How to Build Luxury Homes in Los Angeles?
- This is such an unanswered kind of unknown area on YouTube. And you're a good friend of ours. So you're gonna give everybody a little bit of information. On a project like this, can you give us the price breakdown roughly how much you bought it? How much are you anticipating to invest in the project, your closing costs and what you're hoping to take roughly as a profit.
- Okay. - All right. We're back. That's the end of the video. Goodbye (upbeat music) - [Mickey] We're back in the car. Another day in LA, we have a fun little thing planned for y'all, something a little different.
Enes, what are we doing? - We're gonna meet our good friend, Jason Pie, JJP Construction. We're gonna take a quick look at what it takes to develop these luxury mansions. I'm sure you guys heard Jason's name in our videos for a bit now. How many properties we've toured of his so far? I think we've toured three of his properties. So Jason is a luxury real estate developer in the city. He probably does 20 to 30 projects a year and he does them extremely well he's also very quick because he knows his business from in and out every little detail.
And today we wanna go one of his project sites again in Pacific Palisades, kind of ask a few questions learn what it takes to be a real estate developer and all that good stuff. - Before we go to the Palisades, there's something else we have to do, far more important than real estate. More important than life itself.
(upbeat lively music) - Oh my gosh, so good. All right, everyone. So we got Jason here.
How's it going, bud? - Good, thank God, man, thank God. - We got this amazing project behind us. Tell us a little bit about it. - [Jason] Yes, so right now, we are standing at my project here in Pacific Palisades. This is my fifth project.
It's 5,200 square foot lot. We're building a 3,500 square foot home here. This is probably considered one of the smaller houses in the neighborhood where we're getting, we're squeezing in all the square footage that we possibly can.
It's a very beautiful layout, great floor plan. We're gonna have a lot of fun with it. I'm very excited about it.
There's a lot of really cool details we're renewing in the house. You know that I'm really big into the details. So I'm really excited about this house. - Awesome. - [Mickey] We are about to go in there and look at this house. But before we do, we brought a little something for you.
It's in Enes' car. - What? - One second. - [Enes] No construction site visit is complete unless you bring some donuts. Guys, we may be about details on our main channel but we respect the people who put the time in to execute those details.
And we wanted to honor that. - [Mickey] Execute one of those details. - That's fantastic! - There's some half ones there, we kind of lost a little bit of, all right, everybody's like, I'm gonna take one of those half - Take your, I'll take the maple, very good.
- [Mikey] I knew the maples are gonna come in handy. - Thank you very much. - Before we walk in, there's a detail here I see already. I like, ZIP R‑Sheathing. Tell us a little bit about the sheathing, why it's better than your regular sheathing. - [Jason] So what this is, this is the ZIP system.
It's Huber Wood, and essentially it used to be there's three layers. There's the plywood, the waterproofing, and the finished material. This ends up reducing it to the plywood and the waterproofing in one piece. So all we have to do is put the finish on there and no issues, no concerns. It's a beautiful piece. - You just put the tapes up on the seams, you're good to go.
- It's a Monolithic piece from the ridge line of the roof all the way to the bottom. - I love it, I love it. All right, let's continue. So I'm assuming we walk-in this is your two car garage, pretty standard. I see the footers already raised so you can hose this place down, no issues.
You have your drywall above that. By the way, we're at the stage right now. They're drywalling the house. So you guys are gonna see some crews and stuff - I apologize for the mess in advance, I do have the guys cleaning up, but they only came now.
- [Mickey] It's not a construction site without a mess. - Yeah, that's true. We've got a powder room here, this is gonna be the mudroom, you walk in from this section. You walk into the living room, the dining room.
- And then you're doing that layout of like formal living room, fireplace in the center, dining area separated from the kitchen. - [Jason] Correct. For me, I like to focus a lot on the staircases. Cause a lot of people will think that like the big fixtures in the house where like the kitchen, bathrooms, I actually think like that's the center point of the house. That's the biggest thing that people are gonna see first. You never have the kitchen in the front of the house.
You walk in immediately. You're gonna be seeing the living room, family room, staircase. - You want it to look well. - So I like to put a little bit more extra attention on the staircases and then bring people down this way. So there's a big flow that pushes into the house. You have a guest room right here, then you have the big family room, kitchen space - That open floor plan.
