Nirvana

We have definitely recently hit a sort of nirvana state of construction, construction administration and construction sales.  Smooth is the way it is, like a Marvin Gaye song.

We are construction busy, and it’s going well. 

Someone put this on my car. 2 astonishing takeaways - they were right, I parked horribly. and 2, who cares enough to carry these around with them.

We have good cash flow, so we move without impediment.

We have a constant stream of new clients. Each year I wonder what it holds in store for us, and each year for 25 years we surfed and prospered.  The rarity of that type of small business success is easy to miss for me, because I’m surrounded by successful small businesses since that is the type we tend to associate with.  But outside of my daily experience bubble, the odds of succeeding year after year for decades is statistically low.

All sorts of things can happen.  You can make the wrong investment in technology, land, product or people.   You can make a mistake.  You or a family member could get ill.  The marketplace might change and you might not.  You might just get sick and tired of dealing with the baloney, the neverending fire drills and responsibilities.  You might not make enough money.  You might pick the wrong partner.  You might get divorced.  You might not be able to keep up with taxes, benefits, insurance.  More can go wrong than right for sure.

So that we are entering our ¼ century mark firing on all cylinders, houses for sale, houses going into contract, a half a dozen home build projects for contracted clients on the books, AND have a talented skilled vetted and experienced team both in the office and in the field, AND we have a responsive roster of lawyers, engineers, surveyors.

We know how to solve problems.  How to avoid problems.  How to minimize problems.

Today is Saturday, and when I can I like to tour my projects on Saturdays.  They typically are quiet, so I can concentrate and appreciate without a bunch of yapping in my ear about this problem or that issue.  Unfortunately it’s supposed to rain a bit but that’s life in the fast lane.

I’ve had some projects I’ve been working on for a very long time finally finishing up - electrical infrastructure to two houses in Fremont NY that held up the completion of one of my homes for over a year, and the other one a final punchout of the engineering approvals for a 4 lot subdivision in Phoenixville PA, where I own and rent four single family residential homes.  Projects that took an insane amount of delicacy, perseverance and intelligence.

My residential homes I own and rent now number eight, and the cash they spin off isn’t mind-blowing but it does add up.  The depreciation tax benefit also adds up, where the purchase price plus improvements can be written off over 27.5 years (I believe that is the correct duration).  Just turns out that the depreciation benefit about wipes out the income tax on the net profit so the rental income is mostly untaxed - well, it’s taxed, it’s just offset by the depreciation.  So, at my income tax rate in this state, using easy numbers, if I clear $100,000, I’m keeping $100,000, not $60k.  That’s a big difference over years.

The tax problem isn’t solved however.  When you sell the rental, your tax basis value is the purchase price minus the depreciation, so your gain is bigger, and so is your tax bill.  But that’s typically a capital gain, which can be half the rate of regular income.

I’ve probably mentioned that unless you own a construction company with a book-keeper, operations guy and the owner, I wouldn’t mess with residential rental real estate.  It’s not passive, it carries a lot of risk, the profits are slim, and if you are paying interest on a mortgage, you really aren’t clearing any profits meaning vacancies and repairs and the everyday inflation of taxes, insurance, etc… will literally eat you alive while you are hoping for appreciation.  And a lot of times not liquid so once your in, your in.

My email inbox overfloweth. I find if I just ignore it a bit and come back to it a week later, 75% of the emails don’t need to be answered for one reason or another.

I’m getting ready to build for some folks over in Bethel NY and they husband and wife just were going back and forth about where to put the house and I was like ‘I gotta go’ and the wife’s like ‘you just got here’ and I said ‘I got here awhile ago and this is our 3rd try’ and the wife looks put off and the husband says “I don’t mind his personality” right in front of me.  LOL.  I don’t care.  I’m awesome at what I do, I’m extremely effective and if you want a pro, take it, you want something else, leave it.

Monopolies always suck in one way or another and let’s face it, Apple sucks. At least if you extrapolate their simple voice texting understanding and contrast that with voice queries with Claude or Chatgpt.  How can Apple’s suck so bad and the others are reasonably accurate?  What else sucks so bad about Apple we don’t even realize it since it’s standard and competition has been stymied by the power of a monopoly?   I used to say if Apple voice texting is an example of AI, we have nothing to worry about.  Now I see Apple voice texting and Ai share little in common with forward, high-impact technology.

Ai’s response to why Apple voice texting sucks - 

5) Model size and training approach

AI assistants:

• Trained on massive conversational datasets
• Fine-tuned for natural language output

Apple dictation:

• Trained more narrowly for phonetic recognition
• Not heavily optimized for conversational repair

6) Real-world effect (what you’re experiencing)

Why it feels “so bad”:

• It doesn’t correct your phrasing
• It doesn’t infer intent
• It fails on names, slang, or fast speech
• It locks in early mistakes instead of revising

Meanwhile ChatGPT/Claude:

• Smooth over errors
• Fix grammar automatically
• Reconstruct meaning even from messy input

Jared Covit Lawsuit Fun Fact - we calculated that we estimate we received over 700 emails during and after this house build, started by Jared Covit and Lauren Rich.  That’s the ones they began, not the ones we began, and not counting responses - we are thousands at that point.  If I get two emails a week from a client, that’s about average.  And he thinks he’s behaving normally.  Also found out he’s not married, just got engaged a few weeks ago.  Can you imagine - “Will you marry me?  Oh by the way I need you to get grilled next week at a deposition for this lawsuit I put your name on?  BTW, who loves you baby?” #5 on his search results and it's only been 2 days. And I've republished all the posts I took down last year in an attempt to lower the temperature.

Jared Covit was delivered a great home in the middle of a world-wide pandemic.  We responded to another 100 emails after he moved into the home.  Then he sues us for stuff that judge laughs out of court, and he starts a trade-mark infringement Catskill Farms instagram account, and he ruins his girlfriends upstate experience with this exercise - and I’m the 'mean' one.  

Can’t make this stuff up.  But what you can do is post the entire transcript of the 8 hours of depositions with commentary.  Will be fun.

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