How to Restore Old Buildings in Rural Towns with Roger Duncan – It's Not a Tiny House Podcast

Wyatt: [00:00:23] What we need are safe, secure places that someone can actually afford to live inside of.

Barna: [00:00:29] And this is a recurring theme of we're not going to let you do it.

Wyatt: [00:00:33] And you want a different lifestyle. It's Not a Tiny House podcast.

Roger: [00:00:38] My, my new kind of model going for is was called I call it concept, concept development. And so I'm developing like the ice cream bar turnkey business.

Wyatt: [00:00:52] And you want to sell it.

Roger: [00:00:52] Handing it to Cinda. Not charging traditional rents. So I'm charging a percentage of sales out of that. Same with the bowling alley, the bowling I is going to get completely redone and then I'm going to find an operator.

Wyatt: [00:01:04] So you do well? I de well.

Roger: [00:01:06] That's right. And then I'm looking for hustlers, right. So I actually talking to, you know, a guy last night who's a hustler showed some interest in the bowling alley. And it's like, yeah, I want somebody in there that that hustles like we hustle. Because you know what, the difference between three hundred thousand and sales out of the bowling alley and four hundred thousand sales out of the bowling alley is twenty thousand extra dollars a year to me on a revenue share. But the nice thing is I'm spending a three hundred thousand to get the bowling where it needs to go. They walk in with zero,

Wyatt: [00:01:37] They don't have money out.

Roger: [00:01:38] They don't have money out and they've got a turnkey business.

Wyatt: [00:01:42] That's what we noticed right. Where where people don't have two nickels to rub together. Right. If you find the right hungry person, they'll figure out how to help you rub your nickels together.

Roger: [00:01:55] Also can bite you in the ass.

Wyatt: [00:01:56] And it can. But but you're creating a greater environment for somebody that's going to have the right mentality. Like we told everybody, you go to school, you get the degree, you'll get rewarded for the rest of your life. And it's bullshit.

Roger: [00:02:10] That's bullshit. Now, yeah.

Wyatt: [00:02:12] You work your ass off every day. You might. You might.

Barna: [00:02:17] But we were talking about this this concept that you just mentioned in like the Shark Tank style where you go in or the pitch competition that you did is that you go in and you're doing your pitch and you have investors. Let's do it the other way. You have an investor that has a concept that has a business model plan and the financing to get it going and a track record. And all we need is an audience of hustlers going, I want that one. I want that one. Like I will work my ass off.

Wyatt: [00:02:44] I love ice cream.

Roger: [00:02:45] Yes.

Wyatt: [00:02:46] Because I have zero dollars in it. All I need to bring is my passion and my willingness to work. And that's it.

Wyatt: [00:02:51] Brianna just walked out of here. I've never met anybody who smashes ice cream like that woman. She loves it. She probably be the greatest person for an ice cream parlor manager because she already manages my mom's business. Right. Loves ice cream. But but yeah. How do we cultivate this? I get it. The landscape has changed. Fuckin you used to go get an MBA and they were clamoring for you. And now if you have an MBA, you're starving because it's overeducated. Everybody's fucking got one.

Roger: [00:03:18] No, I mean, I sent my daughter to college. She was a University of Rochester. It was a quarter million dollars is what it cost. She is in her chosen field and she's, you know, doing all right. But she's still making maybe she works for Anthem Works out of our house in Virginia and she makes fifty grand a year.

Wyatt: [00:03:36] It's not going to cover it.

Roger: [00:03:37] Yeah. And it's just. And she's single, so fifty grand a year. She owns her little house and real estate. Lot cheaper out there. You know, she bought a house for a hundred thousand dollars or whatever. But the bottom line is still for two hundred fifty grand. In my mind you should be making one hundred fifty thousand a year or more..

Wyatt: [00:03:52] So your return on investment isn't it's not a correlation like it used to be anymore. I like my. Yeah, my dad was.

Barna: [00:03:58] You have no guarantees either, right. You just get a job next week. You're fired if you if you took your vacation days.

Wyatt: [00:04:04] So and I. Right. And I had heard that from some guys that I went to college with that got their construction management degrees. And I was was confused by that because I'm like, none of you guys have ever been on a fucking construction site like I have. Right. Like, so so you're you're managing. But now they're what they're managing is the numbers and the scheduling and those kind of things. They're not actually usually out like managing how the work is performed. Right. That's like a quality assurance manager. Whatever you want to call that guy, this guy is like, you know, a thousand yard stare. It's you're a cog in the business machine for a large corporation.

Roger: [00:04:38] Don't get me wrong. There are certain there are certain agrees that obviously require college and that you are rewarded for. But but it's not what the general public is going to take. I mean, you know, general public is not going to be an astrophysicist or they're not going to be an engineer or they're not going to be a chemist or a physicist,

Wyatt: [00:04:56] A physician, a fucking doctor.

Roger: [00:04:58] So those I think those disciplines still hold weight where you've got to get a degree, you got to go to college and it's probably worth the amount you're paying for it. But but, yeah, the general degrees where you went and got, you know, just got a degree and in communications or you got a degree in English or you got a degree in the arts or you get a degree, I mean.

Wyatt: [00:05:19] They're kind of gone.

Roger: [00:05:20] They're gone either way, gone. And unless you can reinvent yourself and create and the only you know, the only way I think you can make those businesses is to start your own business in something that you're passionate about. And in those ways. And then again, once again, then you have to weigh the fact. Can I you know, is this having this piece of paper used to the piece of paper, it was only because you wanted to have an employer do it. But it's going to work for yourself. I don't know that

Barna: [00:05:43] You don't need one.

Wyatt: [00:05:44] You don't. How many times do people go, gee, why? I mean, you got your degree and yada, yada, Barna you for what you do. Nobody fucking asks us these questions.

Roger: [00:05:52] And you could learn stuff on your own.

