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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
00:09
Now we're live, right? Ray, are live? Ray, are we live? Welcome to the Real Estate Addicts podcast with your host, Ray Hurteau, RH Investment Group. Dan Rubin, RH Investment Group. Marc Savatsky, Choose Boston. And it's time for your Multifamily Minute. Would you like some? Get it to me. a couple minutes? Feed it to Do you mind if I read? Go ahead. Do we need a little sound bite for the Multifamily Minute? Yeah. Well, here's a number to sit with. In New York, right now, the median household needs 55.
00:38
0.2 % of its income just to cover the mortgage on their median priced home. Whereas in Iowa, 25.44 % New York State. uh So realtor.com just published its second annual state report cards, grading all 50 states plus DC on affordability. Home building and the gap between the best and worst is not narrowing. So every state gets scored between zero to a hundred and it's split evenly across two different buckets. Half of it is affordability.
01:07
And the other half is home building, right? Like permit to total population type thing. Think about that. So grades run A plus to F, but nobody got an A plus this year. What do think the state with the highest ranking is? Who got an A? Like the best value? This is just affordable and building affordable homes. Either Texas or Florida. eh South Carolina. All right. You neither would be right, but you're, warm.
01:35
Atlanta it's Indiana. Oh wow, Indiana got a score of seventy six point three out of a hundred and that's the a rank It's a soft pass for me having spent four years there. Did you really I went to Purdue? Oh nice go Boilermakers. There you go. All right, but very flat do in the middle of nowhere It is there's a lot of corn fields around campus. There's 40,000 kids on campus. Is it like you can't great? But as soon as you leave
02:00
What is West Lafayette, Indiana? It's pretty boring for a while. It's kind of like UMass Amherst-ish, kind of. Not really, it's worse. No? Like Penn State. Yeah, least those places have like green and hills. I just found like the topography so depressing in the Midwest, but anyhow. So to get that score, they have a medium home price of uh $295,000.
02:26
and a median household income of 71,000. So basically 28 % of the income goes to housing costs, which is great, because they usually say about a third of your income should go to housing. And then they also have a permit to population ratio of 1.02, which basically means it's building the exact number of homes it needs. And this is the criteria. Iowa was number two and then South Carolina. I think you said South Carolina. did. Yeah, that's.
02:52
Number three, it dropped to number three, but it's still a very respectable 75.2. They have a permit to population ratio of almost two, which means they're two homes for every individual in the state there, which is great. mean, if you look at Nashville right now, they're offering like three months free rent. um You know, and it's because like there's been a lot of supply that's come online recently and like lo and behold, you know, the renters, tenants.
03:21
Uh, have a lot of bargaining power. Can you imagine that? they really enjoy seeing your drop in states that have built a shitload of housing over the last decade. Wow. Here's, here's something that's really gonna, your nips are going to pop on this one. The new construction premium of negative 5.7 new construction is 5.7 % less expensive than existing inventory. That doesn't make sense.
03:51
I said it all. mean, basically, because they can build new housing in those in that state, particularly South Carolina for at scale or whatever it might be. And I don't know, you know, these are, these are large national studies. So obviously check the data itself, but maybe it's because it's smaller units or who knows what. it's fascinating, right? Yeah. I mean, we talk a lot about different metrics by which to measure real estate and where to place your dollars. But one of an interesting one is like,
04:20
the percent of income to housing costs. Like if you look at England, it's something insane. Like London, particularly. Yeah, you Because they're so constrained by that green belt around the city that- Even Toronto, Canada is crazy expensive. very expensive. like if you're thinking about, you know, should I buy in West Adams? You can look at that and say like, wow, I think there's room for growth. People here-
04:44
are only spending 25 % of their income and next door it's 55. So where does Massachusetts rank? So yeah, so number four is Texas, number five is North Carolina. We're not gonna go down the whole thing. So obviously every A and B grade in the entire report went to the south or Midwest. And I mean, when you read your daily news and reports, that's where you're I'm guessing that Northeast is at the bottom and the West is at the bottom. The West was third place in terms of regions, 41.8 average score.
