Losing Money to Be a Tycoon

May 31st…

Pei Qian was sitting in Fish-Catching Internet Cafe's Handong University branch when he picked up Little Sun's call.

"Boss Pei, I've found the buildings that you asked for. When were you planning to look at them?"

After some consideration, Pei Qian said, "2 PM. Pick Mr. Liang up from the hotel and then pick me up from the internet cafe. We'll go there together.

"Send me the details of the two neighborhoods as well. I want to read through them."

A month had already passed since Pei Qian moved into his new house.

Over this month, Pei Qian had been very satisfied with the Sloth Apartments' style. Not only could it dissuade potential tenants, but it could also provide the optimum environment for him to live in.

Until now, Pei Qian was still the only one living in Sloth Apartments' first building. There was not a single other tenant.

On one hand, this was because they had not done much publicity for the apartments. On the other hand, they were expensive, and there were many rules. Naturally, even those who stumbled upon the apartments—who were among the minority—lost interest.

All in all, everything was going well so far!

That was why Pei Qian decided that he could more or less continue.

He had not finished spending all the money earned from the box office, but he could do so very quickly by buying buildings. Furthermore, considering that ten percent of the value of his fixed assets will be counted among the System Funds, Pei Qian could peg the limit at sixty or seventy million yuan for the current cycle. He had already spent thirty million yuan before, and that left him with another forty million.

This time, Pei Qian planned to buy two more buildings. He would spend about 35 million yuan and leave the remaining money for renovations. If he fell short, he would add more later on.

He also had to make sure to repeat his successes. For example, these houses would need to have innate flaws as well.

Additionally, he could prioritize odd-shaped apartments.

Renting out regular-shaped apartments that faced north or south would be easy as long as they were nicely renovated. However, odd-shaped apartments often implied an uncomfortable living experience. Space would be wasted, and the price-quality ratio would be poor.

If houses like that were priced slightly higher, nobody would want to rent them.

Tenants would also be prohibited from moving their own furniture into the new buildings. Pei Qian would also keep other successful practices such as maintaining high prices by hiring butlers and cleaners and implementing a minimalistic style throughout all the apartments.

On top of that, Pei Qian would plug some gaps in the old design.

Before this, Pei Qian had bought apartments that had been exquisitely renovated, mainly because he had been in a rush to move in. What's more, he wanted to quickly find out if Sloth Apartments would incur losses or not.

That was why most money for the first building had gone into soft renovations. The apartments all contained huge televisions, high-end furniture, various smart appliances, smart light-adjusting glass, and the like.

Now, Pei Qian was going to buy more worn-down buildings so that he could conduct hard renovations as well. That would allow him to spend even more money, right?

In any case, he would not be the one living in those buildings, and he would probably not be able to rent the apartments out either. It wouldn't be much of a problem even if construction took longer, and the living conditions were worse.

He had to spend the same amount of money anyway. He could either buy an expensive and nicely-renovated building or a cheap and unwanted building before spending the rest of the money on renovations.

Obviously, the latter would result in a lower fixed asset value and thus have less impact on settlement.

Pei Qian would buy two buildings this time. Since he could not put all of his eggs into one basket, he especially requested for Little Sun to look for two buildings of completely different styles from the one in Dawn of Prosperous City.

One was to be a residential-commercial building with relatively fewer households.

The other was to be an old building located in a deserted and faraway city district, where very few tenants would live throughout the year.

All in all, the principle to stick to was to find all means possible to pick up rubbish.

Now, most available properties could be found online. What's more, many middlemen could not wait to steal money from customers' pockets. It was not difficult to find buildings that matched Pei Qian's description. After receiving this task, Little Sun only searched Jingzhou for two days before achieving results.

At the start of the month, Little Sun had been put in charge of ferrying Liang Qingfan around. However, a few days later, Liang Qingfan realized that he would feel better touring Jingzhou at his own time and pace. Thus, Little Sun stopped following him around. Coincidentally, it was then that Pei Qian instructed him to find the buildings.

Until now, Liang Qingfan had been set free to roam Jingzhou for almost a month. Pei Qian felt that it was about time to put him to work now.

After lunch, the waiter kept the cutlery and served him a cup of coffee. Pei Qian sipped his coffee and called Liang Qingfan.

After several rings, Liang Qingfan picked up. "Hello, Boss Pei?"

He sounded a bit nasal as if he had just woken up.

