This episode details a Louisiana subdivide project where the contractor made an unauthorized decision to accelerate work on a complex flag lot during ideal weather instead of completing two simpler lots as explicitly instructed, creating listing delays when the broker was unavailable during vacation.
Key Takeaways:
- Artisan Contractors Operate on Different Timelines Professionals viewing work as craft prioritize quality and efficiency over explicit instructions, requiring clear communication about business priorities versus workmanship standards.
- Out-of-State Management Creates Instruction Gaps Remote ownership combined with vacation timing allowed contractor autonomy that wouldn’t exist with daily boots-on-ground oversight.
- Creative Photography Enables Partial Listings The broker’s solution to photograph the completed simple lot while flag lot work continued allowed market testing to begin immediately despite delays.
The contractor’s exceptional work quality on the flag lot—creating what will likely be the premium lot despite typical flag lot disadvantages—demonstrated skilled execution even while disregarding explicit sequencing instructions.
(Podcast transcript below)
Hi, Chris of Serious Land Capital and Land Funding Partner. Today I wanted to go over some updates about this larger central Louisiana minor subdivide we’ve been pursuing for the past few months here. For those who aren’t familiar, we bought this roughly 32 acre piece, chopped it up into three child parcels of roughly equal size, one being a flag lot.
And we were in the process of making it as turnkey as possible for quality residential homes, clearing out a lot of the trees, installing very nice gravel driveways, home sites. There’s already power and water at the street. So, you know, any future buyer, all they would have to do is actually lay down foundations for a home.
and install septic system and then, you know, they’re all set to go with these particular properties. And we keep hearing from the broker and, you know, associated agents in the area to saying, yeah, this is some of the most beautiful land in the parish. Parish is equivalent to a county in say, Louisiana.
FYI, so we’ve been really excited about this project. So we are right at the end of finishing up the value add portion of the property. There’s probably five business days worth of work that still needs to be done.
with the actual three child parcels here. And the lion’s share of the work was related to that flag lot, just given how long the driveway is. And I’ve podcasted and wrote in my newsletter about this. We had a number of weather delays. I have never worked in Louisiana before, so I am appreciating the…
difficulties of just, you know, managing, you know, just wet weather. Yeah. You deep south, Louisiana, muggy, humid area. that’s just the risk you’re to be running into. So that set us back quite a bit. but we had a great stretch of weather over this last week, where a ton more progress was made. Now here was the issue that came up. So.
You know, I had really hoped that we were going to be listing at least two of the properties a week ago from the time of this recording But you know this weather delays prevented that plus our broker who’s been there every step of the way had a planned vacation of like roughly two weeks and It was like two vacations back-to-back with each other
And he had a couple days in between that he would be home to kind of check in on things So the first part of this vacation was during this previous week and we had very very explicit instructions That okay, you know, it looks like a great week of weather here, you know tell the contractor We want to be listing the two properties that are non-flag lots that are gonna require less work by this following weekend So, you know when you get home for a couple days
in between your vacations. You can get the drone photos out, we get the listings. Let’s get rocking and rolling here so we’re not wasting additional time. So that was the clear plan. And then, I was in touch with one of the other agents at the brokerage over this week who’s familiar with the project, but not the primary project manager.
You know, I was asking her, Hey, can you go visit the property? And she did, and it wasn’t in touch. And then I heard from our main broker while he was still on vacation. And it had turned out that the contractor had just gone rogue and made an executive decision to take advantage of the excellent weather and just try to haul.
haul ass and, get as much work done on the flag lot as possible. so that, you know, he was anticipating, okay, yeah, there’s going to be like maybe a week’s worth more of work just to knock out the rest and we’ll be all done. so, you know, this was
Definitely disappointing for us to hear where it’s like, okay, at the same time, yes, we did luck out with the water or with the weather. A lot more work was done, but it also goes against precisely what we asked for because I was already updating my investors. And, you know, also just looking at the clock here, it’s like, okay, I want to get two of those listings up this weekend. Let’s get this thing moving.