05:13
And yes, the Northeast is a pathetic 30 average and New York state was dead last. 51 out of 51 scored 8.5 out of a hundred. Average median home price, 668,000, which is 55.2 % of median income, which is insane. And permits a population ratio of 0.45.
05:39
Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Hawaii, Connecticut, California, all the rest of them in the F category. uh In Massachusetts, 76 % of our land, this is no surprise to anybody, zoning restricted, which is, and that's according to the National Zoning Atlas, where it's basically low permit activity, low affordable, high construction costs. We got back to back Fs. So, F Massachusetts. Well, that's depressing. Brutal. But, mean, but the whole point is like,
06:09
It's what everybody's been talking about. And I actually wonder like if the flood gates were opened and you started seeing these, let's say you got to a point where you built so much and you could have a negative new construction price compared to existing inventory. What's the motivation for a builder to build if they can't make money there? So clearly the builders are making money or they're just taking a bath and it's like a giant. No, to your point, I think they're able to build at scale there. So you're probably have like a.
06:39
Pulte or Atoll Brothers, they're coming in and building 400 or 500 houses in this gigantic development. And their spread might not be much, but if they're making 25 grand per house and they're selling 500 houses, that's, you know, that's basically what's happening. So I think we got to go back to where, you know, maybe here in Boston, think about how Dorchester Bay got filled in, a lot of these other bays. Maybe we need to do what
07:08
some of what we've done in the past and what China does is just start pumping the ocean, making some land. Let's start filling things in. Good luck with that. You can get a permit to build within a quarter mile of fill land. I'm just saying. I'm going to offer another ranking, which is window manufacturers and drew text windows. I'm going to go A plus. I think just to touch on my experience, it's a European window, but what's surprising is
07:36
They show up in six weeks and it's like clockwork. I have not experienced significant delays with Drewtex windows. And I can't say the same about some, I hate to say domestically made, locally manufactured windows, where I just find that whole process to be much less predictable. And much more expensive. I'll add that. Yeah. I was just going to say on the price, I will 100 % hands down endorse Drewtex in terms of just the price itself too.
08:01
not prices and everything, but you get the quality and the price. get the best of both worlds. We have used them over in Lynn. We're using them on our project right now in Ainsbury. use them at my own house. There you go. I've used them on a ton of projects. If you want an introduction, they have an awesome showroom in Quincy. We'd be happy to connect you guys. Just send us a DM or visit their website. D-R-U-T-E-X. So onwards, the topic for today comes from our friend Chris Pruill who reached out. He said Spatsky can
08:31
Can we grab a coffee next week? He's going out on his own full time and said like, he's got aspirations to build property management, development, rentals. He's like, but I'm spread so thin. Like, how do you do it without hiring employees? And like, what were the tricks? So. Don't sleep. We had a good conversation. Don't have kids. Don't have kids. No, seriously, I'm sorry. I think the most obvious answer is AI and we can come back to how you use AI.
09:01
to sort of replace administrative functional tasks. um, so maybe, maybe go up a level, just call it systems, right? Like once you do something, have something that's repeatable and you know, you don't have to customize it every single time. Yeah. Create it on the fly. Sure. Skills. will say, yes, I agree. And I think AI has become super helpful when it comes to administrative tasks that it can help you with. But I think that to a certain
09:29
And I think Ray and I have struggled with this as well. mean, granted, we're lucky that it's two of us and we're able to divide and conquer in a lot of aspects of the business. But, you know, we've talked a lot about bringing someone on full time and it's just, it's a lot of money. you know, whether it's- Well, our workload is unpredictable. Correct. And we get nervous about them not having work. But I think-
09:57
I think just from an administrative standpoint, like having an administrative assistant or something would, I think, help significantly. Like just for example, a small example of something that I was working on this week is, you know, I'm buying all of the finished materials for our Amesbury project and it takes a lot of time. And, you know, I don't think AI could do that for you yet. So it would be nice if I just had someone
10:26
I could send them the spreadsheet. It would have all of the SKUs. They could just go and order everything for me. And that's just like an entire day or two off of my plate, right? So small things like that would be nice. But again, does it justify the cost of hiring someone full-time? uh Probably not right now. just, it's hard. Yeah. I offered a few things. I started by saying that, you know,
10:57
When Jesse and I were sort of house shopping, you look at a two bedroom, a three bedroom, four, and you can run all sorts of scenarios like, hey, what if my parents come? What if your sisters and my parents are here at the same time? And we sort of get to a place quickly where you go like, listen, I could put your parents up at the Mandarin Oriental Hotel every time they come for a fraction of what it would cost to buy another 600 square feet in terms of our house or our condo.
