My New 2-year Old Assistant

Video Index:
0:00 Meet Olivia Lin!
1:20 California COVID News Update
2:01 New “Dream Vacation” Vaccine Incentives
2:37 My Recent Sales of Six Single Tenant Preschools during COVID
3:17 How You Could Lower your Property Taxes with Paramount Property Tax Appeal
4:05 How Unemployment Benefits are Affecting the Labor Markets

Hello Everyone!

A few weeks ago I posted a picture on LinkedIn of my two-year-old daughter, Olivia, and I sitting together “working” on our laptops and cell phones.

It ended up being my most popular post ever on LinkedIn, with almost 10,000 views and 400 reactions.

Olivia has decided that she wants to be my assistant now.  I told her OK, but I’m going to put her to work!  Watch the video to see how she convinced me to take her to work! (It’s the first minute of the video)

California COVID News Update
After more than a year of restrictions, our economy has finally re-opened, hopefully for good this time. June 15th was the day that everything was supposed to resume to normal, with mask mandates and social distancing policies lifted. 

Disneyland will also go back to full capacity and forget about face masks and social distancing, which means it’s going to be packed to the gills.  Looks like I missed my chance to go without having to deal with massive crowds.  Darn it!

I’m curious to see how stores and restaurants deal with the rule change and to see how comfortable people are in changing their habits to not wearing masks.  I don’t know about you, but I’ve gotten so used to wearing a mask in the grocery store that I think I’m going to feel a little naked without it.  But I’m sure I’ll get over that pretty quickly.

New Dream Vacation Vaccine Incentive

A few weeks ago, Governor Newsom announced the vaccine lottery program, where the state gave away millions of dollars to vaccinated residents.  This week, the Governor announced another vaccine incentive where 6 lucky winners will win a free “California Dream Vacation” to places like Disneyland, a Lakers Game, or San Diego.  The vaccine incentives appear to be working.  The state says that they have had a 14% increase in vaccinations since the incentives were announced, and 72% of the state’s eligible population has received at least one shot.

My Sales of Six Sunrise Preschools during COVID

Many daycares closed down during COVID, but a chain of daycares that I’m particularly fond of, Sunrise Preschools in the Phoenix metro area, stayed open the entire time.

I sold six Sunrise Preschools during COVID, for a total value of $17,000,000.  In total, my partner Brad Umansky and I have sold 10 Sunrise Preschools since 2018.

Daycares and pre-schools provide an extremely valuable service to working parents like us, which made me feel really good about working on these properties.  If you have a commercial property, daycare, or otherwise, that you’d like me to provide a valuation for, please contact me.

Are you eligible for a property tax reduction?

Thank you to Paramount for sponsoring this week’s email and video.

Do you think you’re paying too much in property taxes?  You might be eligible for a reduction.

Paramount fights to reduce your property taxes, and their services don’t cost you anything unless they’re successful, since they’re paid a portion of the amount you save.  They’ve been around since 2008 and have completed over 20,000 appeals, reducing tax assessments by over $1.5 billion dollars in California.

If you think your property might have lost some of its value in the past few years, you could be eligible for a tax reduction.

Hospitality, office, and retail buildings are commonly receiving tax reductions nowadays.
So if you’re interested in lowering your taxes, give Jon Fleming at Paramount a call at (858) 245-0949, or email him at [email protected] and tell him that Mike Lin sent you.

Latest news in the employment market

There’s been a lot of news in the employment sector over the past few weeks.

Around 4 million Americans quit their jobs in April, which is the most in 20 years, and retail was the sector with the most job losses.

One of the effects of so many people leaving their jobs is that the number of available jobs is also at a 20-year high.

In fact, some companies are so desperate to hire workers that they’re offering sign-on bonuses of $500 to $2,000 to employees, which is a practice that’s not very common for retail positions.

A Jersey Mike’s in Santa Cruz is even offering a bonus of $10,000 for an assistant store management position which would pay $18-20 per hour, and a McDonald’s in Florida is even offering people $50 just to come in for an interview; and even then, the manager still says he’s not getting very many applicants.

Small businesses are suffering, as well. A study by the National Federation of Independent Business indicates that 48% of small businesses in the United States can’t fill open positions.

So what is going on here and why is there such a labor shortage? 

Economists & labor experts say that one of the main reasons for the hiring challenges is due to the extremely generous unemployment benefits that many states like California are continuing to payout, even as the economy improves and jobs are plentiful.  Last year, the federal government paid up to $600 per week to people on top of the unemployment benefits they were already receiving.  The amount has since been reduced, but in California, it is still a boost of $467 and that will continue until September.

I feel like as long as governments keep supporting people with additional printed stimulus dollars, a lot of people just won’t feel like going back to work.

I understand the use of stimulus and unemployment benefits in a situation like we had a year ago when everything was shut down, and people couldn’t work.  But the country is practically fully reopened now.  Why is there still a need for governments to boost people’s unemployment pay when there are record numbers of jobs available?

Many states are ending the unemployment boost program this month.  But not California. Does it make sense to offer this kind of incentive to NOT work when there are so many employers looking for workers?  Some states, like Arizona, are actually offering a bonus to people after they complete 10 weeks of work, AND offering free child care.  Isn’t that a better plan than rewarding people to stay at home?

That’s all for this week’s newsletter.  Thanks for reading and I’ll see you next time.