I came across this article today about some amazing technology that provides a great initiative to invest in renewables for your home or small business.

New battery could change world, one house at a time

Inside Ceramatec’s wonder battery is a chunk of solid sodium metal mated to a sulphur compound by an extraordinary, paper-thin ceramic membrane. The membrane conducts ions — electrically charged particles — back and forth to generate a current. The company calculates that the battery will cram 20 to 40 kilowatt hours of energy into a package about the size of a refrigerator, and operate below 90 degrees C.

This may not startle you, but it should. It’s amazing. The most energy-dense batteries available today are huge bottles of super-hot molten sodium, swirling around at 600 degrees or so. At that temperature the material is highly conductive of electricity but it’s both toxic and corrosive. You wouldn’t want your kids around one of these.

The essence of Ceramatec’s breakthrough is that high energy density (a lot of juice) can be achieved safely at normal temperatures and with solid components, not hot liquid.

Ceramatec says its new generation of battery would deliver a continuous flow of 5 kilowatts of electricity over four hours, with 3,650 daily discharge/recharge cycles over 10 years. With the batteries expected to sell in the neighborhood of $2,000, that translates to less than 3 cents per kilowatt hour over the battery’s life. Conventional power from the grid typically costs in the neighborhood of 8 cents per kilowatt hour.

Re-read that last paragraph and let the information really sink in. Five kilowatts over four hours — how much is that? Imagine your trash compactor, food processor, vacuum cleaner, stereo, sewing machine, one surface unit of an electric range and thirty-three 60-watt light bulbs all running nonstop for four hours each day before the house battery runs out. That’s a pretty exciting place to live.

And then you recharge. With a projected 3,650 discharge/recharge cycles — one per day for a decade — you leave the next-best battery in the dust. Deep-cycling lead/acid batteries like the ones used in RVs are only good for a few hundred cycles, so they’re kaput in a year or so.

How do you recharge? By tapping your solar panels or windmills. It’s just like plugging in your cell phone or iPod, only you plug in your house.

A small three-bedroom home in Provo might average, say, 18 kWh of electric consumption per day in the summer — that’s 1,000 watts for 18 hours. A much larger home, say five bedrooms in the Grandview area, might average 80 kWh, according to Provo Power.;Either way, a supplement of 20 to 40 kWh per day is substantial. If you could produce that much power in a day — for example through solar cells on the roof — your power bills would plummet.

Ceramatec’s battery breakthrough now makes that possible.

Now this seems like something that I’ve been a massive proponent of for a long time.  By being able to harness the energy of residential and small commercial renewable technologies,  we could greatly reduce the need for large industrial wind and solar farms,  which don’t have a high enough energy output for the amount of financial investment they require.  Wind and solar the two darlings of the renewable movement are not close to being competitive with base-load industrial power such as wind, nuclear and natural gas.

Small renewable projects coupled with new storage capacity are becoming extremely logical and affordable,  with massive savings being recorded by people who have already solar or wind fitted their homes.  The approach to de-centralize our energy policy,  to look at home grown solutions is community based libertarianism, thus not a viable solution for government energy programs.

I hope that our renewable energy revolution looks like this:

Not like this;

]]> http://smallcommercialexpert.wordpress.com/2008/10/09/takes-two-to-tango/ Thu, 09 Oct 2008 20:02:36 +0000 mdg123 http://smallcommercialexpert.wordpress.com/2008/10/09/takes-two-to-tango/

You can dance alone and that’s fine.  Nobody gets in your way, no one stepping on your toes.  Dancing alone can be fun and you can do a lot of creative things. 

But dancing alone can also be tiring.  To make the dance look good you’ve got to be in constant movement.  The audience eyes are focused squarely on you and you must work the entire time.

However, dancing with a partner can be a lot of fun as well.  There are some pitfalls.  You have to watch out for someone stepping on your toes and you have to be sure not to step on theirs, but once you’ve mastered the routine the problems are solved.

One of the most magnificent dances you can perform requires a partner and it is the Tango.  

The reason the dance is so grand is because both partners have to work.  They both take responsibility for their part in the dance and if they are well rehearsed and practiced, the Tango is undeniably the most rewarding dance to watch and to perform!

So why the dance analogy on a blog about commercial real estate?  Simple, this post is all about Partnerships.  I wanted to veer away from talking about types of real estate and take a moment to explore business relationships.

