I'm desperate and need your help

It's getting close to the Holiday BUYING season.

You said you have some space available in your strip mall.

Set up a "Christmas Craft" show...where you rent space for $500 a booth for the Holiday from Nov 15 thru Dec 25. 20 Booths gross $10,000.

The "Craft" stores and Churches know people who make crafts to sell.

You'd have to run some local ads AND...this lends itself to Free PR from local media.

Or set up a "Business Fair" where local businesses would rent a space to display their wares or services. Beauty Salon doing new hairdos, Nail Salon doing new nail designs, carpet cleaner, painter, plumber, roofer, water softener, pest control, realtor, bank.

Which reminds me;
I did the 1st, 2nd and 3rd Annual, "Aspen Home Show" in the banquet room of the Holiday Inn on Hwy 82 just before you get into Aspen. First time I rented 30 booths for $500ea...2nd, 40 booths for $600, 3rd, 50 booths for $750.

AND....I did a "Holiday Craft Fair" in the same room, one Christmas. Started the day after T'Day thru Sunday at 6pm...the biggest shopping weekend of the year. Rented 50 booths for $300 for the weekend.

Ran some ads in newspaper, radio and local Tv and...got some good PR.

You'd have to "hustle your bustle"...make phone calls, go see people to sign them up and collect your booth rent.

In the "Holiday" show I rented a helicopter for $1500...talked Barbi Benton into dressing up in a "revealing" Santa outfit....let all the media know that Barbi as Santa would be "landing at noon on Friday, the day after T'Day.

Got some GREAT...FREE PR...and had a smashing show.

Don Alm

[MMacGillivray]

.... there are many stores and business owners who would be keen to have short-term space at a reasonable rent in a place which is getting publicity ... especially with Christmas coming around. Not knowing the local regulations, you might consider getting a huge banner made saying just that and putting it somewhere visible on the side of your mall. Contact local craft associations to let them know as well.

I'd probably have in front of me a note of my monthly overheads to service the loans - one of those cute little graphs where I could mark out each time I made a contribution towards the overheads .... quite motivating seeing it being filled up.

There is a market for PLR articles about house-flipping. You could probably sell some here in the special offers section - as well as the Warrior Forum. It won't make you a fortune, but meeting a percentage of your costs would be better than chewing your fingernails ....

Is there any use which could be made of the remaining land in your commercial real-estate - storage, parking, .... or what about letting people sell their autos there themselves. I'm certain that there's a whole lot of posts by Don on setting up such a business.

Are there any local charities looking for a venue for a charity event - so that you could make the mall busy and get free publicity for your venue?

Your rehabs - I read somewhere about Lease to Buy - not knowing anything about this, I'm going to ask if this is a possibility for you? Would they rent as vacation rentals?

Is there a market for running courses on renovating property to resell? You probably have a lot of expertise on this.

I don't know if that's any help at all - my hubby and I saw a programme on UK television about the state of the US property market (Cleveland, OH) - and to say that it was frightening is a small understatement. I hope you manage to find a solution.

Margaret

Great ideas as always Don.

I would add that if you can't sell the residential properties, can you at least find renters?

You could also rent strip mall space for holiday office parties possibly? I like Don's idea of craft shows and business fairs. Maybe you could host a swap meet every weekend. Give others a means to generate some extra holiday cash and also get a little cash flowing your way as well.

If you've been around these boards for a while, and you're looking for others ways to make quick cash, I'd look into chatteling (see Gordon), or Skip's quick cash reports: http://makemoneyalerts.com/sowpubtwofreereports.html
or Don Alm's Midas Report: http://www.donalm.com/
Those all contain some ways to make some quick cash, maybe some could even be modified to use some resources you already have, who knows!

Good luck, and keep us posted on how it all turns out.

Todd

You've had some great ideas here so let's add to them.

Have you considered a children's toy and learning show in the mall area...one weekend or more? Sure to get people's attention this time of year. Try an after hours one so parents can get babysitter help and shop without the kids.

Another option: a local artist's show in one segment of the mall areas. Lots of specialty things that don't ordinarily occur.

Incidentally, you might check with a lawyer. There might be a way to get your money back from the estate. Of course they'll try to discourage you but it's worth a try. Not your fault the agreement wasn't completed so no reason you should have to forfeit. Worth checking at least. Estates have been tapped before as I know from a close friend's experience.

You might consider lease-options on the houses. Do a thorough check on the new folks, make sure they can follow through with the purchase eventually. More likely to take care and pride in the place and avoid wrecking the house. Even if they don't purchase eventually, you've had the income and any improvements they do to add value.

Sandi Bowman

you've really got some great ideas here! i agree with auctioning off your properties. there are a lot of people out there who are sure to be needing your stuff and will be willing to pay for it!

My aunt owned a school that she rented to people to conduct classes and she charged a percentage of the income that the teacher collected.

For example suppose I know a lot about Microsoft Excel. I create a course on Excel and call several companies to offer to tech their employees excel. Then I book a room for a certain number of days and pay the 'landlord' 20% of my gross.