Expert Witness Insights: Navigating Property Risk & Construction Challenges

John Harcar (00:00.389)
All right. Hey guys, welcome back to our show. I’m your host, John Harcar, and I’m here today with Greg Trotter and what we’re going to talk about besides his, you know, his experience in real estate and his past, his background. We’re going to talk about how he’s a consultant to his clients and really making sure that he really serves them the best way possible. Guys, remember here at Investor Fuel, we help real estate investors, service providers, I mean, all real estate entrepreneurs, to, to 5X their business.

by providing tools and resources to help grow that business they’ve always wanted to and in turn live a life they wanted to. So Greg, welcome to our show.

Greg Trotter (00:39.264)
glad to be here. Very honored, John. And nice to see you up there in Idaho. And it’s a little warmer. And here I am in Florida where things are picking up and we had a good spring, but it’s gone now and I’m ready.

John Harcar (00:52.231)
Awesome, awesome. Yeah, I’m excited to kind of do a little bit more deep dive into your business and whatnot. But before we talk about all that, why don’t you give our audience a little bit of background on you, kind how you got into real estate, your path, and kind of what brought you to today.

Greg Trotter (01:08.92)
Well, getting out of college, really didn’t have an idea of really what I was going to be as far as a professional. I just thought I was God’s gift to after getting the degree and then it turns out that you really need to work on that. So I found myself in construction and that’s a business, right? It’s got everything that’s business, marketing, accounting, what’s so forth. But I really didn’t like four walls. I like to be outside.

John Harcar (01:23.527)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (01:36.391)
Mm-hmm.

Greg Trotter (01:36.694)
And I like the dynamics of construction, running bids, estimating, thinking about how we can do different things. And there’s always challenges with construction, material acquisition, logistics, whatever it may be. And so I found myself in an environment that I was really comfortable with that was really, really would test you every day. so I started, literally I was…

John Harcar (01:52.561)
Right?

John Harcar (02:00.668)
Mmm.

Greg Trotter (02:06.328)
thumbing to a job in San Diego and a guy picked me up and a

John Harcar (02:11.047)
Did you say f**king? Like thumbing to a job?

Greg Trotter (02:14.198)
I’m thumbing. This has got me thousands of miles, this thumb. I’m a 60s, 70s guy, right? So I’m thumbing, I’m thumbing downtown San Diego, right? And the guy that picks me up, watch this, the guy that picks me up, he goes, I say, he goes, where are going? And I tell him, goes, you know, you’re thumbing the wrong way. But here’s the cool part. He is the future president for TB Panic & Sons.

John Harcar (02:17.827)
Okay, all right. that’s true. Yeah, different different than doing it today

John Harcar (02:34.567)
HAHAHAHA

Greg Trotter (02:43.052)
He’s a junior. He’s just about to graduate and go into the company. And by the time that he got me to where I needed to be, I talked him into hiring me. And I didn’t have a job. I I was working at a hardware store. San Diego, hey, you may know it, San Diego Glass and Paint. That’s where I was working. No, okay. So long story short is, that, so all these things are happening and it turns in if you really just.

John Harcar (02:43.099)
Mmm.

John Harcar (02:57.254)
Right?

John Harcar (03:02.309)
I don’t, yeah, don’t, don’t, doesn’t ring a bell to me, yeah.

Greg Trotter (03:13.102)
start contributing to a company that’s dynamic in its third, fourth generation and take up some slack from other people and take care of your job. It was really dynamic and I could see things really happening in a positive way inside the barracks we were. We were the building, not the corporate building, but the other building.

It was happening over there and we were trying to figure out different ways to do concrete and build a bridge and so on and so forth. what I got from all that is that I thrived in this environment. I felt like it’s a sport event a lot of days when you’re trying to win a bid. So you have to find the closest pay phone. You have to get it all lined up and you’ve got to get the numbers right and get in your bid for some project for the county or the city or whatever it may be.

John Harcar (04:01.137)
Yeah.

John Harcar (04:08.934)
Right.

Greg Trotter (04:09.026)
We worked in the zoo. We worked in a San Diego park. We, yeah, it was a great lineage to start with. And then soon thereafter, without too much time, I all of sudden was handed a set of plans, the truck, the keys to the truck and the PO book and directed to go build a building, 54,500 square feet. And I hadn’t built anything before John in my life. And what a test.

