Real Music & Real Estate . . .

Yiddishe Cup’s bandleader, Bert Stratton, is Klezmer Guy.
 

He knows about the band biz and – check this out – the real estate biz, too.
 

You may not care about the real estate biz. Hey, you may not care about the band biz. (See you.)
 

This is a blog with a gamy twist. It features tenants with snakes and skunks, and musicians with smoked fish in their pockets.
 

Stratton has written op-eds for the Wall Street Journal, New York Times and Washington Post.


 
 

THE TEN COMMANDMENTS
OF PROPERTY MANAGEMENT

by Bert Stratton

  • Don’t rent to anybody for less than a year. How about six months? Nope. You’ll attract unstable — in all ways — tenants.

  • Don’t go long-term on a natural gas contract. Anything can happen with natural gas prices.

  • Don’t assume store tenants will do preventive maintenance. I once hired Roto-Rooter to jet a restaurant’s drain. The bill was $925. The restaurant owner didn’t reimburse me. He said, “How do you know it was my grease?” Well, was it grease from the flower shop next door?

  • Roofers are gonifs. It’s hard work and you can’t easily check their work.

  • When the temperature goes below 20 degrees, everything fails: pipes, downspouts, boilers, walls, roofs, snowplow guys, concrete.

  • Miller is a good all-purpose name. Miller can be Amish, African-American, Jewish, German, English, Gypsy. I once rented to Gypsy Millers. The cops wanted their license plate number but I didn’t get the number fast enough. The Millers left suddenly. They had New York plates.

  • There aren’t enough Elvis lovers in the trades anymore.

  • Real estate brokers wear expensive suits even though they’re not all rich. They go into boiler rooms and climb roofs. They have significant dry-cleaning bills.

  • Make sure there aren’t any Q-tips — even new ones — in the bathroom when showing vacant suites.

  • Wear a tie to court. The defendant usually will not. You win.

    • —
    WSJ readers, here are more real estate stories.

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    3 comments

    1 Kenneth Goldberg { 01.19.22 at 9:41 am }

    With your “words of wisdom,” it might be time for another book, Bert. I only ask you name me in the credits (for suggesting it, of course), and then give me a copy (but I might recommend it to others to purchase).

    2 Ken Goldberg { 01.19.22 at 10:35 am }

    Send this to Rabbi Skoff and Susan Ratner, Park’s President. In case they’re looking for meaningful new art for the walls of the remodeled Park Synagogue in Pepper Pike these Ten Commandments could be the focus of a sculpture, painting, or lithograph of some sort….

    3 marc adler { 01.19.22 at 2:30 pm }

    I have friends that are Millers, Russian Jews.

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