Pei Qian could not help but rejoice. He must have gotten carried away after playing for a month. Why else would he still be sleeping at 12 noon?

Afternoon nap? He could not have taken an afternoon nap at 11 AM.

Good. I admire people who play to their heart's content and take afternoon naps while they aren't working. They are talents who never think much about work!

Pei Qian did not ask any questions for fear that Liang Qingfan would misunderstand him and think that Boss Pei was encouraging him to go back to work.

"I'm thinking about moving Sloth Apartments to the second stage. How are you? Are you ready to start work?"

Liang Qingfan: "Of course!"

Pei Qian was overjoyed. "Good. Get up as soon as you can and have a meal at the hotel. Little Sun will pick you up, and we will look at the new apartments together."

After hanging up, Pei Qian looked into the details of the two buildings that Little Sun selected. Then, he went online to look for more information.

One of them was the Shundong Gardens Residential-Commercial Building. It was located in the city center and was convenient to get to. What's more, it had just been built a while ago. However, since it was a newly-developed residential-commercial building, not many apartments had been sold.

The other was Block 9 of Binhu District. It was built in 2001 in Jingzhou's outskirts. The only thing about it worth mentioning was that there was a park nearby with an average-size man-made lake which one could see from the building. However, the apartments were as oddly-shaped as the 'sun never sets'-type apartments in Dawn of Prosperous City.

The rent for both of those places was significantly lower than luxurious apartments in other parts of the city. Clearly, they were not as popular. In fact, each building was unpopular for different reasons.

Pei Qian was overjoyed. Little Sun was quite dependable!

…

At 2 PM, Pei Qian and Liang Qingfan arrived at Shundong Gardens Residential-Commercial Building first.

The sales consultant was quite passionate, but Pei Qian politely asked him to wait at the entrance.

I have a professional architect with me; why would I need to listen to your lies?

The entire residential-commercial building had eleven stories in total, excluding the commercial first floor. Each story had two lifts and seven apartments, which were 5.5 meters high and 38.5 square meters big. Each square meter cost seven thousand yuan, and so each apartment cost 270 thousand yuan. That meant the entire building would cost more than twenty million yuan.

Once Liang Qingfan saw the room configurations, he immediately understood. "Boss Pei, you want to buy a residential-commercial building?"

Pei Qian nodded. "That's right."

Liang Qingfan didn't say anything more. Since Boss Pei was sure that he wanted to buy a residential-commercial building, he would be familiar with its flaws.

Of course, Pei Qian was familiar with its flaws. However, those formed the reasons why he wanted to buy a residential-commercial building in the first place.

Compared to ordinary residential buildings, he could only hold ownership of residential-commercial buildings for shorter periods. He would also have to pay for utilities, electricity, property management, and carpentry according to commercial standards. That meant living expenses would be higher.

On the whole, there would be high living density in the area, too. The apartments would be small and wouldn't face north or south. It wouldn't be as comfortable.

Pei Qian considered this: although residential-commercial buildings were generally thirty to forty percent cheaper than residential buildings, they had the poor potential to appreciate, higher living expenses, and shorter ownership periods.

Pei Qian would also have to fork out more money to renovate the building. Wouldn't his chances of incurring losses increase?

As for why he wanted to buy a new building…

There were older residential-commercial buildings, but he needed to hire butlers and cleaners for the Sloth Apartments. Moreover, he would have to buy the entire building to start planning that.

For older buildings, he ran the risk of not being able to purchase the entire building because one or two households were unwilling to move out; that was unless the buildings had remained empty for a long time, and the owners were eager to sell them.

Thus, buying a new building would save Pei Qian the trouble. Even if a few apartments had already been sold, Pei Qian could buy them back for a slightly higher price.

Pei Qian looked around. The apartment was squarish and not much different from ordinary lofts. The first floor contained a living room, a dining room, and a kitchen. However, there was no gas stove. Tenants would only be able to depend on an oven, a microwave oven, and an electric stove.

Pei Qian nodded quietly. Yes, this was quite satisfying.

The second floor was quite simple as well—it was just a bedroom.

Pei Qian scanned his surroundings and discovered that the living conditions were not bad. However, it was quite small.

That meant that, if he stuck to the extremely minimalistic style of renovations, the house would not be able to contain much else. Tenants would not have a good experience living here in reality.

In addition, the rent would be high because of the building manager, cleaners, and utilities. Thus, Pei Qian was confident that pretentious, cultured youths would not be able to bear renting an apartment.