John Harcar (04:13.356)
cool.

John Harcar (04:36.697)
What did you still what was your degree in it from college? In business, did you have any any construction influence or anything in your life prior?

Greg Trotter (04:41.474)
Business, business administration. Again, construction is business. Yeah?

Greg Trotter (04:50.38)
Yeah, yeah. When I was a kid, the guy next door bought an old mill building. was an 1880s mill building. It’s called the Button Factory. And he liked to get out of the house on weekends. So he would pick me up and we’d go work on the building where there were windows, doors, whatever it be. so I had touched on a really old historic building and that helped.

I had painted houses, all that sort of thing, just to stay busy and make money. But I think it just happened to be that this all fell in my lap when I was thumbing to my job, San Diego Glass and Paint. So I gotta tell you, it’s just pure luck. And I get paid to eat ice cream now because I’m so passionate about what I do. And I’m responsible for the risk, taking care of the risk of my clients. And there’s a big risk when you’re buying a 590,000.

John Harcar (05:25.127)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (05:30.555)
when you’re hitchhiking, yeah. Okay.

Greg Trotter (05:48.628)
a million dollar building and it’s all on my heart, my back, my shoulders. And that’s a pretty big deal. But I don’t shirk from my responsibilities. I have a lot of fun doing it. I have a lot of tricks to the trade to get to where I need to go to fundamentally assess a building that’s a multi-storied with a lot of amenities and parts and pieces. Buildings are actually just systems. There’s the roof system, the HVA system.

John Harcar (05:51.131)
Yeah.

John Harcar (06:15.174)
Yeah.

Greg Trotter (06:19.353)
electrical system, on and on and on, structural system, foundation system. So I just actually just go through all the systems and see where we’re at. And I found it to be pretty easy. It can be intimidating, but I seem to have got through that a long time ago. And I will take on my largest building I’ve been assessed was 70 stories. was one of the tallest buildings in Florida for five years.

John Harcar (06:22.289)
Mm hmm. Yep.

Greg Trotter (06:47.618)
I’ve done university campuses. done, I got called on the Millennium Tower when it was tilting and sinking. A law group out of San Francisco called me to go take a look at that. I have had the privilege to work in Canada, United States and the Caribbean doing it, working for nationals from USA, know, American citizens and American companies, as well as we have worked currently going with

John Harcar (06:57.03)
jeez.

Greg Trotter (07:17.324)
like a company in France and so forth. So I am very fortunate. I don’t know what, I’ll hit this. Sorry about that. So that’s how it all started. And it just kept rolling and rolling. Now it became, it was a referral business and there was only a few people would do an equity level assessment of a property in the manner that I did it. And it turned out to be a thing.

John Harcar (07:19.525)
Okay.

John Harcar (07:36.572)
Right?

Greg Trotter (07:47.086)
And, but to be truthful, John, and why I’m glad to be here because of all the people that would be joining you and looking at what your firm does, helping real estate investors and operators, is that there’s so much risk involved and it’s so serious. And I am operating as, we do a great job, great referral base, but what happens is, it all of sudden stops.

John Harcar (08:05.073)
Mm-hmm.

Greg Trotter (08:16.888)
your growth stops. So I’m privileged and happy to talk to you and people who listen because they found out there is a guy that will take on anything. The building is leaked since it was built and someone has to go out and assess what’s going on, the study and provide a report and show them how to fix it. The building is sinking. There you go. Whatever it may be, maybe it’s someone who’s building a nice custom home.

John Harcar (08:18.865)
Right.

John Harcar (08:37.446)
Right.

Greg Trotter (08:46.07)
and they’re really having trouble with their contractor and someone needs to intervene. I do a lot of court work. So I do expert witness cases and as the expert witness in the case and lawsuits trying to help the attorney get to a situation where he can settle the lawsuit. And this is all what I do now because I’ve been doing it for so damn long. And it’s really a privilege.

John Harcar (08:58.663)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (09:09.443)
Right.

Yeah, and I love what you say, you get to eat ice cream or whatever that whatever you get paid to eat ice cream.

Greg Trotter (09:15.734)
I do. I get paid in ice cream. I get so excited on my next job. You know, I do. Yeah.

