Richard Spinelli on Blogger

Richard Joseph Spinelli’s Blogger pieces are easy to mistake for shorter versions of his Medium essays, but they do a different job. The Medium essays argue for positions; the Blogger notes explain how a thing gets done, and they read like instructions handed to another operator by someone who has just come back from the building.

Notes under a byline

Eight notes appeared between September 7 and September 22, 2026, the shortest at 1,204 words and the longest at 1,432. Each carries his name and Sandhills Real Estate in a byline at the top and moves through four or five headings set in title case. Most begin with a single morning at a single address. A plumber reaches the fourth cellar he has seen on one block and already knows which of two shutoffs works. A heavy overnight rain puts him on a cellar stair with a flashlight at six in the morning. A new hire is given a loop to walk on the first day. On a cold night a boiler begins short cycling and three people have an opinion about its last service but nobody has a record.

The methods they explain form a small working manual:

1. keep a short bench of trades who come to know each building;
2. lease the whole portfolio as one inventory of comparable units;
3. walk every basement on one loop before the first class after a storm;
4. hire people who can learn the portfolio on foot;
5. give a group room to talk during a showing;
6. treat ordinary wear at move out as predictable;
7. write the maintenance history down;
8. judge an old building from its cellar and roof before its apartments.

Where the notes meet the evidence

The notes on storms and buildings sit on well documented ground. The Journal of Light Construction’s session on basement remodels¹ starts every below grade project with moisture, drainage and red flags, the same order his assessment note recommends. After Ida, Gothamist found that thousands of Bronx applicants were denied federal aid², leaving many owners to pay for basement repairs themselves, which is the practical case for the prevention his storm note describes. Speed on the morning after matters as well, since the EPA’s advice on cleaning up mold at home³ is to stop leaks quickly and dry every wet surface completely. The insurance side points the same way: GlobeSt reported multifamily property insurance rates⁴ climbing by as much as 28 percent, a cost that makes prevention look cheaper than a claim.

The hiring note has support too. Summarizing a review of 81 studies, Harvard Business Review reported that prior experience barely predicts how a new hire performs⁵, which fits his habit of hiring for the ability to learn the buildings on foot. The loop he gives a newcomer on the first day is a form of onboarding, and research gathered by SHRM⁶ found that people who go through structured onboarding are far more likely to still be in the job three years later.

The notes also build on one another more openly than the essays do. The record keeping note returns to the hiring note of September 12, arguing that knowledge carried in people’s legs has to be written down before it can be handed on. Read them in sequence, beginning with the bench of trades.

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