Snookered on financing equipment

By | July 9, 2008

section 179 equipment leasing deductionOk, the title is a little misleading, but I couldn’t come up with anything wittier in regards to what I’m writing about this week. You’ll see what I mean soon enough…

Anyway, the Fletcher clan went on vacation over the 4th of July weekend & my extended family rented one of those huge beach houses in North Carolina’s Outer Banks. There were 16 of us altogether, spread out over 5 individual families (of which my wife and I were one), so we needed a big place with lots of bedrooms.

And let me tell you, this place was HUGE! 10 bedrooms, 5 floors, a movie theater, game room, tiki bar, sports bar, about 10 TV’s, pool, and even an elevator (I’m not kidding, my nieces and nephews thought that was the coolest thing ever.)

Anyway, what does this have to do with equipment financing? Glad you asked. See, I happened to get there first on check-in day, and by luck, happened to catch the owner of the house during the get everything ready walkthrough. I guess I was just lucky that he personally did the walkthrough on ours, because, as it turns out, his company owns seventeen of these places (yea, that’s what I said too!)

So we talked for awhile, and he showed me the new pool table the house had (now you understand the snookered) and in fact, he bought new pool tables for each residence (that’s 17 pool tables, at about $6,000-$7,000 each.) He got a bank loan with a fairly hefty rate (like he usually does when he replaces items in the houses). He had no idea that an equipment finance company like mine even existed. Now, maybe that’s because an equipment finance company like mine doesn’t usually finance pool tables. And that’s true because we don’t finance single pool tables for individuals. But 17 for a company? Yes, that we handle (note for accuracy: not every equipment finance company will do this. Just don’t want to give the wrong impression here.) So he had no idea this option was even available to him.

Suffice to say, I gave him my business card, and will probably be hearing from him in the future, because we can definitely save him money when he wants to upgrade/replace other things. And it really resonated with me that there are so many situations out there that could call for equipment financing, yet oftentimes, the person needing it has no idea of the options available.

And yes, that’s all the work old Fletch did for the week as the rest of the week was spent watching the waves roll in.