Episode 16: Season 1 Wrap Up and Q&A with Toner Kersting

Bonus: Accompanying every episode are show notes with links to guest speakers and other helpful sites mentioned in the podcast.

How to get in touch: Please let us know what questions you have and we will address those on our final episode of the season, Episode 16. You may email us at info@yourprojectshepherd.com.

STORY

00;00;09;15 – 00;00;30;23

Curtis:

Hey, friends, welcome back to the Your Project Shepherd Construction podcast. This is our final episode of Season one, so I wanted to wrap up our tale of Brian and Heather. I’m going to give you a quick recap of where they’re at. But if this is the first time you’re watching or listening to us, I want you to go back and check out the first 15 shows in order, hopefully, so that you can understand what they’ve been through.

 

00;00;31;10 – 00;00;54;26

When we last saw them, they were living in their new home for over a year and a half when a handyman pointed out a potential foundation issue. That issue turned out to be their fault and cost them over $20,000 to remedy Brian didn’t like the low spots on each side of his house, which unbeknownst to him were actually swales, which are like shallow ditches to drain water from the backyard and sides down to the street.

 

00;00;54;26 – 00;01;18;01

So Brian, his dad got busy with a wheelbarrow and a truckload of dirt and filled them in, which caused negative drainage around their foundation. A couple of months later, Brian and Heather were sitting around the dinner table after a meal talking about their day. Heather Brian said, I think I’ve had it with this house. It seemed like a great idea three years ago when we first dreamt of it.

 

00;01;18;14 – 00;01;37;00

We were so naive, though it’s really drained us financially and emotionally. I just don’t think I want to be here anymore. Well, where are we going? Heather asked. I’m not moving back to a tiny house with no room for the kids, and we’ve finally gotten this one the way we want it. Yeah, but you’re still having to work so we can pay for it.

 

00;01;37;14 – 00;01;57;05

And you’d rather spend time with the kids, right? I’ve been looking at some slightly smaller and less expensive homes on the realtor website, and I think there are some good options for us. Although Heather isn’t thrilled with this idea, she knows deep down that Brian’s right. She really is sick of working and she wants to be home as the kids grow up.

 

00;01;57;19 – 00;02;17;25

She knows that Brian feels stress every time he looks at certain portions of the house that they fought over. What Derek? Like that stupid beam in the living room. Okay, She says, Let’s call realtor and see what we can get for this place, and then we can start exploring those options. Over the next few weeks, they interview several neighborhood realtors about listing the home.

 

00;02;18;13 – 00;02;40;27

They are pleasantly surprised to learn that the market has come up tremendously in the area and they should actually be able to make around $200,000 by selling the house. They put the house in the market on the market quickly, get several offers and sign a contract. A few days later, another 45 days go by. The House closes and their three year saga is finally over.

 

00;02;41;13 – 00;02;59;18

They’re able to pocket enough cash to pay back loans from their family and even put a little aside for the down payment on their next place. They spend their evenings now looking at houses online and their weekends going to open houses. They even find several properties for a great price that meet their needs but need a lot of remodeling.

 

00;03;00;12 – 00;03;38;04

Brian Heather says, Let’s call James first. I think we should pay him to help us evaluate these properties with our realtor and make better decisions this time around. Great idea, Brian said. So let’s talk about what people should take away from our first season. I hope that take away from listening to Brian and Heather’s story and from all of our guests is that you have to have those four components that I keep bringing up and talking about every time you got to have the proper planning, you got have the right team in place.

 

INTEVIEW

00;03;38;04 – 00;03;53;22

Curtis:

You got to have good communication with your team, and then you’ve got to have proper execution. And then on top of that, there execution, there’s like multiple layers of verification to make sure it’s done right. So, you know, that’s kind of my little shtick that I’ve been doing this whole first season is showing this diagram of the house.

 

00;03;53;22 – 00;04;15;05

Curtis:

So I hope that’s what the takeaway is from the first season. And I think people may be tempted to say, well, you know, I’ve got the team right. I hired my architect, or I hired a good builder. And so I think people sometimes want to kind of rest there and they think they’ve got the team they can just let them do their thing and kind of trust it, right?

 

00;04;15;11 – 00;04;33;00

Curtis:

This is really important to follow through on all the rest of those things. So, yes, having a good team is important and yes, you should be able to trust them to some extent. But as I’ve mentioned before, you have to have this trust. But trust, trust but verify attitude as well. Right. What’s your what’s your thoughts on that?

 

00;04;33;01 – 00;04;50;00

Toner:

No, I mean, I think if any of those walls are missing, the house is going to fall down. If you don’t finish the roof, you’re going have a hole in it. Right. So it’s it’s a it’s important in most of us, at least in when we’re around a deliverable business, where we’re responsible from end to end execution is verification.

 

00;04;50;00 – 00;05;17;26

Toner:

Right. And execution of the contract requires that you fulfill it. In order to fulfill it, you have to check it. And ultimately the owners are verifying it, too. That’s the whole idea of a punch list. And then and it is a reality that they’re going to move into the structure and still see more things. So that good team is going to reflect two, three, four years later when there are instances that occur.

 

00;05;17;26 – 00;05;45;23

Toner:

Right. A good example of that is when we had a really, really hard freeze to February’s ago and some tankless water heaters froze and wasn’t because most of the time after the homeowners had a backup generator, they didn’t have a frozen water heater, but there were some small components and those that had stored water and they broke and getting that warranty fulfilled was really, really hard, especially when everyone had frozen water heaters.

 

00;05;46;06 – 00;06;04;04

Toner:

So that team and that fulfilled contract and that good relationship, even though inevitably there’s going to be a bump on the road, those owners were able to turn back to that team, understand their situation, and they were able to get some support in getting those water heaters replaced. I know you were involved in some. I was involved in a lot of them.

 

00;06;04;25 – 00;06;36;07

Toner:

So that relationship is going to go well past completion of the home. And ultimately there most people grow out of their structures, or they have something change or they need to go do remodel something else or another family member. So I think we’re fortunate that in this state, in Texas and in Houston particular, if you do a good job and you execute, and even if you have some hiccups, the end result is great referrals and long-term relationships with our clients.

 

00;06;36;07 – 00;06;58;00

Curtis:

I just think that people I’m not trying to keep as negative, but people tend to just trust that team too much and often they don’t even research the team enough to begin with. So I mean, this really kind of goes back to the beginning of did you really choose the right team, or did you just feel that choose the team that gave you kind of the warm fuzzies to begin with, but you didn’t really dig into it?

 

00;06;58;21 – 00;07;17;17

Curtis:

I mean, you and I work on a lot of projects where we see really bad situations and in fact, we were on one the other day where somebody chose a builder in a in a very high-end Houston neighborhood because, hey, this guy knows my family or this guy does a lot of work in my neighborhood and I can trust him, Right?

 

00;07;18;00 – 00;07;37;11

Curtis:

And half a million dollars and two years later, it’s a disaster because they really didn’t do their homework. They didn’t you know, they just chose the wrong guy. And so they chose the wrong team. But then on top of that, they also didn’t keep an eye on them like they didn’t they didn’t hire other consultants to keep an eye on them.

 

00;07;37;26 – 00;07;42;19

Curtis:

They just trusted this dude to do whatever. And he did whatever.

 

00;07;43;12 – 00;08;05;07

Toner:

That was a that was a very interesting for someone a very interesting appointment for someone who lives in the world of absolutely upheaval in the residential market. That was pretty significant. Significant for you and I both at the same time to be there, which is not always the case. I think this podcast serves a really good purpose.

 

00;08;05;22 – 00;08;29;24

Toner:

I know that the purpose is there to help educate people and hopefully drive people to businesses and the right people in the right or I’m teams, but there aren’t a lot of resources for this. There are resources online, but and YouTubers and all this stuff, but they’re paid to talk about those things. So once you start getting all these big sponsorships in there, the information you’re getting is through a filter of economics.

 

00;08;30;24 – 00;08;58;16

Toner:

I think this podcast and I’ve listened to everything up to date and I’ve really enjoyed it and for someone who avoids a lot of other professional sessions and information sessions and classes, it’s just because it can be very frustrating. Based on the marketing angle. This has been very clean, and I think if a homeowner goes out and doesn’t try that hard, they’re going to locate things like this and other good resources to be educated.

 

00;08;58;26 – 00;09;16;15

Toner:

Once they know, they know they do, our homeowners, unfortunately, suffer from, they just don’t know what they don’t know.  So and you hear it all the time, and I hear it when we’re on failure jobs. And they said, had I known, I would have done it. Yeah, I really wish that was the if.

 

00;09;17;00 – 00;09;41;21

Curtis:

But they maybe, I mean that job that we were on, they had, they were half a million dollars deep into that project and you know, they weren’t even halfway finished. And, you know, I was running some numbers with them the other day and if they had just spent, I think 600 with a legitimate builder to begin with and the right team, it would have been done right, it would have been finished and they’d be living in the house.

 

00;09;41;21 – 00;09;47;01

Curtis:

But instead, two years later, now what we’re going to have to go in and deconstruct the whole house, Right?

