Latest / The Land Development Podcast with Ryan Glick / How Cities and Counties Make Homes Unaffordable with Jay Knight - TLP180

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How Cities and Counties Make Homes Unaffordable with Jay Knight - TLP180 · The Land Development Podcast with Ryan Glick

• 0:00
  SPEAKER_01: The people who build homes and develop, they're creators.
• 0:03
  SPEAKER_01: They're creative people, they're risk takers.
• 0:05
  SPEAKER_01: They're not just business people that are counting widgets and counting dollars.
• 0:08
  SPEAKER_01: These are people who want to create, they want to do things that are s that stand out and are nice.
• 0:13
  SPEAKER_01: In too many municipalities in America, the municipality, city or county tells us how wide the lot has to be, how big the house has to be, what kind of garage it has to be, which way it can face, what kind of grass we can plant in the yard, how wide the sidewalk can be, uh, what kind of building materials we can use, how many windows we have to use, the roof pitches, the materials, the colors, where the mailboxes have to be, the type of grass we can plant.
• 0:40
  SPEAKER_01: And then they complain that all the houses look alike.
• 0:44
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the government is designing 95% of the house.
• 1:06
  SPEAKER_00: I am your host, Ryan Glick.
• 1:08
  SPEAKER_00: We have a familiar face back today, and that is Jay Knight.
• 1:12
  SPEAKER_00: Uh, Jay was a past guest on the show back on episode 125.
• 1:17
  SPEAKER_00: And as a reminder, Jay is manager at Templar Development based out of Atlanta.
• 1:22
  SPEAKER_00: He's the host of the Build Baby Build Podcast, and chairman and co-founder of the Georgia Residential Land Development Council, and the new author of the book, Zoned Out, How Cities and Counties Make Homes Unaffordable.
• 1:36
  SPEAKER_00: Jay, thanks for joining me.
• 1:38
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Ron, it's an honor to join you again, and I really appreciate the opportunity to discuss uh the industry and uh zoned out specifically.
• 1:49
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, the first thing I want to get into is something that really stood out to me reading the book is that uh you talked about how you bought your first home at 24, you got married at 25, and then you had your first of four children at 26.
• 2:07
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that resonated with me because funny enough, I bought my first house at 25, I got married at 25, and then I had my first kid at 27.
• 2:17
  SPEAKER_00: So our stories are are pretty, I mean, pretty similar from that respect.
• 2:22
  SPEAKER_00: But I guess with that, and I know we're gonna get into more of the the details of things, but at a high level, what's changed?
• 2:30
  SPEAKER_00: Like, why is this not something that's happening today like it used to happen?
• 2:34
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the subtitle of zoned out is how cities and counties make homes unaffordable.
• 2:41
  SPEAKER_01: And I think what's happened over the last almost 40 years since I bought my first home is that regulations have just gotten overbearing.
• 2:56
  SPEAKER_01: We went, it was kind of hidden, Ryan, after 2008, when there was a just a glut of building lots that people could buy for pennies on the dollar.
• 3:08
  SPEAKER_01: And so the builders who were able to navigate that and stay in business were uh were able to build homes that were very, very affordable.
• 3:18
  SPEAKER_01: And because they were getting building lots for four and five thousand dollars a piece.
• 3:22
  SPEAKER_01: Well, now uh that that surplus of lots lasted gosh, it lasted about five years or more, maybe seven years in the southeast.
• 3:37
  SPEAKER_01: And when we started having to develop lots again to sell at market rates, uh all the those regulations were in place and it made delivering lots just unbelievably expensive.
• 3:53
  SPEAKER_01: And but even that Ryan was hidden by uh unusually low interest rates.
• 4:02
  SPEAKER_01: So as our development costs normalized, it was being hidden because mortgage rates were around three percent.
• 4:12
  SPEAKER_01: And that lasted, we had we had relative low costs, uh construction cost was was okay.
• 4:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um the development costs was rising quickly, but it was all being hidden by low mortgage rates.
• 4:28
  SPEAKER_01: And then in 2021, we had the explosion of cost and on the housing side, uh concrete specifically impacted development, but then mortgage rates doubled, and then everything was exposed.
• 4:46
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think you'll see when you've talked to your other guest that we all saw the market flatten out uh around 2021.
• 4:56
  SPEAKER_01: And where police officers and teachers and firemen and fire forklift operators were able to buy$400,000,$400,000 homes at uh 3%, when mortgage rates hit 6.5% and 7%, they instantly became renters.
• 5:17
  SPEAKER_01: And and then at the same time, the government was tightening up the supply of rental product.
• 5:24
  SPEAKER_01: And so we have we're we've been living in a real, really a perfect storm for the last six years of the intersection of high cost, high mortgage rates, and uh overbearing um mandates from the government.
• 5:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, it makes me wonder, too, if the if the interest rates being kept you know abnormally low, and then also inflation not being where it's at today, if those two things somewhat masked the issues that we have with some of the municipalities, because if those rates are really low, we people can maybe afford a little bit more expensive home, which some of these municipalities are causing to happen.
• 6:06
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think that's part of it, that that just wasn't seen as much because of uh the low rates?
• 6:11
  SPEAKER_00: 100%.
• 6:13
  SPEAKER_01: Because we have to address concrete when it doubles in price.
• 6:18
  SPEAKER_01: We have to we have to address any of these things, but those regulations just kept adding up and kept adding up.
• 6:27
  SPEAKER_01: But um but we were not jumping into a philosophical fight with the government.
• 6:35
  SPEAKER_01: People never stopped buying homes through the the first quarter of 2021.
• 6:41
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, we were selling houses like crazy, and we we couldn't develop fast enough, lot price didn't matter, house price almost didn't matter.
• 6:50
  SPEAKER_01: And and but just like overnight, the government was probably or the Fed was probably too slow to raise, raise rates when inflation started getting out of hand in the uh spring and summer of 2021.
• 7:05
  SPEAKER_01: So, and we had the um supply chain issues through COVID.
• 7:12
  SPEAKER_01: And so suppliers, there was a bidding war for supplies because there was a limited amount of supply.
• 7:18
  SPEAKER_01: Uh there increasingly became a bidding war for lots, and then the mortgage rates uh, of course, went up and and um and it's and we've all been fighting this battle and trying to get some relief on the government.
• 7:33
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Ron, a a builder, a production home builder, they shoot for let's say the numbers vary, and your listeners will have varied opinions on this, but let's say they shoot for a 22% gross margin.
• 7:46
  SPEAKER_01: Most of them are going to budget 10% for cost of sale.
• 7:49
  SPEAKER_01: So now you're down to 12%.
• 7:53
  SPEAKER_01: Our overhead, and that included salaries, uh, for even us, the owners of the company, used to run 11% uh year after year after year.
