Entrepreneurial Saga Is Just Beginning

A key to the quality of Sean O’Sullivan’s luxury home development was found early in his life – when he was only six years old.

“Mom would pack me a lunch and I’d go sit on a dirt pile at a building site across the street and watch the guys build houses day after day,” he recalled, obviously relishing the memory. “I’d watch them dig a basement, pour a basement, frame the house and build the whole thing. It just fascinated me.”

While he remains fascinated with building homes, other abilities have added significantly to his portfolio – and attract a growing group of followers who know the value of O’Sullivan homes and O’Sullivan developments.

Growing up in Raytown, Sean was never far from construction work. “Both my father and my grandfather had their own sheet metal and tool & die businesses,” he recalled. “I worked for both, and I also worked for a veterinarian for about four years. I was actually going to become a vet, but the amount of schooling needed was extensive. I would not have made any money until I was 28 or 30 and that wasn’t an option.”

In the long run, that may have been a good thing. After several jobs with family businesses, Sean joined a friend’s father hanging seamless guttering and he realized his calling was construction.

Sean founded O’Sullivan Seamless Guttering in 1985. Almost immediately, the business was a success as satisfied customers referred him to their friends.

That’s also where his entrepreneurial abilities became evident. He soon made the logical expansion into commercial roofing under the name of Shamrock Roofing and then moved into tile roofing.

Soon that evolved into a contract with a major home improvement chain to install their guttering and insulation in metropolitan Kansas City, and he began installing vinyl, aluminum and steel siding for a number of contractors. Although he was already a business success, Sean saw all of this as an education. “Just being around construction, you learn little things almost everywhere,” he noted. “You could also say I learned the business from the top down rather than the bottom up because I started with gutters and roofs.”

“Just being around construction, you learn little things almost everywhere,” he noted. “You could also say I learned the business from the top down rather than the bottom up because I started with gutters and roofs.”

Laying a Foundation
About the same time, Sean took over ownership of a lake home – basically a fishing shack – which he and his brothers and sisters had purchased several years earlier. He began tearing down the fishing shack and building his first house – significantly at the Lake of the Ozarks in 1989 when he helped his father-in-law build a house from start to finish. Later that led Sean to form a framing company working on single-family homes, duplexes, and fourplexes in Lee’s Summit.

His first home became a training ground for Sean’s obvious building talents. There was one problem – adjacent to this lake home was nearly 10 acres with only one home and 1,200 feet of empty shoreline.

“Anyone could buy that property and do anything they wanted because it was at the lake and there were no zoning requirements,” he explained. “So to protect the value of my lake home and the beginning of my entrepreneurial vision, I went and told the owner to give me first shot if they ever sold. On Christmas 1994, he came and said, we’re selling.”

But for a 25-year-old to purchase 10 acres with a price of $225,000 was not automatic. “Yeah,” he recalled with a laugh, “I went to a banker to borrow a quarter million dollars. He said no way he could loan me the money. I had no credit history, nothing.”

In typical Sean style, he found ways to be successful. “I put down $10,000 on the property and tied it up under contract, then I hustled around – got it surveyed, platted, etc. – and got commitments for the first seven lots. Then I went back to the banker and said I have the first seven lots sold for $180,000. It came down to where I had to borrow $50,000 on the remaining seven lots. Basically, I just needed him to loan me $225,000 for two hours. He couldn’t believe I pulled that off. He said he couldn’t even charge me any interest for that.”

That was in 1994 and the resulting 14-lot development became Eagle View Estates at Lake of the Ozarks. The pattern was set for his future developments.

Close to Home
Although much of his early efforts and recent successes were at Lake of the Ozarks, Sean builds successfully within metropolitan Kansas City as well. In 1993, he built his first personal residence at Raintree Lake and three years later built a personal residence at Lakewood in Lee’s Summit. In 2000, he built his current home there as well, a 5,600 s.f. residence on the lake.

Yet Sean stresses that during this time he was still learning. He had continued his guttering and framing company with three crews, but when he was offered a job as a construction superintendent for a large firm, he accepted.