 

00;09;47;01 – 00;10;11;20

Toner:

It’s deconstruct, deconstruct a lot. Let’s just even the lot. Development is not ready for that structure. There’s been historical failures with it. The thing that they have going for them is an extremely expensive piece of dirt, and they probably bought the structure for dirt cost, so it wouldn’t take that much to if they’re going to offset the new costs, if they’re going to stay in that house for ten years.

 

00;10;11;20 – 00;10;29;15

Toner:

Right. And they have really little kids. So ten years, you know this and we have kids about the same age. Ten years is a blip. They fly. They’re going to look up ten years from now. Their kids won’t even be in high school. And they’re made all their money back up. And we’re talking in excess of another $600,000 on top of it.

 

00;10;29;27 – 00;10;39;18

Toner:

But that should have always been a 1.1 to 1.3 project from day one. Why they thought they could get away with 500 grand is beyond me. Yeah.

 

00;10;40;22 – 00;10;57;12

Curtis:

500, I think, would have done kind of a a basic remodel, but it doesn’t really kind of get it to where the neighborhood is or should be. They could have got it to where they could be living in the house. And it would be okay, but it wouldn’t be kind of on par with the rest of the neighborhood.

 

00;10;57;12 – 00;11;13;22

Toner:

Not at all. But hopefully we’ve given some good information. And I’d like to say we can give our clients the tools. It’s up to them to pick it up and that’s how we can sleep well at night wrestling. If we’re giving them good information and good resources, it’s up to their own initiative to take upon that. Yeah.

 

00;11;14;14 – 00;11;23;23

Curtis:

So I’ve listened to the episodes so far. So what what’s been kind of your takeaway from this first season.

 

00;11;23;23 – 00;11;39;25

Toner:

Heather and Brian? At first, I thought that, okay, this story’s going to be maybe a little amped up or exaggerated for dramatic purposes, but it’s I don’t know if it is well, at least maybe from my perspective, it’s not.

 

00;11;39;26 – 00;11;40;29

Curtis:

You see a lot of this stuff, this.

 

00;11;41;01 – 00;12;14;11

Toner:

Every single day. I, I believe that it’s a good representation of what could go wrong, even if you had half of the issues that Brian and Heather or Heather and Brian had. You’ve got a lot of effort in front of you to overcome that. I do. My favorite part is that they sought out other professionals even after start of structure, knowing it’s never too late to reset your team or to even build it to begin with.

 

00;12;14;20 – 00;12;25;28

Toner:

And we’re brought in halfway through projects all the time and they’re not optimal. And you have to spend a lot of time Who is our construction consultant on this one? What’s his name?

 

00;12;26;26 – 00;12;28;06

Curtis:

Oh, James.

 

00;12;28;06 – 00;12;34;07

Toner:

James. I like the episode where James is going over the punch list with.

 

00;12;35;01 – 00;12;35;13

Curtis:

Derek.

 

00;12;35;13 – 00;12;40;07

Toner:

The Builder, Erik the Builder. And by the way, I know like nine Derek Builders.

 

00;12;40;10 – 00;12;45;17

Curtis:

I do too. So I kind of thought about that after I did the name. I was like, Oh, I hope I’m not insulting anybody here.

 

00;12;47;16 – 00;13;25;24

Toner:

But I love that there’s a little bit of positivity that comes from Derek and his re and their reaction or interaction that he’s learning from that. And the amazing thing is he’ll be able to take that learning and just grow and grow and grow. And I’m hoping that Derek sees that he needs to seek out more avenues of education and takes advantage of this resources that are available to builders through National Association of Homebuilder Tech’s Association of Homebuilders, Local Classes, Continuing Education.

 

00;13;26;13 – 00;13;45;18

Toner:

It’s not that hard-to-find resources, and I know both you and I have gone through a lot of those kind of classes to develop it. So I’m I would love to have a nugget in there that they bump into Derek at H-E-B three years later, and he says, hey, you know, I’m a master certified builder now.

 

00;13;46;04 – 00;13;46;17

Toner:

You’re awesome.

 

00;13;47;05 – 00;14;09;07

Curtis:

So a spoiler alert. So this, this wrap up episode is actually being recorded before some of the other episodes of Released. Turner hasn’t heard all of them yet. So and by the time you guys are listening to this and seeing this last episode, you will have heard it. So I’m not spoiling it for you, but I’m spoiling it for toner.

 

00;14;09;07 – 00;14;16;24

Curtis:

Derek actually went out of business and went back to work for a production builder in the suburbs of D.

 

00;14;16;27 – 00;14;18;02

Toner:

Come on back. Yeah.

 

00;14;18;02 – 00;14;24;06

Curtis:

I had high hopes for him too, but he just couldn’t cut it, you know? He’s back, you know.

 

00;14;24;27 – 00;14;25;16

Toner:

And that’s okay.

 

00;14;25;16 – 00;14;27;13

Curtis:

Running 100 houses at a time for production.

 

00;14;27;13 – 00;14;31;19

Toner:

Builder or production builder superintendent can make about $130,000 a year.

 

00;14;31;20 – 00;14;32;15

Curtis:

Oh, they can do well.

 

00;14;32;15 – 00;14;52;16

Toner:

Yeah. And they could fall asleep at the wheel. Yeah. Because those houses are moving regardless of their back-office systems and stuff. And there’s. We should talk about production builders sooner or later, right. Yeah. There’s some really, really spectacular production builders out there. And then there’s a lot of production builders who I know are just building forensic stock for me for the next 20 years.

 

00;14;52;16 – 00;14;55;12

Curtis:

Yeah, we love it because it keeps us in business for four years.

 

00;14;55;20 – 00;15;15;13

Toner:

That’s right, four years. But you and I know you do this on how you do this when especially when I’m leaving a situation and I have a frustrated builder in the street, typically by the tailgate and we’re trying to manage a situation for the for the whole group, the homeowners, their architects, the engineers and the builders. The was very frustrated.

 

00;15;15;13 – 00;15;36;17

Toner:

I will refer him to a development manager in my office who is one of the most successful membership people for the ABA version of the association. And I’ll say, hey, I’m going to schedule a Zoom call with her and she’ll go through and explain that you have to participate in your industry to learn, and this is where you do that.

 

00;15;36;17 – 00;15;48;29

Toner:

And she signs up. The majority of the people we refer to the ABA for membership are coming from failures with, so they can have a point of reference and build their network and build their education base. So it’s out there.

 

00;15;49;01 – 00;16;11;11

Curtis:

That’s fantastic. Yet Terry and Regina, who work for Turner, they and I are on the board of some stuff at SBA. And yeah, it’s a fantastic resource. I mean, it’s where I did a lot of my learning but nothing I’ve talked about before. You know, I didn’t go to school for this. This is something that I’ve learned on the job over the last, you know, 19 years.

 

00;16;11;26 – 00;16;33;23

Curtis:

And so the ABA, the NAHB, those associations have been, you know, the bulk of my education. There are some fantastic classes out there, you know, nationally. And then now are all the association is developing their own curriculum which is really geared more towards new guys is like the ABCs of home building. Hey, here’s what you need to know about framing an electrical one.

 

00;16;34;10 – 00;16;53;01

Curtis:

But honestly, a lot of these guys coming into the business, they don’t know those basics. So, you know, for me or maybe for my project managers, those classes are like, I don’t want to go to that because it’s like, hey, here’s the basics of how to read blueprints. But honestly, for a ton of contractors out there, they don’t know how to read a set of blueprints.

 

00;16;53;17 – 00;17;10;22

Curtis:

I mean, I’ve been on multiple job sites where you’re all set up prints out. You start pointing at stuff. They’re like, oh, that’s what that means, you know? I mean, because honestly, it’s a skill to read a set of blueprints and understand what all the symbols mean, how one page refers to the next, all that sort of stuff.

 

00;17;11;13 – 00;17;34;20

Toner:

Most definitely. And you only need to pick up one bit of information for what, an hour class to improve yourself. And I love when guys have a strength of, say, in masonry and they go to an electrician class. They’re like, wow, I did not realize how complex that is or how it affects me. There’s there are almost all trades have bridges to each other.

 

00;17;35;03 – 00;17;41;27

Toner:

And if they understand those bridges and they’re respectful of them, they only set up the next trade to be more successful on the project.

 

00;17;41;27 – 00;18;06;16

Curtis:

So yeah, I mean, and that’s kind of that that thought is also kind of goes into the kind of the communication portion of our of our house diagram. I mean, there has there’s communication on so many levels that has to happen. It’s, you know, between the architect and the builder and the design and all that stuff. But even between the builder and the trades and the trades to each other.

 

00;18;06;16 – 00;18;31;12

Curtis:

So it’s like this never-ending chain of communication that has to take place on a complex job site. And, you know, I think the old mentality or maybe the old mentality that the mentality that you see a lot, the wrong mentality is when a guy’s like, he’s in a silo. This is my job. Once I walk away, it’s somebody else’s problem.

 

00;18;31;21 – 00;18;52;20

Curtis:

And so it’s finding that team that that doesn’t view it that way. They’re like, hey, this is my job. But my job continues on into these other people. They have to deal with what I do. I have to set them up for success. I have to be willing, if I make a mistake, to go in and help them remedy as I go along.

