Business Eden Blog

The Benefit of Having Great Partners

Great partners are, of course, beneficial to any venture. As it turns out, Randy, who was raised in Washington state, grew up around water-skiing. It ended up becoming a passion. Randy became a certified water-ski instructor, had his own water-ski school, and skied some of the certified tournaments around the country.

Clearly, his background, even if serendipitous to our project, turned out to be extremely advantageous for us in developing Spring Mountain Ski Ranch. First, he knows about things that the rest of us hadn’t even conceived, such as the need to create lakes with specific slopes so as to reduce the wake from boats and skiers as soon as possible after they have passed. Second, his contacts in the industry have been immensely useful, not only during the construction phase, but also with respect to the selling of lots and the running of the entire operation.

A passion that Randy and Ross share is car racing. While Randy races dirt late models, Ross races remote-controlled scale models. It is not an idle hobby. Currently, Ross is the Arizona state champion, and he also won the 2007 United States Gas Championships.

Not only does this take Ross all over the country for race meetings, but Ross has created what is now touted by the industry as the nation’s best racetrack outside Phoenix. Even with our hobbies, we cannot separate real estate from our thinking! More recently, with Curt Denny joining the team as a fourth partner, we have covered many of the basic skills needed for our operation. If all partners had the same set of skills, then arguably some people would be redundant. Rather, our skills are complementary, with some of us focusing on business structuring and compliance, project management, liaison with contractors, communications, equity funding, customer relations, and reporting, in addition to the core activities of sourcing, analyzing, negotiating, and acquiring pieces of real estate.

In fact, it was Curt’s search for a home to live in that led us to what could turn out to be our biggest project yet, involving 12 acres in the heart of Hollywood. This project is commercially sensitive and will have to be written about in a subsequent publication.

The point is that if you can assemble of group of people who may have wildly varying backgrounds, ages, interests, religions, circumstances, and points of view, but who nonetheless share a passion for excellence, a desire to do good, the drive to get the Job done no matter what, and a genuine zeal for real estate, then you
have the makings of a formidable force in real estate.

Best Choice Properties

For readers unfamiliar with the Phoenix area, let me give some background as to why the region was and continues to be so popular. The climate in Phoenix is spectacular and very easy to get used to. Apart from 10 or so weeks during the height of summer, when temperatures can stay above 100°F (around 40°C) for a few weeks on end, the weather is just perfect, with 350 sunny days a year and low humidity. The job market is stable and growing, with many high-tech firms having headquarters or major centers here, such as Motorola, IBM, Honeywell, and Rockwell. Google has just relocated from Silicon Valley to Phoenix. There are many call centers such as the one for US Airways, and a plethora of other employers.

For a long time now, some 6,000 people have been moving into the greater Phoenix area every month. This provides ongoing demand for anything from podiatrists, hairstylists, and coffee shops to all flavors of real estate.

For a number of years, we were actively engaged in a wide variety of real estate ventures. We had bought orange groves, subdivided them into residential developments, and even had some of the homes constructed. We were involved with commercial retail development in outlying suburbs. However, like anyone operating in this fast-growing market, we couldn’t fail to see what was happening with land prices.

We had seen speculators buy land for a few hundred dollars an acre, only to sell it a few months later for twice as much, or even five times as much. You can only observe that for a limited time before you develop the desire to give it a go yourself.

We knew that being successful with land development or speculation required more than just buying some dirt, sitting on it, and selling it at a profit. Despite the tremendous growth in the region, there were vast tracts of land that were not part of the general upsurge in values. So we pooled our collective knowledge, researched areas, studied population trends, met with companies that specialize in monitoring real estate trends, and looked at a lot of pieces of land. After conducting this research for what seemed like years, we were ready to make some moves.