All Forum Posts by: Justin Sullivan

@Ryan Stumbo

So it’s actually not as risky as you may think. I am not telling you to jump into an appreciation deal but think about the big markets like New York LA San Fran and Phoenix is now entering that group in my mind. Other markets like sand Diego Miami snd some Texas places also are grouped in this. They don’t really follow the same value line as the rest of the country. While prices are stable everywhere in these markets they’re climbing and while climbing everywhere else in these markets they have dips. They operate on a different grid from

Everywhere else. It’s a ton of investment money and hedge fund money as well. So you just have to view the market different. I like appreciation deals or forced appreciation deals. Right now I’m not ready to lose $800 a month to wait for rents to rise and appreciation to Happen. Some of these guys might be paying cash for the deal so they have soMe where to park their earnings to avoid taxes. So it’s a different level then where we are (I’m assuming by your comments you don’t have millions of money lying around, lol)

@Ryan Stumbo

I just relocated to Phoenix area exactly for real

Estate snd how good this market is. House are appreciating 100,000’s each year. This market is more for short term rentals and appreciation in my opinion. I’m looking to break into development. I have one project in jersey which should be starting within 6 months snd I’m networking and learning the Phoenix market now. I have found a couple deals that would have worked but ultimately I’m looking to build new.

So to answer your question I think it will

Be difficult for you to find good COC long term rentals in this area. But not impossible. If your just looking here for Shots and giggles then I say move on to soMe where else. But if you're able to spend time searching and weather the low

Cash flow snd wait for appreciation then keep looking!!

@Jim K.

I’ve read a ton of these responses but there’s just to many dor me to keep going. From someone who grew up dirt poor being made fun of for not having cable as a kid and going to a high school rated a 1 with a disclaimer, if 0 was an option this school would be that, to hanging on the streets and ending up in prison for 5 years, no I disagree that you have to do bad things in real estate. It’s the exact opposite. steaming from your mother to chase a high is a bad thing, robbing someone for the thrill

Is a bad thing. Offering someone housing for a return of money is not bad at all in my eyes. I’m

Not going to speak about the poster and I’m going to focus on the question and responses the best I can.

Some people are perfectly satisfied with there lives in a class D neighborhood, I know I was when I was there. I was even okay with being in prison and at one point accepted that this was my life. But I changed and wanted more for myself. So I worked to get more. With all the cards stacked against me I climbed out with very few in my corner. Life isn’t easy, your suppose to have problems everyone does. But dwelling on the negative is no good.

I just relocated from New Jersey to Arizona for many reasons. Politics and real estate we’re two of them. I didn’t like the way my state was so I decided to go somewhere else. If someone doesn’t like the investments in there area invest out of state or just move! But action is the key here. Nothing will change inside or around anyone until the few take action. New York is a prime example. Run down in the 80’s then trump snd Hemsley stArt building up. Then a few others start developing. Then they run out of space so they move into Harlem and Chelsea. Now they’ve moved into Brooklyn. But this all

Happened because a few people took the first action.

Don’t blame the black kids or people who don’t want to work or the government or slum lords or bad tenants or shorty contractors and anyone else but yourself for you problems. You can over improve s property. That’s why some markets call for imported finished from Italy snd Europe while others csll for stock cabinets snd a $10 faucet. I bought a property with a $30k rehab. Now around $60k in with another $20 left snd I’m completely happy. I decided to redo everything now so I don’t have to touch it again. And this property is in a class D neighborhood with new everything. We all need to be comfortable with what we do period. Everyone has difference tolerance levels. A rich preppy kid from bel air would never invest in an inner city. But someone who grew up snd knows about it will. There is someone for each thing in this world and we all just gotta get in where we fit in. Snd if you don’t like where you are, then change how you act snd move up

To the next level.

I make good money and between my wife and I we don’t struggle and we’re pretty good. But I just offered 8 hours of work of free Internship to a developer in my area. I want to get to the next level so in order to get there I have to take myself from the “king of the loser” and go back to being a toilet scrubber.

Make a plan know where you want to be in 3,5,10,50 years and just act on it. Once you get where you want your done and you can keep going or stop. But if you don’t know where your going you’re always going to be lost looking around the corner for answers!!

 Well said man!!!!

They're not dogs they're people. It's not just about pay and work. Ease of work organization and many other factors all come into play on a job site. I don't pay my subs for a couple days after they get done working sometimes up to a week and they are fine with that. I also only give a couple consistent work. I think communication and organization on a job site come first. These guys literally just want to work. They aren't office type paperwork type or stand around type of guys. They want to show up to materials on site and just work. Thats is the best way to keep a sub happy. Communication and have everything ready for them. I lost a flooring sub (who was decent wasn't the greatest but still its a contact) because I wasn't organized on a couple jobs and he traveled 1.5 hrs to get to job site and it wasn't ready for flooring. So I def learned my lesson about how to treat a sub. 

Absolutely, Honestly I have walked up on job sites and have collected numbers many of times. Its a constant process to always be looking for crews when you're in this business. I have had people come onto my job site and ask for work, neighbors, and also have people come to my job sites offering to work. I have told my subs go ahead and take the work. My main thing is as a GC or Investor how do you operate. Do you freely give your crews away? I want my subs to make money with me or anyone else. My thing is who would you open them up to or not open them up to? 