 

00;18;52;20 – 00;19;09;22

Curtis:

So it’s this idea that everyone has to work together. Everyone has to communicate all the way from the tippy top, you know, king builder, architect, sitting at the top to the to the guy cleaning up the job site. Everyone has to work together, communicate most definitely.

 

00;19;09;22 – 00;19;36;25

Toner:

I think the builder sets that that precedent. When you had Stephen Deiter on and he was discussing the long term relationships that he’s had with his trades, that’s important. So if there’s a electrician who’s setting a box and that electrician knows he needs to check the lighting plan and they’re seeing that that light fixture on a wall sconces, a £30 fixture, and he’s looking at a shallow draft box on a single stud.

 

00;19;37;19 – 00;19;59;05

Toner:

He’s going to turn and say, hey, I don’t think this is going to support this fixture. And he in those established relationships, he would turn to Stephen or his project manager and say, probably to come here and triple this or build a block. And also that new receptacle is going to be three inches deep instead of a half inch deep.

 

00;19;59;05 – 00;20;21;21

Toner:

So can we block in and move over? So that’s that is 100% an elective activity and it’s the culture of the builder who sets the culture of the job. And if they are all respectful of each other, it’s just because it not there’s not a whole bunch of the most ethical people ever that just happen to accumulate because they were developed into that expectation.

 

00;20;22;05 – 00;20;45;22

Curtis:

You know, and, and that that right there is the difference between hiring the lowest bid to get the job done and having a team that you use all the time and paying for a quality subcontractor or a quality builder that has a relationship with the regular subcontractors, the cheap guy that comes in there to wire that house. He man, he’s just putting boxes up, pulling wire.

 

00;20;45;22 – 00;20;56;03

Curtis:

He walks away. I’m done. Yeah, right. And then nine months later, when they’re trimming that house out, now that you’re cutting the sheetrock open to fix that situation.

 

00;20;56;04 – 00;21;00;18

Toner:

You get a sag on that light fixture or it falls off of that like fall. The house the other day.

 

00;21;00;19 – 00;21;04;18

Curtis:

$2,000 light fixture falls. It falls off the wall. Whose fault is that at that point, right?

 

00;21;04;18 – 00;21;24;17

Toner:

Yep. I’ve had crystal chandelier come down three story staircases and crash the bottom because all they had was the smallest little piece of copper wire, not stainless steel, because no one put the support in. And in the end the copper wire was only secured to the box. Not any framing and this huge chandelier just crashed to the ground.

 

00;21;24;28 – 00;21;45;19

Toner:

They’re like, Well, who’s responsible for that? Yeah, and that’s a difficult question because that’s just as long gone, right. And proving it. And that’s how we could talk about the proof of burden, right? Yeah, for the burden of proof excuse me is very, very hard to define. And even if you do define it, just because you have someone to blame doesn’t mean you’re getting paid for it.

 

00;21;45;28 – 00;22;12;25

Curtis:

Yeah, I mean, that is a prime example of communication because, you know, the designer, the architect, whoever picked out that fixture originally, you know, they’ve got to communicate what that’s going to be to the builder. The builder has got to go back to the electrician. And so that one seemingly small piece of information about this is the light fixture we’re using has ramifications for four months or possibly years to come.

 

00;22;13;05 – 00;22;36;04

Curtis:

So just communicating that that, hey, this is a expensive, heavy fixture that’s going here. This is not a flush mound, mushroom fixture, but so that information has to get passed on early. The decision has to be made early, has to get passed along, because, you know, often what happens too, is that that chandelier gets picked out halfway through construction.

 

00;22;36;04 – 00;22;42;24

Curtis:

If they’re not planning it, well, that is the designer halfway through the builds like, hey, let’s do this fancy chandelier.

 

00;22;43;00 – 00;22;43;09

Toner:

Yeah.

 

00;22;43;22 – 00;22;48;22

Curtis:

Not and she doesn’t know that all that’s up there a regular Jay box.

 

00;22;48;23 – 00;23;10;15

Toner:

Well, in that case, because it was a bunch of other problems in that home. And we are going through the litigation, the homeowner had chosen a friend of hers. Not uncommon to kind of what Heather thought about a friend of hers who’s an aspiring designer, you know, because she reads Dwell magazine, which their school there’s classes that’s takes education.

 

00;23;10;18 – 00;23;34;22

Toner:

Yeah. It is not uncommon for us to see bad interior design because they just have not been educated. And she came in really, really late, made all these selections. The picture came in after they moved in. So all they had was a little rough inbox up there and she hired her nephew to install the light fixtures so that she could get paid for it.

 

00;23;35;00 – 00;23;56;06

Toner:

So he inside stalled all the light fixtures. It took them like three weeks to install light fixtures. He got up there, installed it, strapped it in with what he thought it was actually the grounding wire. Oh, what? He looped around it so it wasn’t even grounded on top of it. When all came down, that girl was nowhere to be found in was through interviews that we were able to identify that that was her loss.

 

00;23;56;14 – 00;23;57;26

Toner:

So there was no claim on that.

 

00;23;58;05 – 00;23;59;24

Curtis:

And she didn’t have insurance either?

 

00;24;00;07 – 00;24;08;21

Toner:

No, it’s just a friend of hers. But it did ruin their friendship. Yeah. Yeah. So that was that was significant. It took a lot of hunting to figure that out, though, man.

 

00;24;08;21 – 00;24;34;13

Curtis:

I have seen that scenario quite a bit. And again, not to not to pick on designers, but I think that, um, and we mentioned this before in an earlier episode, um, I think designers kind of have the lowest barrier to entry of anybody on the project or like they can. There’s a ton of great designers out here in interior, interior designers, so a lot of great ones out there not knocking them.

 

00;24;34;13 – 00;24;54;01

Curtis:

But I’m just saying that in that field, especially, there’s a lot of people, like you said, they read Wall magazine, they watch HGTV, they decide that’s what they want to do. It’s an easy thing to kind of slide into, and maybe they have fantastic style. They’re really good at picking things out, but they don’t have the construction knowledge to go with it.

 

00;24;54;02 – 00;25;22;17

Curtis:

Man. That construction knowledge piece, even just for a visit, even for a designer, the construction knowledge piece is essential. You have to know how that product is going to be installed. You have to know how that product is going to interact with the other things that you’re that you’re specifying. And I have seen so many friendships go badly because they get their friend to be their designer, and that designer kind of doesn’t stay in her lane.

 

00;25;22;18 – 00;25;43;19

Curtis:

She’s meaning she doesn’t is helping pick things out. She’s like, hey, I’ve got this this cabinet guy that can help me with something. I got this tile guy that can help do this. And before you know, you have all these pretty unqualified people being supervised by an unqualified person. And we see this a lot on small projects like, yeah, like on, like on a kitchen bath remodel.

 

00;25;43;25 – 00;25;51;10

Curtis:

Yeah. You see a lot of designer kind of designer led small projects that often turn out badly because of that one.

 

00;25;51;10 – 00;26;12;13

Toner:

I know that we’ve got this conversation before when if you have a husband and a wife and you in early in the stages, you hear, Well, I’m going to check with my mom, right. You make a note of that kind of stuff and you’ve got projects. And I’ve had projects when we know that the ultimate decision maker is not just the husband and wife or the two partners, it’s it’s going to be that mother in law or father in law that shows up.

 

00;26;12;28 – 00;26;39;13

Toner:

I had one where the father in law would fly in from New York over and over again, check on their son’s project. And the problem was he was a journeyman in Manhattan. And that is a different way of building their in their requirements and the air conditioning when in is about to be installed. And it works by telling stories like where is the metal ductwork?

 

00;26;40;06 – 00;27;03;22

Toner:

Or like, we don’t use metal ductwork down, Here it goes. No, no, no. That’s absolutely how you have to do. And I had to have an argument with a non argument, a elevator conversation with a 65 year old journeyman HVAC contractor out of Manhattan and his I had to turn on the southern drawer because I had to offset his New York accent and talk slower.

 

00;27;04;07 – 00;27;23;23

Toner:

And we worked it out, but it wasn’t before It shut down the project for three weeks. That was a really rough project. Had we known that or had the builder picked up on those little cues that this person was going to be a decision maker or an influencer, I could have had a Zoom call with them and gone over everything.

 

00;27;23;23 – 00;27;43;00

Toner:

Yeah, I could have checked the boxes. Hey Dad, if they wanted metal, we could have done it. But you can’t go retro metal in. You can. It would be absolutely disruptive and there’s really not a lot of benefit to metal. Decorating was in fact a hiking mechanism. That’s a big sweat tubing is what it is.

 

00;27;43;04 – 00;27;48;23

Curtis:

Oh, yeah, definitely. Sometimes those people are are not just giving advice, sometimes they’re writing the check.

 

00;27;49;19 – 00;27;50;07

Toner:

You’ve got it.

 

00;27;50;29 – 00;27;56;27

Curtis:

And what and when, when, when, when mom or dad or writing the check. Guess what? They’re going to have some some sway in the project.

 

00;27;57;16 – 00;28;17;23

Toner:

How many times do we stand out in the street and we go, Hey, do you know how they’re paying for this? Like, we we, we all ask ourselves that question because you can’t it’s you looking at somebody. You can’t figure out their finances and how things are being quantified. Right. You know, I’ve met tons of people who look like bums and they’re billionaires.

