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-where we are moving, we can build a 4 unit building on the land we own once it is separated. We can look at zoning changes to build larger, but don’t think it would be worthwhile. The building type may dictate the rent a bit (row houses vs. a block subdivided into 4) but we would be looking at about $1300 for 2BR, $1450 for 3BR – tenant would pay utilities.
-I’ve done renovations – huge ones to older homes – but nothing from scratch. I would probably do all the finishing (flooring, painting, trim, doors, etc) myself, but because it is a rental, the municipality requires special electrical, fire protection, drywall, and HVAC codes have to be met that I rather a pro handle.
-I’m not a big party politics guy, but really enjoy local politics and I also like the work a lot of non-religious charity groups do, so I’ll probably find a couple places to get to know people. Especially when we may get into some big constructions projects, it helps to know what the locals know about the tradespeople and get good recommendations.May 2019
Going to post these a little early this month as I have lots of setting up to do the next few days to get settled in two locations and my current house (should it be my old house now?) up for sale…
The May numbers…
Listings – 424 (540 end of April) – I need to calculate what also sold at our yard sale from eBay inventory….
Sales – 46
Total Listings added – zero – listed nothing this month while we are moving.
Inventory To List – boxes and boxes of personal items from moving…too much to list at the moment!
TOTAL Profit – $6560….$4318 on Kijiji, $1620 Yard Sale, $621.39 on eBayLessons learned this month…
This will be the most unusual month of our journey – we took the decision last month to start to sell our current home. That allowed us to clear it out – we sold lots of stuff on Kijiji and through a 1 day yard sale, started to move what we wanted to keep to our new home, and pile up a move of what we need to survive until my job is done into a weekly rental.
The lesson we learned is we had a lot of junk – we thought we were pretty minimalist, but still had plenty of unused/unloved/unwanted items to sell or donate. At least we were able to turn most of it into cash. We also are starting to re-assess some of the stuff we “kept” – we may need to do a second purge.
We only had 46 sales this month on eBay, but it was interesting trying to keep up on shipping and finding items as we move them. We’re able to keep up, but it will be nice to have everything organized again and a proper area to ship and print labels from. Sales from other sources will not be kept up – but provided some good cash this month!
Next Steps for June…
First half of the month will just be getting settled in, unpacking…the second half will be Relax…and list – we’ve been spending the last month moving, cleaning, painting, and getting our house staged for sale. It’s just on the market as of last night and we are waiting for it to sell. Once it is done, we will have a nice chunk of cash in the bank, and will be completely debt free.
We have bins of stuff (most of it personal) to list. Lots of it is in categories we don’t usually bother with, but worth experimenting with our own “paid for/free” stuff that otherwise would be donated.
Where our heads are at…
Our heads have been overwhelmed with thoughts – but basically we will get rid of the biggest weight on our shoulders for this transition process soon as we sell our house. We can also pay off the mortgage we took out to buy our next home…yeah! Owning two houses was maybe not the best idea, but it gave us some freedom to move easily, and now gives us a place to put our stuff while we are in temporary accommodation. Our temporary accommodation will be sparse – we can get out of it with a Uhaul and a few hours of work. Soon as I get my redundancy notice, I’m driving over to the Uhaul dealer down the street to get going!
We are starting to think of what to do next with our new home while in our temporary rental purgatory. We have less than 11 months (things can end at my job any day still…) to figure out things if we want to do something big. Our future home has a very large heated storage “garage” – which we had no real plans for yet. We are starting to think of using it for our eBay storage (and everything eBay – photo studio, shipping, etc). We initially thought of putting eBay stuff in our basement, but are now getting our heads around renting out the basement and doing the necessary renovations to make a legal ADU in the municipality it is in. It is a completely empty blank canvas at the moment, so we need to think about how much $ to put into it, and how to design it. Do we make a luxury unit? Or just have something that looks good on the cheap? Also, mid-term accommodation (like we are moving into our selves) is hot in the market we are moving to – so that is probably our focus. It will be a good experience being a tenant in the same situation before being the landlord the next while.
The second area we need to think about is once our current house sells, and we pay off the mortgage on our new house, what to do with the extra money to make it work for us? We have a lot of land, and are thinking of building a small apartment block…but that is just in the “thought” stage…no real investigation has taken place. Once we see what we end up with, we can figure things out. I will also be getting a severance package, and then government benefits for a year….really need to think out how to maximize things to our benefit instead of the bank’s.
