hello seeker,
<<Oil, coal, natural gas>> a friend just amazon-ed me a book about the end of oil. even though i had figured carbon will get truly tight, i had never considered the facts in any organized fashion. a passing glance at the news headlines does not qualify as a serious review of the matter. i thank the friend.
<<real estate>> interesting happening in this arena where i have chosen to build a way to invest spare cash as well as a possible business. what seems to work, so far, focusing on (following constitutes a draft of an eventual update following completion of renovations and commencement of leasing acts)
(i) renovate small old building in mature urban center heavy traffic location - rent may be 2.4x-ed to 3x-ed depending on existing lease contract age of the tenants thrown on to the street - gold citadel club is doing so on a building purchase april 2007, and if the building is located just so on a block, strategically blocking others from redevelopment, all the better
7.7% net yield on total cost may soon be, but alas, a bummer, mark to market capital value went up by 80%, so yield on mark-to-market can only be 4.47%. renovation should complete in another 50 days so leasing effort can commence.
in an environment where income tax is low at 15.5% and cap gain tax is 0.0%, not bad, almost a no-brainer, and sure beats bank deposit at 0.01% annulized daily call rate and at 0.7% annulaized 2-years fixed deposit :0)
besides, the stuff is liquid enough to be considered near-cash. when and if the stuff goes illiquid, a suggestion to myself, buy more.
(ii) renovate or just own small ocean-view apartments in gentrified neighborhood with own community of upscale restaurants, bars, and mass touristy nick knack shops, of good addresses, but neither of prime of the low density lower upper low density housing nearby nor of the upper lower proletariat high density hovels also nearby, priced to extract the reasonable sum from – say for example, a “director - origination controller - pacific rim” of a regional office of a global i-bank around 35 years old and trying to save some money, and, say the sort of 40 year olds who are just starting an independent money management career after having worked for years within large firms.
while these folks maybe married and have kids, the spouse and kids do not live with them for any number of good and bad reasons. the rental yields range between 4.7 to 6.1% depending on state of original purchase (stuff requiring renovation yields more).
two recent such purchases of the club just resulted the first to be rented out starting july 1st at 4.7% yield to a director – origination controller – pacific rim, whatever that job is, and the second unit to (80% probability) be rented to a new hedge fund manager after completion of renovation on sept 1st.
an interesting happening, on the first unit, the original vendor wishes to buy back the property at 5.56% premium to her original selling price, with 5% accounting for the cost of all-inclusive closing and stamp duty and such, and 0.56% for the trouble of having owned the unit for a full month. seller’s regret :0)
another interesting happening, a expat father living upstairs from the first unit wishes to buy the unit at 11.11% premium for use by his returning daughter, lamenting that he never even knew the unit was on the market before gold citadel snapped it up all cash. neighbor’s regret :0)
(iii) buy and hold industrial buildings at cost in transforming neighborhoods where folks and government are spending serious money to implement change-of-use.
gold citadel had bought a rather large plate in wang chuk hang of hkg and will in a few days take possession of the sale/leaseback situation. now floors w/i the building is bid at 38% premium and ask at 49% premium to gold citadel’s closing price.
i ate dinner at "kyoto joes" japanese restaurant last night and at the next table was the esteemed grand poopa alan zeman en.wikipedia.org of freedom island hong kong restaurant and bar trade as well as chairman of ocean park forbes.com . i broke protocol and expressed my gratitude as a hk resident for his good works everywhere in hk and particularly at ocean park that is within easy walking distance of gold citadel’s industrial estates.
i think gold citadel has done well to have bought into what essentially are concrete shells at construction cost, leased back by industrial bakery tenant vendor needing cash and weighed down by near-impossible to move equipment, and quietly wait for a well deserved tripling, say, but doubling for sure, within the 4.5% yield-on-cost lease period (5 years, including 2 years option at no more than but for sure 10% annual rental increase for the option periods).
<<solar companies>> as to solar energy companies, there are 15+/- serious rest-of-worldwide wafer/cell/panel suppliers, and 100+/- china suppliers (growing fast).
germany is the largest adopter of solar energy, or so i am told.
there is apparently market tightness in solar cell supply. it will be corrected.
by december i will know all there is to know about solar.
perhaps best to be a supplier to solar cell companies, and monopolize the their inputs, rather than jumping into the arena with them or against them.
chugs, tj
p.s. life is so varied when one tries :0) |
