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The Real Estate Addicts (REA) podcast is a must-listen for anyone interested in real estate development, investment, construction and entrepreneurship. Each episode dives into a wide range of industry topics and features conversations with savvy, successful entrepreneurs who candidly share their career paths, challenges, breakthroughs, and the stories behind the remarkable companies they’ve built. Expect big personalities, thoughtful insights, and conversations that both educate and inspire.
Co-hosted by Ray Hurteau, Dan Rubin (Instagram: @rhinvestgroup), and Marc Savatsky (Instagram: @choose_boston)
Follow the Real Estate Addicts Podcast on YouTube: @RealEstateAddicts
00:08
Yeah, don't yank on it too much. It's got a good counterbalance. It's got a good arm over there. Don't yank on it too hard. You can't control certain things. Welcome. Welcome to the Real Estate Ones podcast with your host Dan Rubin, R.H. Investment Group. Ray Hurteau, R.H. Investment Group. Marc Savatsky, Choose Boston. And on today's episode, we're talking about. think Mark was talking about a little bit about Circle Waste, the company that he, oh boy. What are you doing now? Unplugged it.
00:38
I don't know, I'll plug back in. You're You're good. Okay. Mark, we're trying to pump up your business here. Sorry, Dan, I interrupted Dan. No, we were, I was asking you questions about, because I'm trying to swap a dumpster. I'm having issues because of, you know, how limited the trucks are. Well, to be fair, we're in a very tight spot and they need a small truck to do the swap. Yeah. And they only have two of them.
01:02
And so I've been waiting, I've been waiting a couple of days and I'm getting annoyed and Mark was like, well, you should have called circle waste. would have done it. then, I mean, here's my pitch in broad terms. And really the reason I invested in this business. It's like, as a builder, we have in the city, we have very scarce real estate curbside, and we've got a lot of competing demands for it. We have deliveries, we have guys who are trying to park and unload their tools. um
01:29
You know, you could keep going. And the point is like, if you park a 30 yard container there, like you're not taking your grand Cherokee and moving that forwards or back. Like it's just clogging your site. And then to make matters worse, guys aren't cleaning to it daily. So it just, it becomes a mess. it's like, the pitch is quite simple. Like, Hey, how about you like leave that clear for a couple hours on a given day. I will come park there. And the two, the driver and the guy next to him will clean your whole site and fill up that thing and then leave. And you can take a
01:59
drywall delivery there tomorrow. The problem that I've run into in the past, and I'm not knocking that, because we've used that service to clean out buildings that we've been working on, and it works great. The problem that we've had in the past is that we have more than, typically have more than like 10 yards or 15 yards worth of shit, and we need a 30 yard dumpster. So what I rather do, or what I've done in the past is I get the 30 yard dumpster, and then I just hire a couple laborers to come in every couple weeks or every two weeks.
02:28
throw everything in there. like, I guess what's the premium on what your service is versus what I just said. I'll bet, you know, I could tell you real numbers. So one, have a 17 yard dumpster on the back of our That's pretty big. 1-800-GOT-JONK, those are typically more like 12 yards. Yeah. So we've got a pretty big one. And then we just ordered a 22 yard dumpster, which has taller walls. So we can also do that. My concern with that, frankly, is that the market, everyone thinks of these live load cleanouts as half a truck, full truck, or two thirds of truck.
02:57
and they just have numbers in their head. And it's like, listen, a full truck at 12 yards is very different than me taking 22. And I'm just concerned that consumers aren't gonna get that. That's fair. Do you do like upfront pricing when estimating what it is? Yeah. And are there certain things, like I assume you can't just have a pile of TVs, not that anybody does, but you if you have like a bunch of stuff that is gonna be extra to dispose of versus just construction. Like mattresses is a classic example. Like are you focused more on the construction side where you're not gonna run into that or?
03:26
the other side or both. Like residential or? Our website was built for residential. We've been really pushing hard on like Google reviews and building our presence there. Like fucking Sally is not calling to clean out the cellar. All of our business is construction related. It's the exact setup that I just had and I'm surprised by it. I thought it Well, I think you, to your point, going back to what you said, I think the big boys like 1-800-GOD-JUNK and stuff, they kind of have that residential market kind of.