Barna: [00:05:54] Even in my own business, in the same field that I have my degree in. Nobody cared at that point either.

Wyatt: [00:05:58] Nobody cared. Can you do it or can you not do it.

Barna: [00:06:01] Show me your portfolio not show me the piece of paper that where you never actually learned anything.

Wyatt: [00:06:06] Well, and here's the other thing about a portfolio, right? Like if you want to get into design. Well, I want to get into design. You mean to tell me that you can't find free software like SketchUp and draw me fifty sketches for free? I would be more interested in that candidate because you didn't wait to get paid for it. You actually put your time and energy into learning something of some value.

Roger: [00:06:26] First unit we did over 122 East Main upstairs. How do you restore eighteen hundreds year old floors. Yeah. I don't know. OK, YouTube, six hours, I watched three or four different guys, they all had kind of different techniques. I said, I like how this guy does it. I don't like this guy, kind of like this guy. And I kind of melded two of them together and I finished my floors. And it's like, OK, I did not I've never done that before. That came out fine. And it's like you can learn anything out there now.

Wyatt: [00:06:54] You have to be willing.

Roger: [00:06:55] Yes.

Wyatt: [00:06:56] To take that risk. And a lot of people are scared of doing it wrong. And I'm like, there's an old saying that that you're supposed to live by, especially in remodel and in construction trades, like there's more than one way to skin a cat. Who the fuck is out there skinning cats? I have no idea. That's not really the point of where that comes from. Right. Like, there are so many different ways to solve a problem. And because, you know, Barna does it differently than me and it doesn't make him wrong because he's got a different perspective.

Roger: [00:07:20] Absolutely.

Barna: [00:07:21] But also my definition of is an expert is something that's made all the mistakes already. You're not paying me for my time. No. You're paying me for the 20 years of me learning what not to do. Yeah. You could hire somebody else for less, well, they're going to go, well, I'm going to try this. Try this. And with programming, I had that where I hired a kid. He's like, I can do it. He comes back like, well, I want you to pay me first before I give you the code I did. OK, give me the bill. I mean, I'm going to pay you. Gives me the bill. Thirty hours. Thirty hours of work. And I look at it like it's it's one JavaScript to do error checking man. Like I sat down while watching TV, cranked out the same code in an hour and a half and I emailed him like I get it that you want to learn. I want to pay you just for your like six hours of your time because you're learning. I don't need your code. I did it an hour and a half. Yeah, that's experience. Yeah, right. Same thing for construction and everything else.

Wyatt: [00:08:19] That's why the good general in my opinion, from what, where I learned it, he'd already fucking done it all and he was like, I don't do this anymore. You guys are kids and he would show up you go, you are going to do hardwood flooring for example, right here. Here's how you set it up. So you snap your lines, whatever he gets paid for that time, because how much time did he just save us from trying to figure out what the hell we were going to do incorrectly?

Roger: [00:08:41] That's right.

Wyatt: [00:08:41] And and as soon as people can understand how that works, like maybe they'll reward you for it.

Roger: [00:08:48] Yeah, I mean, I got a great story about it. So in my other business in the Springs, in telecom, I had a client that had a bad cable somewhere in their building that was causing problems. And they asked if I had a wiring guy and I said, yeah, I got a great guy and, you know, referring to him. So he calls her up and he's like, Yeah, I'll come out. We charge 125 an hour and we'll we'll fix your, you know, so she calls me back and she's just. Chewing my ear, 125 dollars an hour. Oh, my God, this is, you know, 10 years ago or so. And that's outrageous. That's outrageous. I've got a guy. He works at HP. He'll come over at four hours at night and do it. He spent six days tracing down this problem, Senator, a bill for 480 bucks. Yeah. And she calls me back because I just got a bill for 480 dollars to fix that cable. And I said, you should use my guy, but your guy's 125 dollars an hour. I said, you do what the differences hit when I said he would have come out and done it 30 minutes, 30 minute minimum, I said most likely he would have figured it out in 30 minutes. I said, I promise you, I've used this guy 100 times. He would have figured it out in an hour. I said, so the job would have cost you one hundred and twenty five dollars instead of four hundred eighty dollars. And she just couldn't get her head around. She's like, but here's one hundred twenty five dollars an hour. And I'm like, do you want to pay 480? Do you want to pay 125, you know?

Wyatt: [00:10:05] I'm surprised you even answered the phone call because I would have been like, no, right. Because you don't get any more of my time.

Roger: [00:10:11] Right. Right.

Barna: [00:10:13] I'm three hundred. I don't know. Don't call me.

Wyatt: [00:10:16] I actually have a measure on this and somebody asked me about it. I'm like, no, I have a good guy price and I have the asshole price. Right. But you have to work now for the good guy price. I can't give you any more of my time because I'm not even being calculated. And a lot of the times, like a general contractor, they get snubbed because. Oh, well, thanks for the phone number, whatever. And it's like, hold on. No, no, no, no, no. The only reason that guy showed up and knew what the fuck he was supposed to be doing was because of me. This is a sales commission and also a commission on experience at this point, you're going to have to pay for that. And a lot of times I don't think that people grasp that because he didn't answer your phone call. He answered mine. And there's a difference.

Roger: [00:10:58] I mean, you get a guy in there that knows what he's doing. One of my guys, Rich, who helps me. I mean, he does more work in a day than two my other guys. And it's just like and he doesn't stop. He comes in and he'll he'll be mudding this and then he knows that's got to dry. So they switch to frame an outdoor over here and then you'll go back and put the second coat on. And he's not sitting there waiting for the second coat to dry while. Right. Well, you know, he's he's doing or he starts putting the base down for the floor. I mean, he's he's just constantly moving and doing something that has to be done, moving the full project forward. And that's that's why I use them. And it's like, oh, my God, you know, and I pay him great money for it. But the bottom line is, you know, he's worth it. It's totally worth it.

