Answer the money question on the first call
LA forced small landlords into retrofits they could not finance, so we arrived with financing already in hand.
LA passed a mandatory soft-story ordinance. Small landlords now faced a deadline for structural work that earns no rent and that banks will not finance.
My read: the law had created demand, but not the means to pay. Contractors everywhere were pitching the retrofit itself. The landlord's actual problem was where the money would come from. So we got certified as a PACE contractor and kept an engineer in the same office, which let us talk financing in the opening conversation.
Contracts came quickly. Inside roughly three months we signed over $600,000 in West LA retrofits. Most landed between $50,000 and $70,000 apiece, counting demo, patching, analysis and soft costs.
Fix the constraint your buyer actually has, not the one your trade happens to specialize in.
Story details
| Project | Soft-Story Retrofits |
|---|---|
| Type | Insider truth |
| Year | about 2015 to 2017 |
| Firm telling | on the Common Ground wiki |