• 8:03
  SPEAKER_01: And and so by doing that math, you could say you only have really 1% net, net profit to reinvest in the business and buy land.
• 8:12
  SPEAKER_01: Now, uh I think in reality, most large-scale production builders are lean and they they walk away with about 4% uh net.
• 8:25
  SPEAKER_01: And the government, on the other hand, the latest figures will tell you that the government, to through direct fees and compliance uh with their standards, cost 26 to 28 percent of the cost of a home.
• 8:41
  SPEAKER_01: Now the builders and developers who are the risk takers are trying to escape with a 4% net profit while the government sits and and uh makes 26%.
• 8:54
  SPEAKER_01: And the homes, I can't tell you in good good faith that homes are better now that we're paying the government 26% than they were 15 years ago when maybe the the government burden was uh 12%.
• 9:11
  SPEAKER_00: Do you think this is all very much known by the cities and the people that are doing this?
• 9:16
  SPEAKER_00: I guess, you know, you talked in the book, and I think we even talked about it last time you were on the show, about the the average age of the first-time homebuyer is up to nearly 40 years old now.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: Yes.
• 9:27
  SPEAKER_00: And I just wonder what what's the misconception that people have with not realizing what the actual problems are leading to some of this.
• 9:36
  SPEAKER_00: What do you think those misconceptions are that people have?
• 9:39
  SPEAKER_00: I had a sales staff.
• 9:40
  SPEAKER_01: I was leading our sales staff occasionally, or meet I was leading meetings at our sales meetings and in a room full of gosh, 32 to 40 people.
• 9:52
  SPEAKER_01: And we were getting asked to give away fences and window treatments and all kinds of stuff.
• 9:57
  SPEAKER_01: And I remember standing there and I said, Hey, what do you think we make on a house?
• 10:03
  SPEAKER_01: We walk away after paying you guys commission, paying insurance taxes, not taxes, but uh insurance, overhead rent, salaries in the office.
• 10:13
  SPEAKER_01: And some thought we made as much as 40 percent.
• 10:15
  SPEAKER_01: And these were people in the industry.
• 10:18
  SPEAKER_01: And so I went through that same exercise you and I just discussed, where you're really you're trying to walk away with 4%.
• 10:23
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I I don't think there's I'm I want to think it's not intentional, Ryan.
• 10:30
  SPEAKER_01: I want to think that because you uh we it feels like municipalities are intentionally limiting growth by raising these standards.
• 10:42
  SPEAKER_01: A state representative, I've been doing a lot of legislative work trying to uh do some things at the state level to create guardrails for the municipalities to operate in.
• 10:50
  SPEAKER_01: And we've been successful through our first piece of legislation.
• 10:55
  SPEAKER_01: But um, while I want to think this is just an unintentional consequence of good people who just don't understand the implications of their decisions, I had a meeting with a state representative who told me he went to a ribbon cutting in one large county in Georgia for a huge industrial project.
• 11:15
  SPEAKER_01: And they were talking about the the hundreds and hundreds, maybe thousands of jobs that were going to be created there.
• 11:21
  SPEAKER_01: There's gonna be truck drivers and fortlift operators and people like that.
• 11:24
  SPEAKER_01: So the state rep, who was also a realtor, he asked the county commissioner, he said, Joe, where are all these$60,000 a year fortlift operators supposed to live?
• 11:34
  SPEAKER_01: And the county commissioner said, you know, I don't care as long as it's not here.
• 11:39
  SPEAKER_01: So then it doesn't look unintentional.
• 11:42
  SPEAKER_01: And yesterday's activist who opposed zoning, unfortunately, is today's county commissioner and city council person too many times.
• 11:54
  SPEAKER_01: And so land is a limited resource.
• 12:00
  SPEAKER_01: Um we we're forced to use a lot more of it farther away from job centers just to house people.
• 12:09
  SPEAKER_01: Builders and developers, we get accused of creating traffic or or crowding schools.
• 12:14
  SPEAKER_01: No schools really are crowded anymore.
• 12:16
  SPEAKER_01: We've had declining school enrollment for years now, and the birth rates are not even at replacement rates, so we're we're not in trouble there.
• 12:25
  SPEAKER_01: But we don't invent people.
• 12:27
  SPEAKER_01: Um all you people out there, y'all invent the people.
• 12:30
  SPEAKER_01: We just try to serve the people.
• 12:32
  SPEAKER_01: And we try to serve them in a way that is as convenient as possible for them.
• 12:37
  SPEAKER_01: That's why in real estate, they talk about the the three keys to real estate are location, location, location.
• 12:44
  SPEAKER_01: We want to be close to their job centers.
• 12:47
  SPEAKER_01: We want to limit their time on the road.
• 12:50
  SPEAKER_01: That's the point in us making uh site selections in most cases.
• 12:55
  SPEAKER_01: And and so there's this NIMBYism and then an anti-growth, uh, anti-change movement that um that's really overwhelming throughout America right now.
• 13:11
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, what I find interesting is, you know, as I've gotten deeper into this over the last, you know, five years or so, I it's just fascinating to me that so many people who oppose development, that, you know, they'll say things like, hey, you're you're taking all of our farmland, but then out of the other side of their mouth they say, but we don't want you to build in, you know, here, here, or here either.
• 13:34
  SPEAKER_00: And so you end up in a spot where the only place you can build are maybe in these other spots where you do use some of that farmland, um, at least where where I'm located and everything.
• 13:43
  SPEAKER_00: And so I just I don't I'm wondering if they're kind of taking a big picture look, or if there's a lot of assumptions that are being made by whether it's the council members or some of the the you know, the NIMBYism that's happening and some of the people that are, you know, the anti-development.
• 14:00
  SPEAKER_00: If they well, I I guess what I'm trying to say is I don't know if they're are they ever gonna take a step back and actually be open to looking at the reality of what's happening, or if they're just very set in their ways and that they're always just gonna be anti-any of that type of growth.
• 14:17
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I think the pendulum swings.
• 14:19
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and so right now it's pegged out at a complete anti-growth and making um development and home building as difficult as possible.
• 14:30
  SPEAKER_01: Um but it will break.
• 14:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's breaking right now.
• 14:34
  SPEAKER_01: You see the um movement in uh New York, uh Michigan uh towards socialist uh candidates.
• 14:43
  SPEAKER_01: So you have groups of uh commissions and councils who some are conservative, some are liberal, but most would not consider themselves socialist.
• 14:55
  SPEAKER_01: Well, they have broken the system so badly and created such despair among predominantly young people that they're demanding changes and they're causing changes.
• 15:10
  SPEAKER_01: Now, I think it's the wrong answer uh to the problem.
• 15:14
  SPEAKER_01: I'm a small government guy, and normally I would I would say local control is better.
