Small victories.

This is my current mantra right now because I'm having to deal with a lot of contractors. I'm trying to get my rental back on the market. My guy had been living there for five years, so the neighborhood has changed quite a bit in that time. Thankfully for the better.

I decided to drag the back yard to better fit into the new atmosphere. I would be sticking a new lawn in, but our rain situation is still pretty dire. The minute I wanted to have something bulldozed the rain came. Which almost caused a falling out between my contractor and I. Even though I've used him before.

The storms weren't very bad at all, and contractors are actually getting a ton of work. I could tell he was double booking me. Since contractors are kinda sexist, and I'm a girl, they think they can get away with all sorts of things. To be fair, women are kinda stupid about this stuff. I've been doing houses for a long time now, and Mr S. and I have graded a few yards so I'm unimpressed by a lot of excuses. Yelling at them does no good, you have to threaten to take your money back. That is what gets results. You constantly have to police them. Which I actually hate.

A few days ago I told you how tight the real estate market is. Well, the rental market is equally freaking tight. There is almost nothing in my city for rent. Which is the craziest thing I've ever seen to have both sales and rental be so tight. It's almost unbelievable from just two years ago. My contractor reports there are only 80 houses for sale in all of Tracy. Which must be were he lives. I don't track that market, but I'm sure at one time it had to be in the hundreds. Tracy is a big city.

It's really hard to figure out the market right now. And I spend all my time doing it. Right now everything looks like shortages. And I'm sure the answer to this riddle has a lot to do with the inflation/deflation tug.

If President Money Bags would stop screwing with the economy - I believe we would be in frightening inflation territory. Since he won't, and all of the economic indicators would make most people puke - I think we will have a nasty bout with deflation then we are off to the inflation races.

Inflation is too much money chasing too few products and services. Until both of those criteria are met at the same time - there is relatively stable inflation. In real estate right now both of those criteria are being met. However all of the department store layoffs show there are still many areas of the economy where there are still too many products or services. And don't forget - banks apparently do not lend in deflation. That was a pretty scary lesson to learn. I didn't actually know that could happen. But now I do. That will make getting funding for new starts harder creating an even deeper shortage. For a while.