“I took his homes from the foundation to the walkthrough with the customers, through punch-out and even warranty work,” he recalled. “We had 10 framing crews with up to 50 homes going at one time. I closed 65 homes in one year. That was an education.” That also provided the tie-in for everything Sean had done, including the construction cleanup and guttering companies retained. “I took the job for the education of building homes on a large scale,” he said. “It taught me about attention to details and keeping track of everything. With that kind of schedule, you’re as busy as you can be, and you have to be organized.” The challenge was to see how fast I could build a house with the smallest punch list in the end “the perfect house”. After three years, fate once again intervened. “I still had six lots unsold down at the lake,” he said. “And our Realtor told me people don’t come to the lake to buy a lot, they come to buy a home. They don’t want to mess with finding a contractor and all of that. I’d built about 150 homes in Lee’s Summit, so I figured I could build six at the lake.”

After three years, fate once again intervened. “I still had six lots unsold down at the lake,” he said. “And our Realtor told me people don’t come to the lake to buy a lot, they come to buy a home. They don’t want to mess with finding a contractor and all of that. I’d built about 150 homes in Lee’s Summit, so I figured I could build six at the lake.

Despite his experience, Sean didn’t dive into the building immediately. He asked the Realtor, I’m going to come down Saturday, could you give me a tour of what would be my competition? And he immediately concluded that he would be able to more than compete. “After looking at five homes, it was obvious they weren’t using the kind of finish and standards that I was used to,” he said. “So I started building.”

Popular Start
The rest, as they say, is history. Sean quickly completed five beautiful homes on the Eagle View lots that he had not sold, saving the last for his personal lake home. As quickly as those were sold, others asked if he would be building more. “Realtors called me and asked if I was going to do anything else at the lake,” he noted. “They had clients that had missed out (on Eagle View). I hadn’t planned on anything, but I told them to send me some land listings and I’d look around.”

Sean also remembered a beautiful piece of property that he saw up the lake while boating. “I was too busy at that time to pursue it, but when the Realtor sent me some listings, that piece of property was still there.”

That would be the next development, located at the 10-mile marker and was named Molokai Pointe, Hawaiian for “the friendly island”. Further investigation revealed another connection for Sean. “My wife and I were dating in 1987 and we had gone to Molokai bar and grill,” he recalled. “I remembered sitting on a big wooden deck that overhung the water out on the point. We had sat there watching the sunset and now, that’s where our home is! Sean also used to spend summers in the same cove known as “crane cove” at his grandfather’s lake house for 15 plus years as a kid. He learned to ski right in front of what is now his lake house.

Sean had hardly closed on that property when a couple called. They had missed out on the last home in the Eagle View development and wondered if he planned to do anything else in the area. Within 24 hours they signed up for a half-million-dollar home, the first in Molokai Pointe.

Sean completed the purchase of the property in 2003 and has since started another, Sunset Key, near Horseshoe Bend Parkway. Neither are huge – Sunset is a five-home, gated community – but the quality is outstanding. His latest venture, South Beach, will be larger, an 18-home, planned community adjoining Eagle View.

“I was near the end of Molokai and realized I loved what I was doing, so I started looking around,” Sean explained. “I’ve realized what I like to do. It’s putting everything together to create outstanding homes in outstanding developments.”

Key Capabilities
While his story may read like a novel, Sean’s not-so-obvious skills include comprehensive attention to detail and what can only be called vision. He currently operates his own concrete & excavating companies, which he uses to provide key services for his lake home developments. He also learned that bringing experienced crews from Kansas City ensured that he could get the level of quality he and his clients demand. But most of all, he knew how to identify and deliver a new level of quality to luxury lake homes.

“When I went to the lake, I immediately brought in an architect, Greg Martin Dream Home Designs” Sean explained. “We sat down with a Realtor and asked for all the criteria to define the perfect lake house. We now have all kinds of custom plans and alternations and options, but it started with that meeting.”

ShoreMaster, for example, a company Sean has worked with since 2005, is another example of working with the best. “The ShoreMaster Rixo 850 concrete wave attenuators we placed at Molokai are actually used around the world, in all types of applications including saltwater. They are the number one concrete breakwater company in the Ozarks.”

Sean has a few other tricks as well. His wife, Tammy, does all of the books for the company and keeps track of project progress, costs and more. “She basically takes care of the nightmare,” Sean joked. “That’s how I can concentrate on what I do.”

The couple does find time for more than work. Their two children, Nicol and Breeana, keep them busy, and the family enjoys boating on the lake. Sean and the family have an extensive “fleet” that includes a 42 Cigarette Boat, cruiser, ski boats and SeaDoos. But with his growing list of clients, it’s obvious that his work will keep Sean busy for some time. Call Sean O’Sullivan at 816-985-4040.