• 15:20
  SPEAKER_01: But you know, the the federal government has some strings it can pull through HUD funding for local municipalities, and I think it needs to pull all of them.
• 15:30
  SPEAKER_01: Uh otherwise, you're gonna leave young people no choice but to clamor for some type of socialized control uh measures.
• 15:39
  SPEAKER_01: I think they're uh revisiting uh rent control and eviction limitations in New York currently.
• 15:47
  SPEAKER_01: Um and so that sounds good, but the but the real implication will be that we won't build any more real estate in New York.
• 15:58
  SPEAKER_01: And then the real estate that is there will go down in property value, and all people who do own property uh will lose all their equity.
• 16:05
  SPEAKER_01: And it may sound like a really good idea, uh, but in the long term it's not.
• 16:10
  SPEAKER_01: And it's a bed that we've allowed to happen uh by not jumping on this earlier.
• 16:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Ryan, we don't need the First Amendment with the uh protection of uh free speech and expression because we say things each other like.
• 16:28
  SPEAKER_01: If you call me handsome and wonderful, well, you don't need the First Amendment for that.
• 16:33
  SPEAKER_01: I want you to tell me I'm handsome and wonderful all the time.
• 16:37
  SPEAKER_01: Well, similarly, in the Fifth Amendment, we're granted private property rights.
• 16:42
  SPEAKER_01: And private property rights are not there.
• 16:44
  SPEAKER_01: They're unnecessary if on my 10-mile commute to work, all I do is pass things that I love to see and I appreciate that meet J.
• 16:54
  SPEAKER_01: Knight's standard of quality and acquaintance or beauty or whatever.
• 17:00
  SPEAKER_01: They're there because people have a right to do what they want to on their property.
• 17:05
  SPEAKER_01: Um private um private property rights are almost nonexistent now when it comes to development and home building.
• 17:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the people who build homes and and develop, they're creators.
• 17:20
  SPEAKER_01: They're creative people, they're risk takers, they're not just business people that are counting widgets and counting dollars.
• 17:26
  SPEAKER_01: These are people who want to create, they want to do things that stand out and are nice.
• 17:31
  SPEAKER_01: In too many municipalities in America, the municipality, city or county tells us how wide the lot has to be, how big the house has to be, what kind of garage it has to be, which way it can face, what kind of grass we can plant in the yard, how wide the sidewalk can be, uh, what kind of building materials we can use, how many windows we have to use, the roof pitches, the materials, the colors, uh, where the mailboxes have to be, the type of grass we can plant.
• 18:01
  SPEAKER_01: And then they complain that all the houses look alike.
• 18:05
  SPEAKER_01: Well, the government is designing 95% of the house.
• 18:10
  SPEAKER_01: There's really not a lot left for the builder, the creator to create.
• 18:17
  SPEAKER_01: If you had municipalities that would lighten up on that stuff, you would see such creativity.
• 18:22
  SPEAKER_01: Um it would it would really be a renaissance uh for the industry.
• 18:31
  SPEAKER_00: This episode of the Land Development Podcast is brought to you by Groove.
• 18:35
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• 19:32
  SPEAKER_00: All right, let's get back to the show.
• 19:35
  SPEAKER_00: Well, you do a good job in the book of laying out a specific example of how how you used to go about pricing out, you know, what you could build that would be affordable, you know, by starting with what's the price you're trying to hit, you know, based on your margins that you need to have in order to pay your people and everything like that.
• 19:53
  SPEAKER_00: And then you're able to you're able to then see what size of home you would need to build in order to hit those numbers and what would work.
• 20:01
  SPEAKER_00: But then you contrast that with what it's really like today, where you have all these extra costs that go into the build.
• 20:09
  SPEAKER_00: And so therefore, you can't actually build something that's affordable, you end up at a price that's much higher than what people can afford.
• 20:16
  SPEAKER_00: And so I just uh I wonder if people I get the feeling that a lot of people don't realize how much of an impact this has on the overall price of homes.
• 20:28
  SPEAKER_00: I I see a lot of the consumer sentiment out there that just talks about greedy developers and greedy builders and they're just pricing everything so high.
• 20:36
  SPEAKER_00: And I get the feeling that we in this industry understand all of this that's happening.
• 20:40
  SPEAKER_00: I think a lot of us do, maybe not everybody, but uh I think the consumers don't necessarily understand what's happening with all this regulation and everything.
• 20:49
  SPEAKER_00: Do you you agree with that or do you think uh differently?
• 20:52
  SPEAKER_01: Well, first off, I really want to thank you for saying I've only talked to a couple people who the book's just out.
• 20:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so, and only a couple people have read it that I've spoken to that completed it, because they've really just been going out in the last week or so.
• 21:05
  SPEAKER_01: So I'm so thankful that that message came through because I think it's one of the most significant messages in the book is is what we have to we're forced to do.
• 21:15
  SPEAKER_01: You know, that's the the message, Ryan.
• 21:19
  SPEAKER_01: Builders are accused of only building big and expensive houses on big and expensive lots.
• 21:25
  SPEAKER_01: And the reason that's the case is builders are only allowed to build big expensive houses on big expensive lots.
• 21:34
  SPEAKER_01: And in fact, it's illegal for us to deviate from those standards.
• 21:40
  SPEAKER_01: And and so the truth of the matter is builders make more money building big houses on big expensive houses, on big expensive lots.
• 21:50
  SPEAKER_01: But they don't they would forego that to be able to build and sell a lot of houses.
• 21:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so what's happened right.
• 22:00
  SPEAKER_01: Now is the teachers, police officers, nurses, firefighters, forklift operators, truck drivers, they've been left in the dust.
• 22:08
  SPEAKER_01: They nobody is worried about them.
• 22:10
  SPEAKER_01: I talked to um one municipality recently, it was a county in north south of Atlanta that asked me to come speak to them about affordable housing, and it was a uh it was a county commission.
• 22:23
  SPEAKER_01: They really, I was really impressed with how earnest they were in this effort.
• 22:28
  SPEAKER_01: It was a county commission and their staff.
• 22:30
  SPEAKER_01: It was probably 40 people there.
• 22:32
  SPEAKER_01: And so this was their engineers, their planning staff, everyone who directly is involved with permitting and zoning in this municipality.
• 22:40
  SPEAKER_01: Before I got there, Ryan, I found out that they had graduated 16,000 kids between the years 2005 and 2015.
• 22:49
  SPEAKER_01: So those people are all now 28 to 38 years old.
• 22:53
  SPEAKER_01: I found out also that they had 870 job openings in that municipality, a lot of which were openings within the municipality, the government offices itself.
• 23:04
  SPEAKER_01: So the average uh salary in Georgia is about$62,000 a year.
