What an amazing and interesting month (and first quarter) it has been, both in business and in weather! Going from having snow to an 80 degree day is something you won’t find many places around the world. Although this month has been a bit slower for us on the renovation side of things, many other exciting things are happening for us.
On the Flip Side
To kick it off this month with our main attraction; 221 10th St. Wilmette, IL has finished! We have finally completed this amazing renovation that took us just over a year to complete, and what an amazing product it ended up being. We have the property currently listed on the market at $1.25 million and we are getting many showings and great feedback.
A wonderful surprise for us as we wrapped up this project was that the contractors were masters at the finishing details. *Breath of relief* On a $1 Million+ property this is muy importante.
Typically we have found that contractors tend to have the most difficulty on the craftsmanship of the finishes, additionally this phase tends to take them the most time. On top of that, when finishes are done poorly, the punch-list at the end of the project is 100 items long! It was exactly the opposite of normal with the contractor and crew we had this time! They were even more picky than I was! It is no wonder the product turned out so beautifully.
To showcase this renovation and help our fellow investors, we hosted a live case study. During the case study we let everyone tour this massive beautiful home and we had a short presentation to discuss this projects details and most importantly the things we learned from this project.
To find out about our upcoming Case Studies you can subscribe to our event notifications here.
Another major win for our team was getting one of our other high end renovation sold in Barrington Hills! In our February month in review, we had mentioned that it was under contract to sell and this month it officially closed. This property was another $1 Million+ renovation in the books and we are happy to have it SOLD.
However it did sit on the market awhile and we have some take-aways regarding that. The issue that we had in selling the home can be summed up to two factors;
1.) The curb appeal of the home was lacking. We had decided that we would keep the existing siding on the home and update the color scheme which did not appeal to most of the buyers.
2.) When we purchased the home, there were very few properties on the market in the area. When we listed the property, the market had been flooded with homes and there were around 20 other listings in this area where every property has 5 acres of land.
All in all, the lessons to be learned with this property was that the lack of stunning curb appeal cannot always be outweighed by an amazing interior and when investing in areas where there are very few properties in a 1 mile radius, be aware that sales could be much more difficult than you think!
Back to Basics
While completing the final things needed to wrap these two big properties up, we spent quite a bit of time this month re-focusing on our investor relationships and networking.
We realized more than ever how important it is to continue to keep attention on your relationships, particularly with those on your power team.
As you all know, your goals continually evolve while you and your business grow, and so do the goals of those other professionals you work with. So, it is important to realize that your relationships should also evolve and to recognize when a relationship is no longer creating mutual growth. Perhaps an issue can be resolved but you may need to find another professional to continue to move forward with! And that is truly okay.
Our overall realization around this was, the game doesn’t really change when you’re an experienced investor. To keep growing your business you must grow your network and build new relationships as a seasoned investor just like you did when you first started and went to a thousand networking events!
>> Meet new people and don’t lose your creativeness once you’ve found a strategy that works, because the market is always changing.
You may already know that we run the Chicagoland Real Estate Connections Club but we also made an effort to get out to other groups this month and we even spent an evening out playing CASHFLOW 101. It was fun and truly enlightening.
Speaking of Relationships:
We had an awesome REIA this month discussing how to start using Tax Laws/Incentives as part of your strategy. If this isn’t something you’ve thought about before I challenge you to have a look.
Once taxes become part of your overall investment plan instead of something you need to protect yourself from every year you start to set yourself up to really win. You may be able to avoid paying a small fortune in taxes by making just a few small tweaks to your strategy.
On top of the great content provided by Erica Bartz, we had a great audience. The club goers this month asked phenomenal questions and stuck around to make new connections.
Quality Control
During March with fewer projects under-construction, we put more time into something which is easily forgotten; the quality control of your business.
We let our inner OCD take over and began to analyze what we had done in the past, what results we received from those actions, and how to better move forward to get an even better result on the next quarter.
We laid all of this data out and broke it down on spreadsheets which can be a grueling task, but my gosh, it is eye-opening. When you can have an honest look at the inside operations of your own business you open the door for real improvement. You start to see what is actually going on instead of what you think is going on.
As a business owner this can be one of the hardest activities to make time for. The importance of regularly organizing and then evolving based on your findings is often overlooked, and underestimated
If you have questions about tackling this leave us a comment!
BONUS: Market Update
Steve Budzik of iCandy Realty offered up his insight to give you a market update! We are experiencing the exact shifts he’s described and we hope his elaboration helps you adapt to this ever changing real estate market.
That is our full update for this month. If you have any questions on what we discussed, leave a comment below or post your comment to the iCandy Homes LLC facebook page and we’ll answer you as soon as we can!