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That’s awesome! You have mortgages on those properties, no? Do you make a *cash* profit even after mortgage principal & interest & tax? (If you don’t mind my asking).
For my long-term rental, it’s very easy to make an “equity profit” but very hard to make an after tax cash profit unless there’s no mortgage on the property. So mine runs cash negative at -$240/mo after tax.
Hey Jay – the big ticket items this week are mostly from one place, which probably makes up 40% of my scavenging right now. I do worry about what you mentioned – it’ll be a shame if that well ever dries up. Right now I’m just making hay while the sun shines.
However I bid in multiple auctions that make up the difference. I could ramp up my spending at those and get quite a bit more. Partly I avoid them to avoid travelling. They are sporadic but there are at least 5 auctions I see every year that could supply me with a huge quantity of good inventory if I were willing to fork over a bit more.
In general I would say even without my favourite source I can find lots of good stuff to buy. It’s cashflow that limits me more than it’s opportunities.
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This reply was modified 2 years, 3 months ago by
simplicio.
Well, there’s two aspects: time horizon and risk. I was mainly talking about time horizon – you don’t see a dollar back from expensive building renos for years, whereas ebay *usually* pays off within a year or two.
On risk, which is what you spoke to – I agree that any individual item you spend, let’s say, $500 on, is more likely to be a dud than the whole regional housing/rental/vacation market is to tank. However, if you buy multiple such items and stand to gain quite a bit from each according to your research, you should do OK in aggregate. It’s analogous to “having a diversified portfolio”. (Obviously there’s no replacement for being shrewd about individual buys.)
I think it’s super cool what you guys are doing with your rentals; however, in your place I would be somewhat worried about correlated risk. If housing/tourism craters in your area you’ve got a lot of eggs in that basket. That’s part of why I got rid of one of our rental houses, it seemed to me we were uncomfortably “all in” on the local housing market.
It cracks me up when you guys talk about not wanting to sit on high inventory costs. I’m like, you’re REAL ESTATE INVESTORS! 😉
Whew, this was maybe my craziest week ever on ebay.
Sales: CAD$4152, 10 items, COGS: $517 –> Item profit: $3051
Expenditures: $2206 –> Cashflow: $1362
Hours: 11, $124/hr
Listed: $5630, 29 itemsNotable sales: -Spectrophotometer $950, paid $20 or so. High risk of return on this one, however.
-3 medical transfer boards, bought for $30 each, sold for a total of $1250. I shipped this on the buyer’s DHL account to Saudi Arabia.
-Bought 15 microscopes for $125 each (total $1875) on Friday. I was fairly uncertain about this buy, but I have sold 3 over the weekend for a total of $1290, they seem to be really hot. Once again, more often than not, it pays to go all in. I am keeping one for myself, and waiting for payment on one more, so I have 10 left to sell.
-I sold one of my Herman Miller chairs with the desks for $100 to a collector. A little disappointed as he kinda kicked the tires a little and wasted 2 hours of my time (local sale), I thought he was going to buy 4. He said he may still buy more, not holding my breath. Still! It pays off the COGS for all 10 of those white ones I bought.Scavenging: apart from those things aforementioned I bought and sold in the same week, got a lab shaker, some projector bulbs, and picked up & listed a big auction lot including an envelope printer (hoping for a couple grand outta that), and 16 water valves (hoping for a few hundred each).
Trying to keep grounded, but man, if only things could always be like this.
Winchester, didn’t realize you were moving away from Calgary. I am in the general vicinity. Good luck in NB, that’s awesome!
I’ve mentioned before that Chit Chats will take items across the border and ship them via USPS for Canadian sellers, allowing us to compete on US shipping. They opened up a domestic service just recently too. According to the lady who works there, they have a good deal with Canada Post so they can save you money. I tried it out on my shipments this weekend and… nope, ebay/shippo was still a better deal on almost all packages.
I had a pretty good week on ebay!
Sales: CAD$1490, 11 items, COGS: $245 –> Item profit: $991
Expenditures: $228 –> Cashflow: $1008
Hours: 8, $127/hr
Listed: $811, 6 items
Notable sales: Balometer $385 (paid $30), conference phone setup $200 (paid $15), respirator air filters $150 (paid $37 for 3 sets, this pays them all off).There is a fairly major out of town auction ending tomorrow morning. Wednesday I am going to pick up hopefully quite a few items (3-4 hrs away). I have to go there for work anyway so the trip is NBD.
