Need time and fame on the racetrack? Work hard and follow the traffic!

Sure. You must build icons. But is it time? 

The number of visitors at this stupid blog increases as these headings go completely haywire. But we promise to take it deeper than catchy headlines. We realized that real estate discussions and articles are generally serious and heavy to go through. Unfortunately, we are a bunch of stupid people at Pillars, and we like to drive things to the simplest point. It makes life easy for us and it may also help some of you, understand the picture.

We are also pretty inclined towards all things automotive and have boy racer dreams as well. Some of us at the office think that our miserable lives as real estate consultants is just some very primary stuff. It is a mere mean to an end. The end being sitting behind the wheel of a fast car, pushing it to the limits at every corner and exit of the race track each weekend! But the path to the race track is not an easy one. Quite literally.

The car (Your real estate experience): You would not even attempt to go on a racetrack in your Alto. Period. No matter how many things you can do in/ with it as shown in the TV commercials. You need a better car. If you know a bit more about this, you would be looking at a modified  hatchback at least with upgraded suspension, cold air intake, fuel pressure regulated and the works. Later, you would drool about adding those forged pistons and a turbocharger.
Translated into the business world, this means that you have to prepare. As you go through more delivery cycles, more projects and more customer hand overs, you will gain the real insight of how a real estate project is successfully built and then how the project performs over the years. Your first project is that Alto. Or maybe, even the Nano. It is not time for you to race.


Souping it up to Stage 1 (Building and delivering affordable, easy real estate): A stage 1 conversion for our car would mean adding a cold air intake, a new exhaust system and a fuel pressure regulator. That addition to the existing car needs serious research, the right tools and money! For money, we are working our backsides off and driving for hours in fender to fender traffic each day to get to those sites and clients.

As a real estate builder, you could start with an easy stage 1 project. Easy would mean, well, easy. Pick up a tested area, choose an accessible location, stick to the affordable housing format and deliver your first project with maximum effort and focus. You will need it. Please do not launch a project, get blown away by the sales and then focus on building another luxurious landmark. You need a brand? You need to make a statement about your arrival? Save it for some other day. Focus on stage 1 instead. Deliver your first easy project. Preferably, an affordable housing one.

Blipping the throttle to Stage 2 (Understanding development better): At stage 2, we would look at adding a turbo charger, a waste gate, a blow off valve and things to boost power to get ahead of the competition. That would simply mean more work, more traffic and more sweat. We say bring it on!
After you have delivered your first easy project and have a happy bunch of customers (if not, go back to stage 1 and deliver again), it is time for you to use that precious know how and build a better bigger project. A larger version of your earlier delivery. Add community building features, experiment with some retail and things like that. No. It is not yet time for that half a million square feet of luxury retail. Thank you. Build communities. Keep building them till you know how humans live, thrive and respond to various real estate asset classes. Get the overall picture correctly.

Drop the clutch at Stage 3 (Create real estate landmarks): Before we are ready to go past the chequered flag, the car would need forged pistons, a new clutch system, a limited slip differential and hours of labour in tuning the various parts and modifications to reach perfection. Translates to more money and thus, more hard work and more traffic.
By now, some reasonable years have gone past and you understand how people and the economy respond to different real estate buildings. You have a fair idea of what could work. Most importantly, you have a fail safe of some sort in place. This is the stage where you should start building your landmarks. Experiment with global trends, eco friendliness, bizarre designs and stuff along those lines. Start by creating easy landmarks. And then take the process of learning, saving and investing to make your landmarks bigger and better.

We, at Pillars think that our first ready to race car will be ready in 3 years time from now. We will have our time and moment of fame on the racetrack then. And what a start that would be! Then there would be recurring expenses of maintenance and practice. You get the point our builder friend? You have chosen a tough path for yourself if you follow this but most success stories started with burning rubber on the tough road. So do not worry. With practice, effort and after years of driving in painful traffic, your moment on the racetrack will come. That is when, you can rise and shine. And the world will cheer from the stands!

Cheers!

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