748: $2k+/mo Taking Pictures of Houses: The Life of a Loan Draw Inspector

The Side Hustle Show is designed to help you make more money. But do you have a firm grasp on your overall financial picture? I was stuck in spreadsheets and logging into a dozen different accounts for far too long, which is why I'm excited to partner with Monarch for this episode. Monarch is the personal finance app that tracks everything, your accounts, your investments, your saving goals, and your spending, and does it all in one place. Plus, you can get your first year of Monarch Core for half off. That's just fifty bucks with promo code SideHustle. Now, I probably check the Monarch app more often than I should, but it's helped my wife and I celebrate certain net worth milestones. It's helped us visualize our spending and get honest about where it all goes. It's helped us reallocate funds in an intentional way and just be less stressed about little expenses when they pop up. Use promo code SideHustle at monarch.com to get your first year of Monarch Core for half off at just fifty dollars. That's fifty percent off your first year at monarch.com with code SideHustle. How about getting paid to go look at stuff? Here is a little-known real estate side hustle with almost no startup costs, no particular licensing requirements, and really not a lot of sales required. My guest picked it up as a retirement side gig and made two thousand bucks a month last year and is on track to double that this year. From drawinspectortraining.com, Lou Shaver, welcome to the Side Hustle Show.

Thank you, Nick. I appreciate you having me. I'm a, a longtime listener, and it's a privilege to be, uh, on your show.

Well, I am glad that you reached out because this was something that I never heard of before, and I know anytime I come across a side hustle like that, it's gonna be a good one. You are a construction loan draw inspector. So give us the high-level overview of what that is and what you do.

Sure. So when a bank loans someone money to build a home, I mean, they don't just hand the money over initially and say, "Hey, here's a half a million dollars. Go build your house." They issue it out incrementally in what's called a draw. That draw is given during specific phases, uh, of the build. And so they will send someone out during the course of that build to verify and validate the information. The builder may say, "Hey, I've got the foundation in. Can we get a draw?" That draw may be up ten percent of the build. And so we'll go out there, we'll take pictures, we'll inspect, verify the location that we're at, and make sure that what has been done is kind of an internal control, and we make sure that the bank kind of knows what's going on.

And this is in place to protect the bank from the builder skipping town.

Sure. Yeah. They want to make sure that the money is doled out incrementally and not just in a big chunk.

Yeah. And so each job is paying about how much?

I charge usually about sixty to seventy-five dollars. My costs have went up. My cost and my price has gone up a little bit due to gas over the last few months. But for the most part, it's about sixty-five dollars an inspection.

And those are your only costs. It's the gas to get you to the job site and your time,