Many people like to own real estate solely.  They don’t like the idea of a partnerships and they prefer to be the decision maker.  However, owning real estate in partnership with another can be a beautiful thing.  Once you learn the dance steps and establish the responsibilities of both participants, you’ll rarely step on each others toes.

When developing a partnership the first thing to remember is that it takes two to Tango!  Even though you set the rule and responsibilities of the parties, sometimes you have to cover for each other.  A good working relationship with a lot of give and take and some strong support are necessary for success.

I love to relate the story of when a good friend of mine and I went into business.  He was younger than I was and his father (a very successful business man) wanted to meet me.  We met and had a great conversation and then his father took us into his study and gave us some good advise. 

He said that a business partnership was kind of like a marriage.  He stated that it would take a lot of work to hold it together and that sometimes things would be great and other times things would be tough.  But, he said, if you both strive to do what is best for the ‘union’ (the partnership) then it will always work out for the benefit of the partners.

I agree completely with this comment.  There are many rules of thumbs that should be adhered to when developing partnerships and partnerships can be great in your business.  They can help you to leverage your time and assets.  And you can achieve greater wealth and expand your goals if you will remember one simple truism.

It takes two to Tango!

Michael Gross is the President of Dividend America Mortgage and has been in real estate for over 20 years. He has been a builder, a Realtor, an appraiser, and currently he is a lender and an active real estate investor. He uses all of his experience and knowledge to show individuals how to properly use a mortgage as a tool to help create greater wealth through real estate investing. For more information on residential and small commercial loans please call 770-350-7373 or email mgross@dividendamerica.com

Warren Buffet is buying! The man who has been sitting on piles of cash for years is now in the game. This proves one thing, there’s blood in the streets and he’s making his move.

So what is he buying? He’s buying banks! That should be a signal to all of us that the time is right for us as well. This huge government bailout is associated with one thing, the credit crisis. That crisis has reached a fevered, political pitch and that means opportunity for those of us who choose not to panic.

There is a unique way to play this $700 billion banking bailout and we can emulate great investors like Buffet. We can BUY banks! There are many bank buildings that are empty and just sitting there waiting for creative investors to reposition them and turn them into something new.

With this crisis and the bailout, more banks are likely to come available. As industry giants alike Wachovia and Washington Mutual are snapped up for a song by Wells Fargo, Citigroup and Bank of America, more bank buildings will become vacant and put up for sale.

There are many ways to play the bank bailout. One is to put together a group of partners and go make low-ball offers on buildings that have been on the market for more than 6-months. Banks are strapped for cash and other than having to deal with a 10-year restriction that no other bank can occupy the space, these buildings can be bought for a fraction of their value in a normal market.

You could also invest in syndications. There are several real estate firms that are actively seeking investors to fund their purchases. The investment minimum is usually around $25,000 and offers an 8% annual return with a 10% bonus at the end of the third or fifth year. You can be a real estate investor without the hassle!

So once you’ve bought an empty bank building, what can you do with it? The ideas are endless. How about taking the drive through teller positions and turning them into a hand car wash and detailing center. The traditional wide open interior can easily be partitioned into office space and because of the vault and safety deposit boxes, some of that space can be turned into a mail-boxes-etcetera style shipping center.

As a matter of fact, Fed-Ex/Kinkos style businesses would do great in an old bank building or, how about a check cashing facility. The parking lots are usually huge and are large enough that the facility would make a great used car lot. I’ve even seen an old bank building turned into a restaurant where the vault was used as the wine cellar and private tasting room.

If done properly, playing the bank bailout could be quite lucrative. Whether you buy the bank yourself, create a partnership or invest in syndications, don’t miss this great opportunity. An old bank building could be your next Cash Flow Monster.

Michael Gross is the President of Dividend America Mortgage and has been in real estate for over 20 years. He has been a builder, a Realtor, an appraiser, and currently he is a lender and an active real estate investor. He uses all of his experience and knowledge to show individuals how to properly use a mortgage as a tool to help create greater wealth through real estate investing. For more information on residential and small commercial loans please call 770-350-7373 or email mgross@dividendamerica.com

Residential, Residential, Residential! It’s all I hear form investors these days. Everybody sees the potential in residential right now because there are a lot of great deals out there. And to a certain extent, they are right.

However, I still don’t think people truly understand the investment. Residential real estate is an annuity. I say this because when you invest in a single family home, a duplex and in some cases even when you invest in a four unit residential building, you have to put a lot of capital into the investment in order to receive an immediate income.

