Episode 47.48 – The Grind

Project Rocky

Seems like what has worked for project 192 will not work for project Rocky. All the responses I got for the home ceased when the price was mentioned and the repairs were realized. It was just a little too much repair for the market I'm going after, even if I'm truly going after handymen. So now I have started doing the rehab.

First on the list is the roof. It'll cost me about $650, labor and materials altogether, for the handyman to patch my roof with new shingles and replaced the damaged wood. What's really neat is that this handyman I found actually accept Square payments. So the for the mean time I could actually afford some of this rehab (with credit cards). Once the roof is done, there is still skirting, stairs, then floors, plumbing and paint. Hopefully there won't be much work needed for electrical.

As I'm still learning, I only have an idea of how much work is needed but not a concrete picture, yet. I'm definitely paying for my lessons with this project, sigh, so painful. As it is currently still mid February I'm hoping that the rehab will be mostly complete by the time late March and April comes around. I would like to hit that sweet spot when people start to get their tax refunds back so I can get a decent down payment for the home.

Game Plan

That's all I really have for the last two weeks. Not a lot of progress but I have a better grasp on what needs to be done versus the first time I attempted this with project 192. A few things I have decided somewhere along the line, is that after this project, 1) I'm going to localize. Well first I'm going to take some time and recuperate a little bit. After that, I have to do a fair amount of research and go back to way early in the game when I was probing around parks, looking to build relationships with park owners.

Localizing will allow me to deal with things faster by being physically closer to my projects. This is a constant lesson that keeps popping up every time I drive to my projects. 2) What I should have done from the beginning is to find a park that needs me and already have supply (abandoned homes) with a park owner that is willing to work with me. This seems to be a prevalent and sustainable model that I keep seeing when listening to others and reading on line.

That said, I wouldn't have known all this a year ago and definitely wouldn't really understand it either, even if I was explaining it to myself. Some things are just meant to be learn through doing. These two lessons alone, localizing and relationships with park owners, will save me so much headaches and heart aches. It's not that I wasn't aware, it was just that the information didn't stick. Now the lessons stay and will persists for some time since they hurt.

Alright folks, that's all I have this time, see you in the next episode. Almost to 52 :)