The third area I’m starting to think about is what our new life will be like – and do I need some more diversification to keep me busy? Should I volunteer or even work somewhere a few hours a week to get to know the community, some people, and get me out of the house regularly? Do I look at other business ideas before I tie up my cash savings? Just a lot for us to think about.
Anyways, selling our old house will be a big hurdle (I’m thinking the biggest I’m in control of) completed on this journey. It also won’t be an anchor keeping me from moving forward when my job is finally done – we were really dreading the “rush” of getting our stuff out and selling a home 4 hours away from where we will be living based on someone else’s schedule. This will make it a lot easier on us!
Can’t wait to go out scavenging again – I really miss it!
I think Facebook has too many problems at the moment to worry about the marketplace – every government is after them and other social media sites. They are getting banned/shutdown all over the place, and legislation is being put on them everywhere they still can operate.
Zuckerberg and his top brass can’t even come to Canada anymore without being detained for questioning. There are even calls in Canada to ban Facebook until they clean themselves up.
Will be interesting to see what happens to them – I don’t know anyone young that uses Facebook, young adults even don’t use it, and with all the political and social issues around it, I see it slowly dying as costs to police it increase.
A couple more incidents like the recent New Zealand attack will kill it quickly in most countries. The “cleaners” they hire can’t keep up with the junk that is posted on there platform.
We’ll see what happens, but the marketplace is probably not on Facebook’s radar for improvements at the moment.
TJ Maxx and their other stores (Marshalls and in Canada Winners) are a great source for us. We buy brand name items in the deep clearance sections all the time (they are the items with Yellow price tags – usually 10% the original price). The best items are very large Men’s clothing and shoes – they never can sell them, there is always a few items in every store, and the guys looking for them can’t find them locally and will pay top dollar for items there unique size. Some of the “RED” price tag clearance items are good also (I bought some Calvin Klein dress pants around Easter for $8/pair and sold them quickly for $45 each for example).
So don’t look at TJ Maxx as competition – look at it as a source of clothing – NEW / NWT clothing that sells for more than used clothing.
My wife also does well on women’s accessories/bags/purses at TJ Maxx type stores.
Unlike thrift stores, half the people in there are on their phones, so it doesn’t look odd when you do price comparisons on the spot to see what your potential profit would be.
I’m surprised that someone hasn’t figured out a system to disrupt the shipping industry. Food delivery services are popping up everywhere, and someone just needs to take that model, build in the long-distance logistics between cities/towns, and let locals handle the last mile service.
I know Amazon is starting up something (even offering employees incentives) however you would think there would be good opportunities in the shipping industry…or maybe countries are just too big to tackle…
Cool idea – I always see cool local souvenirs from the area (Niagara Falls) when scavenging and always thought it would be a cool business for someone to sell retro/vintage/antique souvenirs to current tourists – either as is or re-imagined like you did with your Albany items.
Your work shows that with a little effort, re-packaging, and re-imagining items that you can make a profit – especially on local, one of a kind items. Getting a venue is also a great move on your part – makes it easier and comfortable for the casual buyer to check out.
I always love seeing dollar store items at a thrift store, still with the dollar store pricing/logo on them, for more than the dollar store charges.
I assume the thrift store employee with the pricing gun was just too lazy to change the price on the gun and just priced it to get it out of there way.
I always find it strange when stores limit what you can buy – why don’t they sell everything they can? I understand the odd door crasher that is priced lower than cost to get you in the store, but for regular priced or clearance items it makes no sense. I assume that it is just rogue employees/managers at these stores enforcing these terms.
It would be ridiculous for a retailer to do this also – don’t they buy “stuff” from wholesalers at a cheaper price to make a profit themselves?
@ironman – I’ll answer some of your questions that I may not have answered in the past:
I sell on eBay and Kijiji – basically anything large on Kijiji that I don’t want to ship, and everything shippable through Canada Post on eBay. I know others that use Facebook, and I’m investigating Etsy (still haven’t sold anything there, but have bought on Etsy with no issues).
Outside of Canada, I sell mostly to the U.S. but have sold to Europe, Australia, and Japan occasionally. Most of my sales are in Canada and the trend of Canadian sales is increasing (it was about 47.5% each Canada/U.S. for years now it is about 65% Canadian). See my other posts on how to maximize free listings on eBay between eBay.com and eBay.ca.
