The Power of Networking in Real Estate: Insights from True Haven Group

Erika (00:01.08)
Hey everyone, welcome to the Investor Field Podcast. I’m your host, Erica, and today I’m joined by Nick Moe, the owner of True Haven Group, who’s been making real waves in the real estate development and construction management. Nick, it’s so great to have you on here today. it’s so great. For those who may not know your world, Nick, please give us a quick rundown. What’s the main focus at True Haven Group these days?

Nick Moe (00:18.465)
Thank you for having me. Happy to be here.

Nick Moe (00:30.433)
Sure, one of my main focuses right now in real estate is helping developers and owners in providing cost reviews, turnkey estimation, and change management throughout their projects.

Erika (00:43.438)
Awesome. It’s got to be hard with the market, rising cost materials and tight margins with doing that. What’s been the secret to making that work so well for your clients?

Nick Moe (00:58.665)
Yeah, I’m glad you brought that up. So there’s a lot of strategy right now in getting the deal off the ground and actually keeping it alive and not handing back some of those parcels. And a key there is a thorough review at the beginning and negotiation with the general contractor. And part of that is potentially replacing some of the subcontractors in their stack and their proposals to make those line items work for the actual budget. And that’s been crucial for some of my clients in kind of bringing some things back to life.

that they thought they were going to have to hand back at a certain point to the bank. So that’s been a really big benefit for those clients. And ultimately any budget now is so tight when you go into the construction of those projects that it is imperative that you have somebody with skills during the project to review any sort of changes in costs because there could just be one or two things that will completely upset the pro forma and the project no longer works halfway through.

through at which point you’re stuck. So those are two big keys right now in being successful in that new development world for sure.

Erika (02:10.882)
yeah, so I kind of would like to get into that a little deeper if you’re okay with that, because we’re talking about costs and like needing a pivot. So can you share like a success story that came out of that?

Nick Moe (02:15.947)
Yeah.

Nick Moe (02:21.078)
Yeah.

Yeah, absolutely. So I have a great example. There’s a five acre parcel. It was farmland. So when you develop farmland, you’re going to have shrinkage in the soil when you go to compact that. So when that happens, you’re going to lose 20 % of basically what is like the height of that soil when you’re going to actually finally do the construction portion, the horizontal work. So there’s going to be a lot of hauling of dirt. And most of the time we go into these things

and we don’t necessarily put a lot of money into the civils that happened at the beginning of the project, the plans that they’re actually bidding off of. And this client had kind of poor civils that they were working off of that they had handed their clients or their general contractor. And they’d gotten a bunch of numbers back that were 20 to 25 % over what they had in escrow for that project. So I was able to go back. We kind of built up those plans and made them more robust. And then we sent them out to a wider network and we

didn’t just send them to general contractors, we sent them to subcontractors as well within the network here in Phoenix. And that gave us like a real feel for what these costs were gonna be directly. So that when we went and negotiated with the general contractor, it was easier for us to say, hey, here’s the bottom line for these different scopes. This is what we’re gonna expect. And we were able to dial back some of their costs that we would have incurred in that project to bring it down below that budget number. And we actually were able to deliver that

less money than the escrowed amount they had in the bank. So that was that was a big win.

Erika (03:58.83)
Yeah, wow, wow, that’s a great story. That’s what separates people who just dabble in something and when your business is in it for the long haul, great work.

Nick Moe (04:10.517)
Yep, exactly. mean, it really comes down to, think for a long time, developers have gone just straight to the general contractor. You kind of take things for face value and we’re at a point where you just can’t do that anymore. And it’s hard sometimes to speak that other language that is construction. So that’s kind of where I stepped in and I’ve been doing this a very long time. can talk that talk with them and we can create those strategic solutions so that everybody wins and we can move forward with things in a positive and working way.

pretty great.

Erika (04:41.504)
Yeah, so looking ahead with True Haven’s focus on construction management, what’s the next step or what are you hoping to scale when it comes to your impact in real estate?