- That open floor plan that everyone seems to love. And this is where it really shines. - Look, I wanna ask you a whole lot and we're gonna tour this place, I wanna ask you a couple of things about being a real estate developer. And what do you look for, before you commit to a project? A lot of people wanna get into this business, obviously, they see us touring these fancy homes that you build.
They're like, that's nice. I wanna build something like that. But I wanna take it to the basics a little bit. First thing I wanna ask you, straight forward, how do you find the properties or what filters you put in place to decide? This is the right property for me to develop. - So you actually introduced me to a platform called TopHap which I actually have been using non-stop. Because if you didn't know, people send me listings every day and it's exhausting to get that many listings and not have enough information on what they're sending me - Or having comparable data like where you wanna play, and you wanna check out certain details.
- I'm literally able to take those addresses, put them into TopHap, get all of my answers answered within seconds, I know exactly what I'm looking for, what I need to know, how I need to know it. Does it work for me? Does it not work for me? Make those - [Enes] Click on the neighbors kinda get an idea of the street. - [Jason] Comps are immediate, all the pricing is there, everything that I need to know is there. - Gotcha. - I know what houses are selling for, what they can be sold for, estimations.
There's so much, so many tools on this platform. It's incredible. - And I wanna add in here, I like the platform, TopHap because, so there's a developer side of things then there's the realtor side of things. Realtors have quite a lot of access to a lot of data, price per square foot, neighborhood history, who owns what, who paid for, how much for certain home? And developers have access to certain data as well.
But we're kinda limited because we don't have license. The reason I like TopHap also, now that I'm not an agent. TopHap allows you to merge all the data. So from public information, property information, who owns what property, delinquent taxes, to lot information, to all the real estate realtor data, it's merged into the one website.
So you don't have to have a license. - [Jason] Correct. - [Enes] And you can still find out all the information and optimize your decision because no matter how much how many agents you have working with, you gotta be quick. - Yes. - It's you that's pulling the trigger.
- And for me it certainly replaced MLS. I mean, I have all the data I need there. I can run my comps, I can see histories, I can literally click on a property that I'm curious about.
Pulls the information right there, gathers it from a bunch of websites. It's easy, It's convenient. I love it so much that I actually ended up investing my own money. We're becoming partners with this brand. Even Mikey invested in it, Mikey you give 'em thumbs up. Because we really like what they're doing.
They're really allowing the consumer to get access to any information they want. That's really literally the bottom line and that's why we like it. So we wanted to mention that out. I'm gonna get a discount code for everybody who's our audience.
I think you guys are gonna get 50% off. Just take it out, you have questions, DM me. - And ask me too, I'm happy to answer.
- [Mickey] All right, well, I got a question for you. I wanna know what you're doing with this backyard, are you putting a pool in here, let's take a quick peek at it before we go upstairs. - Okay. Well - You don't have a ton of space to work with, but I'm curious to hear your creativity on this one. - [Mickey] It's a little muddy out here, so let's just, we'll stay right here.
- We'll keep inside, so there's about 35 feet in the backyard here. That is, ironically it's actually average, but it is small. Compared to especially the homes we're all used to seeing on this channel. - Yeah.
- So being creative with the space is definitely really important in Palisades. You know, talking about TopHap, you can actually find out the average of who's living in those areas. So in this neighborhood, in the Pacific Palisades, it is high net-worth individuals, but they have families. This isn't like, West Hollywood.
- This isn't Hollywood where people are into party and all that. - This isn't celebrity neighborhood, this is family neighborhood. So actually keeping in mind that when I'm designing these homes I'm trying to design them for a family. - Or the end consumer, that you're thinking whose gonna buy it. - The end consumer is who I'm thinking about.
I've built over 30 houses in this neighborhood, not one of them have been sold to a single couple. - Gotcha. - All of them were either have kids or having a kid. - Or going on that direction. - Going in that direction. So my, my current design, and again, this does change.
I'm very designer that way. But right now when I'm feeling is I actually feel like a nice big deck. We're gonna do a Trex deck here, coming out, walking out flush with the floor. It's gonna come out, It's gonna come out about five or six feet beyond that.