• 23:07
  SPEAKER_01: Pretty quickly we could figure out that person can afford a$225,000 house.
• 23:12
  SPEAKER_01: A$225,000 house in most markets, some are extraordinary in either direction, but in most markets, it's$1,100 square feet, uh three-bedroom, two-bath, on a$35-foot-wide detached lot, no garage, no mandatory HOA, no pool, those type things.
• 23:33
  SPEAKER_01: And so that person, that police officer, that teacher, that firefighter can buy that$225,000 in our home.
• 23:40
  SPEAKER_01: So I then went to MLS and looked up how many listings there were in that market in that county.
• 23:45
  SPEAKER_01: And what we learned, Ryan, was there were 13 listings in the county under$250,000.
• 23:51
  SPEAKER_01: Out of those 200, out of those 13 listings in a municipality that needs 17,000, they need 17,000.
• 24:00
  SPEAKER_01: They had 13 listings.
• 24:02
  SPEAKER_01: They um 11 of the 13 were mobile homes.
• 24:07
  SPEAKER_01: The average age was 42 years, the average square foot was 900 square feet.
• 24:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so, to their credit, they were fairly astonished by that.
• 24:18
  SPEAKER_01: One county commissioner asked me, she said, Well, we all our people have two incomes per household.
• 24:26
  SPEAKER_01: I said, Well, that's fair, but do you as the government want to mandate that it takes two incomes to live in your community?
• 24:35
  SPEAKER_01: When I grew up, it didn't take two incomes for very modest blue-collar workers to own homes, uh, have a spouse that was home with the kids, and I know I benefited from that, as did the other 32 kids in my neighborhood.
• 24:52
  SPEAKER_01: It was a just a wonderful place to grow up with a bunch of people who worked at Ford or Delta or Eastern Airlines, or my dad worked at Lockheed uh building airplanes, and these were modest blue-collar jobs.
• 25:06
  SPEAKER_01: Well, she agreed that she, you know, we don't want to be in the business of mandating that.
• 25:11
  SPEAKER_01: We all benefit when people are not house poor, that they get to live in the communities that they serve, and uh they have options.
• 25:19
  SPEAKER_01: That's what really that's what wealth is.
• 25:21
  SPEAKER_01: Wealth is not money, wealth is choices.
• 25:24
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, and you know, we get and I'm a baby boomer, I'm gonna tail into baby boomers.
• 25:29
  SPEAKER_01: I was born in 1963.
• 25:31
  SPEAKER_01: And I hear a lot of young people complaining that baby boomers, you know, we we we had it easy and we, you know, we we could do, we had more flexibility when it came to affordability, that type thing.
• 25:41
  SPEAKER_01: And they're and they're they're right uh to a large degree.
• 25:45
  SPEAKER_01: When the guys uh returned from World War II in the 50s, uh the average price of a home was three times the annual income of the average income of an American.
• 25:58
  SPEAKER_01: Well, right now, Ryan, is seven times the uh income of the average working American.
• 26:06
  SPEAKER_01: And so if we could build the homes I described, uh the ratio would be closer to three and a half to half times.
• 26:13
  SPEAKER_01: And we could return to a time when America was um encouraging families, encouraging household formation, encouraging um families to have children, letting them be optimistic and not uh and not be in despair and feeling hopeless.
• 26:32
  SPEAKER_00: Well, I'm glad you mentioned the dual income as well, because that was something else that that stood out to me.
• 26:36
  SPEAKER_00: And even going back to my own story, yeah, I bought a house at 25 with my wife, but it took dual incomes in order for us to do that.
• 26:45
  SPEAKER_00: So it wasn't we, if we wanted to buy the house, we didn't have the option for my wife to stay home.
• 26:51
  SPEAKER_00: You know, it took a number of years later for her to be able to stay home with the kids.
• 26:54
  SPEAKER_00: And, you know, it took one income to go up higher to a certain point to get to that spot.
• 26:59
  SPEAKER_00: And so um that's definitely that that definitely stood out to me, and I see that today being very much prevalent in uh people who want to buy homes.
• 27:08
  SPEAKER_00: It's really hard for someone who's even single to be able to go out and buy a home because they are a single income at that point.
• 27:16
  SPEAKER_00: Um, you you had mentioned the speaking with the city leaders.
• 27:19
  SPEAKER_00: I I think something that would be interesting to get your thoughts on is I I can guarantee we have people listening in right now who are those city leaders that are, you know, whether they're on city council, maybe they're mayor of a city or or whatever they may, what whatever role they may have within the city.
• 27:35
  SPEAKER_00: What would you say to them as far as what are things that they can do or steps that they can take to help improve this in their own city?
• 27:44
  SPEAKER_01: I would just encourage them to take a chance on freedom.
• 27:48
  SPEAKER_01: That they should not they should not mandate any lot size or home size or architectural standard that their employees cannot afford.
• 28:02
  SPEAKER_01: The people who work in their municipalities, they say they value those people.
• 28:06
  SPEAKER_01: They're police officers, they're uh they're prison guards, they're firemen, and I mention these people a lot, teachers, nurses, everyone.
• 28:16
  SPEAKER_01: And most of those city leaders are trying to recruit industry to their um their areas, and that comes with forklift operators and and uh truck drivers and that type thing.
• 28:28
  SPEAKER_01: And if they would take a chance on freedom, allowing the developers and builders to be creative and to answer and meet the buy, answer the need, meet the buying power of those people, then they would have such a unique, uh several unique communities within their community.
• 28:52
  SPEAKER_01: You would get to see it's just like artists.
• 28:55
  SPEAKER_01: You would see uh Picasso painted different than uh than Da Vinci, who uh painted differently than Rembrandt.
• 29:04
  SPEAKER_01: These people are creative, and you would see a varied creative uh product because these people, Ryan, they still had to meet building codes.
• 29:15
  SPEAKER_01: They still get inspected, so there's nothing gonna be substandard about the construction standards.
• 29:21
  SPEAKER_01: And they want to sell more homes than their competitor.
• 29:24
  SPEAKER_01: So if the even if the the if even if the municipality took their hands off of it, they would see just a great product because Sally down the street, who's a home builder, is trying to compete with Rick around the corner, and she wants to offer something Rick can't, and Rick's gonna offer more, and then they're gonna compete with one another, and the citizens of that community are going to win all day long.
• 29:50
  SPEAKER_01: Another thing, Ryan, that I think people uh forget, so there's this huge argument in America about the institutional owners of real estate.
• 29:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I've I've sold projects to uh a couple of institutions who have built, but honestly, those those calls stopped when mortgage rates got up, when interest rates got over 5%.
• 30:10
  SPEAKER_01: It's really nothing to be too concerned about anymore.
