Number 1. I wasn't there. I had spent as much as $20,000 per month on direct mail. All 12 months of the year we had traffic. Overall we averaged 300 visitors per month and sold a lot to 10% of them. That is 30 lots at an average of $5,000. Or $150,000 in sales. There is no one there that thinks like that. I mean in the whole county.
Number 2. Lake of the Ozarks winds like a river. It is 100 miles long with 1200 miles of shoreline. As much as Lake Michigan and California. You can Google it.
It winds through 5 counties and 11 towns. There are about 6 main roads through that area. Such as US 65, MO 7, US 54, I-44 on the southern end, the point is that realtors just list a house. That won't work at all. Each of these main highways have countless (hundreds) of smaller roads intersecting off of the mains. Close to 0% of those roads go through to anywhere. Anyone getting off of the highway and onto the local road is not going through. They all have one destination, the shore of the Lake of the Ozarks. There is no such thing as traffic. If there is it is someone driving on it, they are headed to their place on the shore.
Typical realtors just want a listing to put in a computer and wait. It won't work. The Bent Tree Harbor guys spent as much as $20,000 a month on direct mail to get 300 visitors and sell 10% or 30 lots averaging $5,000 per lot. I didn't believe it or not but I watched Bent Tree Harbor (It is on Truman. No access. Thus, no harbor) Then we did that for 7 years. Same numbers, I still find that amazing.
The reason I give all of the weight of the collateral on the big house, is that it is a big ass house. It is well made out of steel. The good thick kind.
Number 3.
There is a frenzy of lot buying in Benton County for the last 3 years. Before that? Not very many.
At Eagle Bay they are being bought up by foreigners. Some company in Isreal bought several hundred at tax sale prices. I can't use those sales to represent the value of my ready-to-build lots. So I can't use them at all. They only have value to someone like me. I am not a lot speculator, I am a value builder. We will build houses on the lots and include them in the price therefore raising the prices. The foreigners will be driven out. I am not going to buy their lots. They are not even ready to build. (No Power, Roads need work, lots aren't prepared.)
Mine are hand picked. 100 plus my eight. If I only have the eight, I will just remodel the house sell it and leave. But, that is not the play. I don't know of anyone here that is uniquely qualified to hit the ground running with a plan. I want to buy more using a boiler room telemarketing approach. It is a shame, but I will miss out of some of the best prices because I don't have the kind of Self-Directed network that I did. You can pay those guys more because they will wait. That is what they are for.
If I could make that kind of money in the 1980s with direct mail costing tens of thousands of dollars. What can I do with the two kids in a garage that Bill Gates fears with the internet. I can't do it. I am ten to twelve years behind. But here will be an internet marketer that can help us go fast.
The small house needs $60,000 worth of work. If not for the chimney and fireplace with the smoker I would doze it down. But, my Lunch Bucket JOEs love it. I have offers. That only means something if you see their eyes. But, in its "as is" the small house is $60 grand of future value. We will videotape the rebuild and use it to fire up the $4,000 follwers I have on Facebook. It will be the noise of growth, activity and creditability.
But, the steel house is cool. It is indestrutible and the large numbers of comparable sales are available for it. So, I can only borrow what it is worth today. And make do. Minimum value is $84.47 per sq ft of livable space. I charged more to build it than that. When the remodel is done and I have added a kick ass kitchen and two bathrooms, plus a "shouse" addition, it will be worth $125 per sq ft. The avg cost to construct in Benton County is the same as Kansas City (Distances push it up). In 2023 it averaged $151 sq ft.
Those numbers are on this website.
The existing Free and Clear Properties from the 2011 Cash Purchase are below.
Lots 6, 7, 8, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18, and 19, Block 33, PLAT 5 of EAGLE BAY, a
subdivision in Benton County, Missouri, according to the recorded plat thereof.
Sierra Investments, LLC was diluted and mangled by different partners and financiers I brought in. But, I had no better idea for a long time. Until about 4 years ago.
I was building Condos in Keystone for almost 4 years. When I came back to KC I ran into an old friend who was helping two women real estate brokers who were working on growing their agency. He told me that if I would get a real estate agent and broker's license he would give me a corner office as long as he could call me his "commercial guy". It worked out pretty weill for me. In 1999 I formed an LLC to be my real estate entity. I registered it with the MO SOS and I have used it ever since. That Limited Liablility Company was named, "Boulevard Real Estate, LC." I have operated as that since 1999.
