how much it will cost to fix up the property, and much more. My negotiating is raising my hand at a public auction and saying “Four thousand and one.” Then “four thousand and three.” Easy negotiating for me.

One thing I consider important is that you know how real estate works. What is the importance of different types of deeds? How do you know what loan is the first loan and what does that imply? In addition, there is so much more you can learn. After over 20 years of real estate investing, I am still learning. It is not boring being in real estate.

I think you should expect to spend about six months to 18 months studying about real estate, real estate investing, and the real estate market where you plan to invest – the environment, as I put it. As you study, notice the different types of approaches that different people use or advocate. Ask yourself “how does this fit me?” Imagine the different steps of the process, the activities that have to be taken. With what kinds of people will you be engaged? In what neighborhoods will you be investing? How well will you be able to accomplish that particular strategy of investing? What might prevent you from enjoying it? Being successful at it? What psychic rewards might you get out of it?

If you are considering becoming an investor in long-term rentals, as I am, I suggest you read a couple of books on property management. This may give you some notion of what you will face and you can consider if it is to your taste. If you plan to rent properties, learn to calculate expenses of owning them—they will be worse than you imagine. Figure out what kinds of properties will provide you with profit if you own them. Learn about taxes, especially income taxes and how real estate can help you. Plan to learn about the laws related to the approach that you take. If you are doing rentals, know the “landlord-tenant” law for your state.

How do you learn about real estate? My suggestion is to take classes at community colleges near you. There are probably classes for people who want to apply for a real estate license. You can take them too.

Read books on real estate investing. Most RE books are mediocre. A few are good. Almost none are excellent. However, you can still learn if you read them. Start at the public library and borrowing books from friends, neighbors, coworkers, relatives, etc. Buy used books, cd, and dvds at bookstores or online at such sources as e-bay and half.com. I consistently pay less than 1/2 original price for the materials I buy there. Some is terrible, just like many real estate books. Nevertheless, some are good.

Talk to other, more experienced investors. See if there is a local real estate investors group that meets once or twice a month. Read newspaper articles and columns about real estate. If your local paper does not have nationally syndicated real estate columnists, find one that does, even if it is not nearby. Get a subscription to the Sunday edition mailed to your home.

Go on the Internet to see what you can learn there. There are many different sites devoted to real estate investing and to real estate for sale or rent.

While you study these things, learn about the area in which you want to invest. What are the different neighborhoods like? Where are there vacant, run-down properties if you want to do fixer-uppers? What are the trends of prices and where are people moving to or moving away from? What kinds of properties make good rentals in your area? What are the prospects of making money by buying low and then selling high, not carrying rentals?

I like Bill Greene’s suggestion from his "Think like a Tycoon" book that you look at 100 houses before you make a single offer. That is of properties similar to those you plan to buy. If, as you go along, you change your mind about the types of houses and neighborhoods in which you will invest, you may have to look at many more than 100 houses. The idea is to learn market values and what the competition is like—either rentals or other properties against which you will be competing for buyers. When I started out investing seriously, I did this and my knowledge of values increased greatly over a few months of time. Study the multiple listing service properties and the newspaper advertisements for properties. Read realtor.com listing for your area. See them and then follow up to find out for what they sold.

Meanwhile, get your finances lined up. If you have a poor credit report, start cleaning it up. Pay off outstanding debt and put explanations into the credit file. Get erroneous information removed. Cut down your expenses. Save money for investing. Yes, it is definitely possible to buy properties with no cash out of your pocket—I have done it. However, you have more opportunities for profit if you are prepared to pay cash or at least make a down payment. This is increasing your resources with which to operate.

Depending upon your investment approach, you may want to get an equity line of credit secured by your home. Alternatively, you may want to ask banks for unsecured personal lines of credit. You may want to stop throwing away all those credit card solicitations and actually apply for some. Naturally, try to get those with good terms. However, sometimes it is possible to make so much money with just one property transaction that you will be willing to use high-priced money to enable you to get into the deal. Use high-priced money for properties you plan to resell soon, not for long-term holding.

Some people talk about getting a “mentor,” an experienced real estate investor to personally train you in real estate investing. If you can find somebody who is willing to spend time helping you, fine, go ahead and try it. However, you do not need a mentor to work in real estate investing. Very few investors have ever had a mentor. I call it “self-mentoring.” The approach that you take to investing will be very personal. Do get to know many different investors so you can get help with the local “nuts and bolts” of investing: referrals for good attorneys, cleaning people, repair people, learn where to get carpets and plumbing supplies, discover the good escrow and title companies, and all the other services and goods that you will need to be successful. Ask about difficulties you have and individual problems of people you know and on the on-line real estate forums. I personally think you need a "mentor."

Try to understand the approaches that these different investors have and their thinking about different aspects of investing. Ask what they like and do not like, what works for them and what does not. Then you can borrow some of their ideas and approaches in formulating your own direction. Nevertheless, you probably will not find a formula that somebody else uses that will suit you to a tee. Mix and match. Take a little bit from here and a little bit from there. Make them into a coherent program that will generate money for you.