Think about this, an annuity is an investment of a large amount of capital for a specified amount of time. When the time threshold is reached, the capital investment begins to throw off a decent amount of income. The time threshold can be shortened by increasing the capital investment. That’s how most single family residential investments work.

Now take a small commercial building. You make an initial capital input and that investment pays you immediately! It is a business and the lenders will not lend the money on the investment unless it can pay for itself in the form of current income.

Many people are afraid of investing in small commercial buildings because they say they don’t understand the nuances of dealing with the business to business relationship. Some real estate investors are just more comfortable being a residential landlord.

If you find you are one of those people. If you understand the renter and you pride yourself in providing a great place for people to live, then you can still upsize your investments by purchasing small apartment buildings.

The small apartment building gives you economies of scale. It helps to reduce the cost per unit for maintenance and repairs because the building houses more units. This type of investment also helps to flatten the loss curve by giving you multiple streams of income tied to a single property.

Adding a small apartment building of 8-24 units can really pump up your cash flow. They are easy to get into using multiple strategies and the great news is that lenders are willing to lend on them. Where you might be struggling to get money to buy those single family homes, money to purchase small apartment buildings is abundant.

The advantages from purchasing small commercial residential properties like apartment buildings are numerous. Lower maintenance costs per unit, higher overall cash flow per investment, more flexible financing and the ability to negotiate great deals.

The secret to purchasing these deals is no secret at all. If you’ve purchased single family homes and rehabbed them to hold as rental then you already understand what you need to do to get started with small apartment buildings.  Now all you need is the financing.

The financing can be arranged in many different ways. Down payments can be as low as 10% and in some cases you can structure deals with no money down. Remember that these are business deals and with the proper negotiation techniques there are many ways to bring a deal to the table.

The key is drop your fear of moving into larger properties and to understand the true money making potential of small apartment buildings. If cash flow is what you seek then investing in small apartment buildings can help you UPSIZE your residential real estate investing business and help you create a CASH FLOW MONSTER!

Michael Gross is the President of Dividend America Mortgage and has been in real estate for over 20 years. He has been a builder, a Realtor, an appraiser, and currently he is a lender and an active real estate investor. He uses all of his experience and knowledge to show individuals how to properly use a mortgage as a tool to help create greater wealth through real estate investing. For more information on residential and small commercial loans please call 770-350-7373 or email mgross@dividendamerica.com

According to reports on Marketwatch.com, the Treas. Sec. said to congress; “If you have a bazooka in your pocket, and people know you have a bazooka, you may never have to take it out.”  Well he had to take it out and he used it.

There was an immediate reaction from world markets.  The effects of this action served to simultaneously strengthen the value of the dollar against other currencies, caused a lifting of most equities markets and gave many foreign investors and central banks confidence in the efforts to stabilize the American housing market.

So what does this mean for the real estate investor?  Well if you have watched the recent unemployment numbers, you have seen the unemployment rate jump to 6.1%.  This means a lot of professionals are out of work now but won’t be for long.

If you think they desire to go back into the corporate world, for the most part you would be wrong.  Many of the professionals that were laid off will take the opportunity to start their own companies and make their own way using their talents to create new businesses and new industries.

This is a great opportunity for those of us wishing to create Cash Flow Monsters.  As time wears on the economy will get stronger.  The dollar will strengthen and we will slowly lift out of the economic malaise caused by this recent downturn. 

Some experts have labeled our economic status as a recession and others argue that it is not an official recession.  What ever you call it is not important.  What is important is the fact that whenever the economy slows people get laid off.  When the economy starts to move again, many of these professionals choose to start their own companies and that presents opportunities for forward thinking real estate investors.

Think about it, these people will need warehouses, office space, retail locations, storefronts and the list goes on and on.  They will not have enough money to buy their own buildings so they will usually rent!  They will not rent the high-dollar, ‘A’ class buildings.  They will look for discounted space at the ‘B’ and ‘C’ quality buildings.

In other words, they will look to rent from the ugly little buildings with low rents. They will be renting from the properties I call the Cash Flow Monsters!

Michael Gross is the President of Dividend America Mortgage and has been in real estate for over 20 years. He has been a builder, a Realtor, an appraiser, and currently he is a lender and an active real estate investor. He uses all of his experience and knowledge to show individuals how to properly use a mortgage as a tool to help create greater wealth through real estate investing. For more information on residential and small commercial loans please contact Mr. Gross on his direct line at 770-350-7373 or via email at mgross@dividendamerica.com

Commercial Real Estate in The Woodlands.