03:56
I guess they have such high marketing budgets and recognition and name recognition like you know, I think our t-shirts and sweatshirts I have you wait there's their sexy. Yeah, know they're sexy I know but I don't know if Susie grandma is gonna be calling you because they're sexy. I know I'm actually thinking I am making circa trucks to scale so like think of a hes truck for Christmas when you're a kid or Hanukkah and
04:23
These will be circuit trucks. it. Yeah. If we go to Dan's house and we see you've got like an eight year old, I'm going to be like, here's a circuit truck. Well, that's smart. Cause A, kids will love watching that. know my kids would and getting a toy. God. You're going to win over the heart. You you should do during the holidays? Just bring them to the schools and give them out to all the kids. We'll give you a hack right now. Look up touch a truck events and go to all of them. Oh, that's a great. Yeah.
04:49
You know, and it's almost like when the fire truck drives around the block and the kids come out like should just like blare the horn on the dump truck. It's just because they're just going to be, it's going to be sitting in the person's like play room or living room or whatever. They're going to see it every day. mean, the secondary reason I bought a demo company is because my nephews, I'm going to be the coolest. I'm going to be the coolest. I started it. Yeah. I bought a dump truck and now I just bought a mini excavator. Nice.
05:17
My father-in-law is picking it up from Secaucus, New Jersey on Friday, and he's going to bring it to Connecticut, and then I'm going to drive it the rest of the way. With my truck. With Dan's truck. Yeah. Thank you for that. I appreciate that. No problem. So what's crazy is that the- You just put our company name on the side of the excavator as the sponsor. I'm I can do that. Yeah, yeah. No, but the excavator costs about as much as the trailer for it. Really? Yeah. Yeah, yeah. I'm shocked. A Mini-X costs like-
05:47
What I'm buying for is a mini X like how much like I guess I don't know the different sizes of action like my flatbed Okay, so it's eight and a half feet long. It's only three feet wide. Oh, oh, so it is it's pretty many Yeah, you got these are the joysticks here It's got a pretty good articulating like long reach and it's got a claw and the claw feature is really what I like about it to grappling thumb and the idea is like we just did a clean out where like they did a pop top and the roofers just like
06:15
through the garbage, all the framing, all the asphalt shingles, all over the backyard. And the cleanup took freaking forever. ah You know, whereas if I had this three foot machine, could just crawl, you can imagine, just like take a handful truck, move truck. And then the other thing that I just bought, which I think is dope is like, it's a stair climber. So think of like, it's got two rubber treads that move independently. So you hit the landing on the stair.
06:41
Oh, and in the meantime, it's like a dolly, right? is for the excavator? Yeah. No, no, this is separate. This is separate piece of machinery. This is for moving heavy stuff up and downstairs? Yeah, namely like a trash, a 44-dally trash can full of construction debris. Those things look sick. Or around the backyard. Yeah, so I'll report back. But it comes with a lithium battery, gives you three hours of life. And for $95, I got a second one. So they'll have six hours of battery on the truck at any given time.
07:07
Interesting. And I think that that's gonna be a huge labor savings. Is that mini excavator, like the ones you see that are digging out basements when you're- Yeah. it's like, does yours, do the treads go in and out? Cause I've seen them, some of like the guys like Vinny or McGew, they have them like when you, when I brought them in, they had to like come into our little commercial space and they can only fit through like a three foot, a 36 inch wide door. It would like, it would like get narrower and then they would widen them out.
07:36
But does this one is not but they also make ones that are like almost drones like yeah, no control now Yeah, so I think that all that stuff is cool. We were talking about like what's coming next for For demolition stuff and I was suggesting that like the axial skeleton stuff where like, know Strong you wear this thing that senses that you see like military guys. Yeah, think that's gonna within
08:01
few years. Augmented like strength or augmented body. Like an exoskeleton. I saw someone wearing it on a hike through like California in the hills and her review of it was basically like, no, it I mean, the end game when it comes to that stuff is just having robots do it all. I know, totally. You don't need humans anymore. the interim, but yes, you're right. Like that's kind of the end game, right? Didn't Elon Musk? labor. Didn't Elon say that that's gonna be what happens in the next five to 10 years is the robotics is just going to completely...
