Developing real estate @ Wursten & Co.
Massachusetts
Joined June 2012
- Tweets1.3K
- Following440
- Followers706
- Likes8.4K
If a contractor asks you any of these questions, they are deciding how much to charge you.
Is that your car?
So, what do you do for work?
Where are you from?
The obvious one: What's your budget?
At some point you realize that the guy with the good restaurant on your street has a higher net worth than the one with a fancy LinkedIn.
Witnessed an amusing and symbolic moment between real estate developers in Boston today.
Blue developer: "We use this upcycled rice husk siding. It costs a bit more but it's way better for the environment. No hardcore petroleum derivatives in it."
Red developer: "Okay nice."
Red developer: "I like the phone booths. We used to do but the costs got ridiculous. Started at $4k, now we can't get them installed for less than $10k."
ran into a "socially oriented" real estate developer who "never evicts" at a mixer last night in Boston.
I asked him how he manages that, thinking he has either invented the world's best tenant screening or subsidizes his tenants with family wealth.
The answer: "I don't rent to people, only businesses."
That's one way to never suffer an eviction.
Dear Massachusetts, tenant "protections" incentivize this behavior. This developer may sound silly, but he's completely rational and not alone.
I got four bids for an apartment turnover in Massachusetts. Paint, new flooring, new bathroom vanity, replace doors, etc. The figures are labor only, same scope for each.
$17,500 (very high)
$14,000 (very high)
$5,000–7,000 (reasonable)
$4,000 (good)
More below.
Salespeople are about to get rich in the AI economy.
Software development costs are collapsing. The budget that used to go to engineering headcount is being reallocated to two things: usage credits (rapidly commoditizing — see OpenAI dropping prices) and go-to-market.
When you can build software for almost nothing, the economics flip. You can afford to pay sales 50% commission and still win.
The scarce resource is no longer the ability to build. It's the ability to sell. Relationships are everything. The age of the nerd is coming to a close.
This building was headed for condemnation. I brought it back. Under the Massachusetts rent control plan clearing hurdles for the November ballot, it would have been a loss of time and capital. The path to lower rent is removing barriers to supply.
open.substack.com/pub/calebw…
How to not get ripped off by contractors:
Tell them you got a bid 40% cheaper. Ask why theirs is so much higher. Be friendly, say you want to work with them, but the numbers don't make sense. I saved $1,000 on a boiler repair by doing this today.