Yes this is exactly my point. I am asking for investors and GC's to voice there opinions about their situations separately. An investor can't understand a GC's viewpoint on this situation which is another reason why I added the disclaimer. A GC is different from an investor who manages their own projects or works closely with their GC and subs and has a good relationship. I also feel as though that you don't just give your contacts to just anyone for a number of reasons. Ive worked with some very unreasonable people who held back payments for my subs for some ridiculous reasons. I don't operate like that. I pay my subs and they go back for touch ups if needed on their own. I am not holding back the entire payment for a simple clean up. Also not every investor understands construction. So where they see a major issue its literally an hour long task. So yes you understand the point of the question but probably only because you do contracting work.

So you did exactly what I asked not to do. Instead of answering this in the form of you and your opinions you answered it towards me and guessed what I do. Ive already stated that I've been on both sides of this and I don't care for your opinions of how I do things. I simply want to put this out there to see what everyone else thinks. I've heard people on both sides of this so just collecting more information. No need for validation from you to pat myself on the back. I stand by my decisions and don't care how it makes people feel because I care about my family and myself first, then everyone else. My main reason for posting the disclaimer was so that people didn't bash this post with nonsense guessing what stance I hold. I want this to be a mature debate about a question that I know everyone has different views on which by the responses its clear this is true. Ok now that I've gotten that out of the way...

I am not worried about my subs not squeezing me into their schedule or losing them to someone else, I am also not worried about the competition. My main thing is I kind of find it rude for people to just expect the work done for them that easily. As a GC the competitive edge one holds is having great affordable subs. This will allow them to charge a reasonable price for the job and also have a good mark up for themselves without being to crazy high in price. I've had people come to me as a sub-contractor and give me retail pricing like I am a homeowner before. That isn't going to work. All of the marketing and bookkeeping and sourcing materials and estimation goes into jobs with homeowners but doesn't with a GC. I give my subs a scope and either tell them to give me their labor price or ask them if they can do it for "X" I do understand that the grey area is if I deny I am actively taking money out of their pockets but if I have worked to get them why doesn't said investor just go through me? Knowing that I am a GC why don't they just ask me to give them a quote for said item instead of trying to get my subs information slowly racking up a list of contacts. It starts with a property manager, then a painter, then a plumber and before you know it this one person is completing their jobs with your crew that you spent years to get and its only there 3rd project. 

So you are an architect or in that business. Lets say you have a draftsman whom you pay 1099 who types all your plans up and all you do is give them the details of sizes and stamp it off. Imagine someone came to you and said can I have your draftsman information so I can make my own plans? what would you do? Do you share it with them and cut yourself out of the deal? Or do you respectfully decline. Think of this in terms of some random person or a past client asking you for your contacts, not people of your network with whom you regularly share with. Honestly I wanted to have everyone in our meetup group get together and order bulk materials toilets everything and keep a storage unit so we all worked together and saved money. I am actually cool with sharing I am not cool with giving away. There is a difference.

If someone is going to job sites and googling names and regularly sourcing contacts then I will gladly share some subs because I believe that they will return the favor with me if I ever need it in the future.

Joe thank you. So yes it is very difficult to build up a good group of sub-contractors and a ton of work to weed out all the bad apples. If I've learned anything is to hire slow and fire fast. I have a new crew right now who went to all my job sites trying to work hitting me up daily, its a new guy, and I finally give him a shot on a difficult framing job. Its an opening for a 90 turn stairwell. So he jumps right into it and its wrong, third go round its still wrong but he's there everyday working through it and fixing his mistakes on his dime. He's not getting paid by the day and I already purchased the needed lumber so everything else is on him. This is a guy that I think will work with me for a very long time. Skills and knowledge can be taught but respect loyalty and hard work can't. So now I just told him to let me know his strengths and I'll focus on keeping him doing that stuff over anything else. And now I know to have someone who can read blueprints and has more experience to go over the job on site next time. He's a good framer just doesn't know how to read plans very well. But I got off on that tangent to say that's its a constant battle. All the time and effort that goes into sourcing training and working with subs is very time consuming. I basically just stating other people in general not necessarily a competitor. I am just looking for others thoughts as investors and or contractors. I am also not for or against either side. I feel as though it depends on the relationship I already have with the person as to what is shared. 

So I totally agree that this business is built around relationships. I too, also am a believer in Karma. But at what point is it hindering yourself to continue to help others? So if I came into your town and wanted your contacts you would open your list up and give them to me? I made the example about a mortgage broker a few responses back which relates to this question I posted. I just think this is a business so it needs to be ran like a business. Anything you have that helps to run your business is yours no matter how little or hard you've worked to get it. ( in most cases extremely hard) so why should you me or anyone else who has spent years building out our teams just freely give this information over to someone else just starting out who doesn't want to put the work in to building it their self?

I have had people call me to offer a referral, then turn around and say by the way if you take it I need $5,000. I've also had people charge me to get there architect's contact info. Your getting the referral to save time of weeding out the bad apples so I gladly paid for the architects contact info. It cost a lot of time and money to run through bad people so why should you just freely give all that away. Now don't get me wrong I have people in my phone whom I will give them anything they want and likewise on my side. We call each other regularly and discuss things. But to just freely give your subs info to just anyone I don't agree with. This is a business and things need to be monetized. Same reason so many people charge for mentorships. Its the same thing, they've learned the easy way to do things from years of experience and they will offer it at a cost. In this case the cost to use my subs is my GC mark-up. I feel like people should be more focused on creating value with others and building an organic relationship so that whatever you need will come to you freely since you've already proven yourself worthy.