08:30
Explode and and people will be just as shocked with its adoption rate as they are with AI Well, I think I think the first the reason why robotics hasn't uh Exploded was because we were waiting for AI because you need the brains Before you know you can build the the body, right? But if you don't have the brains to operate the body and so now the is very far ahead of us I love you. So like Trump got to China. This was months ago, but they had like
08:59
an army of dancing robots doing backflips and karate and just like, holy shit. Well, BYD is the largest electric vehicle auto manufacturer out there. And people were saying if they bring their $20,000 EVs over here, they're going to decimate the auto industry. Oh, I've seen like reviews of some of their, their cars over there. It's wild. Like you're getting, you're getting like Mercedes AMG style, like
09:27
uh, finishes and, like electronics and all that for a fraction of the price. Um, so wait, one more. I was going to say more tools you think you're going to like, this is the start of it. So where's your construction yard? Oh, yeah. It's a good question. I have a warehouse at the moment in South Boston, but that's a new project. So it's going to come down and I'm going to have to figure that out. But, um, like what we're really trying to is optimize for labor.
09:56
Like that's a big cost. And one of the challenges we're having is we've got a driver and a guy next to him and the tipping, the transfer stations where we bring all the trash, you show up and there's 18 trucks in front of you. It takes three hours to get to the front of the line and actually dump. And all the while, it's not like, you your guys are clocking out and saying, you don't need to pay me between 12 and three. Yeah. Screws up your whole schedule. The pricing also has exploded and like.
10:22
We're getting emails all the time from demo companies or disposal companies with fuel surcharges because of energy costs and gas prices and all that stuff. So it's just like, I don't know. Well, again, the underlying issue there is supply demand. There's a ton of demand, trash has to go somewhere. Nobody's arguing that it should be broken down, recycled, separated, all that. But there's limited places here and not for nothing, because I used to be like an outdoors guy and I still enjoy it.
10:50
The real tree huggers are like, no, don't put anything else here. And you gotta, you know, just don't have They've been closing transfer stations in Massachusetts like crazy. also reached their limit. They can just close randomly throughout the day. Cause they're all permitted to have a certain number of tons of waste. So that's, that's a thing. So you have to drive further to dispose of stuff. It's just, it's it's kind of a trickle down. How many are there in Eastern Mass? Like if you're in the greater Boston area, it? 20 to 30, easy. Okay.
11:17
There's a ton of demand that I thought the number was going to be like five. No, there's, there's, there's a pretty big list. Okay. Um, and the, and the prices range, you know, you can drive to high park and it's way less to dump there than it is in Roxbury. It's easy to get from Southie to Roxbury, but so you always have to like trade off windshield time versus your tipping fees. Um, so learning a lot about the business is interesting, but my goal really is to get a couple more containers and have these labor saving features.
11:46
such that one guy can do the cleaning and the other guy can keep moving the truck. So put the can down, let one guy stay there with the crawler, with the mini-X, and the other guy can go and take the full can to Hyde Park and back. And, you know, it's really a logistics business. That's, that's much, yes, I agree with you. It's got to be challenging. It's all about scheduling, logistics. But you can't control like where the jobs will be. That's the other thing too. No, no. So you could be over here one day and yeah.
12:14
How are you? Well, you can't control the jobs are you can't control how long he's going to be sitting at the transfer stations. Like there's a lot of things out of your control, but you try. mean, you try the things that we're thinking about right now is there's a few that are open 24 seven. So we're wondering if we want transfer stations. Yeah. No shit. Really? If we want to bring on somebody like overnight and like maybe we've got four or five cans and we just stage them somewhere. was going to say, yeah. Overnight guy. Like your job isn't to fill them. It's just to go one at a time.
12:42
and dump them and pick it up and dump it and pick it up. And then the trucks gassed up in there in the morning for the, like the crew. So we're thinking about that. We're thinking about bagsters. If you've seen those. Yeah. You put all the trash in a bag. I think of like the, the non-disposable grocery bag, like 150 times as large and you can put construction debris in it. we're thinking about, so you drop it off on site and it's way low impact. me when it's ready. And then I can come with like the mini ax and just put it in our truck.