Wyatt: [00:11:38] And he's saving time and he's saving money for long, long run.

Roger: [00:11:41] And he's someone I can't beat. You know, you're talking about General, right? I mean, we just sit down and we brainstorm ideas like, you know, working on the bowling alley roof right now and just trying to figure out, you know, how do we because the roof comes down, two thirds of the building goes this way. And when another third goes this way, it meets in the middle and it's like and the other day.

Wyatt: [00:11:56] This is a bowl, not a roof.

Roger: [00:11:57] Yeah, exactly. It's such a nightmare. And of course, all the leaks are happening right where the valley is. And so he's like, you know, this building is tall enough on the back. Let's just let's just tear the back third out and just keep going down and we'll just drop the brick down, you know, three feet. The building's plenty taut. The ceilings are still going to be above ten feet. We're not having problems. And then we got one roof that goes all the way down. And, you know, we've been talking about the roof for a year. And finally, I was like just the other day that popped up and it was like, that's it. That's what we're doing.

Wyatt: [00:12:25] You know, you got two options, right? Either we go up or we go we got to go down somewhere where we're going to be rob some square footage or some height.

Roger: [00:12:31] But just he's constantly thinking and that's you get someone out there, the contractor that's good. That's seen a lot of it, done so many different things that and they just think outside the box and it's like, yeah. And outside the box is where it's at.

Wyatt: [00:12:42] Well, and we were talking as people who listen would know, like we we usually kind of have like a conversation beforehand. And what you just grabbed was a segue way for us to talk about rules of thumb. Right. And then versus now.

Barna: [00:12:53] That's because we do everything backwards. We've been here thirty minutes. That's Wyatt Reed over there, Barna Kasa, this is Roger Duncan, our guest today, and we need to know what your what your job title is today in Florence and in this podcast, investor, developer, builder?

Roger: [00:13:13] All the above?

Barna: [00:13:14] Guy?

Roger: [00:13:14] Guy. Probably guy. Yeah, I don't know that I have a job title. A quick little background, I guess. Is is. Yeah, I moved to Florence in twenty seventeen, bought two buildings with the intention of building a loft to live upstairs from my wife and I and having her store downstairs. And that was the extent of what we were going to do.

Barna: [00:13:33] The plan.

Roger: [00:13:34] The plan. But it came with another building when I bought that building. And so I obviously had to fix that. And once I fix that one, it was like I just started looking around Florence and I'm just kind of like, you know, every building is occupied downstairs in Florence and almost every building upstairs in Florence is vacant and has been vacant for like 30 or 40 years. And I was just like, we got a housing crisis. We got vacant space, you know, put the two together. It makes sense to me. Why don't you just. Oh, yeah, right.

Barna: [00:14:02] So you're one of those crazy people that put two and two together.

Wyatt: [00:14:07] Sounds like you used logic to come to this conclusion.

Roger: [00:14:11] Now, once you start my eighteen hundred buildings, you're not sure logic applies anymore. There's a lot more to it. They're a little more expensive to finish. But you know, but you start with, you know, to me it was like, all right, I don't have to go out and put a sewer line in and have to go and put electric line in and put a water tap in and I've got four its worst case on these buildings. I've got four walls to start with.

Wyatt: [00:14:35] Might not have a roof. I noticed you left that out.

Roger: [00:14:38] Two of my buildings I didn't have a roof. So, yeah, you may not have a roof, but I got four walls to start with, water, sewer and electric to the lot. And I own the lot. So right there, you're miles above starting something new versus..

Wyatt: [00:14:50] In work.

Roger: [00:14:51] In work, yes.

Wyatt: [00:14:51] But in cost per square foot to renovate versus cost per square foot to build new minus, not accounting for land development, not accounting for taps and other things. New is faster.

Roger: [00:15:02] News. Faster is a lot faster, but I still think dollar per square foot. I haven't actually gone back and totally calculated it on my first couple of projects, but I got to be below one hundred and twenty five square foot completely all in remodeling, which I can't build new for that.

Wyatt: [00:15:16] Fuck. No.

Barna: [00:15:17] So. So it's, it's. Yeah it's, it's a great option, you know. And of course back when we first started buying, you know, everything's gone up now a little bit, but it's still you look at cost down here versus cost in Denver or Springs where I came from.

Barna: [00:15:30] So why did you move down here?

Roger: [00:15:32] Big City, didn't want to be there anymore. Lived in the Springs 22 years we've been coming down here. I mean, there's a little mix for me. I mean, I'm I'm a history buff. So, you know, in 1998, I joined a Cripple Creek history club and we drove down Phantom Canyon and ended up in Florence for lunch and then drove back up to Cripple Creek. And I went home, told my wife, go gotta check this town out. It's really cool.

Wyatt: [00:15:54] Cool drive.

Roger: [00:15:55] Yeah. And we've been coming a couple times a year for 20 years when the kids were growing up and then they all flew the nest and it was like, you know, Springs has gotten crazy since, you know, twenty fifteen, twenty fourteen.

Barna: [00:16:10] Pot legalization.

Roger: [00:16:10] Yeah, pot legalization really. You know, I think that's what did it. And you know, not that I have no opinion on either way, but the bottom line is people moved in, roads, what took me 20 minutes get across town, now takes me an hour.

Wyatt: [00:16:21] That town was never built for that.

Barna: [00:16:23] That's the same reason I moved down from from Lakewood, is when traffic got insane after pot was legalized. And just everybody move to Denver and we're just like, all right, let's go somewhere else.

Wyatt: [00:16:33] Yeah, I think everywhere else should legalize dope so that everybody can move back to where they were. Do you think it'll work?

Barna: [00:16:41] Honestly, I think it would, imagine Kansas legalizing pot. I mean, Kansas is dying a lot lot out of parts of Kansas. Oh, towns like, oh, please move here. We'll give you free land.