John Harcar (09:22.151)
I think it’s gonna be the title of this, getting paid to eat ice cream. Because I do, same kind of thing, right? I get to talk real estate to people all day. I love it and I get to learn and I get to help and I get to see and talk with people about the growth. So tell me about some of the challenges, right? When you started doing this, you started getting into a full time or that first building that you got tasked with, you got the keys and the.

Greg Trotter (09:29.623)
Yeah?

Greg Trotter (09:33.038)
That’s powerful,

John Harcar (09:48.847)
and the PO book and you know, so they go, what were some challenges you ran into?

Greg Trotter (09:53.56)
Well, what the, okay, so what the hell did I know about surveying? What did I know about layout of a very complicated building? And one of the key things that they, when they sent me on my way is they said, if you need something, ask for it. And back in then it was the yellow pages. was, it would be, there would be someone there if you, if you’re willing to ask, John, if you’re willing to say, Hey, I don’t know. It turns out if you’re a young guy with a lot of responsibility, no one else wants to be a superintendent on a job.

John Harcar (10:23.27)
Mm-hmm.

Greg Trotter (10:23.672)
They will offer you their insights, their knowledge, their ability with grading, this and that sort of thing. And I knew when I needed somebody to bring in to help me with part of the construction, but I got all the subcontract and figured it out. it was just a day to day sort of learning something new every day. And I was very fortunate. So the client that we’re building the building for loved me, that helped.

John Harcar (10:45.351)
Sure.

Greg Trotter (10:53.208)
So when I got back, they promoted me to a project manager. They said, you’ve been project managing all this time. It turns out you can be a good project manager. it was just taking it on every day. so today, Monday morning, I’ll be going to look at a project in Alabama. And I can’t wait to see what’s there.

John Harcar (11:05.66)
Yeah.

Greg Trotter (11:22.156)
Am I really looking for, when I look at this property, it’s say 250 apartments and 24 buildings or whatever, is what is expected for the date of building, the date it was constructed and all the technology that was used then, and what is the surprise? And what I’m looking for, my secret is, is I’m always looking for what that surprise is. I’ll give you just…

John Harcar (11:39.494)
Right.

Mmm.

John Harcar (11:49.831)
Like what do you mean surprise? Like a surprise, something that’s out of code or, you know, just.

Greg Trotter (11:56.302)
I’ll give you two surprises. One was…

I completed the assessment of the property and then I went into the woods beside the property and I ran into this big hole in the ground. Now it’s a joining property and it’s got a big hole in the ground and you can see sewer pipes at the bottom of the hole. What happened was, like sanitary sewer pipes down there. So I looked at the plans and it turns out that those

John Harcar (12:21.863)
Sinkhole?

John Harcar (12:26.372)
Okay.

Greg Trotter (12:31.142)
those pipes are ran for a future development that never was built. And apparently the pipes broke and over time silt from above the broken pipes would get into the pipes, know, weep into the pipes and block the pipes. And it turns out that those pipes are also related to the property I was working on and explains why one of the retention ponds was a little cloudier than the others.

John Harcar (12:49.968)
Right.

John Harcar (13:01.009)
Yeah.

Greg Trotter (13:01.046)
It was totally, you couldn’t see it from the road. And that was, I felt like it was Frank Hardy. Remember the Hardy Boys books? And I didn’t put it together till then, John. said, holy smokes, I’m Frank Hardy. Remember, I’m the young guy, right? Who solved the problem that none of the other adults and detectives could figure out. And so I’m wondering if that maybe was my inspiration. And I’ll give you a really small, small example of what happened for a surprise just last week. Paducah.

John Harcar (13:07.475)
huh, yeah, yeah.

John Harcar (13:20.935)
Mmm.

John Harcar (13:24.785)
Possibly.

Greg Trotter (13:31.032)
Kentucky. Yeah. Turns out we’re doing an IR scan. use thermography to look at property. Here’s a small little surprise we got. It’s a dentist’s office. We’re doing a portfolio of dentist’s offices in like five or six states. So they’re buying them all. We can do portfolio work, right? And we scan the…

John Harcar (13:56.347)
Right.

Greg Trotter (14:00.718)
the circuit panel and there’s a hot, a 20 degree radiant heat differential between one side and the other side on one breaker. The breaker is marked dryer. Huh, the dryer must be on. You go over, the dryer isn’t on. So the surprise is, as you know, I mean, there’s no load on this thing and there’s a rational, I mean, you point at this thing and it’s getting hot. And how much fun is that to find that? I mean,

John Harcar (14:26.011)
Yeah.