You're gonna make a left turn here, and the barbecue will be on that end. And then I'll do a fire pit in that corner, and the rest of this is all gonna be grass and open play area. - Gotcha. - [Mickey] Could I convince you to maybe consider putting a hot tub back there? - Yeah, you could.
- [Mickey] Yeah. - Mikey, likes his water. - [Mickey] How would that affect your budget overall? If last minute you're like, Oh, maybe we'll put in a hot tub.
- It would break the bank, maybe 50K - [Mickey] 50? - Yeah. - [Enes] Yeah, if it's a built in, - [Mickey] Well, I guess you're close enough to the ocean. - Exactly. Just hop onto the roof, get your view, and you're fine. - All right, so let's walk around.
I got construction questions for you. - Okay. - Obviously it was easy for me to see this is kitchen, it has purple drywall. A little bit more moisture resistant.
- It has a moisture resistant barrier to it. - Exactly, right away, your plumbing is here. Sewer line, electricity, waterline, your island is here. - Don't judge the ugliness. - Yeah, it's all gonna be pretty guys.
We'll probably be here when it's done and it will look totally different. - This'll be the smallest house you ever tour. - Built by you.
- Built by me. We've toured some small places, Jason. - Oh, that, in New York. - Exactly.
- [Mickey] Prices in New York are like $30 million though. - Yeah. But a fridge is there? - So, fridge, freezer, countertops here, we're gonna have the pot filler here, hood, stove, cabinetry is gonna end probably about right here.
We have that marked out on the floor. So that's how we do a lot of our markings. So we do have a design plan that we do.
We have a whole bunch of like CAD drawings and renderings that we actually produce for the home So we, all of our sub-trades can see the finish. - You have the 95% kind of finished product in mind. - Yes, so, we'll actually mark a lot of details on the floor and on the walls. So electrical gets placed correctly, low voltage gets placed correctly, like, this is low voltage.
Shelving lighting - Shelving lighting, yeah. - So like, we know that, that's gonna be there. - Gotcha. - We have our outlets, are GFCI's, for the kitchen. As we walk this way, we'll have our butler's pantry here, - There you go.
- [Mickey] For the layman's GFCI's are the ones that have the switches where they'll, like breakers basically with them. - Correct. Like if you're over, if you're overloading the circuit it'll pop here, instead of on the panel. - [Mickey] Yeah. - Or like, if you have wet hands, you touch them.
- [Mickey] You won't electrocute yourself. - I'm assuming you're doing these tall baseboards that's why drywall is kinda open. - Do you remember the detail we did on Glen Avon? That's the exact detail. - I love it.
All right, let's go upstairs. - Come on. - Let's go check out. (soft upbeat music) - [Jason] Let's go check out some other rooms though. - Let's do it, let's do it.
So we got two bedrooms here. Take us to this one, I like this one because there's like a little bit more revealing, ton of drywall. Ah, this smell, everything. This is so, you're bringing me back to my old days in Texas.
- Yes. - You have some framing here, this is one of your smaller bedrooms, I believe. - Yes. - I see... - I believe this is 10 or 12 x 10, something like that.
- [Mickey] I gotta jump in here, point out a detail. You always do this little ceiling detail with the beam in the center, with the fan already cut out. - Yes, - [Mickey] We, and Enes always talk about that in the videos when we tour. - Is that a big thing that you guys don't see? - Well, you don't see that. And I'm like, some people love ceiling fan, Mikey and I, in our rooms, we have ceiling fans, we love it. - [Mickey] We broke, I don't think we were supposed to do that on our lease, but we put them in anyway.
- Yeah, we put them in anyway and let the people decide, you're gonna leave them up there? - That's literally been my choice. I built one house that did not, I did not put them in. And that one house. - They probably asked you for it. - They were like, where is the wire? (laughs) Well, I'll be honest with you. I put the whip in there, but I felt like I didn't wanna put the finish on there.
So I hid it and we had to rip out some drywall and find the wire. Thank God I put the wire there. - Thank God, yeah. - What we did, we had to re-route some wire and pull the wire out and make it for them.
