Contractor's Business Down 50 Percent

One of the six small businesses that The Times began tracking back in October is a Ditmas Park-based contracting business run by Ruben Villlasante. While the amount of work has fallen in half over the past year, he sounds more optimistic than the other five owners:

cash-register-1208.jpg

I’m not getting big jobs, just small ones here and there, from people I know. People have things to be done, things that have to be fixed. They have to fix the stairs or patch a piece of the roof or fix a cabinet. That’s what happens in slow times. It goes into slow motion. When the busy season starts in March, we’ll be busy. I was talking to other guys I know and one said, “I have two weeks and that’s it.” Another guy told me, “Take whatever you can get because it’s so tough.” If they stabilize the market so it doesn’t go up and down, maybe in the 9,000s, it will give people a little security; that will help everybody. We haven’t seen the foreclosures in Ditmas Park. This is business and professional people; they’re not going to lose their job or house. So if the market gets stable, people will spend.

Any other contractors out there? How's it going?
As Crisis Spreads, a Pinch Becomes a Squeeze [NY Times]

Copyright Brown - Brownstoner
Contact Us