Real Estate Blunders: Raj’s Big
Mistakes and Other Lessons
Raj’s Big Mistake
During week nine of the second season, Donald Trump met both teams at the
Top of Trump Park Avenue. He
explained how he renovated the apartment building and what price the apartments
commanded. He then tasked each team
with taking a dilapidated house in the suburbs of
Raj was the project manager and things did not go well for him. His contractor did not come through. The good idea of putting a full bath upstairs didn’t help because it was not completed. Many other parts of the house were also still in shambles during the appraisers’ walk through. However, the biggest mistake Raj made as project manager was deciding to tear out a wall and turn the four bedroom house into a three bedroom house with bigger bedrooms.
When Raj first introduced the idea to his team, Kevin and Jennifer M. objected to the idea. Jennifer M. stated that Raj lacked common sense and that a four bedroom house would get a higher value than a three bedroom one. Raj believed that taking out the wall would be easy, just smash it out with a sledge hammer. Sure, the actual removal of the wall did not take much, but he missed the point. Normally, the more bedrooms a house has, the more it is valued. In the boardroom, this was the mistake that Trump honed in on. The Donald said it was a big mistake to take a four bedroom house and turn it into a three bedroom house. He pointed out other mistakes that Raj made as project manager, but the biggest was eliminating the bedroom. For this, Raj was fired.
Hire Good Contractors and Task Them To Work
Another blunder from week nine of the second season was the hiring of a contractor that did not come through with the finished project on time. Raj, as project manager, hired a contractor on Kevin’s recommendation. During an interview, Raj expressed concerns that the contractor might not be able to complete everything in the short amount of time they had.
Raj failed to motivate or control the contractors. When he expressed concern about the bathroom being finished on time to a contractor that was taking a break, the contractor told him, “Let us eat our tacos and we’ll get back in there.” Jennifer M. stated in an interview that she did not believe the contractors were taking the job seriously. When time ran out, Raj asked the contractor if the bathroom had been finished and was told yes. It was a different story when Raj and the appraisers went upstairs. The work was not done. New carpets had been stained with paint and soiled with mud, and the bathroom was far from completed. Raj told the appraisers, “I wish visually it looked as close as it really is.” “Me too,” answered an appraiser.
In the boardroom, Raj told Trump that they had hired a contractor that
over-promised and under-delivered. Trump
wanted to know who picked the contractor and Raj took ultimate responsibility,
but
Trump Time Out – Control
Your Contractor