ProCon

7 BUSINESS VIEW MAGAZINE VOLUME 10, ISSUE 7 PROCON, INC . the product to market of $390,000, so what we see is definitely a slowdown but a consistent need of housing still being top priority.” Then there’s renovations. “The breakdown of our business is 43 percent renovations, 33 percent first-time homebuyers’ homes being built and 33 percent of the home- rental business,” said Lemus. “Renovations is a very unique industry, where we’ve been able to shine substantially. What we bring into the renovation world is the method and means of the commercial or multi-family world. For example, construction has 16 divisions. When I am estimating or competing with a competitor for the construction or renovation of a home, we come back with a fully disclosed estimate of how we arrived at that number. We don’t generate a paragraph or an essay and put a number to it. We give our clients a 16-division formal estimate, and we outline each division. And each subdivision within that division has a line item with a dollar value to it. So the client is able to easily say, ‘All right, this is what he’s going to charge me for this, and this is what he’s going to be charging me for that,’ which gives full transparency in the beginning, because of the client changing the scope, which very often is the case. “You can determine the cost,” he added. “It’s a really nice way for the client to say, ‘I trust him.’ They don’t have to trust me. They just have to trust my numbers. It’s a line- by-line itemization, rather than writing a description and putting a number to it.” Highlighting noteworthy projects Lemus cited a community of which he was himself a part for more than a decade. “My office is at the entrance of that community,”