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So our situation was that we were living and working in an urban area, just over an hour from Toronto (Niagara Falls). Our family is closer (depending on who, 30-120 minutes away) to the area we are moving to (the shores of Lake Huron) – it is much more rural, with small towns.
I am also working for a company that shut down – I basically went from being an employee in a manufacturing company to being security and inventory manager in a shut down factory. I am just waiting to get paid out when the place closes, and collect government unemployment. My wife also lost her job in the last year. We thought it would also be a good time to downsize, and move to a cheaper (at the time) community, and live off our savings and do more casual work until we could start collecting our pension/retirement savings.
The original plan was to get a cheap place we liked, move there, and not worry about money – problem is that cheap place has gone up in value…a lot. It’s paid for, so it still is a cheap place – just that it has increased as an asset.
Yes – that is the issue. Do we want to move to a cheaper rural area, which in our case would be very far from family? Or if we sell do we rent and wait out the market?
Our initial thoughts are to wait out the market…however, if it takes 1-2 years for the bubble to pop, another year or two for it to bottom out, do I want to spend 5-10% of my life not living how I want to for a chance at a big payday…rent isn’t cheap yet either – that is getting high with the property market going crazy.
We sold one property at the current heights – maybe we are better off cashing in once, and having a nice place to stay that we like, then living in a situation that isn’t ideal for money. We bought our current house in a slow market, so even if it is worth more now, and the same as we paid for it or even less, we still come out good on the investment.
It’s a tough decision – there is no right or wrong decision, just what lifestyle do we want…
I’ve got both an Android and iPad and only use them to manage my store – I use a laptop for listing.
I still find the laptop (Windows 10 for me) is easier to edit photos on, and to type with. I need a keyboard…
Both the Android app and iOS app have different appearances and different interfaces – but once you get use to it, it is easy to get around and for me to update listings. I think the big difference would be the camera specs. If you want to use the device as your camera, you may want to look into the cameras on Android devices as they vary from once model to another significantly.
I would take the savings on the Android device if you can – a few hundred dollars saved is still a good deal.
July 2019
The months leading up to our home sale in June were crazy busy. We finally got some time in July to relax, and get back to normal somewhat (well, we are in an apartment Monday through Friday morning, then drive 4-5 hours to our house Friday night, and come back early Monday morning – if that is “somewhat normal”). We got our mortgage paid off, and have a nice bank account for once with the proceeds from the sale of our old home.
Our new home is in an area where prices are going crazy – just skyrocketing out of control…we are not attached to it yet, just some sweat equity and we are debating trying to sell it before the bubble bursts in the housing market where we live. We may be able to pull up to C$350,000 in profit on the place – that’s huge lifechanging money if we can pull it off. I think we need to make a decision very soon…there is the option to also sub-divide our property and sell land to someone who is crazy enough to buy it at inflated prices…the only problem would be trying to wait out a crazy property bubble – and how long will it last? I’ve been waiting out my job to end over a year now, and is it worth waiting out a bubble to pop to get a home? Just a very tough decision. Cash in hand makes life easy though, but not having a plan for the future is just “weird” for us.
The July numbers…
Listings – 457 (424 end of June)
Sales – 20
Total Listings added – 53
Inventory To List – about 200 – going to tackle IT ALL the next two weeks if we can.
TOTAL Profit – $300.01 – very slow, but haven’t been adding much inventory the last few months to fuel sales. We also did buy inventory to list, that still isn’t up. Slow sales and buying inventory takes a toll on the monthly profit for us.Lessons learned this month…
From an eBay perspective, we’ve ignored listing for several months now and sales started to bottom out this month – which is a good lesson, because we now know that when we don’t list or scavenge, our sales will start to trickle down in about 3-4 months. Therefore, if we take a month or less off, we will be OK.
Next Steps for August…
To sell our house or not to sell…got lucky once, can we sell quick, and rent until the market comes down? We feel this is a once in a lifetime to take advantage of a crazy housing bubble before it bursts. No guarantee on selling either before the bubble bursts. We bought before the bubble, so no losses, but the loss of a large payday is weighing heavy on us. If we could sell two homes in a couple months in a bubble and it bursts, the $s are so enticing…
Where our heads are at…
I really need to lay off the Beaver Tails and Dairy Queen for one…however, we did get refocused on eBay listings in July. A bit of challenge getting things setup for photography in a new place, but now we are setup and ready to go hard. Our goal is to kill our death pile this weekend, and start scavenging before the summer ends.
Debating selling our house is constantly on our minds – we’re at the point where we figure that we could list it, and see what happens – in the end it doesn’t hurt to see what offers come our way, but if it sells, we need to come up with another plan for our future!
Renting where we are currently is not something I would want to do long-term – so more moves would be required if we sell, and we would have to find somewhere to put our stuff we just moved in…
08/01/2019 at 10:04 am in reply to: Winchester38's Journal – A Journey To Full-time Reselling #65716$160k is awesone – I really have to think strongly about going out that way. I’ve looked at places that are around $100 – I could almost retire if I sell my last property in Ontario (it’s value alone has doubled in a few years – the profits would pay for a place and I would still have cash left over from the profits).
Even with a maxed out mortgage on $160,000 (5% down) it is just over $120 a week in mortgage payments. Assume taxes are probably cheaper there as well, and utilities may be a little more a month. Need to really look into this…
I feel the biggest cause of a downturn is people thinking there is a downturn and slowly preparing for it – it all snowballs from there.