Greg Trotter (14:30.008)
Come on, I get paid in a little dentist office and no one cares. But the fact is, is that someday this could turn into a fire. And Trotter was there and said, you need this fixed, evaluated, assessed and fixed. But there it is and we’ll see you later. That’s the sort of surprise that can be so small or so significant. But you get better.

John Harcar (14:40.487)
Right.

John Harcar (14:54.151)
Mm-hmm.

Greg Trotter (14:58.272)
and better and better at looking at buildings every day, right? And I can’t wait till I’m 10 years from now. I think I’ll be doing pretty well. I don’t take anything for granted.

John Harcar (15:01.66)
Yep.

John Harcar (15:06.703)
Yeah, it’s re-

It’s it’s repetition. It’s like, you know, when you got, you know, folks that you’re calling, you know, calling home sellers or, know, you got to call and call and call. And the better you call, the better you get over this time. And over this, you know, obviously you learned in the field, you learned what I think is the absolute best way to learn. What are, what are some of the keys to your success? What are the things that really helped you, you know, keep going great, keep raising the bar, et cetera.

Greg Trotter (15:12.515)
Yeah.

Greg Trotter (15:19.756)
Yeah.

Greg Trotter (15:39.746)
Well, one of the things I try and do is teach other people. I have one of my legacies is I’ve brought a lot of people through the industry and taught them a lot. That’s very helpful. I’ll tell you one of the funny stories is that really keeps me going is I met a father and son in a bar in Tucson. This was where this is my job, right? I’m supposed to meet them and we’re going to look at some multifamily housing projects.

near the college. But we’re meeting in a bar at like 10 o’clock in the morning. To this day and age, now listen up real estate investors, this day and age, they have their own plane. They do phenomenally well. They have wealth beyond belief. And I could see it, John, because they had such creative, they were working on apartment projects that are gonna be turned into

private student housing. And they knew to do the pool area right. They knew how to do the laundry room right. They knew how to make it a dynamic place for kids to live. And they added that very touch and it went micro to macro. And now the amount of wealth that they built, just a father and a son is absolutely staggering. would take, you would fall out of your chair if I told you.

And that is pretty cool. And I was part of that, you know? Yeah. And that’s why you should real estate. That’s your potential in investing in real estate as we all know.

John Harcar (17:08.081)
Probably. It’s very cool. Yeah, that’s very cool.

John Harcar (17:19.287)
So you’re saying that you feel that you got a lot of reciprocation back from your giving and that’s kind of something that for something that helped you get up. Okay. What makes you different specifically than any other consultants that are out there? People that can come and do the inspections and do all that.

Greg Trotter (17:25.698)
Yeah, I do.

Greg Trotter (17:40.502)
I love that question. Are you ready? My competitors called me, one competitor who’s well known in the industry. I’m in the commercial real estate due diligence industry. And there’s debt and people who do the debt work for banks and HUD and Fannie and Freddie. And there’s equity guys. And guess who I work for? The equity guys. What’s equity guy? Well, we all know listening to you, John.

John Harcar (17:57.937)
Mm-hmm.

John Harcar (18:03.737)
equity guys

Greg Trotter (18:07.822)
Equity guys are the ones who have the big skin in the game and can they afford a mistake? Do can they think they can’t so what happened was is He goes great you’re overdoing this thing you’re going too intense your numbers are Accurate you’re too thoughtful and too deep get too deep into the building We’re just doing a PCA. Come on now and basically he goes

John Harcar (18:35.335)
Nyeh!

Greg Trotter (18:37.484)
You’re an equity guy and guess what happens? Another screw up in my life is that, you know how many equity guys they really need to be? About, you know, a hundred in the country that do this sort of work. And I’m not kidding. You can look into LinkedIn and there very few people that are equity level due diligence property condition assessors. And because no one wants to find out, they don’t want to send a report to their bank that the bank’s saying, are you kidding me? I don’t want, there’s no way I’m going to land on this thing.

John Harcar (18:48.807)
Mmm.