Wyatt: [00:16:54] They'll do that. Yeah. I mean I was driving and I know for a fact I was driving somewhere. I was headed to the Midwest and I sent you a photograph. I was still in Colorado. And they were like, we'll give you a lot, we'll give you free land.

Barna: [00:17:06] Yeah. That's one of those small towns kind of east.

Roger: [00:17:08] Sterling or something like that.

Wyatt: [00:17:09] Or Nebraska at that point. That point because it's out in the plains, but yeah, like as soon as as soon as people figured out and that this was the place and then you get here and esthetically at least where we live, like I was in the Springs this morning and last night, you know what it was doing there?

Roger: [00:17:26] Snowing.

Wyatt: [00:17:27] It was fucking snowing.

Roger: [00:17:27] I was there yesterday.

Wyatt: [00:17:28] You know what it was doing here? It was sunny. Yeah. Yeah. And it's forty five minutes away.

Roger: [00:17:34] And it's ten degrees warmer down here. So I like that and I like the water and and I have some interest some day of growing in greenhouses and the valley kind of attracted me to that. I haven't got to that phase yet because I keep buying buildings maybe.

Barna: [00:17:46] What about gold mining.

Roger: [00:17:48] Gold mining. That's a whole different story.

Wyatt: [00:17:50] What about that roof you were just talking about? What about doing that as a greenhouse?

Roger: [00:17:53] Right. That would be cool.

Wyatt: [00:17:55] Two for one. And everybody who's living in there, I could just reach up and grab some spinach and some weed or whatever it is, whatever they need.

Roger: [00:18:05] Whatever they want to grow.

Wyatt: [00:18:05] And yeah, everything's hunky dory. Right.

Roger: [00:18:07] Well, there's cool things. I mean, I think our food supplies this is off way off on a tangent, of course, which but, you know, food supply is is especially with after COVID. But I think regional food supply has got to come back. I mean, why we why we buying tomatoes from South America.

Wyatt: [00:18:24] Seriously, and especially here. 300 days of sun. Tell me again, you can't grow tomatoes here year round.

Roger: [00:18:29] And you got some other cool things here that most people don't know about. But we have a geothermal plume under this whole area. So the groundwater is, you know, ninety degrees, one hundred feet down. So we could be pulling the heat out of the earth and running our greenhouses without having to use natural gas in the winter and electric and all those things.

Wyatt: [00:18:47] Yeah. Ninety degrees. You can heat your house.

Roger: [00:18:48] That's right. That's right. So so there's just lots of reasons to be here. I think here's a, you know, segue way into building back down here in low income housing and some of the stuff you guys are trying to do. I mean, there you go. Right, Penroes? You know, it comes into force a little bit, but, you know, you move towards Penroes more. It's greater. I mean, imagine building houses that. Yeah, that that they don't have a heating bill and

Wyatt: [00:19:11] Zero carbon footprint

Roger: [00:19:13] And that they, you know, their cooling bill.

Wyatt: [00:19:15] You must be a hippie or something, bro.

Roger: [00:19:17] I'm a hippie capitalist.

Wyatt: [00:19:21] I think that's kind of where we would have to almost classify ourselves because it's like, no, we can. We use a we can recycle shit, we can we can build smarter again, where's the problem? We have better steel on the exterior, clearly better insulation, clearly lower energy bills. I don't understand the problem. Oh, that's too small.

Barna: [00:19:38] It's too small. That's that's the problem.

Wyatt: [00:19:40] Come on. Right. So really, what it amounts to is just letting people live their lives and go, oh, you guys can accomplish that.

Barna: [00:19:50] But it's a business decision for that. That's why I like capitalism in general. You know, not a hippie. Totally Socialist.

Wyatt: [00:20:02] No-one here is a total hippie.

Barna: [00:20:03] Is that you let the market decide. So if I want to spend my money, or money and time will spend that to build three hundred square foot houses and we fail epically. Whose problem is that?

Roger: [00:20:18] Right, its yours.

Wyatt: [00:20:19] That's my problem.

Roger: [00:20:20] That's right.

Wyatt: [00:20:21] Not my problem because I want a 300 square foot house. Yeah. And I'm super jazzed at the opportunity to have one.

Barna: [00:20:26] Well, well, you don't even have that opportunity now. Like, you're just cutting off this this option for making money. If there's an option, make money with 300 square foot houses. Why is there a law stopping that?

Roger: [00:20:40] Well, there's two different types of people right. I mean, this new generation and I hate to use the word millennial because everyone uses it, but the newer generation, they want to travel more. They want to they don't want giant houses and tens of thousands of things. So there's that group that's looking at your product or looking at smaller places to live so they can take their money because money is harder to make these days as we beginning of our conversation. So they can take their money and they can use that for, you know, for traveling and their existence can be a smaller footprint. And then you get the low income side of it where there's just the because, you know, the people are getting pushed out of you know high end jobs that the you know, I want to say no uneducated. But if you don't have a skill or a trade, you know

Barna: [00:21:27] Way the market is here, you're just getting pushed out of a house, period. So when we're talking about it this morning with Toy, actually when I was picking up donuts for everybody, is that she has a background in real estate. And when I moved here, probably the same time you moved here, you could for two hundred thousand dollars, you could buy four houses, four separate houses. That was five or six years ago. Today, you cannot buy a house for two hundred thousand dollars. That doesn't also need another hundred thousand dollars, some of these into it. Yeah. So that's how much your market has changed. So everybody that already owned a house that today is looking around like I bought this for 50, I can sell for 200 or 300,

Roger: [00:22:10] But then they can't replace it.

Barna: [00:22:11] But they move somewhere else so people can make that decision or they had a rental and now it's no longer a rental and that person's out on the street.

