What did I learn from a real estate project?

You may have heard rumour that I'm a part-time plumber these days. It's true.

I recently completed a renovation project. Although I've worked on many projects in my multi-unit portfolio over the years, this one sets many new records. Special thanks to Sam Levac-Levey for all the mechanical tools he gave me before moving to California, I weirdly enjoyed using that electric drill.

Learning Never Stop

This recent project was a thorough flip of a 62-year-old house, the biggest in my real estate journey so far. Prior to the renovation, the old property age meant terrible energy efficiency: an oil furnace broke twice in a month (it was winter), and the property did not have backup heat. I decided to remove the oil tank and hired a HVAC contractor to install a ducted system. Although I've worked on ductless heat pumps before, this was my very first experience with a ducted system and oil tank removal all at once.

Having invested in residential real estate for a few years now, and I always enjoy learning new things. Intellectual exercises on project scheduling, debt financing, and cashflow forecast added new toolkits to my project skillsets, and I've also become a jack-of-all-trades in plumbing, carpentry, landscaping, painting, etc. The only thing I don't touch is electric work, for safety reasons.

Real estate is dynamic, everything changes quickly: pricing, material availability, contractor availability, site weather condition. I plan, adapt and make decisions quickly. While a construction project plan remains very traditionally waterfall, project execution is always agile.

When I was painting walls during this recent project, 2 buckets of the same paint, with exactly the same colour code, appeared to show different colours (strange!). Issues like this were rarely my fault, but I made genuine mistakes often, whether it's in material procurement, cashflow projection, contractor selection, or price negotiation. I learned, documented practices, and corrected the mistakes. Construction can be as agile as technology product development, and that's how we could improve productivity in construction.

Productivity: Construction vs Tech

According to recent data on Canadian labour productivity [1], productivity of Canadian construction sector staggers, and it is well behind the manufacturing sector. Furthermore, the productivity of house renovation (repair construction) declined in recent years, while the manufacturing of technology product (computer and electronics) has become more productive.

Averaged at 1% annual growth for 20 years, global productivity in construction staggers compared to the 3.6% annual productivity growth in manufacturing in the same period [3]. The construction sector has identified 3 top areas to improve productivity in construction [4]:

• Up-skill the workforce
• Greater investment in data/digitization for the management
• Improve procurement and supply chain management

Do these terms sound familiar to fellow technology professionals? If I replace "construction" with "tech", it still makes sense. We constantly talk about those terms, but somehow it has become buzz words.

Repair construction is not sexy, it is hard work. Now I believe that residential and repair construction and related sectors are the current biggest innovation opportunity in Canada. There is an ongoing housing crisis, we face a changing climate with more extreme storms, and we have big problems to solve in Canada.

Fire-retardant plywood, construction 3D printers, residential heat pumps, smart thermostats, electric thermal storage - new technologies will improve productivity in construction and real estate. I bet those Roomba robots have collected enough data to revolutionize residential real estate [5]. Here's a thought: when I purchase a new house, am I entitled to own the previous owner's smart home data? If a data dispute occurs in the future, can a title insurance covers relevant expenses? These questions require thoughtful technology product design and engineering.

Standing Out and Extra Scrutiny

I'm interested in solving problems for humanity to improve lives. It's a bumpy ride, especially when I look differently, think differently, and act differently. If you know me, I may have asked you very difficult questions in the past. I go straight to the hard stuff, and I love difficult conversations.

I'm not a difficult person, I just hate cynicism. I prefer to experiment things, ask difficult questions, and learn from difficult conversation. Since early school days, I was viewed as a "difficult kid" by teachers, I was outspoken, and I critically questioned everything: the accuracy of facts, ethical dilemma, technical challenges, genuineness of relationships with others...I even moved to a different country to re-establish myself.

Being different draws extra scrutiny. Being a person of colour in construction - a sector somewhat known for its redneck culture, I leverage my strength of asking hard questions. I engage stakeholders by challenging them, and I find that construction sector welcomes practicality and imperfection. Compared to tech, a construction project tends to be more forgiving on mistakes.

Being a minority and an outliner in tech, I've always faced extra scrutiny. Most recently, when I went through a hiring process, a specific part of my past work experience faced scrutiny due to my poor word choice (and I did not get that job). I appreciated a difficult conversation with Nick Misener to reflect on my shortcomings and improve myself. Extra scrutiny betters me and take me to bigger projects, which will draw more scrutiny. It's destined to be a bumpier ride.

In tech, we sometimes forget that "agility" also means imperfection. Remember: continuous improvement is a part of being agile. I think we could avoid catastrophic impact on users by more thoughtful deployment of technology products and services. A FDA-cleared medical device could still harm patients and be recalled, and we tend to forget how often that happens. We should learn craftsmanship from construction while accepting imperfection.

Trust Is Everything

Did I mention that I engage stakeholders by challenging them? That's the only way I build working relationships now. Meeting a person is only the first step, pushing through hardship together strengthens bonds. Shoutout to Dawa Gyalwa who put together the architectural designs of my recent project. It was my first time working with a vendor outside North America, and we pushed through challenges together. Construction is a relationship business, trust is built upon following through promises and getting stuff done.

Building a trusting relationship to work together is not easy. We see it in the recent power struggle with OpenAI . We see VCs relying on lunch and virtual seminars to engage founders (and it doesn't really work). Tech sector even struggles to build trust with machines, let alone with humans. How do we build trust? It is when we go through hardship and solve problems together, we build trust.

"Together is Better" - Simon Sinek

References

[1] Statistics Canada. Table 36-10-0480-01? Labour productivity and related measures by business sector industry and by non-commercial activity consistent with the industry accounts, 2023-05-19.

[2] Statistics Canada. Productivity Measures, 2018-11-28.

[3] McKinsey & Company, Improving Construction Productivity, 2017-07-18.

[4] Royal Institution of Chartered Surveyors, RICS Construction Productivity Report 2023, 2023-07-04.

[5] The New York Times, Your Roomba May Be Mapping Your Home, Collecting Data That Could Be Shared, 2017-07-25.