I have made it a goal to contribute at least 10% of the profits earned by Brio Realty to charity. As Brio is still less than 2 years old and has been in a very rapid growth mode, deciding where to donate the 10% has not yet posed too much of a challenge, as we have been operating at a loss. Fortunately that has changed this year! :)
Tonight I stumbled upon a cool company named Kiva.org. It partners with Micro Finance organizations in developing countries and acts as a conduit between lenders and the entrepreneurs hoping to borrow money. Because these entrepreneurs are committed to repaying the loan, the money loaned on Kiva does not technically count as a donation. Although the IRS won't agree with me I think I feel justified including Kiva.org as a part of our corporate giving program, so long as we re-invest all monies repaid to us, back into the program to be used by other entrepreneurs.
Our first loan of $100 was to Esther W. from Kenya. As of the time of this post, she needs another $300 to complete the funding of her $450 loan.
| | Make a loan Change a life |
| | Loan Needed: $450 39% funded |
Although Joel Burslem gave ActiveRain a horrible review a few days back, I must say that lately I have really enjoyed reading his blog. He posts a lot of original content, not just stuff regurgitated from other business/real estate blogs. I most appreciated the recent Papa John's door hanger promotion post, and his suggestion for a U.S. real estate company to borrow the idea. I have already started putting a design together for my real estate company. Hopefully we can do a test promotion within a month or so. I will let y'all know how it goes!
Last night my wife, a real estate agent, experienced first hand the agony of loss that many other homebuyers experience everyday in this hot Puget Sound real estate market. The only difference was that she experienced it in the new highly popular, alternate reality, online game, known as Second Life. Sara signed up for a Second Life account nearly a week ago, and almost immediately fell in love with this beautiful piece of ocean front property near the equator, where "the sun is out more hours of the day, and even when the sun goes down it is still light because the stars are so bright."
The only problem was that the owner of the property was asking a little more than $60,000 Linden dollars for the land (roughly $200 U.S.). Since obviously I wouldn't understand the great opportunity this prime piece of real estate represented, Sara felt compelled to convince me with a real world bribe. She bargained that if she cleaned our entire house by Monday, then I would enthusiastically agree with the purchase of the land. I rationed that $200 for a clean house seemed like a bargain indeed, so I agreed.
To Sara's great dismay, the property was sold right out from under her last night. Good thing she was able to find another, nicer, piece of property not too far away from the original property, for just a little bit more money, only $250 (real U.S.). Ouch!
After doing a bit of research, we learned that the property next door to Sara's new subject property sold for only $16,000 Linden ($45 U.S.) in December, just a little over 6 months ago. That means property values in that online region have earned a 1000% annualized rate of return! It is not really a surprise either, as the Second Life population has increased from 20,000 people a year ago to almost 180,000 people today.
And Second Life does seem to be a viable economy with a (GDP) that equals almost $60,000,000 U.S. dollars yearly, with over 3,000 Second Life residents each earning over $20,000 (U.S.) in total yearly revenues!
This land purchase may be a good investment after all. As the saying goes, "they aren’t making any new waterfront land".
