Turner Detective Agency

Alright, I'm home sick today, so I figure I might as well do something productive and post a few blogs on here. There's a lot that needs to be posted before I get this "up to date".

So after deciding the VFW hall was not worth the investment due to the area I started looking at a funky little place not too far away: an old detective agency on Penn Ave. in Doughboy Square, the corner or Lawrencville, the Strip District, Bloomfield and Polish Hill. The Lawrencville area has recently shown a lot of promise in making a resurgence. Lots of new stores and bars have opened up; there are lots of those ever popular hipsters moving into the area; and there's a massive hospital being built up Penne Ave that has really made the area start to change. Because of this, I thought that investing money into the detective agency would be fairly low risk and I could deal with the area being a bit rough for a while.

I went inside the place a couple of times and it would've had to been totally gutted and restored and I would've wanted to add a third floor onto it etc etc.

To make a long story short, on the morning before I was going to buy the property (after much debate with my parents) I went to hang out outside before I went to work to see what it was like there. I then realized that there was a "stop here on red" sign directly in front of the building going up a hill, and a bus stop one door down. This meant noisy cars and busses come to a stop then accelerate up hill and people congregate outside what would have been my front door. After this I got to thinking and decided yet again: this wasn't the place for me. From the financial side of things, it would definitely be a risk, and although I'm confident that the area's worth investing in, it could be 10 years or more before my investment would be profitable.

I've had a constant debate with myself (and my parents) over the course of this house project in general as to whether or not I'm really just building this house for myself, or am I building it to resell. There's a fine line to walk in this regard because although I AM doing it for myself, should something drastic occur and I need to move, I would need to be able to sell or rent it. Another aspect is that I very much like the idea of continuing to buy and renovate places.... and if I do that, I need to be able to sell/rent them out.

So anyways, back to the detective agency: I checked out the street scene the day before I was going to buy it and decided that I shouldn't do it. A couple days later I drove by it around 2AM and there were cop cars everywhere and police tape surrounding the front of it and the place next door. At that point I knew I'd made the right decision.