There are many, many different ways to make money with real estate. With a little imagination, you may even create a new way to do so that nobody else thought of. However, most of these ways can be put into three categories, which you can remember if you can say, “CAT.”

C is for CASHFLOW. This means you get more money in from a property than you spend owning it.

A is for APPRECIATION. There are three types of appreciation, remembered by FIN: F is for FORCED, such as fixing up properties, moving them, getting rid of title problems. I stands for INSTANT, which you get from buying bargain properties at least 20% below market value. Then there is N for NATURAL. Over time, property values tend to go up, the amount and rate varying with locale, the economy, and market conditions. Held long enough, most properties will go up unless everybody is moving away for the town or you do not maintain the properties.

T points at TAX SAVINGS, or tax benefits, which means that you may reduce the amount of taxes that you pay on your other income, non-real estate income. This is over and above the tax write-offs for your investment properties that reduce your taxable income from the properties.

Some people mistakenly add to this list of categories “pay down” or “amortization” on the loan. This is actually a sub-category of cash flow. It is the “forced savings” aspect.

Before buying properties, ask yourself which benefit you want to maximize. In general, you cannot make all three categories big with any one property. You might make one big, one moderate-sized and the other one small. So choose the investment strategy and the property which fits your goal--C, A, or T. For instance, when I buy bargain properties at tax sales, I get very little tax benefit. If I want tax benefit, I will buy a house at market value, but getting financing terms that allow me to get a break-even or slightly positive cash flow. I can also speculate on appreciation with this type of property. Normal appreciation is irrelevant for the bargain buys; the profit is built-in upon purchase with the Instant Appreciation.

Some people advocate getting a "team" together before starting--attorneys, CPAs, loan brokers, maybe real estate agents. I do not think that is necessary. I would certainly suggest that you not delay your investment actions until you get a "team" together. I advocate learning a lot about the local real estate laws and the federal tax rules as relates to real estate investing. Then you can be your own team in part. People make many mistakes by not consulting with attorneys. They sell properties and have to pay terrible taxes—unnecessarily—because they do not understand and consult accountants.

So, do not hesitate to call upon professionals when needed. When you run into problems that a professional can help with, then is the time to find one. One--not a team, in my opinion.

To be successful in real estate investing, in my opinion, you need both movement and guidance. You have to get out and actually invest in properties to make a profit. Therefore, you have to be active. Go and do it. However, do not do it blindly. Learn a lot before you start making deals so that you do not make too many mistakes and so you have a strategy that will fit you and the environment in which you invest. Some people are stuck in the learning phase. You will never know everything about real estate investing, so get started even when you do not feel you know it all.

There are two major mistakes that can lead to real estate investment failure, I think. One is doing nothing – there is no profit in that. The other is rushing out too soon and making expensive mistakes. I once read a magazine article about a couple in Chicago that bought, as their first investment, a run-down apartment complex in a very poor neighborhood in Chicago. I forget the title of the article, but I think it should have been “How we lost a million dollars with no money down.” They did not know how to manage rental properties at all and this property was an extremely difficult one to operate. They made many mistakes, lost the building in foreclosure, and lost all the money they had invested.

So, become active, yes. However, do it with caution. There is a lot of money to be made with real estate. Because real estate can cost a lot, there are many ways to lose a lot of money with real estate. The sellers and real estate agents selling a property are not always honest about that property. Nobody will look out for your interest as well as you do. Learn enough to be realistic about properties and how investing works.

Expect to spend about 10 to 20 hours a week studying real estate during your learning months. Even though that sounds like a lot, believe me, there is a lot to learn. If you thought it would be easy to get rich, I disagree with you. However, it is possible to get rich with real estate. The average individual can do it. In addition, it is easier than most other businesses in which you could invest your time and money. Moreover, because you can tailor your investment program to fit you, your chances for success are high. In addition, real estate is a "forgiving" investment. You can make mistakes, possibly a lot of them, and still make a profit from a property. I have made some very serious errors. Still my wealth and property holdings build up.

Just recognize real estate is a business. It will take time and effort. Some people might say it takes that four-letter word “work,” however, if you have a program that fits you and gives you enjoyment, you can convert that word into another four-letter word: “play.” Many people treat real estate investing as a game and play it to win not only money but also freedom to lead the life they want. It can do that for you.

Melvin Feller Business Consultants Ministries Group in Texas and Oklahoma. Melvin Feller founded Melvin Feller Business Consultants Group Ministries in the 1970s to help individuals and organizations achieve their specific Victory. Victory as defined by the individual or organization are achieving strategic objectives, exceeding goals, getting results or desired outcomes. He has extensive experience assisting businesses achieve top and bottom line results. He has broad practical experience creating WINNERS in many organizations and industries. He has hands-on experience in executive leadership, operations, logistics, sales, program management, organizational development, training, and customer service. He has coached teams to achieve results in strategic planning, business development, organizational design, sales, and customer response and business process improvement. He has prepared and presented many workshops nationally and internationally.

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