Imagination is one of our most powerful assets that can help create Ecuador real estate profits.

In fact imagination can help create profits anywhere.

Right Handed Conch

Thoughts on imagination sprang from a recent message about Ecuador Wonders and how right handed conchs reflect a reality though the  golden mean.

That recent message mentioned a very old and dirty, but perhaps rare, Lightening Whelk found in our back garden.  A friend, who is a jeweler, sent a note about how to make this whelk a beautiful decoration and added this thought.

Great, Gary,  Sounds like the right place to display it.  I love the metaphor.  It echoes your and Merri’s stated love of old things and bringing them into service!  Chuck

His comment led to a thought about Ecuador real estate profit because this is how Merri and I use our imagination to create profits in real estate.  We buy old properties we love and bring them into service.

Profits and fulfillment in business depends on knowing thyself AND knowing your position on the business bell curve.

Recent human evolution has come in increasingly fast bell curves… sped along by technology that introdcues new and new ways to become more efficient.

The pace of  each new idea’s introduction begins when an innovator spots how the new idea can create a trend.  Innovators rarely bring products to market profitably.  They are too early in the curve.

The profit in the trend starts to accelerate when early adapters catch on. Early adapters are forward thinking members of society who have the respect of the establishment.  When they begin to use an idea, the chances of it catching on drastically grow. This is the time to invest before the early and late majority accept the new mode of thought.  Finally the skeptical mass and laggards come on board.

Merri and I are early adapters and despite having written about why I am investing heavily in Florida AND in Ecuador right now, readers continued to ask questions like this:

I read with interest your e-mail regarding your reasoning for disposing of some of your Ecuador real estate holdings. Perhaps I missed something. I didn’t see where you actually came out with your rational on this decision. While I understand that no investment is “for ever;-)”  Is it your position that the market there is about to crest or, is it your feeling that there may be substantially more profitable investments in the other markets you refer to?

Here is my standard reply:

Our Ecuador property is doing really well.  For the last year or so our vacancy has been almost zero other than occasional days when one renter is moved out and another in. Rentals are hard to find and I have 18,991 (as of today and growing) readers who are interested in Ecuador.

Our rental properties and hotel are doing very well, but Merri and I are not good landlords. There are two types of business people… pioneers and settlors. Pioneers… that’s us… who buy, fix and move on. Settlors keep and rent.

We travel too much and love fixing things up… but hate dealing with tenants so have always made our wealth via capital gains buying low… fixing and selling as we are doing with our condos.  Plus there is a US tax consideration.  US Income is taxed at about 50%… US Capital gains tax is 15%.

For a variety of reasons, beginning with our grandson turning seven at the same time that Florida property prices collapsed , we are now investing in Florida and spending less time in Ecuador.

This reply does not mean I believe that Ecuador real estate prices are high or that they will fall.

In fact the history of my real estate investing suggests the opposite. Merri and I usually sell way before any peak.

Take a history of some of my better purchase and sales as an example.

I purchased a house next to this one in London for $35,000…. bare floors… no light fixtures… panels streaked… leaky roof… unkempt yard etc.

I fixed it up, painted, carpeted, tiled,  french polished the paneled room  and sold it for $253,000. Yet the buyer (who still lives in the house I think)  could now sell it for millions.

Merri and I have done very well and are perfectly happy because we know where we are on the bell curve… as early adapters.

We bought this wonderful Naples, Florida home for $265,000. The house was built in 1914, had not been lived in for 15 years and was almost in ruin.  Yard gone… old knob and tube electrics frayed…. galvanized plumbing rusted… roof  leaky. We fixed all this (and more) and sold it for well over a million dollars.

The purchasers sold it two years later for twice as much!   Then the price rose even more.

I bought this condo building when it was a concrete shell, without windows… without doors… without plumbing or electrics…. without pant or tile or finish on the floors.

I completed the construction and sold the units for a profit. Now these units are at a premium and rising.

Our publishing and real estate activities have done well for 40 years from three simple steps.

Step #1: Spot new trends.

Step #2: Enhance that trend with imagination.

Step #3: Take profit early and find the next new trend.

There is plenty of space for early adapters in Ecuador.  There is plenty of space for early adapters in Florida as well… and California and Arizona and many… many places around the world.

The key to your success is to know yourself… do what you love and keep adapting as these infinite variety of trends we call the world evolve.

This reality applies to all industries. Here in Florida we have orange groves. We grow oranges and sell them. Yet others take orange seeds and raise saplings. They sell saplings… not oranges.  Other nurseries take the saplings and grow them larger and sell small orange trees.

In the real estate business, I know brokers. I know some developers that buy land and get it rezoned to sell on to another developer who will build.   Each has a place in the curve.  Each does well…  especially when they know what their role is and enjoy serving in this specialized way.

Gary

Join Merri and me and our webmaster, David Cross, Thomas Fischer, my investment adviser Anders Nielsen, Joe Cox, my tax adviser and many other contacts for business, investing, health and Ecuador this February at a seminar where we share ways to invest, do business and live that protect wealth as they bring joy, satisfaction and better health.