11:24
And same goes for like a third row of seats in a car. I'll get an Uber SUV every single time. So how the analogy here is like with labor. So I get a shipping delivery, I get flooring and it's going to come anytime between 7 a.m. and 4 p.m. It's like my time's too valuable. I can't just sit on site for 10 hours waiting for that. But like, you know what? Screw it. I'm going to call Andrew over at Circa and have him send one of the crew and put them on at 50 bucks an hour. uh Give him some small stuff to do in the meantime, but like.
11:52
Just don't think twice about that $400 spend because it's such a discount to your next best ultimate. I agree. think so many people in this business try to pinch pennies everywhere they possibly can. And it's like, if you're looking to save 400 bucks or a thousand bucks for a project, then the project's not making enough money. No, you're in trouble. You're not doing well. Totally. So, you know...
12:21
you should be able to spend the money wisely and to save you tons of time. And at the end of the day, if all of that gets the project done three months quicker because of that, think about how much money you've saved just in mortgage payments. So have a new good tea. I think that you both saying the same thing. I'm saying be willing to spend money on things.
12:45
ah Correct. But for efficiency sake, for your own time sake, and for outcomes But keep in mind there's a ledger and you're saving a bunch of money on one side of it. You have to keep that mind when you're putting dollars onto the other side. It's like preventative maintenance. You want to make sure that every time a unit turns over, you're professionally cleaning it, deep clean, you're refreshing the paint, because it only takes two or three cycles for that to start to fall apart. And if you don't have
13:11
know, preventative maintenance within your business, then certain things can start to fall apart. Well, not only does it start to fall apart, now you can't rent it for a premium anymore. that's interesting. rent starts going down because the quality of the unit is suffering. You know, the other thing I mentioned is sort of, you've got to break a couple eggs to make an omelet. And like, perfection isn't the standard. I've struggled with this over my career. I say this humbly, but it's like, you know, if a driver shows up and they call me and no one's there to take delivery or the...
13:41
It's a mess out front and they can't park where they need to. Like occasionally you should have to apologize. Take the heat. Uh, say you didn't know they were coming because you're, you know, maybe you're overextended that day and, uh, you'll call the shop and have it rescheduled for another day. Like is what it is. It happens.
14:00
Perfection isn't the standard. Or say, hey, I'm sorry. If you could drop it on the curb, I'll have a guy show up in a couple hours and bring it inside or something like that. you just, you got to roll with it as best as you can. And you're never going to have perfect days 100 % of the time. No, and the other secret is that there's money only solves money problems. We can all agree. There's a lot of problems that money can solve. And now we have Venmo, Zelle, I can send Dunkin' Donuts gift cards via text.
14:29
that driver who's kind of pissed and has to wait or do something that's a little beyond his job, they're likely to get something from me and like, hey, stand by. I think going back to your comment on the perfection thing, I think that's something that I got hung up on a lot earlier in our career as well, where, you know, I would be afraid to move forward in the project because I wanted to like make sure
14:59
everything was perfect during rough during certain phases. it ended up slowing the project down. Your job is to get that project done as quickly as humanly possible. Obviously not cutting corners and doing it the right way, but you still need to keep moving forward. Because at the end of the day, you're always gonna have a punch list. Even if you've tried perfection in that process.
15:28
you will end the job with some kind of punch list and trades people will be coming back to button it off. it's fine. If I miss something and I have to cut a square out to open a wall to fix it down the line during finish, so be it, right? Like if I can keep the job moving forward and I, again, going back, I saved myself 45 days by doing that, whatever. I agree. I mean, look, there's a difference between
15:56
Like I have to protect every finished surface because God forbid I get a scratch and a piece of flooring. but there are also instances where slow is what's the Navy SEALs slowest, slowest, slowest, smoothest, smoothest, smoothest, And either there are problems that you do not want to go back for. Leaks in showers, uh primary example. m HVAC imbalance issues, just stuff where like that phone call comes and you're like.
