Interview with Architect Jared Della Vale,Arizona

Can an architect tell the difference between a great deal and a good deal? As an architect you can spend all the time that someone else has to pay an architect for. The messier it is, the better it is for us. There’s more for us to figure out. All of the recent projects we’ve done occurred in recently rezoned districts. If it’s not a neighborhood yet, if it’s a total mess, if it’s been on the market for a year, perfect. Those are the ones we’re great at. Because you don’t have to pay anybody to do the due diligence. You do it yourself and you say, “Look, I solved this.” You can’t kind-of get into this business. You have to do it. I did this six or seven years unsuccessfully until I got my first real deal. I knew the number signs were way too big and I was confident that this is going to work. And now I’ve had six or seven years of building an actual business. I’m at the point where banks and institutional equity groups are looking to partner with us. These groups are now calling us and want to lend to us. People are throwing money at us now because they don’t have other outlets in which to put it. These days, the buckets of money from lenders are so specific that you have to find out what they want before you even put the deal together. How does a struggling architect put together a real estate package worth millions of dollars? I would make a deal with someone and try to get a loan period, where my deposit wasn’t hard or I didn’t have a deposit while I was talking to investors. Then, I would try to put together the money for the deposit, and always offered to not take a penny during development. Investors were willing to overlook the fact that I didn’t have experience because I didn’t take any fees. I’m going to do everything and I’m going to invest it into the project. I wasn’t looking to just collect a check. I’d say, “I’ll get mine at the back end just like you. You put up the cash, I’ll do all the work, I’ll take nothing, and I’ll get my piece at the back.” This was very effective. How important is building a community? The last project we did, we had such a huge waiting list that we threw the contractor a bunch of extra money at the end, after he was done, as a bonus. We told him to make sure everything is perfect. All the new owners were telling everybody that they’ve bought before but never had service like this. My wife made stationary, we sent everybody out to dinner. We built a little community and we also did a lot of early marketing for our next project by making sure that everyone was so happy. Source:BUILD