• 30:13
  SPEAKER_01: What people are seeing come into life right now are uh projects that were decided and approved three or four or five years ago.
• 30:20
  SPEAKER_01: Well, if I'm able to build everything to meet the market and I can go build that$225,000 home, well, there's places in Metro Atlanta uh where the rent is$3,400 a month.
• 30:35
  SPEAKER_01: I can tell you in pretty short order, a lot of those people will buy those homes.
• 30:40
  SPEAKER_01: I would say, uh, you know, I'm a I'm guessing, but I'm thinking at least half of those people would choose to own a home if they could own a home for, you know,$1,800 a month, something like that, rather than pay$3,400 a month in rent.
• 30:55
  SPEAKER_01: And so the build-to-rent, you know, it would either lower the rent for the people trying to rent homes out, or it may make it where that's not a viable business anymore because the people who rent homes in the build-to-rent space, they qualify those people like crazy.
• 31:11
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, they really do qualify those people.
• 31:14
  SPEAKER_01: And those people, uh, mostly of them, most of them could buy if there was product available for them to buy.
• 31:20
  SPEAKER_01: So, what is that gonna do to the rental uh rates on apartment complexes and uh rental homes?
• 31:27
  SPEAKER_01: It's gonna put downward pressure on them.
• 31:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so the apartment complexes will have a choice to reduce their rent, which will benefit everyone, uh, everyone who's renting.
• 31:40
  SPEAKER_01: And it will or and offer more services.
• 31:44
  SPEAKER_01: So, so they will have to compete for the renter.
• 31:47
  SPEAKER_01: Right now they don't have to because the government limits the amount of rental supply and it limits the amount of home uh homes on the market.
• 31:55
  SPEAKER_01: So if the median price home is$400,000, if you're renting uh if you're own rental property, you can charge just about whatever you want up until you meet a payment that's equivalent to that$400,000 mortgage.
• 32:09
  SPEAKER_01: And so allowing freedom, just allowing freedom would would benefit and for you city and county leaders, your renters would have more disposable cash.
• 32:21
  SPEAKER_01: Uh your police officers and teachers could live in your communities and uh attend church and uh and events in your with in your neighborhoods.
• 32:31
  SPEAKER_01: And it would just be extraordinary.
• 32:34
  SPEAKER_01: And it it just doesn't have to be this way.
• 32:36
  SPEAKER_01: It's just a matter of changing your mind.
• 32:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, I always I always liked how you approach that, even on our last uh episode we did together, how you talk about the people that work certain jobs within the community that you're focused on being able to provide housing for those individuals versus building you know homes for nameless, faceless people that you don't tie to actual, you know, the benefit that it's gonna provide to the you know, firefighters, the policemen, the um, like you said, the forklift drivers and and so on.
• 33:07
  SPEAKER_00: So I've always appreciated that.
• 33:09
  SPEAKER_00: Um one thing you you talk about take a chance on freedom.
• 33:12
  SPEAKER_00: And so one thing that I had a note written down here because I wanted to ask you about this from your book is uh I'm a big Ayn Rand fan for especially for individual rights.
• 33:22
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, you can probably see on my bookshelf back here, I've got Atlas Shrugged and Fountainhead back there.
• 33:27
  SPEAKER_00: So I'm a big fan.
• 33:28
  SPEAKER_00: I saw one of your quotes inside of the, one of her quotes inside the book.
• 33:32
  SPEAKER_00: Um, when you see that in order to produce, you need permission from men who produce nothing.
• 33:38
  SPEAKER_00: And I love this quote.
• 33:40
  SPEAKER_00: And I'm just curious from your standpoint, um, why did you choose that quote?
• 33:44
  SPEAKER_00: And how does it capture, like just from the book in general, how what you're trying to say throughout the book?
• 33:50
  SPEAKER_01: Well, again, private property rights, um, creativity.
• 33:56
  SPEAKER_01: You know, we've we've watched government design houses now for a couple decades, and the same government will complain about how homes look alike.
• 34:06
  SPEAKER_01: You know, the process has us going before good people, it's good people who serve, I think, for the most part on these planning boards and commissions.
• 34:18
  SPEAKER_01: It takes too much time, it's too much of a nuisance.
• 34:22
  SPEAKER_01: But in the vast majority of time, they don't know anything about this industry.
• 34:27
  SPEAKER_01: And they don't, um, but they do to have expertise in their industry.
• 34:31
  SPEAKER_01: They do have an area of expertise.
• 34:34
  SPEAKER_01: And so for us, we know the answer.
• 34:37
  SPEAKER_01: The people in the industry know the answer, and we have to ask permission from people who work in a varied um varied number of occupations.
• 34:47
  SPEAKER_01: So my son-in-law is a finance guy.
• 34:50
  SPEAKER_01: He's a great finance guy.
• 34:52
  SPEAKER_01: Let's say he was on one of those boards.
• 34:54
  SPEAKER_01: I have um I have a wife that's a nurse, she was on one of those boards, uh, a daughter who's a nephew nurse, a daughter who's a registered dietitian, I have um a close friend who's an executive for uh for Bridgetone.
• 35:13
  SPEAKER_01: I have, you know, numbers of people.
• 35:15
  SPEAKER_01: But let's say you took those people, a couple nurses, executive of Bridgestone, and um a finance guy, and they sit on that board.
• 35:23
  SPEAKER_01: For me to ask them for permission to to build homes, and for me to ask them to understand uh density calculations, why they're important, um it it's silly.
• 35:42
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know anything about finance.
• 35:44
  SPEAKER_01: I couldn't be a fin I couldn't do uh be do the analysis that my son-in-law does.
• 35:49
  SPEAKER_01: I certainly could not be an executive for Bridgestone and understand the mining tire industry that my friend does.
• 35:56
  SPEAKER_01: I can't triage people like my wife.
• 35:58
  SPEAKER_01: I can't uh do a pick line like my daughter who's a NICU nurse.
• 36:02
  SPEAKER_01: I cannot possibly calculate the um the implications of mixing a certain diet with a certain type of medication like my younger daughter can.
• 36:14
  SPEAKER_01: And to ask them the questions about housing and roof pitches and that type thing is silly.
• 36:22
  SPEAKER_01: But it's a but it's reality in America.
• 36:26
  SPEAKER_01: And and you see what the implications are.
• 36:30
  SPEAKER_01: Affordability is a it's a top of mind issue with almost everyone on all everything, but especially housing.
• 36:40
  SPEAKER_01: Despair among young people is is overwhelmingly apparent.
• 36:48
  SPEAKER_01: 40 years old to buy your first home, that's not an opinion, that's reality.
• 36:53
  SPEAKER_01: Birth rates that are no longer at replacement levels make this an existent existential threat.
