Alright – so today we’ve got the honor of introducing you to Lizzie & Josh Parra. We think you’ll enjoy our conversation, we’ve shared it below.
Hi Lizzie & Josh, thanks for joining us today. We’d love to start by getting your thoughts on what you are seeing as some the biggest trends emerging in your industry
Although much of our work time is devoted to investing in Real Estate, to grow our portfolio of short-term and long-term rentals, the bulk of what we do is Interior Design and Remodel Project Management. We started this business with mostly bathroom and kitchen renovations, but when COVID hit many people began needing work-from-home space, so basement finishing became a huge trend in our industry. Our design clients needed to carve out more living space from their house, so finishing the basement was the easiest way to accomplish this. These finished basement spaces function as playrooms, offices, workout spaces and more. Now that life is back to normal, the new trend is to create short term rental units out of unused home space. Homeowners have realized that they can capture home space that they already have to create income. The rental suites can also function as fancy guest space when not booked with paying guests!
Lizzie & Josh, love having you share your insights with us. Before we ask you more questions, maybe you can take a moment to introduce yourself to our readers who might have missed our earlier conversations?
We started in Interior Design by accident. We had just moved from Boston back to Lizzie’s hometown in Central Pennsylvania – home of Penn State! Our plan was to flip homes, since there is an abundance of un-updated homes in this town. We flipped our first home in the urban style that we had come accustomed to Boston and the reviews were great! People started asking us to help them with their own home renovation design. Not only do our design clients need help with design, and making sure that all of their choices are cohesive and fit the home’s style, but they need help managing the subcontractors and moving parts of the remodel. We help our design clients come up with the dream plan, secure high-quality reliable builders and bids, select the perfect finishes, and make sure the work is executed exactly how we all envisioned. The goal is to make remodel fun and not stressful. Once Interior Design work picked up, we slowed down on flipping homes, and then started buying homes to convert into luxury long term and short term rentals. Designing our own rental properties is fun for us because we can try out things that might be too out of the box for our design clients! Now our business is a mix of Interior Design and managing our Real Estate Investments. Our newest branch of business is commercial design. We recently designed a Speakeasy event space, we designed a glitzy student study/lounge center, and we’re also working on designing the checkout area for our local toy store. One of the things we love about our work is how diverse the projects are! Every project brings along new challenges for us, which keeps things interesting!
How about pivoting – can you share the story of a time you’ve had to pivot?
Our first business was a pet care company in Boston. We had a bunch of dog walking employees who walked a total average of 100 dogs a day. We also boarded dogs and visited cats whose owners were away. We even cared for the occasional rabbit! Soon after our son was born, we realized that we wanted to sell the business and move to Pennsylvania to be closer to family. We sold the pet care business, sold our home, and moved to PA without jobs! It was a huge pivot. The first thing we did was buy an off-market distressed home to flip. We always loved home design, so it seemed like something fun to try. We used the money from the sale of our Boston business and home to fund this first project. The flip taught us how to upgrade and update everything in a home. We touched every inch of that place! Homeowners started calling us to help them renovate their own homes in the urban style of the flip house. We now had the knowledge and the builder contacts to start an Interior Design and Remodel Project Management company, and Parra Design was born. Having the steadier income of design work was good for us. Flips took a long time to execute, so it was very feast or famine for a while. We ended up over-improving our final flip home project, and it wouldn’t sell for the price we needed it to. So we kept it as a rental. That experience made us realize that keeping our flips as rentals was a better plan for us. Any over-improvements paid off by being able to charge premium rent and by the equity earned while we hung onto the home. It would’ve been easy to get discouraged by not being able to sell that one fancy flip, but we rolled with the punches, and the pivot paid off. Josh and I always say that we know it’s “meant to be” if thing seem to happen by themselves. If something is a terrible struggle for us, it usually doesn’t work out well in the end. If something happens organically and with ease, it’s life telling us that we’re on the correct path. We didn’t mean to become Interior Designers, but life kicked us in that direction and we’re happy it did. We didn’t meant to hold onto our flipped homes, but that was the best plan for us, and it turns out that we love owning rental properties!
How’d you build such a strong reputation within your market?
Josh and I are really good at collaborating with people. We work with a lot of talented builders, and we work with a lot of homeowners with very different design tastes. Everything is dependent on our ability to listen, compromise, learn and grow. We try to help each Design client get exactly what they want and need from their home remodel projects, throughout the whole process, from planning to completion. We’re not diva designers, where it’s our way or the highway. And we always try to show appreciation to the true heroes in our business – the people who build the spaces that we design. If you are a pleasure to work with, your business will grow all by itself. You can’t please everyone, but you can do your best to try.
Contact Info:
- Website: www.ParraDesignBuild,.com
- Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/parradesignbuild/
- Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/parradesignbuild