16:25
uh Relocating sprinkler heads. really. Yeah, fuck that. The things where it is impossible to open a wall. That's difference between knowing like, hey, I get it. Thank you for bringing it to my attention. Keep your foot on the gas. Like, go. Or otherwise, like... that's, again, comes with experience. You kind of know which things you need to pay attention to versus which things you can kind of just keep going with. Look, I my whole job up and we're doing nine units in East Boston.
16:55
And I stopped the job for upwards of 10 days, all progress, because we had a big rain event right before insulation. And I had water coming where water shouldn't have been in like two or three places. And I was just not comfortable that the siding and the exterior wall assembly was where it needed to be to start spraying insulation. um And so we took the minute to fix it. Look, that's a good decision. I'm not going to tell you I would do the same thing if uh
17:24
all the framing wasn't 100 % complete and the drywallers are gonna be a little pissed because my framer needs to come back now and soften in some duck work or different steel pipes. Yeah, are certain, just water intrusion is like high up on the list of like you don't wanna fuck with. Yeah. Right? um But like from, like next week, I have my, um in Amesbury, my fire blocking scheduled for Tuesday. Is my plumbing or my subs gonna be,
17:53
100 % done when I'm doing my fire blocking? Probably not. Am I gonna miss like maybe two or three penetrations? Probably, but I'm getting it done so I can get our rough inspections later next week. Just leave a couple tubes on site, know, something like that. exactly. I walk around, when I'm walking around with the inspector, if he points something out, boom, I have it there.
18:14
Here you go. Done. I know. So it's like, are the types of things that you can kind of keep moving forward. Yeah, that's a good example. Because before back in the day, would wait till all my subs were 100 % finished, they're all 100 % signed off, then I'd go in the fire blocking, but then I'd lose a week. Right. Yeah. The only area where you really can't do that is when you are waiting for all the rough sign-offs, because you literally cannot go to the next step until you get every one of those things checked. there's certain gates that you just can't pass, but it's really just the rough gate. No, you're in the industry, right? Yeah.
18:44
You know, I think a gem that I offered was, uh, I have premium subscriptions for Uber door dash, I don't know what's premium, but I use thumb tack a lot. So I have all these different, even, even on Uber lately, like I needed to get some decent sized packages picked up from new England building supply. And I sent an Uber SUV, like premium car over there called the guy and as well as like, listen, you're picking up drip edge.
19:10
Did he even know what that was? Oh my god. Was he able to fit it? Yeah, I called my count rep. was like, listen, sometimes English isn't the driver's first language. I'm going to really need your help here. But like, can you just prepare the boxes so that when he shows up, I'm just going to tell him to find Paul. And he like came inside. got Paul. I put it in the truck. He got a nice tip for his Uber SUV experience from Roxbury to East Boston. And my siding guy was able to continue with the window and siding.
19:38
That's, that's again, a smart use of throwing money at a problem. It was a hundred. Why do you want to, you know, doing those little tasks yourselves, I think is the biggest thing we've learned we shouldn't be doing. We should not be handling the little stuff. No. Trying outsource. The next one that sucks the most of your time in our, our space, in my opinion, is being a project manager for a subcontractor. So I try at all costs to not be their project manager anymore. Earlier in my career, I think I was everybody's project manager.
20:08
And in what way? what way? like, like even give an example. Even getting the drip edge for the windows. That's probably me being a project manager for my siding guy. Like you should have told me two days prior. ah could have that like a gentleman and we could have had a proper delivery scheduled, but yeah, it doesn't always work. But there are some subs who it's like, you know, Mr. Mark, I need this. Mr. Mark, I need that. I need more glue for the base for, you know, PVC. I can't get you.
20:38
washers for the roofing screws that you need from South Boston right now. So my, uh our framer used to do that a lot. they used to be like, I need an extra 50 two by fours. I need an extra this. I'm like, all right, go to Home Depot, have them call me. I'll give them a credit card over the phone. Yeah. I'm not going to Home Depot anymore to pick up, you know, tubes of whatever.