• 36:59
  SPEAKER_01: I don't know if climate change is an existential threat, but I can tell you, Ryan, I'm not afraid I'm gonna burst into flames.
• 37:06
  SPEAKER_01: I can tell you that that birth rates that don't meet replacement levels are the definition of an existential threat.
• 37:16
  SPEAKER_00: Well, if we don't see changes, uh any type of meaningful reform at these, you know, the local level throughout the country and just different communities and everything, where are we going to end up in 10 to 20 years from now?
• 37:29
  SPEAKER_01: Well, development is not profitable now.
• 37:33
  SPEAKER_01: And so there's a bunch of us that are in the private space that develop land.
• 37:37
  SPEAKER_01: And because of the time involved, it stretches out your money for so long that it makes it where it really doesn't make sense to develop.
• 37:47
  SPEAKER_01: And so now that creates more scarcity in the in the market.
• 37:51
  SPEAKER_01: Now, in the book, I talk about some legislation that we authored and passed that uh we believe takes about 10 months out of the permitting process uh in Georgia.
• 38:03
  SPEAKER_01: And we're working on some stuff on final platform now that we think so.
• 38:07
  SPEAKER_01: What we're trying to do is compress these timelines so that development will be um will uh will be profitable so more people will do it.
• 38:18
  SPEAKER_01: And if more people do it, uh it creates downward pressure on pricing.
• 38:22
  SPEAKER_01: It's just supply and demand.
• 38:23
  SPEAKER_01: So we're told, and we'll just use Georgia as an example, that we need 38,000 building lots in North Georgia.
• 38:29
  SPEAKER_01: North Georgia includes Atlanta and in all the metropolitan areas.
• 38:34
  SPEAKER_01: And Atlanta's still, I think, the sixth fastest growing municipality in America.
• 38:39
  SPEAKER_01: A lot of that's through organic growth because it just grew so much since the early 80s.
• 38:46
  SPEAKER_01: Ryan, because of all these hurdles, we won't produce 10,000 lots in the next 12 months.
• 38:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so when you have that level of scarcity because of government, it's not because of market, it's because of government, then you create upward pressure on pricing.
• 39:02
  SPEAKER_01: So if you take the profitability out of it and you make it impossible for the private developer to do it because of that, because of that risk and the lack of uh profitability, then what you'll see is complete consolidation in the building to only the only the large publicly traded builders.
• 39:25
  SPEAKER_01: They're the only ones who could really ride out um these kind of processes.
• 39:31
  SPEAKER_01: They won't they won't try to profit off the building lot internally.
• 39:36
  SPEAKER_01: They'll fold all that into just their job cost, and housing will be built by a very small number of people who could essentially, it'll be like the airlines, they could charge whatever they want.
• 39:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um creativity style will be out the window.
• 39:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um and I think that's where it could head.
• 40:00
  SPEAKER_01: And unfortunately, we're down that road.
• 40:03
  SPEAKER_01: Twenty years ago, probably 20% of the homes in in North Georgia were built by publicly traded builders.
• 40:11
  SPEAKER_01: I think that number is moving towards 75%.
• 40:14
  SPEAKER_01: And you think about it if a if a young entrepreneur wanted to go into this industry and he convinces someone to, hey, loan me a million dollars.
• 40:26
  SPEAKER_01: With a million dollars, I can put 10 building lots on the ground.
• 40:29
  SPEAKER_01: And here's how it's gonna go.
• 40:31
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna spend a year zoning it.
• 40:34
  SPEAKER_01: I'm gonna spend a year permitting it, then I'm gonna spend a year putting the streets in.
• 40:42
  SPEAKER_01: Then we're gonna spend um a year building and selling and closing those homes.
• 40:50
  SPEAKER_01: So, bank, I want you to know that I'm gonna pay you back in four years and I'm gonna make a profit in four years.
• 40:58
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody can do that.
• 40:59
  SPEAKER_01: Nobody can can live, you know, on uh on those ten building lots, he might make$200,000, 20% gross margin.
• 41:07
  SPEAKER_01: Well, you spread that over the three or four years, all of a sudden he's taking that level of risk for 60 grand a year.
• 41:14
  SPEAKER_01: Um it just doesn't make there there are other better options that are much less risky.
• 41:20
  SPEAKER_01: And so um, and it's solely the government, Ryan.
• 41:25
  SPEAKER_01: It's not it's not the market, it's not the demand.
• 41:29
  SPEAKER_00: So what's the happy path here?
• 41:32
  SPEAKER_00: So that's kind of where we're headed.
• 41:34
  SPEAKER_00: What's the what's the path that could take us in the other direction?
• 41:38
  SPEAKER_01: Well, I do think the pendulum swings.
• 41:40
  SPEAKER_01: I'm hopeful that it won't swing fully towards socialism and and I'm just a government employee and I'm I'm building lots for, you know,$45,000 a year salary or something.
• 41:50
  SPEAKER_01: I don't think that's gonna happen.
• 41:51
  SPEAKER_01: I think that uh one, it will happen in isolated areas, isolated markets.
• 41:56
  SPEAKER_01: Um it is breaking right now.
• 42:00
  SPEAKER_01: And uh when it rebuilds, the pendulum I suspect will will swing too far the other way.
• 42:06
  SPEAKER_01: Uh right now, um there are so many options with uh private community septic.
• 42:14
  SPEAKER_01: Uh there are so many conversations being had.
• 42:18
  SPEAKER_01: I think most people understand that this act that just passed, the 21st Century Road to Housing Act, uh, doesn't really do anything.
• 42:26
  SPEAKER_01: It did some it they entertained some things about investors having to go through this divestiture after seven years of selling all their property.
• 42:36
  SPEAKER_01: Well, then at the last minute, they pulled that out.
• 42:39
  SPEAKER_01: Well, everybody in the industry thinks, great, we won, we got rid of that divestiture.
• 42:43
  SPEAKER_01: Well, that was never an issue until they started uh tinkering around with this 21st Century Road to Housing Act.
• 42:49
  SPEAKER_01: And it's almost like uh, what's that Munchhausen syndrome where you make your kids sick and then you rescue them and you're a hero?
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_00: Right.
• 42:56
  SPEAKER_01: Well, and that's essentially what the government did.
• 42:58
  SPEAKER_01: And so I looked into it and I was in D.C.
• 43:00
  SPEAKER_01: recently talking to people uh some Congresspeople and everything, and they're not expected to know everything about housing, and they're really proud of themselves for doing something about housing.
• 43:10
  SPEAKER_01: The problem with it is they didn't do anything, but now they think they did.
• 43:15
  SPEAKER_01: And too many of us in the industry are celebrating that.