 

00;28;18;02 – 00;28;25;17

Toner:

And I’ve also met people who are living in $2 million houses and there’s no furniture because they’re not liquid right. So it’s interesting.

 

00;28;25;25 – 00;28;38;13

Curtis:

I dress up dogs for a living and on Instagram and my my husband is a underwater basket weaver and we’re buying this house in River Oaks. Yeah. Where is that money coming from?

 

00;28;38;13 – 00;28;39;17

Toner:

Exactly? Yeah.

 

00;28;40;02 – 00;29;00;10

Curtis:

Well, hey, what’s. Let’s move into this. Yeah, the Q&A portion of this final episode here. So we didn’t have a ton of stuff come in to our first season. I didn’t expect a lot of questions yet Another giant audience here. You know, I’m not one of those guys, but I had a few questions to go over and these are not specific to any one episode.

 

00;29;00;10 – 00;29;20;17

Curtis:

There’s just kind of general questions about the process and we get a few different topics here that came in. So I’m going to read these and we’ll just discuss them. Right? Okay. First question, because of the high cost of land and construction, I’m thinking about designing a home to live in with my older parents and sharing that cost with them.

 

00;29;20;18 – 00;29;30;23

Curtis:

As you talk about the decision makers right, Do you have any advice? So what do you think about that multigenerational kind of cohabitation?

 

00;29;30;23 – 00;29;53;14

Toner:

It’s not uncommon here because we’re a really, really international city where the most international city in Texas and a lot of other cultures, that’s very, very common. So we’ve see it quite a lot. And in fact, there’s even production builders here in Houston that specialize in that style of structure. Um, I think the challenge comes from the fact that you have two generations in two different needs.

 

00;29;53;23 – 00;30;22;10

Toner:

Designing a structure for living in place. Aging in place is different than one for a regular family, including you can’t shove the parents on the second floor entrances. And then architecturally, how do you design wider doors on part of the house so that you have ease ease of wheelchair access and but make it mesh with another structure that doesn’t have that?

 

00;30;22;10 – 00;30;38;29

Toner:

And then what about the common spaces? I really think if the aging in place criteria and merging into a nine now, we do it all the time. I technically prefer having those structures to be separate, but that’s going to aggravate some cost, right?

 

00;30;39;02 – 00;31;02;16

Curtis:

Yeah. Well, there’s two ways to do that. You can have kind of an ADU accessory dwelling unit, separate structure on the property, or you can kind of have it all under one roof and just have some separation there. And a lot of that is driven by what’s allowed. There may be a deed restriction zoning in some areas where you can’t do that and maybe even having two families under one roof, although it’s technically up to families, it’s one family.

 

00;31;02;16 – 00;31;13;03

Curtis:

But there may be some some municipal issues to work through on that. Having a whole separate structure, I prefer, I think, privacy wise.

 

00;31;13;04 – 00;31;13;19

Toner:

Yes, the.

 

00;31;13;19 – 00;31;38;20

Curtis:

Parties tend to get along better in that scenario. In fact, we’re we’re doing some design on a project right now in Garden Oaks where somebody built a house a few years ago. Um, mom and Dad ended up moving, moving in, which they hadn’t planned on. And Mom and Dad are living on the second floor right now, but they realize that mom and dad are pretty old and they’re not going to be able to stay up there.

 

00;31;38;20 – 00;31;46;07

Curtis:

So now we’re talking about designing that Adu on the back of the property. Fortunately, it’s a big lot. Yeah, he allows it.

 

00;31;47;03 – 00;31;52;20

Toner:

Now. I’ve got one right now in TK Juster. 610.

 

00;31;53;24 – 00;31;54;03

Curtis:

Yeah. Okay.

 

00;31;54;03 – 00;32;16;17

Toner:

Forest? No, not Oak Forest. And so I was I always prided myself on knowing timber grow. Oh, yeah. Thank you. Got it. Those little neighborhoods make a difference. Yeah. And we’re converting a 1950s mod into the right hand side is for the in-laws and the left hand side. So we’re adding a bump up on the left hand side.

 

00;32;17;19 – 00;32;41;12

Toner:

But to make it look cohesive from the front, the insurance for the older side is from the rear. So they, they park and they walk around the side. So we don’t we it looks cohesive as they’re having two doors. It doesn’t look like a duplex and it is 100% separated other than one pocket door. So they live on their own.

 

00;32;41;24 – 00;33;03;26

Toner:

It’s going to be great. It’s going to be really cool. I’m looking forward to converting a 1950s mod into a multi generational space, including I have a record studio in that space which you would. Oh geek out on, right? Yeah, that’s with a R.D. Architecture who’s really, really cool. Oh yeah. And really conscious of people’s livable spaces.

 

00;33;03;28 – 00;33;27;13

Curtis:

Very cool. I think one of the challenges there is you’re trying to get different generations of people they’re going to have, well, there’s different needs, but there’s also different styles. And so now you’ve got, you know, kind of two groups of people who they have their own, they have different styles, but they’re also sharing in the cost. So everyone kind of feels like they should have some say in what that outcome is going to be.

 

00;33;27;13 – 00;33;34;15

Curtis:

So it’s kind of getting everybody to agree on how this is going to be built. There has to be some compromise going on There.

 

00;33;34;22 – 00;33;34;26

Toner:

Know.

 

00;33;34;29 – 00;33;36;27

Curtis:

Definitely there’s a lot of cooks in the kitchen and.

 

00;33;37;22 – 00;33;57;23

Toner:

I think that’s a that sounds like a fun project. I think if they can remember that their family members and not argue with each other, there’s a dynamic there. And especially if the parents were the lead. Now they’re not the lead in. That takes a little bit. It could be a little humbling for them, But I have done those projects where the parents space is one third of the property, but they’re paying for two thirds of the cost.

 

00;33;58;04 – 00;34;00;22

Toner:

So then it’s a really confusing scenario.

 

00;34;01;04 – 00;34;20;29

Curtis:

So one of the positives of that situation can also be and you know, this is a this is definitely a conversation for a a tax person or an attorney. But, you know, one of the one of the positives could potentially be kind of a transfer of of assets, you know, where the parents are. They’re kind of paying rent, they’re contributing.

 

00;34;20;29 – 00;34;30;06

Curtis:

But really that’s kind of transferring some of their assets to the kids. So not advocating for that IRS, but ask your ask your tax professional about that.

 

00;34;30;08 – 00;34;40;24

Toner:

I’m thinking through that those implications, especially if they had sold their primary residence and transferred that capital into this. And I think the numbers are there to make that beneficial. Yeah.

 

00;34;41;12 – 00;35;07;27

Curtis:

I mean, again, on the positive side, you know, real estate is expensive, construction is expensive. So you’re kind of splitting that cost of construction. You’re splitting the cost of the property. Long term care for older family members can be very expensive, too. So if you’re if you’re dealing with a long term care situation where they’re not having to be in a managed care environment, they’re not having to be in a hospital, they’re not needing medical attention, but they they can’t be alone.

 

00;35;07;27 – 00;35;23;15

Curtis:

Right. That scenario can be beneficial because now you’re not paying a lot of money for that. I mean, I’ve seen the prices on on even on even some of the the apartment community living type situations for for older folks. And that stuff’s expensive.

 

00;35;24;03 – 00;35;40;28

Toner:

Most definitely. And I think there’s also the benefits that and of getting beyond building houses and being in this built environment that the exposure of a younger generation to an older generation and on a regular basis is could be huge. It can also be horrible. You know, it kind of depends on grandma and grandpa might not be cool.

 

00;35;41;10 – 00;36;07;28

Curtis:

So that real quick and that was kind of my last comment on this is, you know, it’s a great way for for multi generations to to spend time together for grandchildren to get to know their grandparents. So that’s that’s another big positive. All right. So next question is let’s see here. Okay. We are building a 3000 square foot custom home.

 

00;36;08;17 – 00;36;34;08

Curtis:

My builder is adamant about using a cost plus contract after he got burned with all of the supply chain issues and price increases, our house estimate alone before his markup is around $800,000. What cost plus percentage or fixed fee is fair to pay the builder? Also, we’re looking for ways to protect ourselves in a cost plus contract to ensure the finances don’t run away.

 

00;36;34;08 – 00;37;05;16

Curtis:

I’ll start with that. Yeah, I mean, the cost plus percentage is going to vary a lot by market. It’s I mean, kind of what’s typical in your market. You know, what’s typical here in Houston is probably different than California. It’s probably different than New York and Florida. You know, around here, you know, I’ve seen everything from ten on the ridiculously low in which I wouldn’t trust a 10% up to 30%.

 

00;37;05;16 – 00;37;31;07

Curtis:

And I think a lot of builders are somewhere in the middle of that. I think a lot of people are in that kind of a in the 25% range is pretty typical, really. That number is driven off of what that builder needs to stay in business. That’s how we come up with ours. I know in some earlier episodes, I think when I was talking to Matt Snell and one of our first few, I mentioned that we pretty much just do fixed price contracts.