Nick Moe (04:56.513)
Sure, mean one of the…

One of the biggest things we’re spending our time on here now is definitely AI driven automations. And that’s kind of completing some of these timelines of repetitive tasks that we’re doing in, in brokerage house and, and inside of construction companies so that we can eliminate some of that wasted time and, and streamline and spend more time on the important strategic opportunities that we need to be focused on, especially as we move further and further into this market where the prices are going to be higher. There’s going to

to constantly be a gap in labor. There’s no quick solution for that. So the only thing you can do is take away some of kind of the dead time that we’re spending and speed up the machine so that we can optimize every single person we have in every seat. That’s what’s going to be crucial over the next five to 10 years. And if you don’t hop on sooner than later, you will get left behind and it will impact your business in a large and very negative way, I believe, over the next few years.

Erika (05:58.946)
Yeah, yeah, that could be huge. It could throw a wrench in things if you don’t nail that right.

Nick Moe (06:05.119)
Yep, yep, absolutely. So that’s a big one for us here right now.

Erika (06:09.614)
So Nick, a lot of our listeners are either new to real estate or they’re looking to scale their portfolios and they love your insight with your perspective. When it comes to building relationships in the real estate and construction world, what’s been the game changer for you?

Nick Moe (06:20.278)
Yeah.

Nick Moe (06:28.023)
I it’s a huge thing is just figuring out those circles where you live and finding some things to join there’s there’s things like contractor associations and real estate associations and like here in Arizona we have AZ REI which is Arizona real estate investors and those are usually monthly bi-weekly events it’s imperative you go to those things because you’re gonna every time even if you don’t want to go you do something always comes out of it either you take a

little bit of information that you didn’t have before, didn’t understand, or you meet somebody. I always meet somebody. I do these things a lot and I definitely have days where I’m like, I don’t want to go do that. I’d rather just stay at my house. But every time something fruitful comes out of it, and you don’t always know how that’s going to kind of cook into your ultimate plan, but as long as you stay active and you’re constantly looking for those opportunities, you will start to build a network around the thing that whatever it is you’re doing.

That’s going to make you ultimately more successful over time. You have to do it.

Erika (07:33.314)
Yeah, yeah, I love that you said that you don’t always want to go, but you show up. That’s so important.

Nick Moe (07:36.925)
Yep. Yep. Motivation goes away, but as long as you stay consistent, that’s the key.

Erika (07:45.262)
Yeah, yeah, and those relationships, they’re so important to keep growing. So before we wrap up here today, Nick, if someone wants to connect with you, maybe collaborate on a project or tap into True Haven Group’s estimating or management services, what’s the best way for them to reach you?

Nick Moe (07:52.245)
Yep.

Nick Moe (08:04.896)
Yeah.

Nick Moe (08:08.374)
So they can find us at truehavengroup.com.

We have what’s called a business assessment on there if you want to check that out that will tell you where you’re at in your business if you’re working in your business or working on your business. You don’t have to put an email in, you don’t have to give any information, but it will give you exactly where you’re at and where you may have some need and it will give you an assessment at the end of, these are some things you could probably change immediately and some of them may be reaching out to us and having us help you out with that. You can also find me on LinkedIn.

just at Nick Moe on there. And we have kind of several use cases, a lot of reviews that we’ve had over the last couple of years. And we’re always open to a call or an email, whatever it is, to see if we can bring any value to your situation.

Erika (09:00.632)
Awesome, Nick, thanks so much for dropping all this knowledge and sharing your story on here. We need more folks out here like you doing things the right way and using your expertise for maximum returns and results. And for everyone listening, if this has sparked some ideas for your next deal, make sure you’re subscribed. We’ve got more conversations like this one with operators like Nick Moe who are crushing it in real estate and construction.

See you on the next episode.

Nick Moe (09:32.513)
Thank you.

Erika (09:35.326)
All right, my window just moved on me. It’s a good state. This gets edited afterwards.