21:05
silicone or whatever I need. It's definitely a thousand cuts. Don't let the little ones get you. Another thing that I will always do is keep abundant supply of things that I really need on site. by that, for me, it's like silicone. There's a product called Geocell that I really like. It's like a cure-all for any penetration. Pressure sensitive tapes like uh what's it Seagull. Seagull. Different tapes. um
21:36
Any kind of flashing stuff, anything where- Like ice and water, like that type of stuff? Yeah, a of ice and water, a roll of blue skin. It's like, if a guy has an option to just keep going or grab it, put it on, and then cover it up, I want to make sure that product is there because God knows, like, you just can't watch everything. heel. Right. Here's another good one. Become really good friends with your neighbors. Yeah. Because...
22:04
They will help you out in Example in Amesbury, I had guys digging footings for a deck. They needed water for concrete. My plumber had the water turned off in the basement. He wasn't there. He didn't have kind of a spigot hooked up yet. So, but I had our neighbor's contact information, called them up, be like, hey man, you know, you think we could borrow like a hose so my guys can mix some concrete to pour the footings in the back? Hit me up.
22:34
you know, I can certainly, you know, give you money towards your water bill, the condo association's water bill next month. He was like, you know, don't worry about it, man. Like just go for it and like save me a day. Yeah, that's cool. I would have, I would have lost the day. Yeah. Or another neighbor of ours. just recently got him a couple of packs of beer.
22:53
Cause all throughout one of our other projects, he was just keeping an eye on the place. Like, Hey, there's somebody walking around like, that your guys? That somebody else? Small things like that pay forward. And, and, know, it pays back in dividends. Absolutely. Yeah. It's very true. But it's not to be self-serving. It's to, to that's the right way to do things. You know, it's not like, Oh, I'm gonna be nice because I might need a favor. Be nice because they're your neighbor and you should respect the fact that you're doing work right next to them. And for those other favorite type things.
23:21
So you never went over there and got a cup of sugar then. I like, I like cameras on all my sites. we use Reolink. Yeah, same. uh And it's got its own data built in. So I don't need to ask my neighbor for their wifi passwords anymore. But that at least Reolink, one of the best use cases is just a camera focused on the street so that I can see if there's parking available for the dumpster, for the circuit demo truck that's going to show up, you know, whatever delivery boom truck.
23:51
and try to get out ahead of it. So if I need to have a car towed, which takes two hours. The other thing we use it for is if you're in a contract or you're doing, or you have someone working for you that's like time and materials. I can see when they're showing up, I can see when they're leaving, and I can timestamp it on the camera. Yeah, that's good stuff. Not that you want to get into a dispute about hours, but just keeps everything ahead, board.
24:19
Yeah, so I mean, there's lots of different time saving tips. And I think to, forget which one of you said it earlier, the wisdom, you can listen to us every episode and you're still gonna probably experience something in your day to day that we haven't covered. And that's the wisdom that as you go through your experience that you will learn how to, it's like my lease addendum. It keeps growing because every time something new happens, I gotta add this,
24:48
Claws in there to be like, well, don't don't flush things down the drain like running a project is like it's just a master class in pivoting Yeah, gonna learn how to pivot all of the time because because things will just get thrown at you date on a daily basis Yeah, I also think that you know, you have to build if don't see things from Z to a and like be looking forward at all times two steps ahead and the more that you can plan so for example
25:16
My drywallers are on site right now and they're starting board and plaster and like, I have a checklist in my head and then yes, tile is order. Tile is going to go next. Um, where are we at with wood floors? Have you told the wood floor guy he's coming the more, the less time you can spend in the urgent and important quadrant, the less you're going to need employees and people around you. Like all of that support staff is super helpful when everything's on fire, but if you can avoid things becoming.
25:46
urgent and important, you're doing yourself and your job a service. That's where, like, when we did the big project in Lynn, that's where, like, the two and three week look-aheads came into play and were super important. I don't know if you necessarily need those on a smaller job, but if you're first getting started and you don't know what those order of operations are, then I think maybe having some sort of schedule ah is super important, because then you can look ahead three weeks and say, listen, what's next?