• 43:18
  SPEAKER_01: So what we're gonna continue doing, and I encourage other people to do it, is we formed a group in Georgia about 15 months ago called the GRLDC, the Georgia Residential Land Development Council.
• 43:28
  SPEAKER_01: We wrote a piece of legislation to address uh land disturbance permitting.
• 43:33
  SPEAKER_01: We raised uh a lot of money.
• 43:34
  SPEAKER_01: We um we hired a lobbyist and we went to work uh out of the 40 days of the last legislative session, which was in January to April the 4th.
• 43:46
  SPEAKER_01: I was up there probably 32 days of those 40 days and just had lots of conversations with really good people.
• 43:53
  SPEAKER_01: My my opinion of politicians went way up.
• 43:56
  SPEAKER_01: They were either benign, which was most of them, or good.
• 43:59
  SPEAKER_01: I didn't see many politicians.
• 44:00
  SPEAKER_01: People who were just really bad on either side of the aisle.
• 44:03
  SPEAKER_01: They just don't they're not expected to know what we know.
• 44:05
  SPEAKER_01: And thankfully, uh they leaned on some of us in the industry to educate them and they saw the logic and they passed this reform.
• 44:13
  SPEAKER_01: And so the land disturbance permit in Georgia took 11, about 11 months on average.
• 44:18
  SPEAKER_01: And um we think we've gotten that down to 10 and a half to 11 weeks.
• 44:23
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we think that that's great.
• 44:25
  SPEAKER_01: Um that takes, you know, it compresses, makes development maybe more profitable a little bit because there's less carry cost.
• 44:32
  SPEAKER_01: Right now, we're working on another thing.
• 44:34
  SPEAKER_01: So final plat, Ryan, when we develop a subdivision, we begin paying interest on that thing as soon as we start drawing money.
• 44:41
  SPEAKER_01: Well, when we've completed developing a subdivision, now we're paying interest on millions and millions of dollars.
• 44:47
  SPEAKER_01: My business partner, Chris and I have a deal, and uh my partners include my father and my uncle too.
• 44:53
  SPEAKER_01: Um, we have a deal right now that uh carry costs is$70,000 a month.
• 44:58
  SPEAKER_01: So that land service permit, the final inspections take place and we're still paying that interest.
• 45:05
  SPEAKER_01: And it has to, because of their processes, it circulates for a variety of inspections and signatures and all this stuff, all of which could have taken place during construction.
• 45:16
  SPEAKER_01: So we think there's likely to be$700,000 worth of carry cost that we're gonna have to add to the price of the lot.
• 45:23
  SPEAKER_01: If we add that to the price of the lot, we've got to charge margin against that.
• 45:26
  SPEAKER_01: It's gonna cost the builder$9,000.
• 45:28
  SPEAKER_01: When he sells that lot, that house to the home buyer, he's got a charge margin.
• 45:35
  SPEAKER_01: It's gonna add$13,000 to$15,000 to the price of that home.
• 45:39
  SPEAKER_01: And that amount of money is about 3% of the average price home, 3.5%, 4% of the average price home in Georgia.
• 45:47
  SPEAKER_01: That's simply, they get nothing for that.
• 45:49
  SPEAKER_01: They just get to reimburse me for interest.
• 45:52
  SPEAKER_01: And so we believe we can compress that to two weeks after completion and uh of the the of the plat.
• 46:00
  SPEAKER_01: We think that'll save on average$10,000 a home on the price of a home to a Georgia home buyer.
• 46:07
  SPEAKER_01: And so I would just I would just suggest that all of your listeners across the nation um enter these grassroots efforts.
• 46:18
  SPEAKER_01: The 21st Century Road to Housing Act, when I was asking a congressperson about it, they said, you know, we don't mandate the cities and counties get friendlier owned zoning and permitting, but we highly suggest Well, affordable affordable housing has been highly suggested for about 10 years now.
• 46:35
  SPEAKER_01: And so we can continue to suggest it, but we need to roll up our sleeves, we have to go to work, and we can do things at the grassroots level.
• 46:45
  SPEAKER_01: We chose permitting because it was an obvious argument.
• 46:48
  SPEAKER_01: It was low-hanging fruit.
• 46:49
  SPEAKER_01: It was hard, but it was meaningful.
• 46:52
  SPEAKER_01: The final platform is obvious.
• 46:54
  SPEAKER_01: It's very difficult to defend that Georgia home buyers should pay$12,000 more per house just to reimburse me for interest cost and when it's completely avoidable.
• 47:04
  SPEAKER_01: The elephant in the room is zoning and land use.
• 47:08
  SPEAKER_01: And uh and we'll get there.
• 47:10
  SPEAKER_01: Um in Georgia, and I'd I would love to hear what goes on in the other rest of the nation because we're writing a follow-up, I'm writing a follow-up book now to zone Dow.
• 47:21
  SPEAKER_01: We have a thing in Georgia called the Department of Community Affairs.
• 47:24
  SPEAKER_01: Uh other ministries, other states have something similar.
• 47:27
  SPEAKER_01: In Georgia, we have 159 counties.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_01: What a nightmare.
• 47:30
  SPEAKER_01: I mean, 159 counties.
• 47:32
  SPEAKER_01: So each county has to maintain a thing called a quality of quality local government, qualified local government, I think is what it is.
• 47:41
  SPEAKER_01: And that QLG rating gives them the ability to float bonds, collect taxes, manage their water and sewer system.
• 47:49
  SPEAKER_01: Um they need that QLG rating for a wide variety of reasons.
• 47:54
  SPEAKER_01: Well, all they have to do to get it is create a future land use map every five years.
• 47:59
  SPEAKER_01: Well, they submit that to the Department of Community Affairs, who's fully funded by HUD at the federal level.
• 48:05
  SPEAKER_01: The Department of Community Affairs says, yeah, you turned in your future land use map, here's your your QLG rating, see you in five years.
• 48:14
  SPEAKER_01: Well, Ryan, if I apply for a zoning that complies with their future land use map, I still have to go through the zoning.
• 48:21
  SPEAKER_01: And it's still only a 50-50 chance I'll get it.
• 48:24
  SPEAKER_01: On top of that, while going through the process, even if I do get it, it'll come with so many um uh conditions that it'll raise the price and make uh building um uh an affordable home impossible.
• 48:40
  SPEAKER_01: And so I think the way to address that is through buy right zoning.
• 48:43
  SPEAKER_01: Other municipalities in America offer it in limited capacity.
• 48:48
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and we're investigating that right now.
• 48:51
  SPEAKER_01: And buy-right zoning would say zoning is no longer a political exercise.
• 48:56
  SPEAKER_01: We do these um some people call them comprehensive land use plans, some people call it future land use maps.
• 49:03
  SPEAKER_01: And these municipalities spend hundreds of thousands of dollars in a better part of a year with consultants to create these things.