13:11
And that's a thought that we have. My concern with that is that having filled those before, like it's great if you're doing a bathroom renovation, but like a full-scale construction. It's going to make it down. It's like 1.5 tons. It's not big yards rather. The other thing that we've had issues with in the past is like, especially in the city is like illegal dumping. You know, we just finished a project in Dorchester and we, had, I actually took a guy to court.
13:40
Oh yeah, this was really interesting. I won, like he actually, I made him pay. to pay. I made him pay for half of the disposal fees for the dumpster. Well, judge did it, right? The judge made him do it. There was restitution. You filed like a civil action? It was originally a Boston police report. Yeah, I filed a police report. then, so we did a project in Dorchester. We had a three family building that we've owned since 2012 that we converted to condos. we had cameras everywhere. And this guy,
14:09
literally backed up like a gigantic truck and then we caught the plate and then the DOT. It took us a couple tries. took us a couple tries. The images were a little blurry. But we found it. We found him and then I filed a police report in Dorchester and a detective called me like a couple weeks later. That's insane. And he was like, do you want to like pursue this? And I was like, yes. Yeah. And then he called me he was like, show up to...
14:35
on this date and I was like, uh, okay. So I showed up to Dorchester District Court, me and the guy and the detective were sitting in front of the magistrate and he tried like arguing that it wasn't him. He was like... Under oath? Yes, under oath. Well, first he was like, oh, my friend told me it was okay for me to dump in there. And then he's like, it wasn't me. I was like, who's your friend? I was like, what are you talking about? And so I showed the video of the guy literally spending a...
15:04
an and a half. It was probably 20 yards and we had just gotten a fresh can. A 30 yard dumpster. I'd be furious. So the magistrate was like, what do you want? And I was like, I want to pay for half of my dump fees for this dumpster because he filled half of my dumpster. She said the whole dumpster. Yeah, but well, she saw that it was not. So it was funny. He was like, I can give you the money now. I was like, okay. So me and him, after we got out of court, walked down to Western Union, gave me a money order, done.
15:32
There's a little more to the story. Like you initially called him and it was a little tense when, we somehow found his number. Yeah, I called him. But he was like, kind of being an asshole. He was an asshole to me. I called him and I said, listen, I was like, I'm going to give you the benefit of the doubt. I have your, I have you on video dumping into my dumpster. said, you have two choices. You can either come get your shit out of my dumpster or I'm going to file a police report. And then he got mad at me and hung up on me. And I was like, okay, I'm going file a police report.
16:01
Fuck them. Wow. got I got ticketed every day for about two weeks because our job we didn't have room for a dumpster and we had like a small front yard and it was just framing stuff. It's not like I was putting out like chicken bones and like half-eaten steaks for the rats to come over but like sanitation like got phone calls and just made it their thing. and... But you're taking away the trash. I don't get it. Why are they... This was on my own job and it was before I had Circa.
16:30
And we would just stage it there. We would basically take all the framing Oh, you would dump it all there and then live that. You were doing live loads, but you would pile it up in the front. In the front, and then live load it out. And they didn't like that. I was like, all right, I can't win here. It's so difficult to do with such tight spaces in the city. Yeah, to their credit, they were cool. I got in touch with them. I explained the situation. They're like, all right, you gotta stop doing it.
16:55
and we'll forgive the like 16 tickets we fished. Well, that's nice if Send us pictures, show us the dumpster, you know, the permit, the indices. That's Yeah. Cool. Yeah. So speaking of that project, we finished it. We just finally sold out of it. Yep. So closing the last unit a couple weeks ago. May of 26. Three units. was a three family we bought in 2012. was our first rental. the first building Ray and I bought together as partners.
17:23
So Mark, it's ticked off a bunch. business partners, partners. Partners, Yeah, we talked about that. Wow. I just completely screwed up your train of thought. I'm sorry about that. You guys, did well on the exit. We were chatting before, and I was suggesting that I think it's a function of two things. One is benefit of 2012 to 2026. So you've had a lot of appreciation over those years. And then the improvements you made to the property, including the most recent.
