Sullivan County projects
I started this business in Sullivan County in 2002 and continue to build in this county to this day. Currently we have quite a bit going, and the county has always been a good source of business for me. Up until Covid, I literally had next to zero competition because the selling price points were just uninteresting to most people - and I use the word ‘uninteresting’ in sort of the English understatement sort of way - there was little to no way to make money on new construction in Sullivan County (SuCo) - the sales prices just did not support them. SuCo had a ceiling of around $425,000, and if you got that you were really doing something right. The real target was low $300’s.
I guess one of the reasons I’ve been able to hang around so long in this risky business is I honed my whole game in one of the most unforgiving business environments a lot of us have/had ever seen. There’s a saying if you can do it in NYC you can do it anywhere, but back in the day, the business environment of SuCo made NYC look like child’s play.
What a business landscape/environment like that means is you have to be creative with your product, you have to very cost-efficient, and you have to be constantly pivoting with your price points and product. I had an ‘advantage’ in this because I showed a lot of homes back in the day (after 2008 with my son in his child’s seat) and I would always invite the clients in my car, and since it’s SuCo, with big distances separating everything, I would get to know the people, but more importantly, I would learn of their changing tastes, their preferences, and other market insights that to a careful listener would be a lot of information to incorporate into my business plan. And I was a careful listener indeed because I frankly couldn’t afford to go out of business because I had so much debt my life would have ruined forever with that big black stain of bankruptcy.
I learned all sorts of stuff - and always had the modesty to immediately incorporate any valuable market insights into my product. And when I say “the modesty”, I just mean I didn’t let ‘my plan’ interfere with ‘the reality’. Many times people are committed to their ‘plan’ and feel insecure about changing it because that would mean they were wrong to some degree in the first place, and somehow being wrong was a ding to their credibility. Me, I was too insecure about too many other business things (ie survival) to worry about ‘being wrong’ about the exact details of my business plan. I never started building log homes, or modular homes, or ‘going green’ or 100 other ‘ideas’ that crossed my desk, but I did constantly refine my product line and product process - so I stayed in my lane, but incorporated as many inputs as I could. Information was everywhere, you just had to be listening, but as importantly, you had to have a business product that was able to be tweaked and refined.
I had that, and was constantly adding to the line up. Farmhouses, then Cottages, Barns, then Moderns, then Mini’s, then different counties. Each insight, expansion, and risk-embracing pivot allowed us a little more diversity, which translates into a little more fortitude and dexterity which translates into a little more chance of survival if you experience an international real estate and financial system collapse when your pants were fully down (2008), 12 long years of a sort of morbid housing market, the Pandemic, the Inflation, The Competition (because of higher price points). I benefited over and over from information and the ability and willingness to pivot.
5 of the 12 homes we got going currently.
Not many people make it an entire lifetime in speculating in real estate without hitting some sort of hurdle that tosses you into bankruptcy at least once - could be something outside your control like 'the economy' or could just be some land investment that didn't pan out. It's the old adage that there are two types of motorcycle riders - those who have crashed, and those that will in the future. On both accounts, (I was an avid and reckless rider when I was young), I have bucked the traditional wisdom. Since my risk-taking is much less these days, and i don't ride motorcycles anymore, looks like I stand half a chance to buck it for good - which is fine with me.