Connecticut Real Estate and Construction

Connecticut Real Estate and Construction Connecticut Real Estate and Construction LLC (CRE&C) is a licensed real estate brokerage and new home/commercial construction contractor with three divisions-- Real Estate Sales, Building, and Development.It’s the only company that combines these divisions with “smart green growth” to uniquely address the fundamental (and State mandated) needs of 169 municipalities in Connecticut. CRE&C seeks funding from green-thinking investors interested in making environmental and social progress profitable.

PROBLEM: As of May 2007, the Department of Energy states there are over:17,000 contractors in Connecticut, yet just 39 have earned designation by Energy Star*; only 3 have contacted the Department of Energy about energy-independent construction; and only 1 (that’s us, CRE&C) has broken ground on a solar powered, geo thermal commercial building. * The labeling program of the US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the US Department of Energy that identifies energy efficient companies .

SOLUTION: Increase “smart green growth” across Connecticut by developing commercial projects and congregate residential housing through the State’s leading eco-developer: Connecticut Real Estate & Construction.Connecticut’s only solar-powered, geo-thermal commercial building (mentioned above) is being built by CRE&C in New Milford, CT. It will have over 12,500 square feet of corporate office space and will highlight what we do for others: smart, economically beneficial, and environmentally friendly design. This building has been chosen by Northeast Utilities as a showcase for Connecticut’s model of energy efficient design. Indeed, ABC and NBC news reported on the office ground breaking on May 14, 2007. (See http://www.connecticutrealestateandconstruction.com/.)

As a result of the building’s breakthrough energy-saving advantages, Northeast Utilities has offered to partner with us in marketing the building and poising CRE&C as the leader in an under utilized yet exploding market—green construction.This industry-leading position is further strengthened by CRE&C’s trademarked BIOS Technology TM product line of affordable, green construction options: BIOS Homes TM and BIOS Buildings TM.BIOS Technology TM structures are precisely measured, then constructed from laser technology and manufactured in a factory, thus not distorted by human error or difficulties with weather and climate. Warping is virtually eliminated and the process of moving from pouring a foundation to a watertight structure is no longer a six-week process, but rather, reduced to one.BIOS Technology’s TM pinpoint precision, cost-effective technology and reduced production time allows CRE&C to carve out a niche as Connecticut’s affordable green developer and builder. Never before has elderly housing, workforce housing and commercial building been so attractive to investors, zoning boards and local residents alike.

As a result, CRE&C is building valuable allies within both the private sector (investors, builders, engineers) and the public sector (planning and zoning boards, municipal governments, statewide utilities, and housing authorities.) These two sectors are helping us tap into three of the largest economic trends of the next 100 years: environmental consciousness, an aging population, and housing that is affordable by design.“Do well by doing good.”Developing smart, green growth is “doing good” for Connecticut communities. Applying a strategic business model to maximize profits ensures that investors will “do well”. And you can’t effectively do one without the other. Today’s unfulfilled and dire demand for reduced energy costs and lessened environmental impact, combined with reduced (yet technologically superior) building costs, attests that CRE&C and its investors will indeed “Do well by doing good.”

Too often builders have abdicated their responsibility toward the community at large. For a nice long stretch, the easiest and most lucrative construction to erect was a development of “McMansions”: big, opulent houses that are fundamentally wasteful in terms of energy efficiency, resources, dollars, and living space. A family of four does not need 6,000 square feet in which to pinball around. Nor, do they need five different heating zones, or to spend half a million dollars per family member on housing. However, like any other market, the housing market functions via the shifts in supply and demand. And, large houses were in great demand for over a decade. That market is slowing down, precipitously. Builders continue to do what they know, and new mansions sprout up everyday. Many of those houses remain empty. Others houses have been sold at below cost. Still, these houses keep on getting built.