17:50
Like it's interesting, everyone always says when they do apartments, like I'm gonna do them to condo quality and I'll one day condo them and no one ever does, but like interesting move and- Yeah, I mean, I think it goes to show that real estate's a long game, You you gotta, you're not gonna get rich immediately, right? You gotta invest, spend time and eventually you realize the gains. I think this is a perfect example of that, right? You know, when we cash flowed,
18:19
We did well with renting it out over a decade and made money cash flowing it and renting it out, but we didn't really spend much money when we bought it, right? We inherited a hoarder on the first floor. Yeah, three stories, first floor was this like- We got the demo disposal, we do hoards. Dude, would have, yeah, we would have hired you and you would have been filling your truck up six We got rid of them. So that was the only unit that we spent.
18:46
good amount of money on the other units was kind of just like fluffing They weren't good for the time. were like 90s reno's. not bad. They were 90s reno's and we didn't Yeah, 90s reno's in like early 2010. But we hadn't really spent any money since. the reason, the impetus for condoing it was about a year and a half ago-ish, we had some turnover and Ray and I were having discussions. were like, the building's getting really tired.
19:15
the units, need to spend some money there. And it's like, we could spend this chunk of money and we're already kind of capped at the rents we're getting. So the return on the money we would invest to improve the units, we weren't gonna make that back. And so we were like, I think, and then we were looking- did it out. Like you could, say you get another generous, being generous, another 500 a unit, right?
19:41
You're talking about a $300,000 renovation. This is not an insignificant amount of money. Kitchens, baths, heat pumps, we had a laundry. We did a decent amount of When you do it over $1,500 a month for, and that's being generous again, I think we did it out. We said it was like a 30-year ROI. It just made no sense. worse. And we had so much equity locked up in the building that we bought in 2012. It's like we had the mortgage on it was so low.
20:10
Yeah. And I'm sure I'm having the same quandary right now because I have two single families side by side and I actually just got approvals to convert them each to two families. um Did you confirm occupancy? Cause weren't they originally threes or something? Yeah, this was a crazy That's an interesting side story too. I actually have a hearing on Wednesday. Oh yeah. Cause your neighbor appealed your ZBA decision. Oh boy. um
20:37
All right, we'll our fingers crossed for you. Yeah, we'll keep our fingers Yeah, we'll talk about it after. I feel good about it. But yeah, I mean, it's it's hard because you've owned those for a while, right? Yeah. So it's like, you're going to be dumping a good amount of money in. And the other thing is like, it's all long-term capital gains. I know, I'm emotionally tied to these. And I think that like, they're just like, my, like, almost like a baby blanket. Like if everything else goes wrong in the world, like I still have these two.
21:04
And they put off enough to that I could eat, you know? There you don't want to get rid of them. We were kind of in the same boat. They were our first ones. So of course there's that emotion of it, but I don't think we were that emotionally connected to them. It was more just, we got a check every month, which came from the excess rent. And it was like, well, I guess it's time to just give that up. again, for the amount of money that we need to spend, we did it out. Like, wait, right? Like the amount of money we made on it.
21:34
the amount of money we were cash flowing, it would have taken 20 years to get that money. And like, what can you do? That's like time value money. What can you do with that chunk of money now over the 20 years, right? Like how much can I leverage that money or invest, reinvest it and things like that. I mean, that's rational. That's, that's real. Yeah. Here's a fun tidbit, you know, that apartments or condominiums, those two words do not appear in the building code. people always.
