Easy Safe Money

I recently spent some time in a small town Bed and Break­fast, lit­er­ally in the mid­dle of nowhere.

Always on the look­out for an invest­ment, I was chat­ting with the owner about his prop­erty. Now, per­son­ally, I’d never have thought to run a Bed and Break­fast in the mid­dle of nowhere, but it was a beau­ti­ful place, over­look­ing a lake. The owner was very pas­sion­ate about it, and an excel­lent host. I could see why he could do quite well.

There seemed to be a lot of nice places for sale, and I was assured the prices were cheap.

As we talked how­ever, dis­cus­sion turned to some of the issues he’s going to be fac­ing. It seems the first major issue is the taxes. Cur­rently, the place is clas­si­fied as a town, and as I said in my Taxes arti­cle, the amount of money needed is fixed, you’re slice of it isn’t. To keep the town run­ning, taxes have been going through the roof. With a tax increase, and a small pop­u­la­tion, the local gro­cery store, and sev­eral small busi­nesses closed down. Basi­cally only a bar still exists as a busi­ness in the town. With no ser­vices and peo­ple who couldn’t afford these increases, the town is now half owned by the town itself, seized for not pay­ing taxes.

The town is look­ing into dis­solv­ing the town­ship and becom­ing a ham­let, run by the county. They hope this can help with the taxes and allow peo­ple to come back.

As for the Bed and Break­fast, the big town about 15–20 min­utes away was about to open up a new Casino/Hotel. I think the owner will man­age to suc­ceed, he knows about ser­vice and has an excel­lent rep­u­ta­tion. The town however, being a small place in the mid­dle of nowhere though, I don’t think the future looks to bright.

Les­son: Some­times things are cheap for a rea­son, with­out a gro­cery store or ser­vices, why would peo­ple want to come/live there. There always has to be a source for pos­i­tive cash flow if you want a good investment.

Share on Facebook

Pop­u­lar­ity: 2% [?]