CHAPTER SIX – REAL ESTATE
“So you had a guy that did all of that for you?”
“Of course, it’s not I like I was going to stay the whole time and manage finances.”
“So you got lucky and found the right guy then.”
“Actually no, it took me five times to get it right. I would leave enough instructions to cover 30 years. Once I made contact I would come back here and see what happened. If the held to the contract I would keep them, if not I would go back and change who I approached.”
“Seems like a lot of trial and error,” James said as he grabbed another roll from spread they had assembled.
“Well I had to be sure that it would get done. I wasn’t going to leave something important like this to amateurs.”
“Fair enough. I can’t imagine that thirty-years’ worth of information remained accurate though.”
“It didn’t, I had to go back and revise a lot, thus many of our conversations. But I wasn’t going to do that for each schlub I tested. I figured if they followed the information to the letter, then good or bad I would know. The first four tried to make things better when it got bad. I didn’t need thinkers, I needed followers. Nice, blind, obedient, followers.”
“So once you found the right guy, then you adjusted as you needed.”
“Correct, which brings me to my next point, and you.”
“Now we get to the good stuff.”
“Not really, unless you find lots of numbers and trading transactions fun. I really can’t see how you did this for a living all those years. I took a few classes so I knew the topic and I found that boring. Doing it for a living day in and day out, I would go insane.”
“I like numbers, what can I say?”
“That you like working here better.”
“Oh, I do, I get to deal with numbers and the nerdy shit I adore. Not as much in the number department, but enough to make me happy.”
“So I think I have something that could make you potentially really happy.”
“What would that be?”
“I want you to pitch me a deal that would make a literal fuck ton of money.”
“I’m not in the market that much anymore. I mean I still browse the journal occasionally, but nothing that I can think of that magnitude.”
Tommy leaned over as James took a bite of an eggroll and smacked the back of his head. “Why the hell would I want you to pitch me an unknown? I have a damn time machine. Pitch me something from the last twenty years that could do the same. Thing about it as a sure thing. If you have access to capital and resources at any point in time, that we can get too, what would you do to maximize profit?”
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James pondered a moment while he rubbed the back of his head. “Maybe take advantage of the housing crash of 2007 and 2008?”
“I tried that. I got the securities that said it would fail. I made some, but not a lot. The losses were eventually capped, for me at least, at around five billion.”
James stopped chewing and just stared at him a moment. “Only five?” he said as pieces of eggroll dropped from his mouth.
“I am serious here dude. The amount is not an obstacle. Take a few to actually think and get as stupid on me as you want. I mean even look at things that didn’t work out that well, and if they can be fixed and profit us then pitch that as well.”
James thought for a few more minutes as he finished the eggroll that had been plaguing him for too long now. He started off at three six-foot Millennium Falcons that Toys R Us had for displays in the late 90s. They were engaged in a static position from a dogfight they were caught in, it was a thing Tommy had done with them. At a grand a piece, James expected them to be that way for a while. For whatever reason though this sparked a thought.
“Countrywide!”
“Well sure, maybe someday I could franchise out, but that isn’t in my immediate plans.”
“No, the home loan company that was one of the main culprits of the crappy loans that brought about the housing collapse.”
“Oh yeah. They really screwed the pooch on that one.”
“Anyway. Bank of America bought them for like 4.1 billion, actually 2.5 when the deal closed. But they lost a ton of money on the deal over the years as things were worse than they thought along with taking on all of Countrywide’s legal problems.”
“How big a loss are we talking?”
“About 40 to 50 billion.”
Tommy audibly gasped. “I want to make money man.”
“I get that. They went in thinking they knew what was going to happen. But if we know all of that and how it will play out before hand then we can take it over and potentially turn that into, I don’t know 100 billion?”
“That is a huge difference.”
“Yes, it is, but if we have everything in place before we take it over, head the lawsuits off at the pass, and knowing when the markets will recover at what times in what markets we can take all of that property and mortgages and optimize revenue.”
“Sounds like a lot of leg work.”
“How far did Kirk have to go to get Spock back?”
“Fair enough, what are the main things we will need?”
“Well to even have a shot at it, we would need some kind of heavy financial company to have the credibility to buy them out. The government has to approve the deal, that kind of thing. And I will have to do a lot of homework. I just hope we can have everything in place to make it happen.”
“Remember the Y2K scare?”
James looked at him weird for a moment, “Off topic, but yeah.”
“In 1995 I set up a small computer repair company that had every conceivable variation of fixes for the problem. Every system, network, whatever. You might have heard of it, Safe Systems.”
“Of course. They are still big in computer repair. Not as big as back then.”
“Nope. I used it to tackle that problem and make a ton of money. Since we already had the fixes, we could do it faster and get more contracts. Once 2001 came I pretty much stepped back and sold the thing. Now it is just a shell of its former self, but it did what I needed it too. The point is, I found a problem that was huge, figured out how to take it on and profit, and then did it. Computers are my space though, now I am looking to you to figure out yours.”
“Well give me a week or two to do some research. Then I will come to you and see what we can do to get ready.”
“Sounds like a plan. Now pass that fried rice.”