All Forum Posts by: Richard W.

Victor - thanks. I found somebody already (NB. additional quotes ranged from $1500 to $3500).

Jonathan - thanks very much, very helpful. As it happens I did end up going to upwork, and quotes there ranged from $1k to $3.5k, so you were right that $4k was high! I'm using the estimator numbers to check all the sub pricing from my GC, i.e. to work out if I need to have him go and get more bids from subs for particular trades (or negotiate his preferred guys down). 

In terms of paying my GC, I'm hoping he'll be okay with 12-13% profit on hard costs (with no additional overhead). I'm told by others this might be on the low side, with some GCs wanting 10% profit and 10% overhead. What would you think is reasonable? We may operate this as a cost-plus contract, trying to lock down as many of the sub's prices upfront, but knowing any justifiable increases will be passed on to me. Would that seem reasonable?

 Taj - thanks very much. I'm already developing in 77003 so somewhat familiar with the Texas Medical Center. I'd not realized just how much it is expected to grow. The only thing that surprised me was that Houston wasn't higher up the list of destinations for travel nurses (according to furnished finder). Being the 4th or 5th biggest metro with a large medical center I'd have expected it to be in the top 10 places in the US. Maybe travel nurses aren't relied upon as much in Houston vs other metros. The list:

According to Furnished Finder, here are the top 50 cities where traveling nurses work.

First, we’ll start with the top 10 cities where travel nurses need housing:

1. San Diego
2. Seattle
3. Denver
4. Phoenix
5. Boston
6. Los Angeles
7. Nashville
8. Atlanta
9. San Francisco
10. Portland

Here are the other most popular travel nurse cities to round out the top 50.

1. Albuquerque
2. Austin
3. Las Vegas
4. Saint Louis
5. New Orleans
6. Tucson
7. Tacoma
8. San Jose
9. Reno
10. Portland
11. San Antonio
12. Miami
13. Charleston
14. Houston
15. Washington
16. Sacramento
17. Orlando
18. Honolulu
19. Tampa
20. Baltimore
21. Charlotte
22. Asheville
23. Chicago
24. Burlington
25. Dallas
26. Oakland
27. Palo Alto
28. Saint Petersburg
29. Colorado Springs
30. Anchorage
31. Fort Myers
32. Santa Rosa
33. Charlottesville
34. New York, NY
35. Scottsdale
36. Fresno
37. Savannah
38. Boise
39. New Haven
40. Jacksonville

 Think this makes a lot of sense. I'll add it to my list and start taking a look.

Bruce - thanks very much, all very helpful info. I wasn't aware of Scottish Rite or the potential casino. It will be very interesting to see if the law can be changed to approve a casino in Dallas!

Weatherford and Ft Worth are both interesting to me. Do you do much work there? I'm particularly interested to know how strict the zoning is there and how competitive finding lots to either build duplex or townhomes is there. I've found Dallas to be far more restrictive than Houston, also with more risk around getting approval for replats in Dallas.

Thanks Bruce. I could see downtown Fort Worth making sense. Visiting professors apparently can be good tenants for MTRs. 

Why do you recommend West Dallas and Weatherford? I know there's lots of new construction in West Dallas, and its clearly central, to that may be enough.

I'm not familiar with Weatherford

I'm a small scale developer of new construction units in Texas (so far duplexes in Dallas and a 5-unit townhome project in Houston). Rather than always sell when complete I'd like to keep some units as MTRs. I like building in areas with greater appreciation potential (hence lower cashflow), and don't want to make the time commitment to manage STRs. Hence MTRs may fit well.

I'd be open to building anywhere in Texas, although Dallas and Houston are obviously easier. Any advice on specific locations and/or a methodology for narrowing down the locations would be much appreciated!

I'm building (as developer, hiring a GC) five townhomes in Houston. Until now I've been building duplexes in Dallas. I have a decent set of cost data from those builds, but all the material and labor cost inflation/volatility of the last two years make it an imperfect calculation for price checking my GC's latest bid for the townhomes. Rather than ask another GC to bid (knowing that I will almost certainly not use them), I'm instead looking to pay for a professional building cost estimator. Two questions:

1) One cost estimator has proposed a $4k fee to do this work. Seems higher than I was expecting. Do people agree?

2) Do you have any recommendations for other cost estimators I could ask?

Thanks in advance for the help

I'm building (as developer, hiring a GC) five townhomes in Houston. Until now I've been building duplexes in Dallas. I have a decent set of cost data from those builds, but all the material and labor cost inflation/volatility of the last two years make it an imperfect calculation for price checking my GC's latest bid for the townhomes. Rather than ask another GC to bid (knowing that I will almost certainly not use them), I'm instead looking to pay for a professional building cost estimator. Two questions:

1) One cost estimator has proposed a $4k fee to do this work. Seems higher than I was expecting. Do people agree?

2) Do you have any recommendations for other cost estimators I could ask?

Thanks in advance for the help