Much later when I decided to go back and try to takeover as much of Eagle Bay as I could and begin building affordable homes with an emphasis on retirees whose pension money was in these multi-corporation pension funds (I first read about the teamsters liquidity issues from buying the same mortgage-backed securities that may have already done irreperable damage to the Amerian Dream.) I have an interest in VA housing also.
I think the greatest thing we an do is to make good money doing the right thing. It is easier than the anxiety caused by cheating. I learned that in 5th grade. I will give some credit to Mrs Chipman for that. But, really I hate bullys. Down deep. So, I am better off helping the little guy while still thriving myself. That is reliant of full disclosure. You shouldn't believe that just because I typed it. But, if we begin any type of relationship, just oberve. I am ok with that I recommend it. I will be doing the same. Like Reagan said, "Trust, but verify"
As I began to prepare, I had not considered yet that the "Wall Street Meltdown" might have made it harder to borrow than I was It used to. But, I was beginning to learn it.
So, I formed a new clean LLC that had done no prior business and was therefore transparent. I had been gone from Eagle Bay for a very long time. But, some of my people that worked for me in the 1980s were still there. The existing HOA board is slow, stupid, and aggresive. I decided that until I figured out who was who I would not stir the waters by calling me Eagle Bay and spooking them into thinking I was going to try to grab a lot of influence, which I am. But, I had no reason to get into a scuffle until I could figure out the best way to do things.
That is why I called the LLC to be used on this project, "Boulevard at Eagle Bay, LLC".
Yes. The enactment of the 1986 Tax Act did not cut into our traffic, but it eliminated the lenders. It was a bitch trying to figure out what happened and why, and answering the question could it be fixed?
It was bad. The RTC stole a lot of money from me. I don't think it was aimed at me, but the directive is sell it all no matter who it belongs to. The FSLIC failed in spectacular fashion in the first millisecond. I was using warehousing lines to Borrow 70% of new contracts and if one went bad, we just replaced it. Once we set up the structure lots did not cost much to produce. We were never in trouble. We just lost funding, therefore the ability to sell.
It was Glass Steagall that kept the economy together. Some people got hurt pretty bad, I adapted and went on. In retrospect the government caused the problem by putting the Act into effect immediately giving no one the chance to modify the general contractor and limited liability partnership model into something workable.
But, it could have gotten worse if action wasn't taken. Maybe.
I did all of the Eagle Bay Development with my own money. I could spend $20,000 a month at Eagle Bay and I did. We spent over one million dollars on infrastructure such as roads, electric lines, a private six acre lake on property as well as the boat ramp directly in the lake. Remodeling an old TJ Pendergast house on a cliff overlooking the Lake of the Ozarks. I put a $75,000 addition on that house and ran a waterfall from there down to a swimming pool. Those were in 1980 dollars. But, we went profitable in the first summer. Most of the investment is still there, but I need to get back more control. One of the two reasons for getting the 100 lots.
Some of that is gone. But, the crux hasn't changed much.
The original development LLC was Sierra Investments LLC. Formed for the purpose of creating Eagle Bay. It is is irrelevant now. This story will become a novel if I try to fit it all in.
I think you are trying to figure out me and if I am a good bet. Do I know what I am doing? What is my experience? How is it structured? I expected the questions. But, like I said, I did not and still do not know how to anticipate what someone wants to know. If some of this narrative gets to long just skip ahead. I am going to try to answer this as I understand the questions. But, I think there is some backround that may be important next. So, as best I can, I will fill some of the holes. I am relieved at your questions. I have been asked no questions in a long time. The referral guys working out of their garage just want a Social Security Number to send to some other non-broker until it finally gets to a lender who is score driven.
I have been looking for someone who wanted to know all of the whys. You made my day. However it works out or doesn't, I am getting closer. Thanks.
Where does my experience for this type of venture come from?
My original career was plowing utilities cables underground and on poles. Our company was headquartered in Windsor, MO. Windsor is in the center of a triangle formed by Warrensburg, Sedalia and Clinton. It is located ten miles south of the North - South runway of Whitemen Air Force Base in Knob Noster.
