In this Flash Fiction Story, I use the circumstance and character from another story to continue the narrative and the business related conversation. 5 More days of Flash August Fiction.
Harry feels like the breaking weather has saved his life. There has been excessive heat for a week, and it’s really killing his chances to stay on top of his work. On the one hand, the grass and all the plants he takes care of suffer, and he has to struggle to keep up watering them. On the other hand, due to the heat, their growth is slowed, and they are easier to catch up to.
The year has gone pretty well with Harry. The little town he’s a part of now has somewhat warmed up to him. No one can argue that he doesn’t work hard or that his work is lacking. It’s a pretty good situation, and as much as Harry likes routine, this type of work is not as routine as he expected.
Things are always shifting and moving. There is a lot of troubleshooting involved. Sometimes a contract goes swimmingly, it’s all just repetition, and it’s over in no time, and other times there’s something out of the ordinary. This normally rote behavior morphs into two or three new jobs out of a usually mundane process.
A positive that comes from this is that Harry has accumulated a lot of new skills, and has either purchased, or rented enough equipment, that he has become proficient in all sorts of physically oriented, and tool related work.
It puts Harry in an interesting situation. What does he want to do? Does he want to expand his business into more of a general handyman type thing, where he has lots of work, and he’s more busy, but he might have to work 40+ hours a week? He likes the work. Work is not punishment to Harry. He enjoys helping others and trading money for his time, materials, and skills. That’s OK with him. He’s quite proud of his abilities and for the way he’s chosen to use his time. He’s not worried about appearances, or what puerile, lazy people think about working people who produce actual value in life.
It so happens, that some circumstances lined up with one of his contracts, that one of his clients has a dormant property that has some potential, and he wants to sell. They have been talking about it around town with neighbors, and one of the neighbors that also does business with Harry, mentioned that Harry might be a good person to talk to. The client with the property thought that was something he should have considered on his own, and he contacted Harry.
Harry, being someone who, in his earlier life, was familiar with business and Real Estate contracts, explained a scenario to the owner. He described the way that he, if he were interested, would want to do business, but made it clear that he was not sure if he wanted to.
Harry explained that, at the owner’s materials expense, Harry would go into the property and prepare the property for sale, based on the current appraisal estimate. This is for the purpose of being able to determine how much work is going to be needed before and after the sale, but also, to have a baseline for the owner, and for Harry to decide what is worth doing.
Then, Once the house was updated and brought up to higher standards, the property would be re-appraised. Now, Harry can decide, based on that second appraisal, whether he wants to get involved in the property. If he decides it’s a good idea, then he will take control of the note with the contingent to pay the owner the value of the first appraisal, and where Harry retains the value added from the second appraisal. This way, Harry takes zero money out of his pocket, but makes a profit from his hard work of upgrading the home, and the owner gets the amount they would have gotten, if they had sold the house as is in the first place.
If Harry does not like the second appraisal number, then the owner can sell the property at the new appraisal rate, and pay Harry a percentage of the sale, for doing the work of upgrading the house. This gives the owner the security of knowing that he will make back his materials upgrade investment, and can also compensate Harry for his time and expertise, all while the owner makes his profit.
The other option for the owner is to get all sorts of real estate and banking people into his business. It’s a choice a lot of people make. Sometimes, however, business can be done between citizens, with little involvement from outside influences. Harry hopes the owner chooses to work directly with him and to forego all the traditional models. Regardless of what the decision is, Harry has radically low risk.
The End790 Words
