Lakehouse®, SummerLand, B.C. luxury land Development project, CONSTRUCTION COMPLETE, JULY 202520/7/2025 
Located right in the middle of Western Canada’s most important wine growing region and outdoor recreation capital, its potential was unmistakable. The land had quite a history to it, including multiple lawsuits and business partners who stole from one another, hated each other, only communicated with one another through lawyers, which is an expensive and unproductive conversation. The land was locked in legal limbo for a decade-and-a-half until my business partners and I found a solution that broke the deadlock. It was better to sell to us than die from old age without a resolution More frustration was soon to come. Having raised the necessary funds, just as we were about to launch construction in early 2020, the COVID 19 pandemic hit. Businesses shut down, construction halted, and investors panicked. Those who withdrew missed a generational opportunity, because just 12 months later we broke ground and the and was suddenly worth a whole lot more because of all the real estate speculation that took place during lockdown. Those who thought rationally knew the world wasn’t ending and reaped the rewards by doing nothing. Those who responded with raw emotion, withdrew their investment cash, and were left on the sidelines. The best time to invest is when the world is panicked and running for the hills. When the inexperienced head for the exits en masse, serious investors move in with their flatbed trucks and load up on assets at irrationally low prices. It’s hard to convince most people of this. If they feel pessimistic about life and the world, they don’t invest. But when prices are high and they feel more optimistic in outlook, they are ready to join the herd, forgetting that the most important way to make money is through the price you pay for an asset. Buy low, sell high. Put your emotions on a leash and lock them away in a dark cupboard. Right now, it’s a buyer’s market. But, of course, it’s also the hardest market to raise cash in because investors are downcast and reluctant. Irrational! The Most Common Investor Questions The most common questions I’m asked by investors about development projects are, when will I get my money (when everything we’ve built has sold or when construction financing comes in if it’s a rental building); how much ROIs are an educated guess because no-one can accurately foretell the future), and what could go wrong? (Anything you or AI can think of.) In my experience, the most risky real estate developments are those that promise short timelines (one year) and dividend payments to investors along the way. Add to that the role of inexperienced/novice developers who have caught the hubris bug (“you can do anything you put your mind to”) from social media and investors can entrust their money to promoters who have self-promotion skills and not much else. It takes 5-7 years to develop land on big project. I don’t make cash payments along the way because that money has to come from somewhere. I need every penny to hire architects, engineers, concrete formers, framers, drywallers, etc., and deal with the unwieldy mechanism that is local government. Planning departments are frustrating beasts to work with because they interpret rules in ways that make builders go crazy. Elected councilors like to make a name for themselves too and often interfere in development projects for populist reasons, rejecting designs that have already been approved by planning departments. For example, a BC project know of had water rights to build a jetty as part of their lakefront development. Zoning rules explicitly permitted a jetty. But councilors objected for personal reasons – boats were considered environmentally unsound – and so the application to build one was rejected and the bylaw retroactively changed to prevent anyone building a jetty again without explicit council approval. You can’t plan for this stuff. Land development is a lottery. Back to dividends. I don’t pay them because that would require me to borrow more than I need and to hold on to a cash pile (dead money) so that investors can have a feel-good moment when a trickle of cash comes back to them monthly or quarterly. 100% of borrowed cash should go into the project. If an investor needs regular cash payments to live on, they should not invest in long-term real estate developments. They need a GIC. Investment cash is money you don’t expect to need for the duration of the project. If you do, you are overinvested. Thanks to all those who invested in Lakehouse. We got through the pandemic on time and on-schedule. What we couldn’t foresee was the current down real estate market, which is a reaction to the go-go years of COVID 19. Remember Isaac Newton’s three laws of motion. It’s the third one we should focus on in this case – for every action, there is an equal and opposite reaction – although all of them are applicable to markets in one form or another.
NEWTON'S SECOND LAW: FORCE The acceleration of an object depends on the mass of the object and the amount of force applied. His second law defines a force to be equal to change in momentum (mass times velocity) per change in time. Momentum is defined to be the mass m of an object times its velocity V. NEWTON'S THIRD LAW: ACTION & REACTION Whenever one object exerts a force on a second object, the second object exerts an equal and opposite force on the first. His third law states that for every action (force) in nature there is an equal and opposite reaction. If object A exerts a force on object B, object B also exerts an equal and opposite force on object A. In other words, forces result from interactions. Thanks to NASA for these concise definitions. https://www1.grc.nasa.gov/beginners-guide-to-aeronautics/newtons-laws-of-motion/ The remainder of this post will showcase what we’ve built, from beginning to end. Bare Land, 2019
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