A rare opportunity exists to invest in a high-quality commercial property in The Woodlands. And… not only that.. it comes with a great tenant! The owner wants to sell & lease-back.

It’s an incredible deal for the investor – the owner will lease back the property on a Triple-Net basis which means the new tenant will be responsible for all tax, insurance & maintenance costs.

This allows the investor to easily assess the risk profile of the project.

CD’s are currently paying out 3.63% for a 5-year IRA CD (source: www.bankrate.com), this project returns 22.8% on invested capital (ROIC) in year 1! From there it increases each year.

Asking price: $1.4 million. Now reduced to $1.295 million. Cash investment required… around $400k. $375k.

To review a complete financial analysis of the project… click here. The documents available include regional commercial overviews and Woodlands commercial property market reviews & analysis. Also, for the subject property, it includes local map & location, aerial views, birds-eye views along with photos of the subject property. Also… a brief analysis of the business that wants to lease back the building is available.

This is a perfect deal for a 1031 exchange and/or for an out-of-state investor due to it’s low hands-on management requirement.

Call Lance @ 832-483 8655 for more information.

I had another look today at the “Golden Triangle“… this is such an exciting little area for small business owners. Here you can carry on the business you’ve always done but, you are the landlord! You can sub-lease offices out to related industries….

For instance, Doctor Looney is a therapist on Oak Ridge drive and he sub-leases out offices to about 3 or 4 other therapists. Their combined business is that much better.

A long-time lawyer on the street sub-leases out office space. On Nursery road someone is sub-leasing out offices to an insurance company and a title company.So, why is this information so important? Well, you get a MUCH better return on your investment. That’s why. If you were to own a building on the street and lease out the whole building you would get from $1.20 to $1.40 per square foot.

If you sub-lease individual offices out, you can get $2.00 per square foot or more!!! Ask around on the street and you’ll see… in fact, the lowest price I found was $2.14 per square foot. The higher quality finishing you have and the more modern convenience you offer… high-speed cable, internet, phone jacks, etc. the better your rate can be.That’s a big difference.

So, if you are looking for office space anyway but would like to be a savvy investor at the same time, consider the property in the Golden Triangle.

The beauty of it is.. you’ll end up with a “free office” paid for by your sub-lease tenants. And, you can keep an eye on your investment as you’ll be in it every day!!If you’d like to know more… give me a call. Lance
CEO – The Oscar Group, a Keller Williams team.
832-483 8655

Wouldn’t it be nice… to find some property, almost right in The Woodlands, that you could buy and convert to commercial office space?

Wouldn’t it be nice… if you didn’t have to get planning permission for any of the remodel?

Wouldn’t it be nice… if there were actually a few different choices available to choose from?

Wouldn’t it be nice… if after the remodel, your property was worth more than all your costs so that you’d have immediate equity?

This little heaven does exist. And more and more people are discovering it. So… where is it?

It starts on Oak Ridge drive, the first road to the right after you pass Olive Gardens. Oak Ridge Drive crosses Nursery, which comes straight off the feeder and the little area is bordered on the South side by Valleywood which comes onto the feeder right at Carrabas.

The other roads involved are the North side of Budde and Rye street.

The area is unrestricted… it doesn’t belong to The Woodlands and it doesn’t belong to Oak Ridge North… it’s kind of no-man’s land right there in the middle of everything!!

So… that means you can pretty much do what you like! And, that’s what people are doing. One by one, businesses are snapping up these old 70’s homes and converting them into smart office space. Lawyers, asset managers, counsellors, dentists, mortgage brokers, etc. have been moving in….

The heavy hitters have arrived… Tow & Koenig moved in recently and they’re adding to the number of quality monuments that have arrived on Oak Ridge drive in the last 12 months.

It makes sense…. instead of paying rent in The Woodlands and never seeing it again you can now win on multiple fronts:

- you build equity as the principal is paid down
- you build equity as the property appreciates in value
- your rent never has to go up again!! (this one is pretty cool)
- if you sub-lease some of the office space then you gain because you raise that rent each year. Hey, that’s what they were doing to you! Now it’s your turn…

If you’re worried about remodel work, don’t be… it’s faster & probably cheaper than you are thinking. You can always call Shannon.

If you’d like to find out more about this area, give me a call.

Lance Langenhoven,CEO – The Oscar Group, a Keller Williams team.
832-483 8655. 
www.carltonwoods-thewoodlands.com
www.theoscargroup.com