About Us

I am the Poster Child for the 2007 Financial Meltdown!

Hi-

I graduated from Georgia Institute of Technology in 1993 from the school of Architecture in Industrial Design. After graduation, I started a small handmade furtniture company with 3 other talented graduates building domestic hardwood contemporary furniture. After 4 years we had representation in Chicago, New York, and Atlanta and we each were still only making about $15,000 per year. We split up and I started renovating houses.

The first house I renovated myself. I did EVERYTHING! This was 1998 in Atlanta when the real estate market was just starting to percolate. Single Family Homes could be purchased for $25,000 in habitable or repairable condition. After I sold my first renovation I realized that I could’ve earned more money working at McDonalds for the amount of time I invested on the renovation.

After that I got smart. I started using the pencil and cell phone versus the hammer and the nail. I started hiring small crews and renovated 27 homes in 7 months. The next year I went back to school and got my real estate license and still bought, renovate, and sold 17 homes.

I added a buyers brokerage to my business by 2000. We ramped up and at one point we had 4 agents working out of my house. I learned quickly that managing real estate agents was like herding cats. I made more money focusing on the real estate development and I slowly closed down the brokerage and focused on multi-family redevelopment and some a few speculative new construction single family projects.

One thing led to another and I ended up partnering on a 123 unit apartment redevelopment project that we sold after three years for a healthy profit. I re-invested the money into a loft redevelopment that made a small profit and was poised to sell off another 12 unit loft redevelopment project and 2 custom spec homes when the housing market stopped dead cold end of 2006.

What does a small real estate developer do when the market stops dead? Go broke. My income was partially from the construction management draws from the construction, which means no new construction- no draws- no income. The large part of my income was from the profit of the sales of the units. We shifted gears mid construction and built the lofts for apartment rentals, but all our capital and any hope of profit was stuck in the property. No banks were (are) refinancing properties like ours.

With no work, no new construction, little opportunity for gainful employment in construction or real estate brokerage, I was faced with a finite time frame of capitol reserves. I put everything up for sale. Our personal residence, the spec houses, the cars, the planes (yes airplane), and boats (yes boats).

I sold our Vans RV7 2 seater experimental airplane, our 19′ Carolina Skiff, my wife’s 1997 Subaru Impreza, we had a big yard sale and used the cash to pay down the business credit cards by 2/3rd’s

I literally gave away one spec house (signed a quick claim deed) but could not sell or give away our personal residence and two other rental properties that were under water due to increased property taxes and insurance.

At the end of 2007 our monthly overhead was over $8,000 per month with no income coming in at all. Now with major slashing and a year of diligent work we are down to less than $2,400 in overhead and that could go down to less than $2,000 per month!

What’s the big deal with making $2,000 per month? 56% of the country earns $24,000 or less a year. That’s true. For our $2,000 a month we have health care, life insurance, food, fuel, a housing payment, and some utilities (phone, internet, car insurance, home insurance, property taxes). We can sustain on $24,000 a year without going further into the remaining $30,000 of credit card debt we are chipping away at (down from $80,000) right now.

My objectives for the future:

1. Spend as much time with my daughter as I can (born October 2007)
2. Get down to ground zero debt wise
3. SAVE, SAVE, SAVE- try to put a little bit away every month to have a nest egg to start over again when we decide to settle down and lay roots.
4. Lead an active lifestyle with REAL encounters with the world.

I hope you join us as we try the ‘live and learn’ approach to stretching the dollar and getting the most out of our time over these next 4 years

Best Regards,

JC McDowell and family