In 1978 - 1980 I was a passive partner in buying a rock crusher with a friend from high school who had a contract with a development called Bent Tree Harbor on the new (at the time) Truman Lake. They could not build on the lake because it is a Corps of Engineer Lake and is much more tightly controlled than the much older Lake of the Ozarks. They were selling lots. So the business was to put in the infrastructure (mainly roads and recording survey plats with lot and block descriptions. The lots were universal, in that the buyer could camp, build, or park RVs and have an acccess to the activities available in this area. We made friends with the local operators of Bent Tree Harbor and began to learn how they made money and why it worked over and over.
In the 2nd year Forbes magazine bought a great deal of property across the Lake of the Ozarks from the property that I would serendipitously discover and purchase in the near future, Why Forbes (Malcolm Forbes chose to do this is still not clear to me. Their plan was bigger but very flawed. They contacted us through the Bent Tree Harbor group and we began crushing rock for their large and expensive endeavor which did not work well at all. We were learning from them both. But, we did not plan to use this knowledge to get into that business.
Bent Tree Harbor did not market to people living in the area. Those people already lived there. They used Direct Mail (computers were not on anyone's horizon as of yet.) to entice prospective buyers from the midwest.
Of course the core target market was "Joe Lunch Bucket" and his family from the closest large population areas of St. Louis, Kansas City, and Springfield in Missouri and then also Des Moines, Iowa, Topeka and Wichita Kansas and Oklahoma City and every small town in that general geographic area. The invited people down for a tour of the property and it was uncanny how the traffic was always constant and sales in the same percentage of visitors range.
This we learned from Bent Tree Harbor ownership group and the local Sales and Management Team. I copied this plan right down the line very soon, but that was never my intention. Much of the Eagle Bay history was from using the Bent Tree Harbor game plan. It worked, so even if I did deviate from the plan for improved results, I did so in tiny steps and with a lot of thought.
Forbes Lake of the Ozarks Project (which we dubbed with the acronym FLOP) was the opposite. They were on the wrong side of the Lake and their water ingress and egress was very, very shallow. The Lake of the Ozarks by the time you get to the 78 mile marker was and still is remote from the hot action of the 1960s and 70s from Bagnell Dam (the zero mile marker) to the 40 - 50 mile markers.
It is more pristine and changes slowly. The Bent Tree customer and then, of course, our target market did not have the money for the bigger homes and boats that just kept building. It is more river like and is challenging to keep out of trouble. In the one of my short raw videos of the Eagle Bay boat ramp a portion of Forbes Lake of the Ozarks Project (FLOP) is directly across. It appears that the lake is a quarter mile across or longer. The water looks the same all the way across, but that is an illusion.
The ancient channel of the Osage River is on our side. We sit on an underwater bluff and it is easy to see that. Forbes has several coves which look like perfect water entrances, but from what looks like the center of the lake is acually deep on our side and so shallow on the Forbes side that in the winter when the operators of Lake of the Ozarks (Hydro Electric Power Producers) draw down the water level to prepare for spring rains, FLOP was a mud flat for miles.
We met Malcom Forbes and his son Bobby several times. Once he hired a helicoptor and had us ride over their project so we could tell him where its boundaries were (we were building his roads as well as Bent Tree Harbor.)
I pretty much grew up on the Lake of the Ozarks. My family had a 63 foot houseboat that was two stories tall. We kept the boat at the 7 mile marker at Millstonte Marina (condos today) and at the time there was no bigger boat. So, I knew that end of the lake and, because I ran the family construction business and I worked day in and day out with crews that would have looked right in place on a pirate ship, I knew Joe lunch bucket. Our target market. The two areas of the Lake are very different. In between is every type of person and structure and they are from everywhere.
Our target could not buy on the first 50 miles. That wouldn't want to. They are deck boats, fishing boats, camping or just staring at the water.
Our logo which I still own the copyrights and trademark to is a sun with an Eagle Landing on a tree with the words, "Eagle Bay Your Place in the Ozarks". That is what Bent Tree Harbor was and that is what we then provided. Eagle Bay was the new improved version of Lake of the Ozarks.
I was only 28 in 1980, But, I was already fearless. I had over 200 people working in two to five states at any one time. I bought a six passenger Piper Lance (the plane John Kennedy pulled upside down into the water). I actually kind of had to. I could haul big heavy parts to fix Bulldozers, backhoes and cable plows or carry crews back and forth from Texas, Louisiana, Oklahoma, Kansas, Arkansas, etc.
Our work was heavily influenced by the Rurual Electric Authority (REA) and our main line of work was constantly upgrading rural area phone service to the standards of cities. But, I started running a backhoe at 16 years old and by 1980 I had been living a grueling but very fun life for 12 years.
