Welcome to our new blog

Hey everyone, here is my welcome post. A dear friend and myself are introducing this blog to help everyone be succesful growing wealth when the economy is at it's worst. It is my personal opinion that fortunes can be made in the next 7 to 10 years if you play your cards right. We have created this blog to open a line of communication to "Build wealth while everyone around you is going broke" The blog is called contrary riches for a reason. In order to be a successful investor it will be neccesary to do the opposite of what most everyone else is doing.

A little about myself. The 1st phase of our (there is a Mrs. Bottom feeder as well,she's the love of my life and a huge part of our success to this point) wealth building process has been real estate. We started in the late 90's when real estate was in the toilet. We had NO CASH when we started, but could convince sellers to hold 2nd notes and cover all closing costs. Everything we have bought had fully leveraged cash flows. Over the last 12 years thanks to the most ridiculous appreciating RE market we were able to leverage appreciating buildings to buy more buildings. We now have a cash flow that can cover all of our personal expenses and have been able to exit the rat race. We were in the restaurant business working as bartenders and managers, and are now free of having to work for someone else. The buildings we own are mostly boarding houses and medium size apartment buildings with efficiencies , and 1 bedroom apartments. This is a little contrary to what most investors do. Most like single families homes. I find these to be the most difficult to manage.

I believe it is important to have more than 1 income stream so we have a few other ventures as well. I am a licensed Pa. RE agent and work mostly on the commercial and investment side. Lately most of my work has been on the short sale side of the market. I believe an excellent wealth building strategy the next few years will be to buy distressed properties at huge discounts. I plan on flipping some to 1st time home buyers for income since I don't like managing single families. I also plan to hopefully take advantage of the distressed commercial RE market and picking up some small strip malls, office buildings, and or hotels to add to the buy and hold portfolio. Just remember when real estate seems to be at it's worst, and the sheep herd is petrified, that is the time you want to be a buyer. We will be discussing some great strategies to get in the game sometime in the future.

I also opened a used car lot a few years ago. It was doing quite well before the crash of October 2008. It has now become a trainwreck. I made many mistakes in this venture. I will fill everyone in on these down the line, to hopefully help our readers avoid the screw ups I made.

We are now currently learning to trade options. I believe there is a good chance the market could tank again. I want to learn to make money whether the market is up down or sideways. If you know the right strategies you can make great money on volatility, and things will be very volatile the next few years.
Lastly we are starting this blog to be an interactive forum. We welcome everyone to post their thoughts, questions and strategies. We can all learn from one another. Sometimes we may all not agree, and I love a good debate. Lets just try to keep it respectful. We welcome guest bloggers, and I have a few great ones lined up for the future. Feel free to give feedback. We want to create something our readers go to everyday, so we would love to hear what will keep you coming here.

I guess that's it for now. Time for the disclaimer here. Please don't take anything on here as investment advice. This is just a forum of what we are doing, and what we are planning to do. We have made investments that have treated us very well, and there have been some trainwrecks also. Investing can be dangerous, and most people lose money trying to be an investor. We are hoping to give insight and ideas here, but please consult your own team of proffessionals before pulling the trigger on anything. I'm looking foward to meeting many great people on here. We can all exchange ideas and figure out how to get rich together doing things most people will think are nuts. Happy Investing

Bottom Feeder