- [Enes] Make it for them. - [Enes] I see the walk-in shower there, I don't wanna go in there because you have the same detail in the master primary bedroom. Let's go check that out, actually. - Come on.
This right here is where we're coming into the master. There's a nice long corridor that gets us to that space. - On purpose, you kinda set the tone. - It really breaks the space up and almost you forget that you're in the house when you're in there. - [Enes] Gotcha.
- [Mickey] What do we got right here, is this like a duct that you haven't cut yet? - [Jason] This is a return mat. So this, that's the air that's pulling out to keep the temperature going. - [Mickey] Okay. - That's where all the temperature gets tested from.
- [Enes] And you come in. Oh, nice, This gets, actually a lot of natural light. - [Jason] Yeah. - [Enes] Very cool. So fireplace, I am assuming TV, bed set-up there. - Bed set-up in the center, windows flanking the bed, plenty of natural light coming in from both walls.
They have a nice balcony in here. We'll have a, we'll have built in shelves here, but we decided to actually put a vanity here, we're not gonna do a built-in. - Which is unusual, but we're doing a really nice wall detail on the wall.
And we really wanted that to shine throughout the whole space. - Okay. Got it. That's interesting. Linear gas fireplace.
- Linear gas fireplace. Really cool tile details on this. The master is gonna blow you away on the design. It's gonna be something really, really, interesting.
- Show me, I mean, I kinda briefly walked around it. - You cheated? - I mean, I see a ton of, you see Jason, I'm a weird guy, this kind of stuff excites me. So I see these, not Propex.
What was this? The expansion ones. - Yeah, the pex - Pex, yes. So you have the pex here, but your valves are copper. I'm assuming you have two wall faucets? - Two wall-mounted faucets, two sinks. This is gonna be the washing station, essentially. The separate closed toilet room.
Makeup vanity. - Cool. - Freestanding tub. - Nice. - On this section. - Always love those.
Tell me about this. And this is really important for everybody to see, waterproofing is everything. Water is the biggest enemy of your house. - Yeah. - When there's water, you gotta be careful, right? Tell us what happened here.
This is not hot mop. - [Mickey] Is that plaster or is that concrete? - This is concrete. - This is concrete, this is waterproofing.
This is a fiberglass, fiberglass method of waterproofing. I call it cold mop, cause everyone uses hot mop. And this is the opposite of that. I have no idea what the name of it is, what the reference to, whatever it is.
I just essentially know it's a fiberglass method. - What we do is we put, we put that felt paper down Black felt paper, then we level it out with concrete. Then we put a few layers of the fiberglass on there, and that's basically what we do.
- Do you use epoxy in between to like glue down the fiberglass or is it. - There's some sort of gluing system, I don't know if it's a epoxy, but there's definitely a gluing system that kinda hardens the fiberglass. It makes it makes it a one note. The reason why this is better, hot mop has no give. Hot mop can crack. - Hot mop does crack.
- Hot mop does crack - Does crack. - I, there's a joke there, I'm not gonna make it, Mickey, okay. (laughs) - I've done quite a bit of hot mop, flat roofs and they do crack. - They do crack, so one, we definitely don't put hot mop on our roof anymore. But in the showers and stuff like that, people like to use hot mop it's the quickest, fastest method It's also the cheapest method.
This is definitely much more expensive. - Okay. - But...
- It seems more intact and kind of tight too. - It's tight corners, tight knit, tight spots. Nothing is bubbling, nothing is, where it should. This all has, this has metal in it.
Like, actually metal flashing, like all of this right here that you can see here. It's completely metal flashed. - So it's reinforced. - It's completely reinforced. Everything is tight.
And the best part about it is that, it is malleable to some degree. Like if you go into a tub, which this is basically made out of the material that most tubs are made out of, when you're in a tub, it actually has some give like, when you sit in it and that kinda bends a little bit, cause you know, donuts. - [Jason] Krispy Kreme. - Krispy Kreme, so like, that's the same, this is the same exact material. - There's a detail I got to show here.
This is hitting, I love this. You guys see this? So in between the studs, they actually filled in the cracks with the spray foam, for air quality and the air tightness of the home. Love that, you've got a fancy valve there. So double of everything, I am seeing a rain head above.