I have been trying for the last 4 years to remember how I ended up buying the property. I know who was involved, but I think it was not a straight line.
Another friend from Windsor called me. He knew we were working with Bent Tree Harbor and Forbes and he asked if I wanted to buy some land cheap. That was a broad and dangerous question, so, of course I told him yes without much thought. The originall parcel which has been chewed up some from the 1986 Tax Law Act and the inconceivable repeal of the Glass Steagall Finance Act of 1934 which I have written abut extensively.
I bought it from an 84 year old physician who was still working on Staten Island, New York. He wanted to meet me. So he flew in to KCI and I picked hin up. We hit it off instantly. His name was Dr. Theodore Atlas. His son is Teddy Atlas, Mike Tyson's ringman.
We made a deal for $550,000. I never met him again in person. But, he called me all the time because he had a condo in Daytona Florida and he knew I was a gearhead. He had no one left to use is it. I used it several times. I paid him off using the warehousing line. Everytime we made money he did. He thought it was great fun. I really thought he was a great man.
The original parcel was 1200 acres, 7,014 feet of shoreline, and if the Lake of the Ozarks was not right there its value would have been about 25 cents per acre. From 65 Highway east 12.3 miles on H highway an asphalt road the change in terrain is stunning. It is right at the fracture line of the Ozark Mountains. Much older than the Rockies and once just as tall. The land changes as much in that 12 miles than anything i have ever seen. I lived in Keystone Colorado for almost 4 years building condos and the change from Denver to the Eisenhower Tunnel on I-70 is spectacular but expected.
There is a video on the Draft Website eaglebayoz.blogspot.com that I just shot a few weeks ago of me driving the 12 miles. It is stunning. I did the video because I thought it would look good on a website, but the real reason, is that real estate finance has become a chaotic industry and is full of "Broker/Referers (? sp?) who are not required to have any license and 9 out of 10 or worse do not know anything about real estate or finance. I have had a dozen voices on the phone act really intereted about putting together some funding only to have them take the Zip Code of Lincoln, MO and see that it was designated agriculture and just tell me they could not work with ag property.
Lincoln is farmland. All the way to the Arcitic Circle is farmland. But, the thing is that Zip Codes are very large in rural mountainous areas because the population is very spread out. The Lincoln City Limits is 15 miles from Eagle Bay. The first 5 miles of H hwy going east off US 65 is ordinary. Then it begins to change rapidly and for the new visitor terrifyingly so. By the time you get to Eagle Bay if you have not slowed way down the experience is much like racing F-1 in Monaco. Agriculture? You have even left dirt behind. It is rocks, dirt, and deer and turkey walking through your yard openly showing contempt.
Theand began a similar operation in a bigger, but not better way
- 60k to rebuild smaller home correct?
- Please address
- Do you have appraisal of ARV once completed
- Area Comps to support the sale of 130K
- Photos ?
- Scope of Work
- 60K for larger home correct?
- Please provide address
- Do you have appraisal of ARV once completed
- Area Comps
- Photos
- Scope of Work
- 50K for 100 lot payoff .
- Please provide a few parcel numbers
- How long are you needing the funds?
Between 98
Free and Clear Home Building Lots. I paid cash for 8 ready-to-build new home lots in November of 2011.
LARGE LAKE HOUSE ON LOTS 15-16 BLOCK 33, PLAT 5 EAGLE BAY A SUBDIVISION IN BENTON COUNTY, MO.
8 Ready-To-Build Construction Building Lots 6, [7 Small House], 8, 12, 13. 14, [15&16 large house], 17, 18 19 in blk 33, Plat 5 Eagle Bay a subdivision in Benton County, MO
I moved the section below from the Post Title. It is not current but I saw no reason to just delete it yet. It is known that I can't run the project very long on borrowed money. the core business is building affordeable single family homes to either be sold at a profit or to long term finance some or all of what we build to sell or we keep to lease. There is no number of construction loans that I have determined would be ideal for the project. 4 is very low. But, I can't detremine that. The money determines that. So when a lender asks what I want I think we have not reached that point. Why will someone give me construction loans and how many are they considering giving me.
Boulevard Real Estate Is Looking For Loans To Fund 3 Construction Loans @ $90,000 Each In Eagle Bay on the 78 mm of Lake of the Ozarks, MO
3 Construction Loans @$90,000 each = $270,000 funding to build new homes on Ready-To-Build