I don’t make my living from construction. Now it’s real estate. Just simple disclosure, as I’m so used to from years of being overseen by the State.
In both construction and real estate I’ve experienced periods where I had more money on hand and work lined up, and where I’ve had less money on hand and work lined up.
Fortunately, so far it hasn’t bounced to hard to the down side!
My experience is that I usually found the next job by the time I wanted to and almost always by the time I needed to.
Question: How do you tell the difference between an ongoing slack economy (for your biz and locale) that you need to adjust for, and a momentary blip in timing that shouldn’t affect your overall biz plans?
Replies
That's a good question. I would talk to some of the other folks in your business and see how they are faring. At any given time I can find a guy or two who say they are slow. If I can find a number of them easily, then it's slow. I myself have been slow when others are booming. Talk to as many as you can and get a consensus. In construction you can also poll the materials suppliers and subs, see who's doing what.
I don't know if you can tell until history plays itself out. There are guys that are swamped in a down economy and guys that are dead in the water in a good economy.
Bob's next test date: 12/10/07
In my area, I have gauged it by what opther guys WHO ARE COMPARABLE to me are doing. I say comparable as I talked to two "handymen" I know and they say they are swampped but thats just putting in one door or fixing one window.
As a builder I would rate it by what the local "average" is doing. As a realtor, I might check with my local realtor groupguildmembership whatever you might call it and see what agents handling similar "comps" are doing.
Just my .02 of course.
Like the others said, some are busy in downtimes and some strugglin in boom times. In saying that I think we all agree that there is work out there to be had at all times. We just have to find it.
Keep your overall plan. Always be adjusting but keep your long term goals the same. Maybe money needs to be allocated to different areas at different times but overall there is still money out there being spent and we have to find a way to get it.
Funny how this works.Two days of extreme business in the office and now things seem different.As we say about closings in our business: There are only two types of closing. "Closed" and "Not Dead Yet!"