Roger: [00:22:20] All you're saying is people what's happening with California is they sell a house for two million dollars, come here, buy one for a half million dollars, and they put a million and a half in their pocket. So that's going to help with Colorado right there. They're going to sell bought a house for fifty two hundred, moved to Kansas and then have enough money to retire on. But at some point that that equity has to come back. That's right. And everything to me, to me, everything and building comes back to one thing. Cost of replacement. So yeah. If you know. Yeah, great you bought a house at a certain time and you got a great deal on it. But at some point, you know, you have to, you have to replace that house. If the house burns down or whatever happens now, you've got to replace the house and you can't replace your fifty. You can't place it for 100 or 150 or even 200. And with building materials today, you can replace it for three hundred. So, I mean, so then you're stuck with people that say, you know, I just have to stick in my house. I need you need to stay because I can't do. But then if there's no jobs in an area, can they afford to stay? So there's all kinds of stuff.

Wyatt: [00:23:14] That's been our our conversation, too. We talked a lot about how how jobs have not kept pace with housing or medical care has gone up way too way too high, way too fast to keep up with jobs. Right. So and a lot of people into the conversation go, we can't have a fifteen dollar minimum wage because then we're going to introduce inflation and Barna and I are going like the inflation's already fucking here because the house cost the cost of living is that high already. If you can afford to live with fifteen in the housing market today at fifteen dollars an hour, if you can afford to do that, you're working 90 hours a week. There's no other way. Right. And so when people go well it can't be a fifteen bucks an hour, it's like, well how then how do we fix this? Because right now there aren't enough cookies in the cookie jar to live.

Roger: [00:24:00] Well if you if you Google today, I did it like a year. I don't know what it is today, but a year ago I Googled poverty level for Colorado family two. It was like fifty two thousand dollars a year.

Wyatt: [00:24:11] So we have it here. We actually have.

Barna: [00:24:14] I was just going to say I got it in front of me, too.

Wyatt: [00:24:15] Yeah. So we're sitting here looking at it and it goes rent affordability, right. Let's just say. And purchase price affordability. Correctional Officer, this is the highest paid. According to the the kind of the average wages here, highest paid correctional officer, one state of Colorado, right. Just under twenty five bucks an hour. And that means the monthly wages, you know, just over four grand annual wages, you know, fifty one thousand dollars. They can afford a house. That's one hundred and ninety three grand. Find me that house. That's the highest paid guy in the list.

Roger: [00:24:46] Right.

Wyatt: [00:24:46] So if you work at according to this at a school in the school district, if you are police records clerk, if you're an entry level teacher, if you're a sandwich artist at Subway, whatever, good luck. And we're going. We're going. No, you can't afford to live here and we're going. But we need you.

Roger: [00:25:02] Right.

Wyatt: [00:25:02] We have to solve this problem. It won't solve itself. And then we go. And you talked about it, right? You can't replace it. You can't even replace the house for three hundred grand. Well, if the highest paid guy on this list and this does not include physicians and others, this is this is kind of what we would consider our working class. Right. If they can't live here and they have to leave, what are you going to do?

Barna: [00:25:28] Good luck restaurant owner, business owner, anybody, trying to start a business here now

Roger: [00:25:34] Who in the hell in Denver do you even, the median house is now six hundred six thousand dollars. The median house. Who, who, who who's buying that?

Barna: [00:25:43] I had a friend who was homeless up in Denver for that reason. It's like this house is a million dollars. I can't. And then that means you had to rent it for what, ten grand a month?

Roger: [00:25:52] Right. Right. Well, it's like it's it's we're we're moving up on the same problem California has and had, and it will eventually kill it and it's killing it already. But it's like you got five families living in a seventeen hundred square foot house.

Wyatt: [00:26:05] That's illegal,

Roger: [00:26:06] Which is illegal.

Wyatt: [00:26:08] Hold on, every time we roll with a solution, I'm going to go, that's illegal because they all are. Can't have cohabitation with multiple families in a house that's not zoned for that, illegal. OK, so throw him in jail or what are we going to do to actually solve the problem? Because that is not a solution. Criminalizing isn't the solution.

Barna: [00:26:26] So we need to add ADUs.

Wyatt: [00:26:29] That would be one option. Then, of course, I champion. I think I think he baited me on that. I think. But but how is that not effective, especially when I go. So what's the zoning requirement if I go to a lot that's allowing a certain size in a house and I go do you guys just want to do an addition? There's no law that says you can't do an addition to a home. It's one wall different. An addition, has three new walls generally and a roof. If I add the fourth wall, what what are we going to now all of a sudden I'm the bad guy.

Barna: [00:27:00] That's illegal, man.

Wyatt: [00:27:01] And this makes no sense.

Barna: [00:27:04] But we're let's go back to, like, what it costs for you to remodel something. You mentioned it earlier. So now you're working on several projects that have basically vacant space upstairs that have been vacant for a long time, need a lot of work. What is, what cost is it for somebody to rent or buy?

Roger: [00:27:26] So I just finished two in August of 2020 and one is 650 square feet and one is 750 square feet, and they rent for 850 and 950 a month. My neighbor is running the same square footage for thirteen hundred a month, but I just felt like in good conscience I couldn't rent 650 square feet for 1300 dollars a month. Someday that may change when everything's three thousand and I have to do it because I'm forced to do it because I've got to pay higher property taxes and everything else. But yeah, but to me that was a reasonable rate and

Barna: [00:28:02] And you were able to do that.

Roger: [00:28:03] And I was able because it cost me about 75, I mean, not counting the building cost, but the remodel of the units were about seventy five thousand a unit to to redo them.

Wyatt: [00:28:13] Material or?

Roger: [00:28:14] Everything.

Wyatt: [00:28:15] But you're not paying yourself inside of the work.

Roger: [00:28:17] That's correct.