After making one round around the apartment, Pei Qian felt satisfied. He faced Liang Qingfan and asked, "Mr. Liang, do you think this price is appropriate?"

Liang Qingfan pondered for a moment and said, "It's quite high, but it's acceptable. Still, the biggest problem is—"

Pei Qian did not wait for Liang Qingfan to finish speaking. Instead, he turned to Little Sun and said, "Alright, buy it. Notify Assistant Xin, and then we'll go and look at the next building."

Liang Qingfan: "…"

The middleman had not followed the group in but had been waiting at the entrance the entire time. When he saw Pei Qian starting to leave after making one round, he quickly moved forward. "Sir, if you're not happy with this apartment, there are others to consider—"

Without stopping, Pei Qian said, "I'll buy this building. Someone will come by in the afternoon to sign the contract."

Liang Qingfan followed behind Pei Qian, swallowing his reminder to Boss Pei about the flaws of such an apartment.

The middleman watched as the three men left and blinked in disbelief. At that moment, he had no idea how to react.

Buy? The entire building?

Is he playing a prank on me?

…

After leaving Shundong Gardens, Pei Qian and Liang Qingfan arrived at the second location—Block 9 of Binhu District. Since it was located on the outskirts, it had taken forty minutes for them to get there.

There was a park near Binhu District, and there was a man-made lake in that park. Upstairs, one could enjoy the view of the park. The higher up one was, the better the view.

There were eight stories in Block 9, with one lift and two apartments on each story. Blocks 8 and 9 were side-by-side, each having a semi-circular column sticking out and facing the park and man-made lake.

Each apartment was sixty square meters large, with two bedrooms and a living room. It was going for eight thousand yuan per square meter, which added up to five hundred thousand yuan per apartment. Since the entire building had eight levels, it cost about eight million yuan in total.

That was obviously lower than the average price of property in Jingzhou City. On one hand, it was because it was located on the outskirts. On the other hand, it was because it had remained empty for a few years; no one had even wanted to rent an apartment. Naturally, the price had been declining for years.

The middleman led Pei Qian and the others to the top of Block 9. Directly in front of them was an arc French window that offered a 180-degree view of the outside. One could see everything with a single glance.

Pei Qian frowned. He wanted to back out immediately. However, when he saw Liang Qingfan frown as well, he changed his mind.

"Is there a problem with this house?" Pei Qian asked.

Looking disgusted, Liang Qingfan answered, "Of course! Why else would the building still be empty now?

"The entrance and aisle are only 70 cm wide. That's so narrow—transporting any furniture inside would be extremely difficult. What's more, this building was built ten years ago. The waterproof layer is damaged, and the ceiling is full of mildew. You can even see watermarks at the corners of the wall. If you want people to live here, we would have to redo everything.

"The kitchen is located in a small corner in the living room, and the bathroom is very small. Living here would be very inconvenient.

"What's more, this arc French window has the same problem as the one at Dawn of Prosperous City. The arc is irregular, and the space can't be maximized.

"Still, the apartments at Dawn of Prosperous City were big, and so it didn't feel that bad. This apartment is much smaller. If we can't maximize the use of this space, living here would be much worse than living in Dawn of Prosperous City.

"On top of that, the structure of the apartments seems problematic. There's a reason why they're so cheap. If ordinary designers and renovation companies wanted to, they could have easily bought the apartments and renovated them.

"However, no one wants to stay here or renovate the place. That means it would probably be very difficult to modify these apartments, so that even ordinary renovation companies don't want to try!

"All in all, the structure of the apartments wouldn't allow for large-scale modifications. Either that, or it would be extremely difficult.

"Scarce landscapes only have value in the luxury housing market, but it's completely worthless in the general housing market. Not only would it have no premium, but it may even be the cause for lowering the price."

Pei Qian nodded. "I understand. Little Sun, I'll buy this building and the adjacent Block 8 as well."

Liang Qingfan: "?"

Did Boss Pei not listen to a single word I said?

It was fine if he wanted to buy one building, but he was buying two buildings at one go. That was 16 million yuan in a single breath!

If Liang Qingfan had found the previous residential-commercial building barely acceptable, this one was completely unacceptable. He had to try dissuading Boss Pei!

"Boss Pei, I already said that it would be extremely difficult to modify this building. We don't even know if we can make modifications to begin with…"

Pei Qian smiled and patted him on the arm. "That allows us to judge the designer's standard better, right?"