Really cool story on the Columbia records sign, by the way. Awesome find!
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This reply was modified 2 years, 3 months ago by
simplicio.
Well, the fat lady hasn’t sung on that $30 item yet, but I think it’s a good buy. They’re huge though! Those boxes are 50lbs, 37x22x11″. That’s big for me, but even so my typical item is large. A lot of stuff in the 20lbs range with at least one dimension bigger than 12″.
Yes, storage is becoming a bottleneck. I have one 10×30′ unit I pay $200/mo for and after last week it is now, officially, full. So I’m getting a 10×20′ shortly, which will run me another $175/mo.
Hey Jay, the stuff may be industrial, but still the reason I get it cheap is a lot of it’s long-tail, not super popular, specialty stuff. So yeah, it piles up in inventory like any other long tail thing. I make enough on these items for it to be well worth it though.
I wish buyers who want right of first refusal but aren’t seriously entering into a contract would not buy or accept offers, but rather make offers in messages. If you want to make a non-binding deal, the functionality is right there.
What a week! Crazy sales, crazy spending – broke even.
Sales: CAD$1966, 15 items, COGS: $310 –> Item profit: $1337
Expenditures: $1655 –> Cashflow: -$8
Hours: 10
Notable sales: Headlight bulbs $130, projector $400 (paid $150 I think), 32 new remotes for satellite dishes $490, Yamaha tone generator $220.
Scavenging: I went a little crazy this week. The tone generator mentioned above – I have 18 more of them, bought for $20 each. Hopefully there is a decent market for them but the first sale within 5 minutes of listing seems to bode well. I also bought 12 mounts to place computers on walls (mainly for hospital application) at $30 each. These have a few solds in the $600 range. I also bought an addressing printer (not yet picked up) for $600, this has one sold for $3600.Welcome.
>I know eBay is the main thing in the states for resell. But how do you guys sell in Canada? eBay? Do you sell to the states?
Yep, I sell on eBay mainly, some on kijiji and a tiny amount on amazon. Be crazy not to sell to the states, they’re right there and the population 10x bigger. I find about 50% of my sales are stateside, most of the rest domestic.
Canada Post parcel rates are expensive relative to what Americans are used to paying – especially rates on light, small stuff (on bigger heavier things CP is more competitive). This means if you are selling small cheap items (say, a $15 shirt with $20 shipping), you can’t really compete with American sellers (who are selling the same shirt for say $15 plus $5 shipping) unless you use a cross-border shipper like Chit Chats.
My solution is, get away from low-dollar sales, so shipping is not a big part of the equation anymore.
I agree with you about filling up storage ASAP. But the prepackaging thing seems like a lot of upfront labour for an item that or may or may not sell.
I believe costs (time/money) on these zillions of one-of items should be kept as low as humanly possible until sale.
Also, often a buyer wants further info (some particular measurement for example). I’d hate to unpack the item just to get that.
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This reply was modified 2 years, 3 months ago by
simplicio.
I think I’ve got like 7 orange and 10 white in storage. I had a blue one, that’s one of my other 10 that went on commission, and the blue one sold immediately for CAD$200 (I get half).
Hey, thanks for your advice!
Here’s a
.Nothing is moving so far, probably due to the high shipping – so I think I will strip a couple shells off and see if they move faster. Cheers!
Yes, 100% agree. I take the first decent offer unless it’s an item I know is popular. With mountains and mountains of stuff I don’t think it makes sense to be really picky.
I believe this is, in fact, a problem in North America where there is not much of a culture of haggling. I remember from childhood the old Bargain Finder in our area (basically print craigslist) and recall my dad telling me “OBO” meant “or better offer”. I think he thought you would offer more than the list price to lock the item down or something… I bring it up not to mock my dad but to illustrate that many normal people here are kind of clueless about haggling.
Sometimes I price high hoping for offers but there is a cost to that, which is buyers who say “ridiculous, why bother”. I think that way as well sometimes, as a buyer on ebay/kijiji, when stuff is priced not even in the ballpark.
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This reply was modified 2 years, 3 months ago by
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