Wyatt: [00:28:18] Yeah. So there's a there's a I'll call it a skewed number there because generally speaking in Barna's big on this one too with with what we're building, you don't get to pay yourself. That's not how it works. Well, the one who is blessed with the thing, It pays you later.

Roger: [00:28:33] However, I just hit a building that I bought for two hundred thousand dollars. And now the equity in that building is is probably 500 thousand. Exactly. So that's how I'm making my money is long term. I have a long term vision of it. So that's where we make our money. And but you're right. I mean, I wouldn't be able to do these if I hired a contractor, do everything 100 percent of this. Yeah, it'd be a different story. But I use my contractor to help me frame and I use the plumbing company to plumb. But I helped put the floors in. I do the paint, I blow the insulation in. There's. I jump in where I feel like I have a skill set that can

Wyatt: [00:29:04] It sounds to me like you like to do work and that dirty four letter word man if we're just talking about money boo. Like nah-uh, so it sounds to me like if you want to, if you want to be successful, if you want to build stuff, you might have to do some work.

Roger: [00:29:20] You have to.

Wyatt: [00:29:21] Imagine that.

Roger: [00:29:22] Imagine that.

Wyatt: [00:29:24] Obviously I champion doing work, all of us here sitting here for a reason and everybody likes the work side of it. Right. So the conversation we had earlier, you're thinking that it's still more cost effective because of things like water taps, land development, getting electric brought into a building, renovating in place, less expensive per square foot than building new.

Roger: [00:29:47] Absolutely.

Wyatt: [00:29:47] Although slower.

Roger: [00:29:49] Yes.

Wyatt: [00:29:49] So slower means maybe there's more money that goes into labor.

Roger: [00:29:53] I wouldn't even say slower? I mean, we did these start to finish those two units. I bought the building in January 31st and the tenants moved in August 1st.

Wyatt: [00:30:02] Right. So in eight months, you're looking at 1500 square feet to be completed.

Roger: [00:30:06] And and to be fair, you know, and this is all contractor stuff, right? I had to wait for contractor scheduled out a month because our book like plumbing and heating business. So I jumped and did the roof on two sisters last year because I had a month of downtime. And it was like, all right, we're stuck. I can't do anything until they put the plumbing and the heating and the electrical gets put in. So why they're doing that, I'm going to move and fix the roof. So really, if you take a month out of that. Yeah, I was like five. We didn't like six months. Yeah. There are times which we've all had this conversation offline is is capital. Right. I mean, I could be building these things faster than the city could keep up with them if I could get the capital. But it's it's one of those things where, you know, we're small, we're not, you know, some giant homebuilder. And everyone's still, you know, our our model is keep some rentals and condoize some of these and sell them off to continue to move our cash back and keep moving forward other projects. And, you know, no one's ever done that in Florence. So it's it's kind of a you know, the banks are like, well, what if you can't sell a unit? Well, I'll rent it then. You know, the rent the rent covers the cash flow in the loan. So what do we what do you care? But they can't get their head around it. They're just like, well, but what if you don't sell it? Well, if I don't sell it, then I'm going to rent it. You know, what?

Wyatt: [00:31:22] Because they want their lump back so they can loan it again.

Roger: [00:31:24] That's right.

Wyatt: [00:31:24] They can get their points again. I mean, that's kind of a yeah.

Roger: [00:31:28] And so that's that's that's a big, big issue, I think, with affordable housing too. Is it you know, like you said, like Barna said a minute ago, we're funding this. All your projects, my projects, we're all funding this out of our our pockets or with private money and.

Wyatt: [00:31:41] With cash and sweat.

Roger: [00:31:44] Yeah, and there is probably a fewer less jobs that I would do. Like I said, I don't mind work, but I have other companies. So I would I would probably. You know what, I'm just going to contractor, finish this part out, but, you know, keeping a budget, you know, I'm going to finish this part of yourself. Yeah, so and so. It just I look at every project a little different, like, all right, I got plenty of cash right now and everything is good. I'm going to I'm just going to go ahead and I want to get it faster. So I'm going to have a contractor do it. Or you know what? Right now I'm juggling three projects and cashflow is tight. So I'm going to I'll just jump in and do the framing and. Yeah, and whatever myself and just to cut some costs

Wyatt: [00:32:21] And to learn how to do all those things. This is another conversation that we had had. So the shipping container housing that we're proposing. Right. At least this is my portion of it. It's like I'll set up a class. You can come here if you don't know what you're doing, because there's a good chance that a general population is like, I don't have any idea how to coordinate because what you just said, scheduling trades, at what point do they have to come in? On whose heels do they kind of follow? How do you keep yourself working in the meantime? That's what the course that we've been talking about doing is designed around. Like, here's how you do it. You come here and you're in a month, you're going to learn how to actually do the job so that you could replicate the process again.

Roger: [00:32:59] That's a great, a great idea. I like it. And there's I looked at something similar to that that is pretty successful. I was I was a mountain lion and I was thinking about putting a cabin up there. So I started researching, you know, how do you build a log cabin? Right. Because. Yeah, right. Right. So there's a group out there and I just pre-COVID they have a seminar in Vegas once a year. It's seven hundred fifty dollars for two days. You go down there and they give you a two day course on how to build a log cabin. But it gets better because what they then do if you take their course and you pay their money and you become a member of the organization, then you have to help to. It's almost like an old fashioned barn raising. You have to you have to have two other people raise their their cabins. And so they sent a list out. Hey, you know, Barnas building a cabin on this property in June, and we're going to be there from June 12th to June 16th. And 40 people show up and they've got a whole plan and they raise this cabin and it's done. And once you've helped two of the people build their cabin, when you're ready to build your cabin, these people show up to have equity.

Wyatt: [00:34:04] So you have community equity.

Roger: [00:34:06] You have community equity. It's a cool concept.

