Archive for the 'Real Estate Lessons' Category

The Decision - First Development

Revised Financial Model
Our last post walked through our revised financial model. In running the numbers, we had a dilemma. The highest priced spec luxury home sold to date on this lake went for $1,700,000. In our latest financial model, we would have over $1.9 million in costs! The model we put together had us selling […]

The Contractor’s Estimate - First Development

Our contractor did a good job pricing this new preliminary design discussed in our last post. He provided us with a 31 page estimate with the detail we needed to fully analyze this pricing. We couldn’t afford to get this wrong and have to go back to the bank a third time.
The Numbers
The contractor’s estimate […]

Conceptual Design - First Development

First Big Problem
When we received the conceptual design layouts, we knew we had a problem. They were all 4,500 SF or greater. If you remember from a previous post, our initial financial model had us developing a 3,200 SF home at $200.00/SF. The smallest conceptual design was 1,300 SF greater than our model. At $200.00/SF, […]

Selecting Your Contractor - First Development

Importance in Selecting a Good Contractor
Selecting the contractor for your real estate development is one of the most important things you will do for each real estate investment you start. The wrong contractor will not only cost you time and money, but also provide such an unlimited amount of aggravation that you will question your […]

Choosing an Architect - First Development

Real Estate Development Tasks
Once we received our commitment letter from the bank, we had three major tasks to accomplish. We ran these tasks in parallel. They were:

Choosing our architect
Choosing our contractor
Picking our building lot

This post addresses how we chose our architect. Investigating all the architects currently working in the lake development we had targeted revealed […]

Getting Real Estate Financing - First Development

I remember when I landed my first job out of college. It was a good job with good pay. I thought I had it made. I was living away from my family in another state. Christmas was coming and I didn’t have any extra money for gifts and I just thought I would go down […]