How to Fail as a Slumlord

In his second volume of amusing short stories, Thorbecke tells us about his struggle to make a living during his first years in the USA. After coming to St Petersburg, FL. during the late seventies, to join a small sailboat builder as marketing manager, he and his wife try their luck as owners of rental properties. The properties they buy are of the NO-Money-Down type. They soon find providing rental property to lower income clients can be very rewarding, if not financially so. His stories about their experience with a wide variety of tenants, some smart, some conniving and others funny, are very amusing. After some years of ‘Slum lording’ they finally gave up and started something totally different. He and his wife Lea open a daycare center that prospers into a small private school. The second part of this book should perhaps be called ‘How to Succeed at Running a Private School’. With tongue in cheek Thorbecke relates about their experiences with children, parents and ‘regulating authorities’. Final the final section of this book adds a few additional experiences from additional times in the author's life.