Wyatt: [00:34:08] Yeah. And this is this is basically that I might I might hijack some of the way that that works for shipping containers because the structure is already there, it lives there already. Right. And so it was like, why, why wouldn't we take something that you can't you can't replicate that building for that dollar amount. Even even with prices today, you can't build a 320 square foot steel sided box with a floor system like that for what they charge, not even not even close because a double just for the structure without insulation

Roger: [00:34:37] And there's so many shipping containers out there.

Wyatt: [00:34:39] They're everywhere. And and we're going to get more of them. Right. And so why wouldn't we take a model that is going to serve the masses? Because there's a surplus of them. Right. And go, OK, I don't need to teach. I don't need to build every one of these things. But we need to do is figure out how we help one another and go. When does the plumber come in for his rough-in? When does the electrician come in for his rough-in? How does this dance actually work? Because feeling it and experiencing it is way different than reading about it on paper. It's a completely different experience.

Roger: [00:35:10] Oh yeah. And you guys have learned obviously from, you know, just like. Yeah. How you do everything wrong the first time so you can do everything right the second time.

Wyatt: [00:35:17] And you know, and the container was like we knew we were going to get it right because there's a lot of different ways of doing it. How do we want to do it permanently and consistently. I had the benefit of building my whole life. Right, so it was nothing foreign. Barna's never put up. You never put a house up?

Wyatt: [00:35:34] No.

Barna: [00:35:34] I have. Right. So that's how houses go up. How do we want to kind of use that information? Here's how to steal buildings, go up, use that information. How does everything fit inside of this one?

Roger: [00:35:45] It seems like you could do some other things. And maybe you guys have already looked at this. I don't know. But, you know, you could sell shipping containers that the panels, preinstalled and the pipes all run. And, you know, It's it's you know. Yeah, it's eighty percent or sixty percent or seven or whatever percent finished.

Wyatt: [00:36:02] So that's how we can do it here. Well, basically you would ship and it would sit there and then it would be ready for rough plumbing and electrical immediately the day that it's hooked up. Right. And then begin to close the walls up. Right. Because they need to see how a lot of the interiors work. And look.

Roger: [00:36:16] You don't want the little metal wavy walls.

Wyatt: [00:36:19] Not on the inside with the way we did ours, you know, we added framings so that we could have fastening points for our finish our wallboard. You have to have it, you know, to meet codes.

Roger: [00:36:29] Sure. And you need insulation between the metal and otherwise you get pretty damn cold in there.

Wyatt: [00:36:37] But yeah, like we said, I mean they obviously heat quite inexpensively, super high efficient unit, which does help and that's just electric.

Barna: [00:36:44] And there's no dead space. I mean it's 320 square feet, you're using all of it.

Wyatt: [00:36:52] You're using all of it and the stories in there, and there's not a lot, but there's some and and so it's just those kind of things. And so what we've talked about now is like part of my problem, if you will, in the math is if you're forcing me to build a house that's 900 square feet or 850, whatever single family is in our current R-1, 856 or something. Right. And the cost per square foot is, let's say, on the low end. One hundred and fifty bucks a square foot. That's super low. Right. So do the math on that one, guys. One hundred and fifty bucks a square foot, 900 square feet for simple math. Where are you at? One hundred fifty grand.

Roger: [00:37:28] One hundred dollars a square foot. Your one hundred fifty grand. So I mean, you're yeah you're a minimum.

Wyatt: [00:37:34] But that's before land. Yeah. Water taps are sixty six hundred.

Roger: [00:37:38] Sewer.

Barna: [00:37:38] Sewer is about the same if you are doing one at a time.

Wyatt: [00:37:40] Yep. Sewer's another six grand let's call it. And then of course you get a you

Roger: [00:37:45] There's landscaping, there's grading, there's, there's just a ton of stuff.

Wyatt: [00:37:48] Site prep and your foundation, I mean the foundations are is the site isn't part of that calculation. And so all of a sudden you're at 250 grand.

Barna: [00:37:56] Right. So, yeah, that was the phone call I got right before this meeting. This recording, this podcast, is a city city planner called me and well, want to talk to you, I guess more than me. He called me first. He called me first. I was like, maybe I can answer the question. The question was that he is talking to several developers right now and they're all looking at Florence because we've got land, we've got water, we got all this stuff and we have the need, just like every major city. So developers are coming down here and they're doing the same thing we are. They're doing all the math. And they go they keep telling me they can't build an affordable house. Like yeah, they're right, because we just did the math on the smallest house possible in in Florence. And it came out at two hundred thousand dollars for a thousand square foot house. Right. That was with land. With general contractor that was with it's a finished house. Came out at two hundred thousand dollars with the investor or developer making zero dollars. If you want to actually make money, you can't build a house with the current minimum square footage with the current requirements for two hundred thousand dollars and still make money. You can start a charity.

Roger: [00:39:16] So I think the the problem that the city, you know, has with this or they don't understand is, yes, land is cheaper down here. But let's just let's take a let's take three acre lot and let's say it's. 50000 down here and it's 100000 in the Springs, it's probably more than Springs, and it's probably.

Wyatt: [00:39:35] Probably more than that here. Yeah, right.

Roger: [00:39:37] Yeah. Let's say it's one hundred thousand here for three acre lot and it's 200000 springs. That doesn't double your house cost because if you say 30 houses on a three, fifty houses and a three acres lot and you divide that your cost per house, I don't know what that works out to be. But but that only adds. Doubling the money on the lot price only adds five or six or seven thousand dollars to the total cost of the house. The cost is now in the labor and the building materials, so it cost slightly less to build a house down here. And I think their conception is, well, we're so much cheaper down here. We're half the cost of land. But that's not where the cost is.

Wyatt: [00:40:14] That and there's no labor market here where you're going to make enough money to do it. Right. We don't have the fucking infrastructure down here from a business and employment standpoint.

