About Us
Gast Homes is the number one Florida leading real estate team of agents with the passion and experience to help home buyers, home sellers, new construction home building and investors. Our team leader has strategically aligned with some of the best affiliates to leverage to real estate experience. Below is a short list of operations that is owned by our team leader.
Real Estate
In 1996 the real estate empire began in the Midwest by joining a Century 21 office and within a few months developed the local Century 21 home builders connection program. Approximately a year later we opened our first real estate brokerage. Along the path of owning several real estate brokerages leading to the Florida market was GMAC Real Estate, Real Living Real Estate and broker of record Keller Williams Real Estate. As a real estate broker with thousands of agents coming to you over the years with tough negations, you become tested in almost every conceivable problem that could arise. With our experience we can offer sound advice to our future clients that can help keep the deals moving forward and not fall apart. Furthermore, we have found that often our real estate clients save money working with us. Thousands of dollars of money can be saved with the correct negation skills that exceed far past just the offer price. Owning real estate brokerages we have seen it first hand, if you pick the wrong agent to represent you it could cost you thousands more.
Home Builder
In 1987 our owner started out in a two year home building technical school course that completed two newly constructed homes. After completing home building schooling the start of a new construction home building began in 1990 in the Midwest. It was then when he realized that there are mainly two types of builders, ones that swing the hammer and know very little about running the business and the other an office paper pusher who knows very little about how a house is constructed. Using this knowledge we bridged the gap by doing both tasks and formed a system that was both business sound and constructed properly. Creating models and systems was and still is not a standard practice in the home building industry. Our success has led to building super strong, well designed and energy efficient homes for consumers in a price range that cannot be touched. A summary of our secret sauce includes owning your own materials buyer group, Manufacturing some of your own building materials, creating value engineered house plans, packaging the perfect material usage, developing systems to manage task and budget concerns and creating a network of sales staff throughout the united states. If you’re considering building a home we can offer the faster completion times at affordable prices that sometimes are lower than buying an existing built home.
Land Development
With real estate brokerage ownership and home building experience perfected it was a natural move in 2000 to start land development. Land development might sound glorious but the pressure of developing cities and towns by creating thousands of single family homes, townhomes, apartment complexes and condo buildings that have little to no impact on the environment becomes challenging. With almost two decades of experience we have perfected our development process that is efficient, well planned, cost effective and the right choice for the community. Our experience goes past just the residential side, some of our projects have been commercial strip malls and large scale mini-storage facilities. Sometimes we own our own land development project but often we team up with partners and investors as these projects often lead to millions of dollars of upfront cost before they even start to cash flow. If you’re considering investing in a land development project we offer two options: Fee based service to construct your project or a partnership arrangement. Our experience will guide you through the challenges of design to construction and include impact & environmental studies, zoning variance prep, job costing and actually construction. See investor relations section.
Real Estate Software Development
Perfecting our real estate services we have found the need to write many of our own software coded solutions which can be purchased at our Real Estate Ninja website.
Real Estate Agents WordPress IDX Plugin
A privately held software program that collects IDX RETS feeds from real estate associations and holds them in a super-fast Amazon cloud storage for agent retrieval. Then a WordPress plugin developed from scratch that links to these Amazon cloud stored property data which also includes new construction house plans from a local builder that is tied into their pricing software. In addition the real estate agent has the ability to dynamically show all their local real estate properties on their own website which increases consumer traffic flow. Adding to these local properties and creating more leads each real estate broker has the ability to display new construction house building opportunities and get paid a commission if they build or move them into an existing home.
New Construction Pricing & Management Software
Internet based new construction solution that allows for a portfolio of home plans with pricing for every house plan and upgrade options that is then displayed to hundreds of local real estate agents on their own website creating powerhouse sales force. Utilizing a master construction price table when one item changes in price the whole portfolio database of house plans base price is updated. As an example if the cost of one door knobs changes in price then every house plan will get an instant updated advertised base price that reflects the door knob price change multiplied by the number that each home would have installed. Furthermore, the managing of jobsite scheduling and leveraging gant charts is used allowing for the project manager to control the build from budget tracking to completion date.
Certified Real Estate Construction Estimating Software
Real Estate agents that pose the highest construction experience in a market area would have additional tools that tie the outside real estate agent sale in with the actual home builder. This is accomplished using software that can create actual building estimates in minutes that can later be moved into and actual building contract for the home builder. This software solution allows the local home builder to view all estimates and invoice. Once the Home builder approves the contract invoice by signing the contract its officially under contract as a new construction building contract. This links the everyday real estate agents with clients to the home builder without the home builder being required to meet for every possible prospect. End result leads to better use of time, more sales and affordable end product.
Weatherization Assistance Software Program
In addition to years of real estate our owner also has been involved for the last 17 years and multiple states with a Department of Energy grant program making homes more energy efficient for senior citizens and low income families. Having thousands of these projects under our belt we found the need to develop software solutions that can manage contact information according to the unique program guidelines, Capture actual job site inspection and testing data, create work orders for local contractors and track financial record keeping. The DOW WAP program requires heavy document management and our system delivers with option to even go paperless. System includes government level encrypting data including meeting HIPAA for data in motion requirements with daily back-ups. Multiple security level logins from the contractor level all the way to the admin in finance, a true internet based solution.
Community Redevelopment
Based on our real estate activities we directly benefit the local community.
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Job creation
We create thousands of jobs and attract outside individuals and companies to the local area. This is accomplished through some of our energy research and development projects, manufacturing new construction materials, constructing local housing and facilitate in the sale of real estate. Samples of some of the jobs we create are Title companies and staff, attorneys, manufacturing line workers, plumbers, roofers, engineers and architects. In fact not only do we produce thousands of jobs we also create the need for second level jobs like truck manufactures, utility companies, local restaurant food supply and many other products & service for everyday living. We help attract many companies to relocate in your local area.
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Housing
The biggest part of community development is having housing. The local work force needs to be well rested and comfortable so they can perform their jobs which helps make the world go around. Our housing is built using fortified techniques to reduce the burden on the local community if a disaster takes place. Cost of living is highly reduced with energy efficient homes that include low maintenance. Affordable home purchase prices attract more families to your community. With more families means the need for more consumer products creating a full cycle of a community.
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Tax Base
Each working person pays their share of payroll taxes which help operation cost to run our government. In addition to payroll taxes every time we build a new home we help add to the collection of property taxes. Each home that is built could bring in $200K to $500K in property taxes for a 100 year housing life cycle. If we were to only build 1,000 home that could be a half of billion dollars ($500,000,000) in property taxes for a hundred year cycle.
Summary About Us
As you can see our life is real estate! When you’re making the biggest purchase of your life, who do you want to be on your side? We are currently interviewing consumers daily that want to save money in your next real estate transaction. How can we help you?