 

00;37;31;25 – 00;37;58;22

Curtis:

Since then it’s been a few months since then. We are actually transitioning to a cost plus model and it’s not so much for the kind of this protection from price increases reason that they mentioned here in this question. The reason for us is more for transparency. The client I think people want to understand where their costs are coming from and when we lay it out on the table, we can show them all of our costs, show them that we are making a fair profit for our work.

 

00;37;59;21 – 00;38;24;08

Curtis:

And so here’s what it costs. Here’s our profit, here’s what it costs us to execute the project, our cost of project executions, our project management, our insurance, all that kind of stuff. It helps people understand those costs aside from just the cost plus percentage, most builders are going to have also a an hourly project management rate. So that’s that’s how we’re doing it.

 

00;38;24;08 – 00;38;50;17

Curtis:

I our friend Stephen Deiter, a lot of guys are doing that now. They’re like Chris Boyo. All of those guys are doing that. So there’s multiple tiers of the pricing. You’ve got your cost plus percentage. Again, that could be 18, 20, 25%, whatever, and then you have another line item for project management, which is an hourly rate and that charged as an actual amount.

 

00;38;50;17 – 00;38;56;29

Curtis:

And so sometimes some builders will just do that as a fixed price or to say, okay, my project management cost is for.

 

00;38;56;29 – 00;38;57;10

Toner:

A month.

 

00;38;57;10 – 00;39;24;11

Curtis:

Here you go, $50,000 fixed fee or it’s $4,000 a month or so. People do hourly, which is what we do with We think this project is going to take us 500 hours worth of management time. But if you make a whole bunch of changes to this project, it could be 1000 hours, right? So it kind of also encouragement to not go crazy on requesting changes.

 

00;39;24;20 – 00;39;48;04

Curtis:

As far as what’s fair, I think that’s really hard to say. I think that if if your builder is doing cost plus and he’s showing you his costs and showing you, hey, this is what it costs me to do business, I think at that point it can be pretty obvious that this is a fair price to pay somebody for a year’s worth of work or two years worth of work or whatever that is.

 

00;39;48;04 – 00;40;09;16

Toner:

I mean, we see this on the back side in litigation and fees and owners will bring this up as part of the defense. Can you believe that this is what we got? And he made $120,000. We see fixed pricing fall apart. We see costs plus fall apart and it doesn’t fall apart because of the contract. It falls apart because of the actions.

 

00;40;09;24 – 00;40;40;24

Toner:

Right. So their protection is in that contract and I would say focus less on the fee and more on the details that are reviewed before you sign the contract. If you have a horrible set of plans and no specs, the contract is only as good as that. If you have a good set of plans and all of the specifications and then your contract says you are building to the plans and specifications, that’s a better set of protection.

 

00;40;41;02 – 00;41;03;22

Toner:

Yeah than the fee. And in and the fee percentage should be higher for smaller projects and lower for bigger. But the only time I see 10% is on $5 million plus projects. Yeah, because that’s still a ton of money. Yeah, right. And even then and that’s just they’re not charging for that does not cover any of their consulting.

 

00;41;03;28 – 00;41;22;05

Toner:

Right. So all of the meetings to discuss a fissure in the slab or changing the texture on that it’s all billable billable billable, billable and I prefer that the billable hours for a builder be graduated by the person they’re talking to.

 

00;41;22;05 – 00;41;22;17

Curtis:

Yes.

 

00;41;22;20 – 00;41;22;28

Toner:

Yes.

 

00;41;22;29 – 00;41;24;07

Curtis:

So that’s what we do. Yeah.

 

00;41;24;09 – 00;41;48;14

Toner:

Project managers, you know, whatever. But the owner. Because if an owner doesn’t value their time at a higher rate, then they’re not understanding that that that it is a loss, it’s an opportunity loss because they can’t sign up another when they’re out talking about sheetrock. And you do have clients that will only talk to the owner. I have that all the time.

 

00;41;48;14 – 00;42;07;01

Toner:

When we have a project manager going out to a forensic project and they call and they go, Well, we want toner. And I’m like, Well, you do as the name of that’s why and in the company. TONER Because you sell. TONER And no one believes it’s a first name anyways, So that that will happen. And then it is control, but it’s also set in that expectation.

 

00;42;07;15 – 00;42;39;02

Curtis:

So I think also understanding that the length of the project makes a difference too, because 10%, even on $5 million, $10 million could be low depending on how long that project is. So if that’s a 20,000 square foot property that takes three years to build, which they very well can, when they get up to that size, making $500,000 but spread out over three years, it’s not that much monthly that that builders making.

 

00;42;39;02 – 00;42;40;22

Curtis:

And so it’s all in context.

 

00;42;40;23 – 00;43;02;23

Toner:

It is in context. And on that $5 million house, they’re probably charging $15,000 a month for a project manager. Right. Just to be there on site. Right. So the starting date really, really add up pretty fast. And then and then that’s just to manage the house. That is not to have meetings with the owners, the architects, the interior designers, and that’s really where you’ll start to have some time fly away from you.

 

00;43;02;27 – 00;43;29;21

Curtis:

Yeah. So, so for example, you know, they’re talking about a $800,000 house before before markup. So it’s probably a let’s just call it $1,000,000 project. You know, what’s what’s fair. Again, that’s is dependent on allocation. Who the builder is, experience level workload, how busy is the market even I mean, just honestly, how much is going on in the marketplace can can affect that that percentage as well.

 

00;43;30;18 – 00;43;35;27

Curtis:

If everybody’s busy, guess what? You’re probably going to pay a higher markup than if everybody’s slow.

 

00;43;36;03 – 00;43;47;28

Toner:

That’s right. And if you’re building a custom home and that custom home price is equivalent to a production home, then go by the production home. Yeah. There’s no way a custom home can be built for production on pricing. No, absolutely impossible.

 

00;43;48;10 – 00;44;10;18

Curtis:

So and as far as ways to protect yourself in it, in a cost plus contract to make sure things don’t run away honestly that that kind of is the danger to a cost plus contract is you know things can run away if if lumber goes up 100%, if metal goes up 100%, if there’s a giant labor shortage. Yeah.

 

00;44;10;18 – 00;44;29;05

Curtis:

I mean, that’s that’s one of the dangers of it. So that’s one of the benefits to a fixed price contract. Although most fixed price contracts are also going to have an escalation clause, especially now. That’s right. If they didn’t have it before now, they’re definitely going to have an escalation clause. I think protecting yourself in in those scenarios is always difficult.

 

00;44;29;20 – 00;44;47;20

Curtis:

There’s always going to be some risk on both sides of the aisle. And that’s when just kind of trusting that you hire the right team, trusting that you built the right team comes into play. If you hired the right builder, he’s going to take the steps that he needs to to mitigate that risk as much as he can.

 

00;44;48;05 – 00;44;52;14

Curtis:

If you hire an unscrupulous builder, you’re going to have some problems with that.

 

00;44;52;28 – 00;45;18;19

Toner:

It’s the builder that attends the Most boring Builders Association meetings every year on commodity price risk. That’s I hate that class. Yeah, I don’t like hearing about the cost of wood. Right. And pulp and but that’s important and you need to be aware of that. Right. And I also went out client is looking at those price at that pricing and trying to determine if this is a good time.

 

00;45;19;13 – 00;45;23;14

Toner:

Waiting on a project has never made it cheaper.

 

00;45;23;22 – 00;45;24;01

Curtis:

No.

 

00;45;24;13 – 00;45;43;12

Toner:

This time is only going to make it more expensive. So especially in this market, we have many homeowners. I had one yesterday. We’re going to wait out the market. Okay, Then I’m going to guarantee you this will be more expensive. Right? The thing is, you have a year and a half that’s actually going to be a two year build.

 

00;45;44;00 – 00;45;50;04

Toner:

So all you can hope for is that the market will improve itself. And I know they’re basing this off of the value of their investments.

 

00;45;50;05 – 00;45;54;11

Curtis:

You’re going to hope that you’re in the interest rates go down, things like that.

 

00;45;54;11 – 00;46;15;22

Toner:

Correct. And you always can refinance. Right. It’s I mean, ultimately you will find a period where you can refinance out of a bad deal. I mean, everyone did that when they got into their arms in 2007 thinking they would refinance out if they didn’t. And in time they got hosed. Right. So and I just heard that arms are coming back like, oh, yeah, did we not learn this?

 

00;46;16;04 – 00;46;20;10

Toner:

I think there’s a Steve Carell movie out there we’re supposed to watch that prevents us from doing that.

 

00;46;21;15 – 00;46;32;07

Curtis:

Yeah, we talked about that with with Jamie Wolff on an episode recently about about arms coming back and yeah, I thought those were done after what was that, 28 or so. Yeah.

 

00;46;32;19 – 00;46;34;29

Toner:

You know, it’s Jamie the Wolf that’s his middle name.

 

00;46;35;02 – 00;46;35;17

Curtis:

Oh yeah.

 

00;46;35;17 – 00;46;36;18

Toner:

Yeah. It’s Claire Wolff.

 

00;46;37;07 – 00;46;38;22

Curtis:

Like a character from Pulp Fiction.

 

00;46;38;22 – 00;46;39;04

Toner:

That’s right.