And now here we are where none of the three lots were going to be ready by the end of this week. And so initially I responded back, Hey, go back to the contractor and sell it. Like the seller has explicitly indicated drop all work on the flag lot, get the most simple lot done. And so we can properly list this thing here asep. And it looks like
You know, this following week, it’s going to be, you know, potentially another week full of rainy weather. Um, so, you know, time was of the essence in, this circumstance. yeah. And that’s always kind of the risk when you’re an owner out of state, not having routine boots on the ground personally. In this case, we had our broker serving as our project manager, but he was just out of town for a week. And the contractor just went against what we had instructed him to do. So, uh,
You know, our broker then went back to the contractor and it’s like, Hey, this is what the seller wants. And he’s like, okay, understood. can do that. Just know that. And this is where, you know, my ignorance is going to show because like, I don’t fully understand how this, you know, dirt work is fully being done. But the bottom line is that if we do this, it’s probably not going to look quite as good because it’s going to be more of a rush job.
to get this done. And so the broker was, you know, he came back to me he’s like, I’ve been in these situations before where, you know, a seller, they try to rush something and, you know, it ends up affecting the property in a negative fashion from, you know, interest and, you know, buyers taking a look at it. And he was like, you know, the contractor, definitely went against what we asked.
but he’s been doing an excellent job. you know, it probably makes more sense to just continue with the path and that, you know, the broker, when he was coming back home from his vacation, he was going to creatively take, photos to, of that, most simple child parcel and still get that one listed.
by today actually, this weekend that we wanted to get two of them up, at least we’ll get one of them up. So we can start understanding, okay, is the market gonna respond to these lots? Are they actually that premium that we think they are? And we can also just explain the listing, hey, like this project’s almost done and the gravel’s gonna be laid down. And then as soon as it is done, you can go take a couple more pictures, update them.
but I really want to start testing the market. Plus I want to stagger the listings a little bit too. So you have different days on market for each of the child parcels and you can build up some excitement with a couple others that are coming to market shortly that are also not exactly identical. They have different type of home site patterns. So that is our game plan here and how we handled different type of situation.
That’s just the thing. Like I’ve seen some of the pictures, like it is. It really shows within the pictures. Yeah. This country he’s done an incredible job. the broker went to go visit the, the, the lots and he’s saying, all the work done on the flag lot, you know, he’s driving over it. is like truly exceptional. It’s probably our moat. You’re usually flag lights. Aren’t going to be your most premium, but the work done on this one is probably going to be our best quality lot.
which is certainly good to hear, from, from that perspective. and then we’re actually going to price that one a bit more on a per acre perspective. So, you know, this contractor is clearly doing good work, had his own, you know, decision making in mind clearly, you know, for
Broker was, happened to be in town. We could have caught this earlier, but you know, it is what it is. We have to now deal with the situation as it is. And, uh, that’s just kind of the thing, you know, you get, uh, certain professionals who, you know, they view their, work from a sense of artistry. You know, I, I in, in general, try to work with folks like that who really take deep levels of pride in the output. Um, uh,
that they are pushing forward versus somebody who’s just like more utilitarian and just the contractual obligation. But when you work with artists, they’re gonna operate with their own timelines and processes in mind there. that’s kind of what I’m keeping in mind at the moment, but we were still able to sort out.
a solution with the circumstances that arose. So we signed the listing agreement. We’re going to be up with one of them here shortly. And crossing fingers now that we’re actually about to be on market. You never know what’s going to happen, but that would be great if we get some excellent interest here. It seems very premium. So hopefully this helps just on the fly decision-making.
and how to work with different types of folks, different types of circumstances. I just wanted to share all of this. And if you were looking for funding, actually we’ve gotten several more leads here recently. SeriousLand.Capital, Land Daily Diligence Facebook group for zero cost review of your land deals and LandPricer.AI for simple and efficient way to price land, subscribe and share.
Talk to you all next time, bye.
