They usually count people sleeping on your couch as homeless.

Is that all at once or cumulative? I'm trying to get Fort Wayne on the map.

I am quite familiar with couch surfers as they try to rent their first apartment from me. I take over where their parents leave off and give excellent instruction in The School of Hard Knocks. They are different. Couch surfing is fine and they only communicate by text, but have no grasp of grammar. They sometimes think you know what they are talking about when they send you a picture only to convey a complex concept. I once got a picture of whipped cream sitting on a box of pizza. A phone call clarified the picture...the kitchen ceiling was disintegrating and the whipped cream was plaster. Woe to us, they have been raised by cell phones and computers and humanity frequently eludes them.

humanity frequently eludes them

A splendid turn of phrase!

I once got a picture of whipped cream sitting on a box of pizza...the kitchen ceiling was disintegrating and the whipped cream was plaster.

What kind of illicit drug causes that???

You are making me so glad that I didn't get mixed up in rental properties. Thank you.

You are making me so glad that I didn't get mixed up in rental properties. Thank you.

They are not for the faint of heart. When I married, hubby was a traveling carpenter from the Keys who had spent the majority of his life sailing the Carribean and transporting herbaceous materials. A pirate.

When he moved here, he could find no jobs without local references. I had always wanted to invest in real estate, but I knew contractors would make overhead impossible, so the books sat in my library. But, now I had a man who had been in the building trade for many years, so we went for it and bought 7 houses the first year. I did legal and book keeping. He did people and rent collection. We did remodels together.

Real estate doubled my income, increased my net worth substantially, and gave magnificent tax writeoffs. It let me have the freedom to walk away from the Medical Industrial Complex and retire early.

When hubby died it all fell on me, but I hired full time employees and really had a lot of fun remodeling and upgrading units. I can totally design and redo kitchens, bathrooms, porches, exteriors, including roofing. I am very picky about how my roofs are done and buy my own supplies so I get the best underlayment, ice/water barrier, and shingles. It's fun to have your own(rented) 40 foot boom for high jobs. Can you tell I really like being my own general contractor? I can also do my own pest control, including getting a racoon out of a porch roof and a possum family out of a dryer vent. Lot's of fun. Lot's of stories, and I will kind of miss them. The whipped cream was the "flat" roof causing a major leak. The ceiling was on the floor when I got there.