spring 2014

Summer has just arrived.  The repaint business is now picking up.  Contractors are hearing complaints about the cost of repaints.  Most of this is due the fact that repainting has been put off for too long. Customers were warned about waiting too long for years and now they will pay the price.  A lot of repaint has now turned to repair and paint.  “Pay it now or pay it later” is an expensive way to be educated on property maintenance.  The cost of materials never slowed down either.  Now the minimum wage has increased and so even the bottom rung of painters should be getting more than even last year.  California isn’t survivable at minimum wage.

The work on the levy has now passed final approval.  The funding for it should happen within 6-8 months.  As soon as funding happens, real estate in the north area will start to escalate in price and availability.  New construction in both the residential and commercial will start up to fill the void that the moratorium has caused for the past 3 years.

The new construction will pull the tract stars off of the repaint market.  This will enable the repaint market to rebound on their pricing, which has been in the tank due to the track stars being used to working for 50% less than they should.  The tract painters are getting less now, in 2014, than Dad did on his last tract in 1959.  Seriously.  And Dad was union.  No, not adjusted for inflation.  Dollar for dollar, less than in 1959.  I sat down with Dad in 1990 and we recalculated his last bid (he had all the paperwork) so that we could find out how much he got for each floor foot.  He didn’t paint the floors, so his bids weren’t figured that way……   Dad used to get between $1.40 and $1.60 per floor foot in 1959!  You can guess at his material costs…… figure 10% of current.  His journeymen were getting as much or more than what most are getting today, 45 years later.

Sure, housing costs have climbed radically since then, but the sub contractors are making a lot less.  The rising costs are the cost of the dirt, licenses, permits and developer profits.