Tuff Turf

This is my life.


The original objective of this blog was to educate people about real estate, particularly about the nuances of New York City real estate. It is 2010 now and the past 5 years have been a helluva ride. One thing I have learned about real estate is that it is not what it appears to be.

The cliche has always been "Real Estate is always local." As the past two years have demonstrated, that is not the case. Actions that taken place in Washington D.C and Wall Street have had huge ramifications on all real estate markets across the globe. And those are not the only theaters where economic warfare is being waged.

This realization is one of the the main reason why this blog seems so schizophrenic.
We are all connected in some way whether we like it or not. Tea baggers and militia are on the rise? Blame the recession. You have a lot of free time on your hands when you have no job. Drywall turning your home in a death trap? Probably got a newly built home courtesy of China. Good luck in getting restitution from that economic powerhouse. Wonder how they got so rich and powerful? Look at the drywall. During the real estate boom the cost of goods skyrocketed and developers had to figure out cheaper alternatives in order to keep their margins in check. So they knocked on the door of Mao's homeland. You want to buy canned American sardines. After April you won't be able to. Blame globalization and outsourcing.


Ideas have circled around my head in how leverage this blog into a profitable business model. Some of the ideas are now in play by other people. Am I kicking myself? No. Upon doing my own feasibility study, I realized that there was no barrier to entry for my concepts and I also did not have the capital nor the manpower to pull them off successfully.

In fact I have strongly considered pulling the plug on this blog and letting it be a reminder of days gone past when real estate was shiny and new. But a little voice in my head is telling me the following.

"You've only just begun."


Which brings me to this link.

I can't justify killing this blog because I can't call it a failure. How can you say you failed at something when you never even tried.

The game has changed drastically in the last 5 years. There are more real estate bloggers on the scene and some of them do not even work in the industry. Despite that they are putting out a high quality product.

The only resource I have is myself. That's it. It is kind of overwhelming. But I remember something my martial arts teacher once told.

"You are always going to be the last line of defense."

When he first told me that, it really scared the s**t out of me. Because the reality is that you have no one to rely on other than yourself. And when you can't rely on yourself, you fail yourself.

However, if you succeed. It is your success. No one can take that away from you.


I will be maintaining this blog but there there will changes in the near future. I can't say what and when they will be but it will happen.

To all of you who read my blog, thank you. I really appreciate all of you.