• 49:10
  SPEAKER_01: They get community input, and once they post it, we should be able to go buy a piece of land that complies with the land use category that they um that that they assign to that parcel and then move straight to engineering.
• 49:26
  SPEAKER_01: If we were able to do that, it would save the contentious public hearings, it would save a year of time and the uncertainty on the zonings, it would save the expense of zoning, and it would get more product to market sooner, which would create more downward pressure on pricing.
• 49:42
  SPEAKER_01: So I think there's I think it's gonna be up to the people in the markets to make it happen in Georgia.
• 49:49
  SPEAKER_01: The Georgia Residential Land Development Council is having some success.
• 49:53
  SPEAKER_00: Well, that's great because you not only talk about the problems, but you talk about what you're doing in Georgia specifically to solve some of these problems, and I think that will give those listening in some ideas on things that they can do in their own markets to get involved and do some similar things as well.
• 50:10
  SPEAKER_00: Um Are there any other things that are topics?
• 50:13
  SPEAKER_00: I know there's a lot more in your book that you cover, but is there anything else you wanted to talk about right now before we we wrap up and tell people where they can go pick up a copy of your book?
• 50:22
  SPEAKER_01: You know, I think the most important thing, and it's circling back to something we talked about at the beginning of the broadcast, is for us in the industry to enter into the lexicon and make sure, ensure that the definition of an affordable home is one that a municipal employee can afford to purchase on their salary alone.
• 50:45
  SPEAKER_01: You know, Ryan, we we see all types of programs.
• 50:49
  SPEAKER_01: We're gonna do this down payment assistance and all this kind of stuff.
• 50:52
  SPEAKER_01: Or on one county in Georgia is gonna let us build 34 houses in this one place.
• 50:57
  SPEAKER_01: We're a market right now that's over 300,000 homes behind in Georgia.
• 51:01
  SPEAKER_01: We're 350,000 homes behind.
• 51:04
  SPEAKER_01: That's not scalable.
• 51:06
  SPEAKER_01: But if you'll take your hands off, the government would take their hands off and let us have the freedom to go build homes that their police officers, their firemen, their teachers, their forklift operators could afford to purchase, it would be monumental.
• 51:21
  SPEAKER_01: And so the the thing for us to agree on in the industry, in the nation, is that an affordable home is one in which a municipal the average municipal employee can afford to purchase using their salary alone.
• 51:35
  SPEAKER_01: And I think that's the most important thing.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_00: All right.
• 51:38
  SPEAKER_00: Well, Jay, what's the best way for people to pick up a copy of your book?
• 51:43
  SPEAKER_00: Well, everyone should pick up one or ten copies.
• 51:46
  SPEAKER_01: And um the reason I suggest ten copies, Ryan, is the industry professional will read this as, you know, speaking to the choir, basically, to a large degree, because a lot of them are experiencing these things and they know it.
• 52:02
  SPEAKER_01: I think what I do here is distill several of those things and try to show the implications to cost.
• 52:10
  SPEAKER_01: From things like you mentioned earlier, density, house size, uh roof pitches, side-inch garages, even the grass we plant, the pike we had to use.
• 52:20
  SPEAKER_01: But I did it at a 30,000 foot view.
• 52:23
  SPEAKER_01: It was intentionally not buried in a bunch of technical jargon just so that the person who doesn't do this every day could read it quickly and easily understand.
• 52:35
  SPEAKER_01: What was your experience?
• 52:36
  SPEAKER_01: What did you think when you read the book?
• 52:38
  SPEAKER_00: Yeah, well, I was gonna say that.
• 52:39
  SPEAKER_00: I was gonna say I picked it up and I was very happy that it wasn't flooded with technical jardin.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_00: I got through it.
• 52:44
  SPEAKER_00: I mean, I just I read it this, you know, past weekend.
• 52:47
  SPEAKER_00: I just took it in one day and and got through it.
• 52:49
  SPEAKER_00: And basically, uh, yeah, the the thoughts and the concepts and everything like that were very straightforward and and high level, but to the point where you kind of understood the impacts that it was having on developers and builders.
• 53:01
  SPEAKER_00: So yeah, I thought it was very, very easy to read.
• 53:03
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thank you.
• 53:04
  SPEAKER_01: And that was the point.
• 53:06
  SPEAKER_01: And uh, so it's available on Amazon.
• 53:08
  SPEAKER_01: Um, it's available now.
• 53:11
  SPEAKER_01: You can it's downloadable onto like your Kindle device, something like that.
• 53:16
  SPEAKER_01: Um, and uh, and right now the uh the uh paperbacks or what what's available, it's the conversation is a current conversation, so we wanted to get it out in the market as soon as possible.
• 53:29
  SPEAKER_01: And so I would encourage everyone to buy it right now.
• 53:32
  SPEAKER_01: It's a bestseller in the land use and law category and the urban planning category, and I think the mortgage category.
• 53:39
  SPEAKER_01: I've never done this before.
• 53:41
  SPEAKER_01: And um, but I think it's important.
• 53:44
  SPEAKER_01: I think we can demonstrate uh support.
• 53:47
  SPEAKER_01: Uh we're about to distribute a bunch to um lawmakers and um probably some other people who are who may be info influential in the argument.
• 53:59
  SPEAKER_01: Because I just don't think anybody is making this case.
• 54:03
  SPEAKER_01: And uh and I'm still hopeful that the municipalities are inadvertently have unintentionally caused this problem.
• 54:12
  SPEAKER_01: And if they've unintentionally caused this problem and they act in good faith, I think zoned out will make a big difference to them.
• 54:19
  SPEAKER_00: Well, thanks for writing the book.
• 54:20
  SPEAKER_00: I do think it will be helpful, and I'll put the links to pick up a copy of the book in the show notes page.
• 54:25
  SPEAKER_00: So those of you listening in right now, if you look in the description, you'll see a link there to the show notes page, and on the show notes page will be a link to pick up your own copy of Zoned Out.
• 54:34
  SPEAKER_00: Uh Jay, really appreciate you taking the time to hop on here and talk through many of the concepts that you cover in the book and just your your experience in the industry uh as a whole.
• 54:43
  SPEAKER_00: This was uh really interesting and I definitely learned a lot.
• 54:46
  SPEAKER_01: Always an honor, run, and I really appreciate it.
• 54:48
  SPEAKER_01: Thank you.
• 54:49
  SPEAKER_01: Absolutely.
• 54:50
  SPEAKER_00: All right, guys, that's all for this episode.
• 54:52
  SPEAKER_00: If you're not already subscribed, please click that button.
• 54:54
  SPEAKER_00: We'd love to have you back for the next one.
• 54:56
  SPEAKER_00: Otherwise, we will talk to you all next week.