We see a different future.Connecticut has started to lose its work force. State economists agree. The average working person cannot afford to live in the state he helped build and run with his or her diligent efforts. Often, workers are forced to live in distant towns, far away from their work place, because the areas surrounding the centers of commerce have housing stock too dear for the average person to purchase. CRE&C wants to change this trend by providing housing for those who keep the state’s economy running.CRE&C’s Real Estate division is integral to achieving this goal. While our building and development division will create housing inventory that’s both exciting and needed, our real estate agents will get listings that agents from other companies cannot touch.

The commission structure in CRE&C’s real estate sales division will allow top-flight agents to earn 100% commissions. This will attract the top producers in the real estate sales industry. Top producers will promote our company to other agents (and consumers) by utilizing our website in all of their advertising. Agents will earn residual income from the agents they recruit into the company. Similarly, the company will earn a significant bulk of its profits by supplying leads to our agents with a 30% referral fee paid to the company. Thus, our agents will be rewarded, new agents will be recruited, and our company coffers will be filled.Our small regional offices and trade names will provide us another crucial edge in the industry. There is little difference between one real estate agency and another to the average consumer. However, CRE&C’s unique “smart green growth” approach creates a distinct market advantage over the competition and thrusts us into the lead position throughout Connecticut. No other agency will have similar access to green listings like CRE&C’s agents will.All told, we seek to raise 2.5 million dollars to launch the three segments of CRE&C: Real Estate Sales, Building and Development. Already we have attracted investments from the private sector for two of our projects, 72 Railroad St. and 533 Federal Rd. (again, see website). However, for us to fully engage all three arms of our business, we need sufficient capital to hire the appropriate managers, recruiters, and sales staff to launch a company that has already successfully targeted over 1 billion dollars worth of building and development.

BUSINESS PHILOSOPHY: Helping people, saving the environment, boosting the economy.

OUR MARKET:CRE&C is focused on four different eco-markets: home buyers, builders, developers and socially responsible investors.All indications point to a market that is propelling toward “environmentally conscious” buyers. Just as CRE&C wishes to “do good”, so do consumers. By offering buyers homes that are at least as physically and financially attractive as our competition, but provide the added benefit of “saving the planet”, one can only conclude that the trend will be to move toward green and away from the wasting of our natural resources.Within the homebuyer market, CRE&C is strategically focused on two significant sectors: the elderly and the work force.

“The competition to attract and retain skilled labor will define a county’s ability to maintain its economic vitality and standard of living. We will need workers to fill jobs that are being created and to replace the workers who will be retiring in growing numbers over the next decade. Without steady growth in the labor force, our economy cannot grow and, over time, will contract.” The Business Council of Fairfield CountyHow can the aging population afford to downsize when the upscale elderly housing costs half a million dollars and their present homes are only worth half a million dollars? How can municipalities thrive when workers cannot afford to live close to where they work and are forced to drive long distances, when highway congestion intensifies, when open space is consumed, and when urban sprawl is accelerated, further threatening the economic competitiveness and environmental protection of the region?

With a focus on the impending elderly population explosion as the Boomer generation moves into its seventies and eighties, combined with a focus on the younger generation needed to fulfill new workforce vacancies, CRE&C provides a “smart, green growth” solution to an issue we face not only across Connecticut, but throughout the nation. To further this cause, CRE&C will offer other builders (first local, then national builders) the opportunity to purchase our developed plans and BIOS TechnologyTM building materials and design. In doing so, we first inculcate builders into a positive green mind-set, then guide them step-by-step into changing the nature of how they do their work.

Thus, CRE&C will provide them of the opportunity to build smarter, faster, better… and greener too.Accordingly, CRE&C will entice additional developers to join and partner with us, in our efforts. Judging by the responses we already have received from the Danbury Housing Authority, the Danbury Housing Fund, the Newtown Planning and Zoning Board, the Brookfield Planning and Zoning Commission, Northeast Utilities, and the Green Fund, we have hit upon a formula for providing affordable green housing for the nearly endless number of towns in the state that need to increase the number of workforce housing units in their municipalities.While most developers meet with considerable resistance to workforce housing proposals, we have found our efforts to have quite the opposite effect. Developers want nothing more than to be able to meet with friendly folks sitting opposite them at the Zoning Commission table, and CRE&C’s has the means to provide them with this positive environment in which to do their work.