Duties/Taxes are handled by the buyer – if any. Most countries, like the U.S. have huge duty-free limits compared to Canada – unless you are selling items over $800 US, you will never have any issues with duties/customs with a buyer. Just make sure what you are sending is legal and the customs forms are filled out correctly.
The market in Canada is huge – being a Canadian seller, the huge benefits are no duty, and cheap shipping to Canada. For example, once you have an established Canada Post account, I can send anything in my area (basically Ontario and Quebec) for under $10 – anything huge and heavy may be up to $15. You also have little or no competition within the country. You can also charge more for you item if you are the only one in Canada as people don’t like risking duty, converting currency, and the hassle of cross-border returns if there is an issue.
Kijiji has also been HUGE for us the last month as we are moving and trying to get rid of large items. All cash, a bit of hassle with the odd buyer, but has been easy for us to unload unshippable items.
I’m also working with the BDC to develop a program for small online businesses using platforms such as eBay – if you have any questions, let me know.
@Sharyn – U of T is great! Many friends went there and have good careers all over the world. It’s very expensive though (compared to most Canadian schools – but some U.S. schools sound very expensive as well). Enjoy your trip – the campus is great, and the school and city is very liberal compared to most of the U.S.Our situation is that we are in a summer tourist destination – which really only has a season between June and August (3 months). We also have a huge government project that is bringing in workers from all over the world for the next 20 years down the road. 100’s of people are looking for what we are calling mid-range (monthly) accommodation.
We talked to several real estate agents, and local renters this weekend and the money seems to be catering to the people working on this project – they want long term stays, but all amenities supplied (bedding, towels, dishes, etc. etc.). We are going to target that market as it is in the middle – we can always go either way when someone leaves (short term in the summer, then long term in the winter, etc).
We are starting work on the basement unit, and researching plans for the secondary unit.
The short-term vacation rental market has been going down in the area the last few years – could be just “legal” units are going down and AirBNB type units are not being counted.
@ironman – we are going to be just off the shores of Lake Huron – it is about 3.5 hour drive from Toronto.We’re looking into adding an ADU (or a few) to the property we have – one would be in our house (a basement unit – self contained with separate entrances but shared utilities – we are looking to make money on the space we don’t really need) and looking at building possibly a small “4-plex” (we would split off this portion of the property as a separate lot) as income streams.
We were leaning towards having full-time tenants – I’m just curious what the pros/cons others went through in deciding to go with the short-term rental vs. long term tenants?
Also, where we live, we can offer “rent discounts” in the lease agreement for tenants who would like to do tasks like cut the grass, shovel snow, etc. We’re about 12-18 months away from our decision and any renovations/building, just trying to gather feedback from any source we can…we also figure putting our money in our property instead of investing it elsewhere keeps our investments close to us.
I keep selling high-end blank audio cassettes to Eastern European countries for crazy money (sometimes over $100 for one 90 minute cassette) – I wish I could find more.
The question I have is, what are they doing with them? Is there something that they are re-purposed for, or just a lot of crazy collectors in that part of the world? I just don’t understand it. They sell almost immediately every time I list one.
I also hate the people who write asking to have a BIN item “saved” for them until they get paid with a long story about how they have to wait until they get money or credit on their credit card to buy it.
I just ignore them…first buy, first serve…
The estate sales where I live get raided before the sale. The few companies that run them in our areas post pictures of what is available, and sell it to people before the sale starts. They also let their favorites in before the sale, so if the sale starts at 9am and you get there for 9am, the place is almost empty.
I’ve seen some items of interest in the photos they post, but they want very high prices when you show interest pre-sale.
I tend to have better luck at any local random thrift store then local estate sales.
I also live in a very heavy tourist area with expensive tourist options – a lot of people come to this area for estate sales, antique sales, specialized auctions, etc. – they are not scavengers, they are collectors willing to pay top dollar for items they want.
I’ve checked out estate sales and auctions where I am moving – completely different looking. Lots of barns full of forgotten stuff, regular household items, and more reasonable pricing (a lot of the estate sales where I’m moving auction off the rest of the items and even the house at the end of the day).
Coming from a family of mechanics, most people don’t factor in that an average garage mechanic probably works on 100’s of Corollas for every Audi they see. This means they can quickly diagnose the problem, and get it fixed right the first time. By bringing in an Audi, you are paying them to learn how to fix your car…or you are stuck going to the Audi dealer for repairs at a much higher hourly rate.
Also, the more popular the car, the more part options, quicker to source parts, and volume of parts exist, therefore they are cheaper and you will get your car back faster.
