A. You need capital, you need money to start your business, you need qualified estimators, you need qualified job superintendents, you need qualified suppliers, you need banking, relationships. So fly-by-night companies in the long run are not going to exist. And it's happening now, that this economy is taking those marginal contractors and unfortunately or fortunately, they're falling by the wayside. Our organization has manuals and educational seminars to help the start up company to get on its feet. . . . So we're very sensitive; we know that there are a lot of people that are starting up. It's in the industry's best interest to make sure that they have a good foundation and a good basic understanding of what's required of them as a business, as an entrepreneur.
Accountant heads building contractors as savvy outsider
One on One
Q. Talking about residential construction, residential homeowners and residential home buyers have just seen prices go up and up. Now they're starting to stabilize, yet there is a growing concern that homeownership is beyond the reach of a lot of lower- and middle-class people. Is there going to be any relief in that or is this going to become the privilege of the "landed gentry"?
A. I hear that there will be an improvement. There are many construction companies out there that have recognized the shortage of affordable housing and have taken some of the old existing residential communities and are renovating them and rehabbing and making them affordable for the first-time buyer. The city has been great at that, I mean those dollar houses that they had a decade ago. We need to do something like that again, and there needs to be, you know, aggressive financing for those companies that are willing to go into the city and renovate those kinds of houses and make them affordable for the middle-income home buyer.