26:15
what do I need to schedule? What do I need to order? Who do I need to line up? Who do need to call? Like that type of thing. And I think that that's something that you can definitely implement now. And as you gain experience, maybe you kind of teeter off of it a little bit, but yeah, think having those types of schedules are important. Yeah. And we had like a whole distribution email list. So subs who were next up, we would add them to it, know, maybe a month before they were due on site. So they could see.
26:44
the job's coming and they would know to expect Dan's call soon enough if they read the emails. yeah, my wife is uh covering for her boss right now and she's like, I have so much anxiety. I can't handle being in charge. It stresses me out too much. was like, welcome to my life. Like this is every day you're on the hot seat when you're running a company. But I think the point there is you gotta have temperament and the attitude and the desire to know that these things are gonna come up and you've gotta be ready to respond and you gotta be that.
27:12
You're that person that has to answer the questions and answer the call. I also think having one thing that I always do as well, especially if it's a project or it's a piece of the job that's complex or complicated, I always have like a preliminary on-site meeting with the sub. So for instance, I'm having a meeting tomorrow with my window installer, because we're replacing all of the windows in Amesbury. It's an historic building, so it was...
27:42
the install, then we had to provide an elevation to the city, which was approved. So it has to be installed a specific way. So we're having a meeting on site tomorrow. Windows aren't getting delivered till next week, and they're not starting the install till next week, but meeting them on site tomorrow, walking through what the process is gonna be. We're gonna start in the back. We're gonna do kind of a mock-up of one of the windows that isn't gonna be street facing, like that type of thing. All that preliminary planning and.
28:11
ahead of time can save you a lot of aggravation when it comes to the install. Cause it's not, especially on a complex thing like that. Yeah. I mean, I think time management comes up a lot when you're thinking about this. It's like, I'm not that good at it because I am inherently ADHD, but how do you prioritize a list and stop all the distractions such that you're constantly starting a bunch of things.
28:38
and not finishing any of the important things that you really needed to get done that day. Cause that's uh a constant struggle. mean, I think everyone's heard different pieces of advice. Probably the best one that I don't follow is to turn your phone off or at least on like privacy mode for a portion of the day so that you can do deep work. I'm sure it already exists out there, but having like my own personal private administrative AI assistant would be amazing. can do that already.
29:06
Yeah. I my AI manages my schedule. So someone asks me like, when are you available? I just like, I'll put that into my address and say like, give me blocks of time in the afternoon next week that I'm free. And then once it comes back, I'll screenshot it. They're like, okay, cool. Thursday at one. And it'll create that calendar invite, send it to Dan and it's got the tie in with Gmail. So it knows to search. might just see Dan Rubin.
29:33
but it knows to find his email address from my Gmail. access to all my contacts. Yeah, there's a lot of agents now that can like administrative assistant agents that can tie into Outlook and Gmail and all that. Quad could do it all now. That's a good one, It's like, ah, just on social media or Instagram, but like it creates a dashboard for you of all the things you need to do. It like flows through your inbox and sees that like Dan emailed me yesterday and Ray was two days ago.
30:02
and I still haven't responded. So I'll start playing with that. I mean, Claude can, if you download the Chrome plugin for Claude, can like search websites now that like, I'll log into MLS and if you be like Claude, I want you to search for expired listings in this zip code, whatever. And it will read the page, it will do all the searching for you and then it will export it ah as a CSV.
30:31
This is why we keep talking about AI. You're going to have to start doing these things and be like, Claude, keep me accountable to what I need to get done. I know. I know. Cool. Yeah. Good episode. I think a lot to think about if you guys have ideas, other inspiration or wisdom on how you're able to manage a lot in a little bit of time that we all have. Drop We'd love to hear a drop a comment. Yeah, for sure. DM us. Thank you for listening, rating, and subscribing. Thank you to Drutex Windows for being our official window partner on this.
31:01
podcast. If you'd like an introduction, reach out and we'll see you guys. put a link to them in the show notes. See you guys on next one. Thanks. Later. Cheers.