Construction General

>an industry plagued with retards
>boom times fetch massive profits
>many people who run highly profitable construction companies have zero knowledge of engineering, finance, accounting, and law
>LEED meme is giving smart people massive government projects and the people in charge of spending money are rampant libtards
>extremely high margins compared to any other industry
>endless supply of labor
>can easily hedge material costs with futures to minimize risks
>can blow up your company through cheap government financing after building a reputation

Please tell me, why aren't you in construction. People who work in construction don't wanna sit in an office and people who want to sit in an office don't want to work in construction. It's the easiest money out there. My father and I run a remodeling company that clears 1.5M+ revenue a year with 620K of that being profits in 2016 and the company is only 8 years old.

Also, construction general.

Nice. (Just bought 100k)
Do tell us, what’s your advice on getting into the biz?

yeah i work in constructions. the problem is people want something built how they want it even if from an engineering pov that shit will not do... else, it's all k, i clear 50k EUR a year in a country that has a minimum salary of 2.5k EUR (after taxes)

Start small and charge less. You really don't need much money to start. We did tiling and made about $20-35 an hr average each at the beginning. Had to stay at home half the time but after the first year we had more work than we could handle. Then we moved to more profitable work. Full kitchen/bath remodeling, framing/crowns, exterior work, roofing, etc..

We do pretty much everything now. I'm in the office full time and my dad is in charge of operations to make sure we squeeze every ounce of labor out of our employees as we can. We pay them well but they earn every penny. You'd be surprised that people pay very well when you don't send a horde of Mexicans to their house.

Oops, $30-35/hr**

bump

my grandfather owned a contruction company. he said the mexicans he hired all had a secret ditch they they crawled under to take a shit

their was literally a ditch full of shit

On the subject of mexicans, how do you handle HR? Do you subcontract through the jew agencies or do you actually troll your own postings.

I was a detailer for a steel fabrication company for 7 years

the entire industry is miserable. what a nightmare, ill never go back. rather sweep floors at mcdonalds for half the pay

Just subcontract them. In a legal sense, you can just say, I didn't know they were illegal...

In Chicago Mexicans don't get deported anyways so you can use cheap Mexican labor for jobs that call for it.

I was actually asking for quite the opposite, I want actually decent employees.

>My father and I
"Why don you have daddy's money" the thread

Typically Polish employees > Mexicans at least in Chicago. I am bilingual so we hire a lot of them.

Usually our employees have fake SSNs the ones that are illegal, so in our eyes we cannot be tried for anything in court. The black market for SSNs is pretty big in Chicago, many immigrants in construction have them.

Typically though if you choose to hire undocumented, you will have to pay them under the table, and be a smaller firm.

>Please tell me, why aren't you in construction
I am, I'm starting a brick factory as we speak.

I'm looking for investors, want to jump in?

Because my dad didn't finance the business you retard. We immigrated here 10 years ago w/o any savings.

But my dad had the experience necessary to build the business, he taught me everything. So "daddy's apprentice".

Too much shit going on sorry. But good luck man, my brother runs a manufacturing plant. It can be great money when run well.

Pretty cool learning the trade of your father and carrying on that legacy. Good for you and your father, user.

I'll be getting 50% of my father's construction company early next year. He and I will be doing some serious spec building, as we have a rental company together and have used it to buy land to split into several lots.

Mind explaining the LEED meme? And also what you mean by hedging material cost with futures?

My friends dad had a business. Made 300k. Fucking hated it.

Became a lawyer instead

>Please tell me, why aren't you in construction.

Because it's hard physical work that rapidly degrades your health and is overall quite uncomfortable.

I respect craftmen though but I wouldn't like to be one.

Typically this only applies to longer term projects. Our business is moving towards becoming an achitect-builder for residential custom homes.

There was recently some trade sanctions put on Canadian lumber so a lot of the people int he industry who didn't see it coming had stretched their margins very thing on projects they were supposed to make a lot of money from. This typically applies moreso to apartment complexes in my area. Many refinancing agreements had to be drafted, and with interest rates pushing up, a lot of people got really screwed.

The LEED meme is more of a thing that appeals to people in my area. Chicago is really liberal and a lot of the people we do business with are willing to pay a lot more for LEED certified homes. You can even convince more conservative people that it will save a lot of energy over time.

The LEED meme is aimed at bigger projects, such as schools and apartment buildings primarily, but residentially it's becoming more popular too.

You can just exploit cheap labor after a few years. Most of the high paying work isn't physically degrading.

So you guys are making the big money in commercial projects then? Has that always been your thing?

Any experience in residential remodeling or building? In your opinion is building apartments (even just quads) and then renting them worth doing?