22:03
ask like, what's the process like, what do I need to be cognizant of? It's like the building code doesn't treat apartments any different than does condominiums. In fact, it's completely like neutral and doesn't speak to it at all. number of units. Yeah. Condos are just like a construct of chapter, whatever condo conversion law in Massachusetts. So, uh, you know, master deed declaration of trust trigger stamp and a
22:27
You record it. Now you own a condo instead of an apartment. It's all, it's all based on like a number of units, right? It's so, it starts to get you is when you have, when you go into in Boston, small projects review will trigger like you to make a declaration. Like these are for rent or for sale. And then if you want to change that, then you would have to do like a notification of project change and ask for it. But, um, short of that, you could finish the project in any time. You know, now that being said,
22:56
there's new laws about condo conversions and offering it to your tenants first, including in Boston now. Somerville has always had that. Oh, Somerville was a nice actually, believe it's a statewide ordinance or a statewide law. And then there might be some city or town ordinances. No, Boston implemented, think it's own on top of the state. Yeah. Yeah. It's hard. It's at what four units and above, right? I should have researched it before. The next,
23:26
We can talk about condo convergence on the next one. Yeah, we could do that definitely. And, you know, I think it's an awesome play that you guys, congrats on the success of LedZit. Thank you. Just like, cool that you cashflowed for that long. The tax benefits over time, the depreciation you realized from it. Well, I think we'll save that for next year because we haven't done the tax analysis on it yet or the filing. Or where like the depreciation recapture. I have no idea. It's actually, I think it's the first time we've sold.
23:54
like a rental going back and recapturing it maybe. No one ever recaptures. You just buy something else with it. I know, right? Well, we're not 1031. I don't think you could, we might have actually been able to 1031 this because all the sales were so close, but I'm just- Let me give you one other quick one. Yeah. Someone said this to me recently. It's like, today we are too focused on making the perfect decision. And really what we're not factoring in is the value of our time. Right. So it's like, you can shop
24:21
forever to find the absolute cheapest commodity to buy for five cents less. But like, how long did it take you to find that and get it? And the same goes for like the perfect decision in real estate. It's like, God, if you're making money, you're not losing money. Like, I'm sorry you didn't 1031 it or somehow like this LLC bought that LLC. And then you woke up and it's like fucking. It's like you can second gets yourself to fucking oblivion. it's just like, you'll just your mind will be rattled. It's not it's not worth it. Yeah. And frankly, you'll never buy anything.
24:49
You'll just paralyze yourself. You won't transact and you won't make money. So your point, if you're making money in real estate, you're fine. You've made a good decision, right? Regardless, you know? So I think with this one, time obviously helps with the deal and having the idea of having an exit strategy and not just saying this is gonna, you could also go down the road and say like, I wanna keep this in the family. We're gonna.
25:17
put it in a trust and then when we die, it goes to the next kids, you get the step up basis. You shouldn't, I forget who told us this, but you shouldn't let tax determine your economic decisions, because that's just a part of it. Hey, did I tell you guys I was doing one last thing? Did I tell you I bought, I finally subscribed to Claude? I got a little AI band. Congratulations, Ray. So you've made it. I know, I know, you're so proud of Boo AI. So I used Claude to calculate it like a rough IRR on this because, you know, there was,
25:46
I don't want say there was no cash flow, but it was below where we were hoping it would be. It's the drum roll. And with the big nut at the end, we were somewhere in like the 30s. I want to the low 30s, which is crazy, but it's tough because when we first bought it, we obviously had like a good amount down, but most of that got returned through all the cash flows over the year. So at some point we went and it was positive. And so then the big sale, obviously, oh you know, I just want to recognize one of our sponsors here as well. Hanging Institution for Savings.
26:15
who has been a lending partner of mine for many years. Great relationship with those guys. just as far as like local bankings and people who can make good decisions, pick up the phone, help you through whatever business challenges uh or lending needs you have, can't say enough good things. So- And speaking of rentals, their 35 year AM is- Yes, they have a great- Probably one of a kind, right? Yeah, say more. It's a good product. Well, we've transacted with them a few times and 35 year amortization schedule really helps when it comes to- Cash flow.
26:45
cashflow and the interest rates that you might find yourself in these days. And it's not something that's standard outside of it's a unique product they offer. Yeah. And when you know, we have a lot of different LLCs and a lot of different bank accounts and they've really like, I have, I have a keep a bank of America account just for like little things. would say like right now their mobile app is superior to the bank of America app on my phone, far as like all the different functionalities that I can do and you know, run my business, send money to this sub, bring money in that way.
27:14
Really, really cool stuff. And the landlord tenant accounts now that they have, that's really- Oh, the Z suite? Yeah. I use that. That is cool. I know a couple of banks, but certainly, Hangum. So anyway, shout out to Hangum. Thank you guys for sponsoring, and we'll see you guys in the next one. Later. See you.