By Bert Stratton
(Editor’s note: Stratton is the uncle of Jordan Rose and Court Rich.)
CLEVELAND HEIGHTS, Ohio — I wish my father, a landlord, were alive to read the news about the rental boom. He always liked numbers, particularly when they went up.
Reis, a national real estate research firm, reported this month that rents were up 13 percent since 2009, and up a hefty 3.2 percent in the last year.
Before buying apartment buildings in Cleveland, my father sold cosmetics and homemade foot powder. He had a chemistry degree. He was Walter White, minus the homicidal streak. He was also a streetwise realist who, oddly, believed in magic; he thought real estate would always go up. He once told me, “There is nothing short of outright speculation that will equal real estate.”
He bought his buildings in the 1960s and ’70s. I operate those buildings still. I have an office in a spare bedroom with three huge file cabinets. A young man recently walked in and said, “You have the whole history of Cleveland real estate right here!”
