Hmm, maybe I should go.

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There’s a place about 1.5h from home (including a ferry ride) that I’ve never been to (but it’s on my bucket list to go ride my motorcycle there because it’s a beautiful place) where my trade is in extremely high demand so the price is whatever you say it is.

There are only 2 small companies doing drywall & taping there, but massive demand to finish new mansions for rich people so there’s a 5-6 month backlog of work.

A friend of mine can connect me with the builders & property developers there to get started.

The biggest catch is that there is literally nowhere to stay. There’s zero housing, hotels, campgrounds, Airbnb etc available for out of town workers - what little there is is booked by tourists and tradespeople already. So, you either have to sleep in your vehicle/camper/trailer or swing a deal with the builder to be able to sleep on the floor of the site.

I’m gonna ask around and see if any colleagues would be down to go work & camp there. I’d sleep in a truck or on the floor/foamie/air mattress to go make $15k-20k+/month for a while. Hell, I’d buy a trailer to tow up more tools & materials & then sleep in it.

Just need to assemble a crew and maybe get some business paperwork in order if I’m gonna do it. Time will tell I suppose.. but it does sound like a killer opportunity to stack cash.

strike while the iron is hot and you are hot.

Go get that mansion money.

Ironically, mansion money in my trade is pretty crap IN the city here. Too many lowball bidders working for square foot prices that haven't changed for decades - yet the complexity of builds is waaaay different so it's hard to make money working 12-14' ceilings and installing tons of trim vs. finishing 8' tall square rooms back in the day before my time on the tools. It's crazy how little money people are getting thanks to some very cheap workers. (who often do poor quality work.) People can just get by doing it in larger homes here as builders expect volume discounts for so many square feet.. but where there's No one available to do the work? now all of the sudden mansion money is Really Good money vs. a kick in the pants.

On some jobs in the city, the pay is so low that guys might make $30/hr if they're lucky. Up there, general labourers sweeping the floor and moving materials around start at $35/hr and skilled trades 2x+; probably more taking on the contract.

My friend told me his friend had a set of french doors installed in her place. She supplied the doors. 2 carpenters were sent, they installed the doors (not sure if they had to do framing for it or anything) but didn't install any trim over the door frame - she got back from working elsewhere to find she had to hire another carpenter to come do trim. The bill for the door installation labour that was done by 2 guys in 1 day? $7500. (No idea how much work they had to do.. but c'mon, they did it in a single day. Expenses could also be hotel and restaurant meals etc, but still..)

Would be nice to know what price/square foot or however the couple crews up there are billing. Wouldn't wanna dramatically under bid and leave a bunch of money on the table. I wonder if my friend can find out for me..

Chatted with a local boarder who did some work in that area already. He said he got .5-$1/sf for boarding labour up there. Not sure what boarding sf prices are here. Him and his work partner boarded a house with 27,000 sf of board at 75 cents = $20,250 for boarding labour. They’re Good and fairly fast.


Anyways, for my trade, finishing, he said he knows a guy working up there charging $3-5/sf including materials. That’s astronomically Good money. Material cost is approximately 30-35 cents/sf, but can be a lot higher if the framing and boarding is garbage and you need a lot of expensive material to make it look good. But whatever, for argument’s sake let’s say it’s 50 cents to account for some problem areas and waste. At $3 materials & labour that leaves 2.50 for labour (and overhead, but whatever, everything is just billed as materials and labour with details left to the contractor to sort out.) and at $50 that leaves 4.50.

Know what the cheap contractors pay in the city for labour only? It’s low low like 1990’s prices low.. 50 cents; which is way too low - it’s not enough for a contractor to pay proper wages and make any money. Guys work for a cut rate and the contractor still loses money Unless they’re paying ridiculously low wages, like minimum wage. Even then to do a proper job the math barely adds up.

But if those numbers are real.. 5-9x the pay vs the lowest paying jobs in the city, which would be better pay than some of the gravy jobs I’ve had and 2x+ what I made on my last job.

People are making Bank working there. I’m gonna explore it further.