 

00;46;40;21 – 00;47;11;22

Curtis:

It’s like the guy who comes in to clean up the mess. All right, next question. All right. We hired our builder first. Good job. He usually uses a building design company instead of an architect, and he says he’s never had issues. He says they provide the same service for half the price of the architects. We’ve checked out their work and references and we’re impressed that price does not include interior design, which we don’t need, or so you say, but it includes everything else we need for our permits.

 

00;47;12;10 – 00;47;23;22

Curtis:

What’s your opinion on this? Do I get what I pay for? Are architects really overpriced? And if the builder is comfortable with this, does it matter? What do you think?

 

00;47;23;28 – 00;47;29;07

Toner:

Well, I’m glad that they’re saving half the cost because then they have half more to spend.

 

00;47;29;07 – 00;47;31;03

Curtis:

Then they can hire a good building performance consultant.

 

00;47;31;03 – 00;47;53;15

Toner:

That’s right. The building performance consultant, interior designer, lighting designer, all of those things. I think there’s got to be a reason why it’s half the cost that I mean, let’s not be foolish. We’re adults, right? You’ve got to they may want it to be half the cost and they’re ignoring the obvious signs. But there’s a reason why it is architects and as a whole are just not more expensive.

 

00;47;53;15 – 00;48;18;20

Toner:

Because they’re architect. No, they don’t have now they do have more education to pay for. They might have a student bill there, but otherwise, sometimes, sometimes in house designers, I love house designers. Some of the most creative individuals I’ve worked with, our house designers or home designers. But I don’t I feel like most of the time they’re not getting all the information.

 

00;48;19;06 – 00;48;37;29

Toner:

And I would hope in that person scenario that they have also gone and met with an architect to not just take the word of the house designer and the builder that, hey, we’re half the cost. There is something to be said about design build firms. I don’t know if that has really been discussed a little bit. A little bit.

 

00;48;37;29 – 00;48;49;17

Toner:

And I think there is some potential cost savings there. But I would still reach out to a consultant and have them pay for an hour of time and a cup of coffee.

 

00;48;49;20 – 00;48;53;06

Curtis:

You should definitely call Shepherd and let us walk you through that process.

 

00;48;53;12 – 00;49;01;17

Toner:

It’s we get the phone calls in and when you started, your organization was like, Great, I don’t have to answer these these calls anywhere. I can just give them the Curtis.

 

00;49;02;03 – 00;49;32;00

Curtis:

I mean, my take is and I actually kind of had to do a whole walk out an apology short episode because I got I got a call from a mutual friend of ours who’s a house designer said, Hey, man, you’re picking on house designers. And I was like, Man, you are. You’re right. I may be. So I did this whole short apology thing where I was like, Hey, house designers are not inferior to architects, and they’re not like, No, there’s really bad architects out there.

 

00;49;32;06 – 00;50;07;18

Curtis:

There’s really bad house designers, there’s really good architects, is really good house designers. So the title does not affect the quality of work that you’re getting, it’s it’s the experience, it’s creativity, it’s the process. That’s what’s there design process. So kind of back to, you know why is it how price probably there’s some level of service that’s not being included right Maybe the architectural firm or another home design firm, maybe they’re including CAA, maybe maybe they’re including, you know, the interiors in there.

 

00;50;07;18 – 00;50;32;05

Curtis:

Maybe they’re including extra detail pages in their drawings that they might be doing all the interior elevations, whereas the discount person’s not including interior elevations. There’s so things that you don’t know that you don’t know. But then that number again, it’s not it’s not the title of architect versus house designer. It’s what level of service are you getting?

 

00;50;32;09 – 00;50;54;07

Toner:

And I would say the architect has more to lose if there’s a mistake. He has a license, right? Right. If he makes a mistake, he can lose his license. That license requires insurance and errors and omissions. So if that mistake is made and then there is money to be paid for, house designers do not carry that. So now they might electively carry that.

 

00;50;54;07 – 00;50;55;01

Toner:

And I hope they do.

 

00;50;55;01 – 00;50;57;28

Curtis:

Yeah, they are required to for their license. Right.

 

00;50;58;08 – 00;51;11;18

Toner:

Architects are right. Yeah, right. There’s no license. Right. And I think they all have their place in this world. There are some I have lots of house designers that outperform a ton of architects for sure.

 

00;51;11;18 – 00;51;16;12

Curtis:

I mean, our, our friend that, that made that call. He’s definitely one of them. Yes.

 

00;51;16;12 – 00;51;37;14

Toner:

And he’s brilliant. Referred a project to him this week. Yeah. So and I know I did that because this homeowners are very emotional about their journey through this and he is the most patient and conscious individual and I’ve known him forever and he can manage through a chaotic situation.

 

00;51;37;21 – 00;51;39;10

Curtis:

He has a pretty Zen personality. Right.

 

00;51;39;10 – 00;51;43;12

Toner:

The Michael Stipe of House Design.

 

00;51;43;12 – 00;51;46;21

Curtis:

That’s awesome. We’re going to we’re going to have him on here sometime soon.

 

00;51;46;21 – 00;51;49;00

Toner:

So give be a great voice so.

 

00;51;49;15 – 00;52;12;15

Curtis:

So everyone can meet Michael Stipe. That’s awesome. All right. Next question. I think this is yeah, this is the last one we’ve got. All right. And this is a great one for you. We are building a custom home in Mississippi on the coast, which is similar to our climate. Right. I told my builder I want to use an RV.

 

00;52;12;15 – 00;52;28;07

Curtis:

I’ve seen a lot of videos on YouTube talking about them and saying that with our spray foam house, it’s something we should include. The builder is telling me in this climate, we should not use it. He’s been pretty good and I want to trust him. But I feel like we’re getting mixed messaging on this. Can you give any advice?

 

00;52;28;20 – 00;52;50;15

Toner:

Sure. If we received this question a lot, especially I know when new products have been out there on social media that comes back to us, a lot of our builders, because homeowners bring it to them. I just had a conversation very similar to this with someone who’s trying to build an Internet influenced structure, is what we call it, internal on Galveston Island.

 

00;52;50;15 – 00;53;18;04

Toner:

So very similar to Mississippi, right now. Mississippi has a state license for contractors. They have more robust wind code. They have to build all of their houses to a national insurance level for windstorm and that and flood. So there’s a lot of other great things that come from that and a little more complex. I am happy that the Mississippi is applied that across the entire state.

 

00;53;18;04 – 00;53;44;02

Toner:

So it’s not an option. And we do projects in Mississippi. Gulf Coast is a really big part of what we do. We do a lot of failures in Mississippi, unfortunately. So the RV energy recovery ventilator is something that has a lot of marketing push behind it. The why is they can be built for a pretty low cost. It’s a big box with not a but it serves a purpose, but it has a lot of margin.

 

00;53;44;14 – 00;54;06;15

Toner:

Right. So we in our we like to look through the economics of the situation first. Why is it being marketed? What kind of margin and does it really apply here? It is a northern device typically because we’re trying to recover energy and a lot of that is going to be the heat energy. But it’s also known as an RV in many cases, heat recovery, ventilation.

 

00;54;06;24 – 00;54;30;14

Toner:

It took the heat out in the marketing turns because we don’t have heat here, heating and we’re a product like that is bad is is not necessary. I’m going to say that right now in the south at all. We have been designing hundreds and hundreds of the most high performance structures in the Gulf Coast for almost 15 years.

 

00;54;30;15 – 00;54;58;16

Toner:

I’ve never done any RV. I don’t need it for indoor air quality. It tends to turn to a crutch that, Oh, I’m going to have this ERP and it’s going to fix these other issues that may pose and it’s not cheap. 3 to $6000. I rather save that 3 to $6000 and turn it into the basics and make sure that the House itself can respond to the climate without, the need of a device that can literally be unplugged and then it fails.

 

00;54;59;21 – 00;55;33;08

Toner:

Where we like to use the Hoosiers movie scenario that we come in to a project, we go, okay, no one’s shooting any baskets today. You guys have to learn. The fundamentals are going to be the best physical shape of your life. Then we’ll start shooting baskets. We had to earn our way into control devices like that. And even when we designed houses for people living with HIV and really, really modified and difficult, I’m not using your RVs because someone has this RV or let’s say an advanced filtration system.

 

00;55;33;08 – 00;55;54;11

Toner:

They’re forgetting to even service their equipment. And when our houses are tighter and tighter and better thermal envelopes, the runtime of that equipment, those RVs, is going to be limited because we don’t have as much outside thermal influence. And the internal thermal influence can be thrown off because a big custom home like this might only have two people in it.

 

00;55;55;01 – 00;56;01;05

Toner:

And in this Mississippi house was a vacation home. That’s going to change everything.

 

00;56;01;10 – 00;56;06;06

Curtis:

Maybe I paid like half the cost or I mean, I mean, vacation home, maybe way less than half the time.

 

00;56;06;06 – 00;56;15;23

Toner:

And we’ve had a big challenge where people buy a structure and they start using as an Airbnb or I know where to say Furbo, right? It’s not the RPO. Yeah. Even though it’s all capitalized.

 

00;56;15;23 – 00;56;15;29

Curtis:

Yeah.