Guys, we talk about it. God, how many times we've pointed out one of these. This is how it looks when the walls are open. This literally, this is the easiest way.
Left, you have the cold. Right, you have the hot. - Correct. - I'm correct right? - Yeah. - Haven't lost my skillset.
- Also, this is insulated, this is not insulated. - There you go, that could have been another way. Comes in, it gets mixed up here. This is the on-off essentially. - Yes. - It does, mix here.
And then you have the diverter here. - Diverter here. It either goes to here or to the rain head. Nice balcony.
You have these sliders, bringing natural light. This is awesome. When you think, so little bit more perspective. There you go, while you open that up. I mean, there's some serious waterproofing there actually. We can talk about.
A couple of questions. From the time you bought this property. Walk us through the timelines.
How many months did take you to tear down the existing home? How many months to plan the new home that we're sitting in? How many months to build when you're putting it on a market, a couple of timelines, so people can get a little bit of reference. - I'll try to do my best to do the timelines, for me, I have to be honest with you, timelines really do get blurred with the amount of projects I have going on. Okay, all right. But roughly, one, I put this into escrow and I think I got a six month escrow into it.
So that's a pretty great deal. Maybe it was three or four months. I don't remember exactly.
- That helps him to design the projects while not having to pay and close on it yet. And because he has a deposit that he knows he's gonna be able to deliver and close. It's just a perfect scenario for you without committing to anybody. - A 100%, so I put in my offers, I put in longer escrow times the reason I do that is, one, it's super helpful with the planning stages and things like that. And also with Corona, things have really extended in time.
So what used to be a three month planning process for me, is now six to eight months. It's killer, it's really tough. So we were blessed to be able to have that time. We really used a lot of it really well. About two months later, once we closed, we were able, we had permits and we just started running with it.
So we bought this house. We've now been building for about two months. - Okay. - We're anticipating another four months from before that, we were in contract about six months ago.
So it will be total about a year, maybe 13, 14 months max, by the time we're on the market. So from purchase or from contract essentially to sale, about 13, 14 months. - 14 months, you commit a year plus of your life. So you can finish one of these projects.
Another question, this is such an unanswered kind of unknown area in YouTube. And you're a good friend of ours. So you're gonna give everybody a little bit of information. On a project like this, can you give us the price breakdown, roughly how much you bought it? How much are you anticipating to invest in the project? Your closing costs and what you're hoping to take roughly as a profit? - Well, I'll give you, I'll give you the breakdown.
I'll be honest with you on it. Okay. But I do wanna preface this with some very important information. Okay. The most important thing to know is everyone always asks, what's the percentage return.
People wanna know what people are making. Why? You know, if you Google Enes, you'll be, Oh, what does Enes make each video? (laughs) - [Mickey] If you type in Enes the first thing that comes up is net worth. (laughs) - Yeah, when you type in Jason, and he goes, who? But the truth is, is none of that is true. Every single project is gonna be different. Nothing is gonna be the same, the information I give you and the information I give you, honestly, it's related to this one project.
It's never gonna be the same for every single one. It's never gonna be perfect every single time. Really, when I give you this information, do your own search do your own due diligence.
- It is specific to this project, to this circumstance and how you got involved with this project. - Yeah, like, don't take this information and go, Oh if I do this, that's what I'm gonna make. - You get phone calls tomorrow, I committed to a property in Sherman Oaks. I'm hoping to make 30% like you did. - [Mikey] Profits alone, what kind of Bugatti can you afford? - Yeah, I don't know Bugatti's, but, maybe one.
But okay, so we bought this house for $2,175,000. - Okay. Basically you paid for the land? - We did.
We paid for the land and let's call it $2,200,000 for math sake, okay. We're probably gonna put in about a $1,000,000 into the build and in that million dollars, hopefully, hopefully we can anticipate money costs and transaction costs, and - A little fees, here and there. - A lot of things, here and there. - Roughly 250 to $300 a square foot of built price.
- Correct. - For the house itself, not the land, house itself. - Keep in mind, yeah. So 3,500 square feet, break that down, - Exactly.