I always wonder if a small .25% or .5% cut ever makes a huge difference – rates are extremely low as they are.
The U.S. is in great shape compared to other countries. Here in Canada (the average Canadian has almost twice the consumer debt of Americans, houses are very expensive here, and 38% of Canadians are $200 or a day of pay away from insolvency), Australia is already crashing, New Zealand is ready to crash, and UK/Europe is a mess. I would assume a recession is coming.
Really thinking about liquidating my assets before a crash – being stuck in Canada, which is now the #1 or #2 country in the world to fail the hardest is scary.
Sounds great! Noticed that the rates on 3-year and 5-year mortgages are all below 2.75% at most banks – wish the housing bubble would burst here in Ontario! But maybe I should move to the east coast where housing is still reasonable and join you out there. Seriously thinking about it as similar homes to what I have are $250,000 to $300,000 less out there and pocketing the difference would be another life changer in the real estate game I’ve been lucky at in the last few years.
Good luck and keep us up to date on the offer – hoping the inspections go well for you and looking forward to hearing more about how you setup the storage building for your business. Would like to hear any cool ideas you have as your mix of eBay items is similar to me – especially how you store all your clothing going forward.
07/26/2019 at 3:45 pm in reply to: Annual Rant About Ebay's Shipping Supplies-3rd Year in a row #65456Noticed that everything is different on the Canadian store, but the coupon code showed up automatically for me as well. The small balance I had to pay went to a different PayPal account then before.
All the supplies have a different graphic design then they did 3 months ago. Currently they are printed black with just “ebay” printed on them – before, they were printed in blue with the “ebay” logo in a circle that was knocked out.
07/25/2019 at 2:07 pm in reply to: The Most Comprehensive List of Helpful Items to Remove Sticky Residue #65428Add “Sunscreen” to your list – it is good for getting rid of “best before date code” style printing on most metals, plastics, and glass.
I sell a lot of vintage perfume/cologne (as much as I can find) and it always smells bad to me, but the buyers love it. “Smells exactly like I remember” or “Can’t believe I found this scent – will save it for special occasions”.
It’s a weird market – I can’t imagine wearing any of the stuff we sell. I hate even getting a bit of it on my hand when testing it if the sprayer is off/clogged as it takes forever to wash off with soap/water.
We had a buyer for an expensive leather bag (about $250) that we thought was going to be a nightmare. Kept wanting to know when the item was coming, had to provide updates of the tracking information (for some reason they couldn’t look it up), kept asking where the item was, and when it was delivered found “flaws” with the leather, and sent dozens of photos that showed nothing…
The buyer wouldn’t return the item, but insisted on taking it to a leather specialist to examine…we thought we were dealing with a super crazy buyer. She wrote back about the leather specialist’s examination of the bag, and said that they cleaned up the bag and got rid of the blemishes she saw for free and the bag looked amazing…even sent us a thank you card in the mail expressing how much she loved the bag and how she has been looking for that specific bag for years.
Like @debitandcredits, some crazy buyers are just crazy excited about there items, and probably can’t believe they found something vintage/old/impossible to find.
I think there are dozens of ways to measure sales increases/decreases. I take a look at three numbers – sales percentages (listed vs. sold), profit per item, and total profit. I’m sure there is also a dozen ways to slice/spin those numbers also…
I also am running at a higher inventory this year, eliminated some categories I was buying, and added new categories of items that are doing very well…so I’m not sure if my numbers mean anything in the wider scope of eBay, or just how I’m doing as a seller.
My sales percentages (listed vs. sold, measured on the 1st of each month) are down. My profit per item is way up, and my total profit is way up (just based on volume – about 4-5x my inventory last year) – so, I’m doing better as a seller/scavenger, working harder, but things may be slow, or I have a lot of items not too popular. Not sure – but still making good money for the time/effort it takes.
Selling one off items is something I think we can never measure…just as long as the profit is good at the end of the day for the effort, keep on chugging…
We buy a lot of items online from Walmart and other retailers that have a physical store as it is safer to go to the store and pick it up at the moment.
We are temporarily living in an apartment building where everything gets ditched in the lobby by carriers – very easy for someone to steal something or for something to get damaged or go “missing”.
We also like in store pick-up because you can see the condition of the item in person, refuse/exchange it instantly, and shipping is free (especially for large items). A lot easier for returns also.
If we truly cannot find something at a retailer with a physical store, we do have setup with the local post office to have our parcels held for pick-up instead of having them left in a common area – just more of a hassle as the post office has very limited hours of service in our area.
We’ll probably go back to shopping “anywhere” online when we are in our house – it’s just not safe/secure to have items delivered in our current situation. Not sure how others do it in the same situation where you share a common entrance/mailroom with 100’s of people going through it daily.
Sears was YEARS ahead of the game as well…the problem for eBay is to offer something unique that the other guys aren’t doing – with this, I don’t see that.
Also, to keep costs down, eBay is going to have to build warehouses everywhere – 1 day shipping is cheap when the item is nearby, but across the country is a different ballgame.
Wish eBay would split the site in two – one for resellers, and one for new stuff.
The other thing is why are they trying this in the U.S. – the most competitive country for this type of service with a huge area/population to cover? Why not try it somewhere small first in Europe, and then launch it elsewhere.
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