 

00;56;17;04 – 00;56;45;07

Toner:

So that occupancy rate, usability type type orientations, all those things are way more important than just saying buy any RV. But I guarantee you they’ve seen some really cool videos online. And you know, the challenge with Internet videos is different than most FCC regulated things. If that was a ShamWow commercial, it would say for entertainment purposes. But on Internet, on a lot of YouTube stuff, it doesn’t say that, right.

 

00;56;45;07 – 00;56;51;06

Toner:

You’re not required to say that. You’re also not going to say, by the way, before you listen, this video is paid to talk about this.

 

00;56;51;25 – 00;56;56;23

Curtis:

Or, hey, I live in this location and it may not be applicable where you live.

 

00;56;56;23 – 00;57;10;05

Toner:

Correct. I wish that all building videos said that. Please be aware this may not be applicable where you are building. Consult local professionals for consideration. Yeah, I wish that was there.

 

00;57;10;05 – 00;57;31;02

Curtis:

Yeah, we see lots of misapplied products in our market because you know what? Let’s be honest. Well, I mean, every every climate zone has its own needs, right? But where we are, it’s hot, it’s wet. There’s so many products that people use in the rest of the country that we just cannot or should not use here. They get use.

 

00;57;31;02 – 00;57;58;12

Toner:

Here. They do. We are on a project now that ten years ago or excuse me, 11 years ago, it was built here in outside of Houston. A when all these national awards, all these national energy awards and it’s absolutely melting down. It’s a it is a stick of butter of a house now. And we because all they were doing is chasing energy efficiency and in a hot, humid climate zone.

 

00;57;58;12 – 00;58;20;07

Toner:

And I would say everywhere else will be the hot, humid climate zone. It didn’t respond to resiliency. So what is the purpose of a $40 utility bill if your house falls apart in ten years? Right. Right. It was totally not the right approach. But ten years ago we were very few and it was very few and far between.

 

00;58;20;07 – 00;58;27;12

Toner:

People that were designing for resiliency now is the only thing we designed for is resiliency. So kind of crazy world.

 

00;58;27;28 – 00;58;52;24

Curtis:

In a lot of products have been getting used for four years here that again, are great in other climate zones. I mean, I mean a huge one that is stucco. We shouldn’t be doing traditional stucco here in Houston. Great product if you’re living in Phenix. Um, but not not so much in Houston. And, but we use it because it’s relatively cheap.

 

00;58;53;07 – 00;58;55;07

Curtis:

Looks good. It looks good when it’s new.

 

00;58;55;19 – 00;58;55;26

Toner:

Yeah.

 

00;58;57;08 – 00;59;22;23

Curtis:

But man, we’ve had so multiple projects that we’ve gotten involved in where an even kind of like award winning builders quote unquote guys like hey I’m a former builder of the year for the for the builders Association we’re we’re involved in in cases against them as they’re having major stucco failures and also sometimes it’s like a combination of the products.

 

00;59;22;23 – 00;59;29;03

Curtis:

It’s like, yeah, you can use that product but don’t use it in combination with this other product. We see that a lot.

 

00;59;29;03 – 00;59;46;18

Toner:

Exactly. Coming into your studio, come on down this road and there’s a built in commercial building on my right, which is the north side of the street. And then there’s a bunch of residential structures on the south side of street where the back is facing north. And in this part of town, stucco was very, very popular on new big box builds.

 

00;59;46;18 – 01;00;07;04

Toner:

Right. And we call those houses greenbacks because they’re right in the front and the green, the back, because the north side of the structure does not see very much sun. So the moisture stays in the assembly because it doesn’t get heated up to radiate outward and they turn green and you drive down this green back, green, back, remember, and that’s hard to fix because how are they going to face it?

 

01;00;07;04 – 01;00;22;12

Toner:

There are a power wash it, which is only going to make it worse. Right? So and they love light colored stucco. Most people don’t like black stucco houses. I wish everything was painted green. I wouldn’t have to really worry about that kind of stuff. So yeah.

 

01;00;23;07 – 01;00;37;05

Curtis:

Start advising people to think of stucco houses, algae, green color. Right. I’ve never paid attention to that. Driving down the street. Come in here. I’ll have to start looking over and checking those houses out and see what you’re talking about.

 

01;00;37;05 – 01;00;49;04

Toner:

The more and more we work together, you’re going to basically ruin every Airbnb or villa you ever go to. And no what? People will stop inviting you to house parties because they’re like, This guy sucks. I don’t want him anywhere near my house. I can’t help it.

 

01;00;49;04 – 01;01;03;09

Curtis:

It’s I already like pick apart a house in my head every time I walk into it. And I’ve told my wife before I have a hard time going to a friend’s house for dinner or whatever, or going to a party because I just kind of look around the whole time, analyze it, and.

 

01;01;03;09 – 01;01;13;21

Toner:

When people know what that you do. This, it’s like when a doctor you have are having lunch or at a soccer game and there’s a doctor, you go, Hey, doc, and you look at this bump on my arm. I get that all the time.

 

01;01;13;21 – 01;01;14;15

Curtis:

Oh, me too.

 

01;01;14;16 – 01;01;22;12

Toner:

Can I, you know, give you a nice, really blast, nice glass of scotch? Come over and take a look at them. Well, actually, that’s what I do for a living, so I don’t really want to.

 

01;01;22;14 – 01;01;32;04

Curtis:

Is that. Is that a $2,000 a bottle scotch? And how much of it are you giving me? Because it could equate to my hourly rate if you give me an up.

 

01;01;32;04 – 01;01;54;11

Toner:

That’s right. That’s right. And and the things that were that we are addressing here, we just want a job in Virginia. And it’s the same problem we fixed 15 years ago here. So this is not going away. And I think that this podcast to kind of look through the fourth of all of this is the things we’re talking about here.

 

01;01;54;11 – 01;02;00;14

Toner:

Other builders in other markets that are drier, that are becoming wet. They should be listening to this and understand this is coming at them.

 

01;02;00;15 – 01;02;02;19

Curtis:

Yeah, they’re dealing with the climate migration issues.

 

01;02;02;20 – 01;02;11;19

Toner:

Climate migration issues and homeowners need to be aware of that. And how much how much time and effort it takes to make a structure be able to respond to that. So yeah.

 

01;02;12;04 – 01;02;47;13

Curtis:

One thing that you mentioned a minute ago that I want to go back to about this this Mississippi house you mentioned, you know, if it’s a very oh Furbo app situation, one thing that I think people don’t think about with vacation rental homes is the maintenance on those. Again, things like RV is of so many things in the house require regular maintenance and the right kind of maintenance when it’s a vacation house and sometimes they invest a lot of money in these vacation houses that maybe they personally only visit a week or two out of the year and the rest of the year they’re renting it out and now they’re trusting a local company to

 

01;02;47;13 – 01;02;57;14

Curtis:

do the maintenance on the house for them because they’re never there. Does that local handyman maintenance company, cleaning company, do they know how to maintain that stuff?

 

01;02;57;14 – 01;03;32;21

Toner:

Probably not know unless you can get it, get ahead of them. So there’s Bolivar Peninsula, another coastal community here, one of the largest accumulation of vacation rentals in the United States. I think it’s 79% of all the houses on Bolivar are not occupied full time. And they’re all in rent and they’re rentals. Short term. And there’s one main maintenance group for almost like 60% of those, and they knew that they were coming into problems where they could.

 

01;03;32;21 – 01;03;52;23

Toner:

They were smelling mold and they were starting to get blamed for it. So they seek this out. They knew that we were resolving a lot of these issues and we gave them some key things to look for. And if that happens in order to protect their company, they have to turn around and then issue a letter to the owner saying, We believe you’re something beyond regular maintenance.

 

01;03;52;23 – 01;04;17;03

Toner:

Something needs to be addressed. Here you go. And here are some resources. And we’re one of those resources. The only reason why they care is because they were getting blamed. The economics, once again, is the only thing that turned this dial. And it’s a it’s amazing. It’s also amazing how many really, really nasty homes are being rented out because it doesn’t carry the same as a long term rental.

 

01;04;17;11 – 01;04;35;28

Toner:

There are renters rights. You have to provide a safe, clean environment for that. Don’t have to do that for starters. Right? So I have homes that I have plenty plenty of homes where I’m like, I feel bad for every time someone rents this house. Like this is not a safe environment. Yeah, I can’t do much about it.

 

01;04;36;13 – 01;04;39;02

Curtis:

They’ll breathe in some bad air, some mold for a couple of nights.

 

01;04;39;02 – 01;05;04;20

Toner:

Yeah, that’s the beach smell. That’s. That’s the thing. It’s not just the beach. I have this problem in the. The hills of Texas. I have it in the East. Texas Pines. I have in Dallas. Austin. I have this problem everywhere. And that’s really the str. Forensics is how we go back to your home state of North Carolina, doing a lot of those that are have those walk out basements and we’re more humid in those basements.

 

01;05;04;20 – 01;05;08;25

Toner:

A never you’ve seen bad walk out basement conversions right.

 

01;05;09;02 – 01;05;13;13

Curtis:

We I mean growing up we had a we had a very musty basement Did.

 

01;05;13;13 – 01;05;13;25

Toner:

You in.

 

01;05;13;25 – 01;05;18;23

Curtis:

Our house. Yeah No it wasn’t living space but, but still every time I went down there I was like.