Lastly, we plan to attract investors by showing them the enormous potential affordable green housing and development has in our state, and subsequently, across the country. While other companies might be able to provide investors with opportunities to make money, their projects are usually littered with red tape pratfalls wrought with legal wrangling. CRE&C avoids these difficulties by offering towns and municipalities an attractive means to garner favorable press and good feeling in the public sector by providing their communities with housing that is desperately needed; ideas for housing that are simply too positive to dismiss. What town board can politically afford to say “no” to affordable, environmentally responsible, elderly housing? They may as well torture puppies on Main Street.Advantageous across the board, CRE&C’s development plans will virtually force planning and zoning across the state to say, “yes.”

The opportunity for positive press and marketing is almost ludicrously enormous. Connecticut towns will get the housing they need, the state’s work force will have housing which meets their needs, the Earth will take less of a hit than it would have had another company provided this housing, and CRE&C and its eco-business savvy investors will reap a social and financial bonanza. We will capitalize on just that and share our windfall with those who put their financial faith in CRE&C from the start.

What's the Hurry?

We are in a hurry. The hurry is: we humans are in the process of destroying our planet. Global warming is the single most significant environmental crisis the world community has ever seen. The 2007 G8 Summit in Germany will focus on the reversal of global warming. President Bush, of course opposes this proposal. Like his strategy in the Middle East, he has a better idea, and he wants to convince the world of something they already know is untrue. This time it’s not that there are weapons of mass destruction in Iraq, but that global warming is not that dire an issue.

Our Nero-like President fiddles, but we cannot allow our Rome to go up in flames. This isn’t a city’s destruction we speak of. It is the end of all of us, of history, of every thought and feeling humankind ever produced. Our present federal government is not going to do anything about this crisis.

Our company, Connecticut Real Estate and Construction wishes to do something about it, because Connecticut needs workforce housing in significant number for very important reasons. Suburban sprawl is killing the environment. When we continually clear off two acres and more per household to put up large houses, we cut down trees which produce oxygen, we deplete the filtering system for our water, and we make houses which leave a carbon footprint which further opens a hole in the ozone. If we instead build multiple units together and build them with solar photovoltaic cell panels and with geothermal heating and cooling, we leave virtually no carbon footprint, we leave sufficient greenery to filter water run-off, and we provide our workforce with housing that allows them to stay in the state and not flee to the South and Southwest as has been the recent trend. As a result, those businesses (and their tax revenues) which require those workers need not flee with the workforce, a trend we have seen throughout the Northeast region of the country.

Additionally, we will build elderly housing. The Boomer Generation is aging. They are retiring at record rates and require specific housing that does not exist in sufficient number. We will build it. We will build commercial buildings and office space to go along with the elderly and workforce housing. We need cooperation from local governments to achieve our goals, and we need that cooperation quickly. As we move forward, we will build with town tax rolls in mind. We are aware that the workforce housing will require significant services and expenses, most notably educational expenses. This is why mixing the elderly housing with the workforce balances the ledger, for the elderly pay taxes without sending children to schools. Further, the commercial and office buildings will bring in significant tax revenues without pulling out revenues from the local municipality. This formula is referred to as “Smart Growth” and is to be part of our plans.

While proposing “caution” and “care” is never foolhardy advice, studies on these issues have already been done and “smart growth” is necessary throughout the state. We cannot wait. The cost is too dear for all of us to sit idly by and fiddle away time as the planet goes up in flames.

Sincerely,

Miles J. Shapiro, Partner
Connecticut Real Estate and Construction
VP Marketing and Commercial Real Estate
www.connecticutrealestateandconstruction.com