We’re getting back to our “high tech” roots and publishing more web sites – it’s been a challenge keeping up but we enjoy doing research online and learning about various topics. Funny thing is, I (Amber) wanted to do web site development and multimedia publishing when I graduated from Berkeley over 10 years ago! Oh well, better late than never.
David just posted a review of his 2009 site stats (his first full year of blogging) on his personal blog DavidOverfield.com. I selfishly encourage him to blog more so that he can share his insights and stories with more people and not take up hours of my time when I’m trying to get work done
David has been shooting videos of houses bought at the foreclosure trustee sales and the actual live auction – you can find these videos on his YouTube channel and posted at AccessWealthStrategies.com. I’m getting used to video editing but find that it takes more time than I would like.
We believe distressed assets are a major opportunity and hard money lending a good way to take advantage of it. So we’ve been working with a group of friends on flipping houses bought from Phoenix foreclosure trustee sales.
We’re also working on more “expert interviews” to be posted on AccessWealthStrategies.com – please subscribe and stay tuned!
Wow the first month of 2010 went by so quickly we barely noticed
We had a full month of no traveling, which was a nice change, after getting back from visiting our parents in southern CA.
This year our major goal is: SIMPLIFY. We did the big house with the big yard in the suburbs for 3 years, had a big real estate portfolio, traveled almost every 4-6 weeks, and we tried to run multiple businesses without being able to focus on any one of them.
Now, we’re living in this rental condo in Scottsdale that’s 1/3 the size of our TX house, with no yard to maintain and nothing to worry about when we do travel. We’re pleasantly surprised that we love this living arrangement a lot!
We’ve been cooking more too – which is something we always wanted to do but for some reason didn’t do as frequently when we had a very nice kitchen in our big house. David thinks it’s because this place feels “cozy”. Whatever the reason, it’s a positive development.
I’m also happy to find a local Chinese market to buy groceries and snacks; less than 30 min. drive whenever I miss “home food”.
It’s been nice living in Scottsdale – the weather is wonderful in the “winter” except for a few bouts of rainstorm last couple of weeks.
David has found a group to play ultimate Frisbee with every weekend. He’ll probably look for a hockey team to join too.
My Dad and I attended the Barrett Jackson auto auction in Scottsdale on a very busy Saturday. There were classic cars as well as brand new concept cars.
Here’s a video sample of what we saw that day: a live auction of a 1932 Ford, browsing sold cars on display, and up-close view of a multi-hundred thousand dollar concept car (Locus Plethore).
The event was lots of fun, we’ll probably attend a car auction again at some point in the future. We did learn that the lower priced cars are sold earlier (mid-week), not on Saturday where most cars were auctioned for more than $100,000.
While we were visiting my parents in Long Beach for the holidays, we took a boating trip and cruised in our Riva 50′ from Shoreline Marina in Long Beach, past San Pedro, up to Palos Verdes and back.
Though we never found the migrating whales we were searching for, we saw many interesting sights. Watch the video highlights below and see LA Harbor Light House (“Angel’s Gate”), Cabrillo Beach, South Shores San Pedro, Trump National, Point Vicente Light House, and Long Beach Harbor.
Make sure you watch the whole video (2 parts) to see the seal pod we found and listen for what mom wants to feed them!
We’ve been spending time with our families in southern California last few days. The holidays sneaked up on us this year and we are guilty of doing some things last minute and not even getting to some things we should have (like sending out Christmas cards).
OK, so here’s another last minute project: a video highlighting our major life events in 2009 and season’s greetings to you!
Summary:
After living in TX for almost 5 years, we sold our 4300+ s.f. “McMansion” in May and spent the next 5 months roaming the west coast, from southern CA to Vancouver, B.C.
Being “homeless” put our mobile lifestyle to the test – we put most of our possessions in storage, lived off a couple of suitcases, and worked on our laptops wherever we were. We even rented a mostly unfurnished house for a month in Mountain View while we visited our Silicon Valley friends.
We enjoyed spending time with many of you during our travels, which included several trips to mostly northern and southern CA, ranging from 1-7 weeks, as well as a week-long family boating trip in the Pacific Northwest.
Eventually in November we moved into a rental condo in Scottsdale, Arizona. It has been beautiful in the winter and we love the north Scottsdale area so far.
We hope you had a memorable year 2009 as well and we look forward to making new memories in 2010