 

01;05;19;10 – 01;05;41;16

Toner:

But with an str they’re going to convert that space because it’s about the number of beds. Oh yeah, right. And then I feel sad for anybody that gets stuck down there because they don’t go through the trouble of hiring professionals because it’s all about get it done fast, cheap and get the beds in there. And then we have a lot of folks who are getting sick and are not they’re not in great spaces.

 

01;05;41;16 – 01;05;41;23

Toner:

Yeah.

 

01;05;42;10 – 01;06;07;02

Curtis:

So it’s a maintenance wise one of the one of our guests earlier couple episodes ago was Eric Klein with Good Smith. And, you know, I strongly advocate, you know, whether it’s a vacation rental or if it’s somebody here in Houston or, you know, wherever they find a company like that who can put you on a regular maintenance schedule because let’s be honest, we’re all busy.

 

01;06;07;02 – 01;06;24;06

Curtis:

We don’t have the time to do all these things to our to our homes that we should be doing. I mean, I’m a builder. I have a podcast about that stuff and I don’t do this stuff. I don’t take my own advice. So, you know, I told Eric I was going to hire them. I haven’t done it yet.

 

01;06;24;22 – 01;06;33;28

Curtis:

I’ve got I’ve gotten busy, I’ve gotten lazy, but, you know, I’m going to put Eric on a maintenance plan for my house because I can’t keep up with it. That’s what I do for a living.

 

01;06;34;12 – 01;06;59;26

Toner:

In our building performance specifications, which we just updated for the first time since the pandemic. We have a home maintenance criteria where we’re trying to educate the owner from the upfront, and I actually refer Eric as a good example as an example because he doesn’t serve all areas. No, that’s the challenge. He you hit a load of clients and those clients it the logistically it’s a very difficult business.

 

01;06;59;28 – 01;07;23;10

Toner:

Yeah. And I imagine Eric is a he was a very chill guy. I don’t know if I’d be able to do that. I’d be stressed out all the time. I mean, he went from 0 to 1000000000 trucks. Yeah. And like, no time at all. And he was an award winning remodeler this. So he chose to leave 15 homeowners and go to 1500 homeowners.

 

01;07;23;10 – 01;07;39;16

Curtis:

He said it’s a great model and. I hope that he I hope that he grows and services all of Houston so that I can refer him everywhere. So hopefully he’ll end up with multiple offices around town and, yeah, all that kind of stuff. We’re we’re cheering for you here.

 

01;07;39;16 – 01;07;56;07

Toner:

Yes. And I hope it doesn’t become a national model because I think that’s just going to get watered down because it takes local knowledge and local experience to really fulfill that. Well, if anything, a franchise would probably be awesome. A little cool model for that.

 

01;07;56;10 – 01;08;05;11

Curtis:

Yeah, well, that was all the questions that we got here for this first season wrap up. So I appreciate you coming by and going through these with me.

 

01;08;05;11 – 01;08;05;29

Toner:

Not a problem.

 

01;08;05;29 – 01;08;13;19

Curtis:

We’re doing this early morning recording session before it. Owners got to book it down to Galveston for some work today. And appreciate you coming and joining.

 

01;08;13;19 – 01;08;29;20

Toner:

It’s not a problem. We appreciate you having us. I’ve really enjoyed listening to it. I think it’s super relevant and I’m looking forward to hearing the rest of the episodes, even though, I mean, I feel like a spoiled myself now. So you’ve got to tell me which episode that is later on. But yeah, congratulations. And the studio looks great.

 

01;08;30;00 – 01;08;50;00

Toner:

You’ve elevated and over the time, you know what? I’ll throw this out to the group and see if we can get some comments. We need a name for the studio. Right. So I had already thrown out a couple Now shepherds, I’m looking at sheep, I’m looking at those contacts. It’s, you know, I said the flock house and that doesn’t I don’t think that works.

 

01;08;50;06 – 01;08;51;11

Curtis:

Sheep pens sheep.

 

01;08;51;11 – 01;09;06;14

Toner:

And I thought it was a paddock. I’m big F1 fan but that’s all horse is Barnyard right. I even thought it called it a slaughterhouse. Like what happens, The poor sheep, you know, the the lamb house and I’m going to we’re not.

 

01;09;06;14 – 01;09;11;12

Curtis:

One to slaughter them here. We’re all about saving the sheep. So nurturing the sheep.

 

01;09;11;12 – 01;09;25;04

Toner:

We go through that and, and would love to, to see all the fans start sending you random sheep and lamb materials to the office. Okay. Like to see a stack of sheep and all this kind of stuff. So I’m going to throw that know.

 

01;09;25;05 – 01;09;27;12

Curtis:

Decorate the back wall with a bunch of sheep.

 

01;09;27;12 – 01;09;39;17

Toner:

Me That’s right. So I’ll give a challenge to listeners. Let’s let the listeners choose the name of the studio, right? You can say welcome to Welcome to the Sheep Pen, right? That kind of stuff, that thing. That’ll be a lot of fun.

 

01;09;39;27 – 01;09;59;13

Curtis:

Actually. It’s funny, you know. Matt Risinger is sponsored by Rock Wall Installation, and he has the Rock Wall studios. And so I’m like vegan as well as sheep, right? So rock, rock. Well, if you want to sponsor me, you already go along with my theme here. So then we send money. Let’s give you the Rock wall Studio.

 

01;10;00;02 – 01;10;02;12

Toner:

Wall Studios, Gulf Coast.

 

01;10;02;12 – 01;10;24;27

Curtis:

That’s right. So, yeah, thanks again. We will definitely, you know, as always, put your information on our show notes and our YouTube notes where I can find you. And I also want to thank you can’t see her, but my producer, Danniella, she’s sitting back here behind the table, behind the camera. One day I’ll swing a camera back around there and show you.

 

01;10;24;27 – 01;10;51;23

Curtis:

Danniella She’s been working super hard to get all of this done. This first season. I also couldn’t have done without my two my daughters, Caroline and Catherine. They were my original O.G. production crew. On Tony’s last recording. Caroline, Catherine sitting there. So they did kind of all my initial recording for the first, all the interviews for the first 15 episodes.

 

01;10;51;23 – 01;11;12;02

Curtis:

And then after school started back and they got busy. Danielle came on board and she has just done a fantastic job making something great out of all this big pile of stuff that we handed her. So she’s the person that she’s responsible for, editing that stuff, putting it out there. So she’s awesome. She’s she’s carrying her faith.

 

01;11;12;03 – 01;11;13;23

Toner:

She’s the shepherd Shepherd.

 

01;11;13;23 – 01;11;14;29

Curtis:

She’s embarrassed right now.

 

01;11;15;01 – 01;11;18;29

Toner:

Right. What is that? What is the tool the shepherd carries that pulls the sheep back?

 

01;11;19;00 – 01;11;19;16

Curtis:

The crook?

 

01;11;19;17 – 01;11;20;14

Toner:

She’s the crook.

 

01;11;20;14 – 01;11;20;22

Curtis:

She.

 

01;11;22;06 – 01;11;23;15

Toner:

Was the shepherd in the possession.

 

01;11;23;17 – 01;11;45;04

Curtis:

You’re the crook. So. All right. Well, thanks, everybody, for for joining us. We appreciate you being here on this first season. I hope that you’ll stick around for our next season. That will be releasing the next episode. So we do these first 16 and we’re going boom right into season two. So season two is going to be about what does it cost?

 

01;11;45;14 – 01;12;07;11

Curtis:

And we’re going to be getting into, you know, what does a what does a new house cost to build? What does a kitchen cost to remodel? What should you expect to pay for architecture fees? What should you expect to pay for solar panels and battery? So a lot of these different things that that you have questions about what should I or what am I what am I going to spend on this stuff?

 

01;12;08;00 – 01;12;28;15

Curtis:

That’s what we’re talking about on to Turner. I’ll be back. I think you’re coming back for our episode on the solar and battery. And you’re also you’re getting a tone or two for in season two. He’s also going to be on a discussion about historic structures, historic remodels, which he has a ton of experience with. Yes. So I’m excited.

 

01;12;28;15 – 01;12;47;24

Curtis:

Season two, we’ve already started recording it and we’re going to start releasing those here in the next couple weeks. So again, thanks everybody, for joining us on this first season. I’ve had a great time doing this first season. I hope that we keep doing this for you for a long time and I hope that you’ve learned something. Taking something away from this.

 

01;12;47;24 – 01;13;08;13

Curtis:

So if you have questions, if you have more of these questions like we read today, please send them to me. I want to do more Q&A episodes kind of at the end of each season that we’re doing. So some of those questions and we will talk about those each time. You can shoot those over to podcast at your project Shepherd dot com and I’ll go through those and read those the air as we can.

 

01;13;08;14 – 01;13;30;25

Curtis:

So once again, before I sign off, I just want to remind you that there’s four key components of a successful project are the foundation is proper, the left walls, your team, the right walls, communication and the roof protecting it all is proper execution. If you have all four of those components, your project will succeed. If you take one away, it might all come tumbling down, as the owner said earlier.

 

01;13;31;10 – 01;13;35;07

Curtis:

So thanks a lot and we’ll see you next time.