- It comes out to about that exact price. It was really good quick math, buddy. Props on that. - [Mickey] He didn't prepare for this. (laughs) - Imagine the night before, I'm studying, calculating. Okay, if he says, (laughs) If your in construction industry, you'll live with price per square foot.
I'm always wired to understand it that way. - Well I do talk about the price per square foot a lot, but and then obviously we're hoping to sell this thing for about 4,500,000. So if you guys don't wanna do any math at all and you're following along. - [Mickey] That's almost a Bugatti. Well, 2,700, keep in mind, you have your closing costs, time on the market, some carrying costs, can we say, rough estimate another three to 400,000 in that range of waiting maybe a little bit of discount on the price.
So you're hoping to make let's say 800 to million dollars on the high side. 800 on the low side. - Yes. - The best advice I give truly, and I think I even told this to you around the time that we first met, don't do it alone. It is worth paying the education.
If you're gonna go into something, if you wanna be an expert in something, pay for that expert advice, be willing to be the stupid guy in the room who asks all the questions, who does all the hard work, who's gonna climb that ladder to be something more. I did not learn this myself. I had teachers. I had, you know, mentors, people that I worked for, people had mentors. I mean, my dad's a huge mentor in my life. Like, there's always someone that I can go ask a question to.
I'm never stuck. I'm never in a roadblock because there's people that want to see me succeed. And without sounding horrible, like I've I've paid those dues. Like I've made those people money. - So you paid a premium for those dues.
- A 100%, I paid those premiums. I paid tons of money, in hard money loans. - High interest rates. - Profit splits and high interest rates, everything. I've made sure that people made money from my hard work.
So if they want it, they wanna teach me. They wanna make sure that I succeed, so that way I'll do more for them. I'll do better for them. And that's the advice I give people too, like people wanna just jump into something, I'm like, first of all, hire a contractor or hire someone who knows what they're doing and trust them. - And it's easy, I literally learned my career built up my construction career out of YouTube. Watched ton of content, watch and follow people like Jason, literally, you wanna learn this business? There's no like, he's talking about it on every single one of his videos we're gonna, of course leave his link and everything in the description down below.
Also I pushed Jason to do something here. He's gonna do a giveaway. - That's right. - For some of you who are interested in learning about this business, do me a favor go follow him on Instagram, send him a DM, tell him why you wanna learn this business.
And what's so important for you. He's gonna pick a couple of you guys, he's gonna spend a couple hours, showing some of his projects and answering questions that you guys might have. This is gold. When I was getting into this business, if I had access to people like Jason and be able to ask him questions and get this information, you can't pay for this. Do yourself a favor.
If you're interested in this stuff, go contact, Jason. - Can't wait to hear from you guys. - [Mickey] Well, Jason, thank you for having us here. - It was absolute pleasure, you guys are, some of my best friends over here.
- We feel the same way. - [Mickey] Just because we bring the Krispy Kreme. (laughs) - That's all you need to do to buy the key to my heart. - [Mickey] Last time, at his last property, if I remember correctly, you brought us like three pizza's.
- That's true. - Kosher pizza's, and they were good. - That's right.
And in the giveaway, I'm gonna be bringing pizza too. - There you go. (laughs) - [Mickey] I think I might put in my name to that. - But I just, I enjoy hanging out with you guys. And this was honestly just so much fun.
So you know. - Thanks for having us. - Thanks for having me. - All right guys, that's it for the tour, I hope you guys enjoyed this video and definitely let us know in the comments section if you want us to do more of these site tours, I'm glad we got a chance to talk to Jason. Learn more about what it takes to build these homes and be a real estate developer in the city.
Make sure to attend to his giveaway, I guess. - [Mickey] Go to his Instagram, check it out, We're always plugging Jason's Instagram, every video, I don't know if we plugged anyone's Instagram that hard because it's worth it. - Yeah, and then Jason's right there, behind us watching this outro right now. But yeah, there you go.
And yeah, definitely. Let us, let us know in the comments section make sure to check out TopHap. We love this app, we got discount codes for you guys. Make sure to check that out. Thank you guys for watching and we'll see you guys next week.
(uplifting cheerful music)
2021-04-25 21:04