Greg Trotter (19:06.912)
I write a report that the lender will never see. I write the report that the lender doesn’t want to find out the truth about the roof, mechanical, the structure, whatever. I write the report for you, my client, and it never sees the light of day sometimes. So it’s really an honor to take on that responsibility, that risk, and deal with it.

John Harcar (19:17.489)
Right.

Greg Trotter (19:34.318)
You know, I get pretty excited about it. I take it very seriously. And it turns out what happens is, is you build a network of people of like kinds, right? They are, that’s what they’re looking for. A lot of people don’t want to see, you know who hates that? Let’s say you’re in the acquisition part of the quadrant of the company, the real estate company, and you’ve worked for three months on this deal and it’s $280 million deal. They don’t want the deal to get killed.

John Harcar (19:55.185)
Right?

Greg Trotter (20:04.258)
where the guys with the initials and the name of the company, they want to know all the facts. Guess who I’m working for? I’m working for the L, the E, and the You know, I’m working for…

John Harcar (20:08.433)
Mm-hmm.

Right. initial guys. Yeah. Yeah. And we don’t like you coming in torpedoing our deal.

Greg Trotter (20:19.404)
right because you know what that’s what they’re all their their their bonuses and everything goes on and yeah we close that deal. I don’t work for them. work and believe me they don’t love me. I understand that. I don’t work for them. I work for that the guys with the initials on the actual name in the company.

John Harcar (20:25.989)
Yeah. Yep.

John Harcar (20:39.879)
Right, Okay, well, cool. So let me ask you this, you know, since we’re getting close on time here, you know, what advice, like, you know, what’s this piece of knowledge do you want to share with our audience that you think is important in any journey they’re taking, whether it’s, you know, doing what you do, doing investing, doing other real estate, what do you suggest? What advice?

Greg Trotter (21:04.28)
What do I suggest? Well, everybody that’s watching this doesn’t… didn’t know that how patient John was because my camera didn’t work right away. What I’m saying is things happen. Things screw up, right John? And what my best advice to you is is that if you’re having trouble with your very, you know, your beautiful home, your development, and it’s just don’t freeze up. Don’t do that.

John Harcar (21:19.046)
Yep.

Greg Trotter (21:33.528)
Call someone like me and say, and let’s get off our asses and solve this problem. And we know, I see so many jobs and so many properties are coming back from, to the lenders because they just didn’t get stuff done. You had expectations, you have a budget, you had a schedule and this thing is a way off. It’s time for somebody to intervene. And I want you to do that and don’t just give up. Don’t just let it keep going. And I help, and again, I help a lot of people.

John Harcar (21:44.551)
Mm-hmm.

Greg Trotter (22:03.918)
who are just so desperate that they need someone to interface between the contractor and the owner or the bank or the whatever or the city and that’s what I do and I really feel bad because you can have a lot of anguish within your family and your organization for problems with buildings and it’s just a building come on and we can solve this problem fire the contractor if necessary

John Harcar (22:10.876)
Right.

John Harcar (22:30.022)
Right?

Greg Trotter (22:33.676)
But that’s what I do, is I resolve problems with buildings and with getting things built, or getting things fixed every day.

John Harcar (22:42.895)
Awesome. If folks want to get in touch with you, they want to talk to you about your business, maybe they want to hire you, how do they get in touch with you?

Greg Trotter (22:51.31)
We improved this John because it wasn’t so good before. It’s Greg at my email is Greg at the cbcteam.com so Greg the cbcteam.com and our website is the cbc.com We’re here in Orlando and we go all around the country Solving problems and looking at things that obviously we currently have several projects where we’re being the owner’s rep

or consulting through a distress property and getting it back up and running. Or maybe you just call me and email me and say, I’m kind of stuck on this and maybe we can unstuck you. Yeah.

John Harcar (23:25.062)
Okay.

John Harcar (23:36.643)
Awesome. And we’ll take all that information, all your contact. We’ll put it in the show notes as well. So that way, know, folks, if you guys are out there and you want to get in touch with them, you know, please by all means do and we’ll have that contact info. Greg, I really appreciate you coming out and sharing all this stuff with us. Guys, I hope you enjoyed the show. I mean, I know I did and we’ll see you on the next one. Cheers.

Greg Trotter (23:40.769)
Okay.

Greg Trotter (23:58.894)
Thanks, John. I really appreciate the opportunity.