Getting Started
“Why don’t we build a spec home?” That was our first thought after we realized what it cost to build our first home together in 2020 and what we realized it was worth at the end of 2023. You see, my wife had been working for a builder for years and doing renovations on the side for her own company, A & D Construction Group and I had been dabbling in real estate investment beginning with turning my previous home in CT into a Long Term rental. During the summer of 2022, I got bored with long term rentals- I had been doing it for 10 years and grew tired of trying to get tenants out at the end of leases- and got excited about Short Term rentals. We purchased a condo on the beach in the pan handle of Florida off of Route 30A after selling the CT property and I entered the world of Airbnb as a host. After a year of figuring out how to market and manage that property, not to mention the lessons I learned in financing a STR with a like-kind section 1031 exchange, I figured I am pretty good with numbers and real estate finance and my wife has the experience and a network of sub contractors, so like two great tastes that taste great together- who better than us to develop homes?
So, armed with some money from a HELOC on our primary residence, I reached out to real estate investors- hard money lenders- and told them my story of how I was an amazing real estate investor and my wife had 10 years of experience building and renovating homes and we wanted $500K to build a spec home. I’m not going to say they laughed in my face- I did email them so I luckily it wouldnt have even been possible to tell- but all said the same thing: Three fix n flips in my own LLC name and then we can talk. Well, that’s just the first three firms I reached out to, surely the next 10 will be different when I explain the level of expertise we are bringing to the table. Yeah, no. We were dead in the water before we started. However, like all success stories, we just needed to adjust and pivot. Step one- the formation of the Thompson Development Group.