Barna: [00:40:24] That's what. So that's why I was talking to John Miller and he was working up in the Springs and he told me that the the builders up there and the contractors, they're they're cranking out like hundreds of houses. So the guy rolls in, he knocks the work out in in a couple hours, and they're doing the same thing over and over again. They take their money, they make a couple grand, and then they move on and they're doing like volume. Down here you get the local company and they're like, well, we can get you on the schedule in three, four months it's going to be this much more than up in the Springs. And that goes for everything. that goes for concrete, that goes for HVAC, that's for plumbing because there's just less of those people.

Wyatt: [00:41:08] Supply and demand.

Barna: [00:41:09] Yeah, high demand, low supply.

Roger: [00:41:11] You know, we do my main business is fiber optics in the Spring, you guys know that. And we're in a neighborhood called Sterling Ranch. It's going to be seventy five hundred homes.

Wyatt: [00:41:20] What?

Roger: [00:41:20] Yeah. I know. Right. The first 120, we are on it we'd finish those. They finished those last year and we put our fiber in the next, the next phase this year. Five hundred. But they're in phase two right now and phase two is going to a hundred or two hundred eighteen houses I think something like that. And there are seventy foundations. Somewhere between foundation and framing, completed siting going on, done right now, they didn't they started those in like December. So here we are, barely March and there's 70 houses that start closing in six weeks. Yeah. The developer so far behind, he has even got water and sewer in yet, I mean, it's like.

Wyatt: [00:42:09] So they don't have roads in.

Roger: [00:42:10] They don't have any of that. But but these builders are so starving. They have so many people that want housing that they're just they're not waiting for the developers anymore. They're like, all right, let's just sell us the lots. We'll get going. And mean just by the time customers move in, you know, you've got to have this stuff in which is not typically how it works, right? Typically. Right. You develop it a lot. The water sewer, the power is already stubbed out to the lot. The communications are stubbed out a lot. Then you sell everything to the builder and then the builder comes in and finishes it all out where now it's just they're just building like crazy. But but you're right. That's what happens on those deals, is the HVAC guy will come out. And because there's 30 houses in all, somewhere pretty close to the same level of completion all at once, he can just he can just walk down the street and have, be cranking on, you know, ten houses, 12 houses at one time.

Wyatt: [00:42:56] We always call them cookie cutters. Right. Like, I mean, it's the same. It's the same. It's the same. And so, like, when they're doing the same thing repeatedly, they're going to do it a little bit faster. Generally speaking, they know that they're going to be able to buy in bulk. So they might get a little better price because that's how we like to do things here. And so that that system works there because they have the bodies to do it. And when you come to a more rural part of America, let's just say it's Florence, right? This is where we are obviously trying to get together, all of your guys, so that they don't have weeks in between in their schedule. A plumber right now. Good luck seeing him until July. Right. Like, that's literally how deep my plumber is right now. The guy that we use, July. And I just said that just put me on the schedule. I don't even care anymore. I'll figure something out for you for three days or we'll grab coffee because like I know I'll need you in July. I'll be. I'll be. I can't wait long enough. Right. And the electrician, similar story. Right. When you find the good ones in a smaller area, you work with the same guy.

Roger: [00:43:56] I fly mine in. And that's how bad it is.

Wyatt: [00:43:58] You said your brother comes in.

Roger: [00:44:00] Yeah, he flies in. I just flew him in yesterday. That's why I was in the Springs. Flew him in for 2 weeks.

Wyatt: [00:44:03] My brother came down here and help me put up the first shipping container house, the one that was not a shipping container, but on top of one. And he was here for a couple of days. That's how quickly we did it, because I had it prepped and we stood it up and it was like, OK, so this works. We what we have to do if you live in a small town, in a small area, why would you have a small house? Come on. But with that and I think that we've kind of we've talked about everything that we that we can. I know that I just somebody pointed it at the watch.

Barna: [00:44:31] At my invisible watch on my hand here.

Wyatt: [00:44:34] With that. And we want to thank you for taking the time. It's always great sharing and sharing the expertise, sharing the experience with us and the listeners. And hopefully they got something out of it.

Barna: [00:44:43] Is there anything else you want to share? Like, my sign off is don't call me, I'll call you because we're busy as hell. Do you have anything to rent, is there a business you want to, you know, promote. Email address, phone number?

Wyatt: [00:44:55] I mean, you said you're looking for hustlers for for some of your various things that are coming down the line. I mean, do you want to give contact or should they contact us and we can put them to you or what do you think?

Roger: [00:45:06] Yeah, I mean, if, you know, I'm always I listen to everybody. If they come and talk, you know, I mean, like I said, I'm picky when it comes to contractors. I'm kind of got a good crew together. But if I'm going to do more projects eventually, I need I need a double of them. And, you know, and it's and so I'm always looking and it's you know, I listen anybody and I give most people, I give them a shot and then, you know, I kind of go from there and it's either work out or they don't. You know, it took me a while when I first got here to find the right people. I mean,

Wyatt: [00:45:31] It takes time.

Roger: [00:45:31] No, it does. It just it's just work ethic blows my mind. And in today's world, people showing up blows mind. Right. And then that's just how fast they want to work. You know, I'm I'm like, you know, you guys, you got a million things going on and we don't sit down. We don't sleep. We just we just go.

Wyatt: [00:45:50] This is the longest I've sat down minus the time I had to ride to Denver yesterday and back to install a bar.

Roger: [00:45:56] It is hard to deal with people that that aren't on that same same speed track with you. And it's just it's tough. So but yeah. I mean, you know,

Barna: [00:46:04] Usually in the audience watching.

Roger: [00:46:06] And that's that's fine. That's fine.

Wyatt: [00:46:08] You guys work a lot. Right. Thanks.

Roger: [00:46:11] I mean, you know, it's good. We're trying to finish the ice cream shop right now. Hoping to open in April and it's going to be an old fashioned fiftys soda fountain downtown Florence. So that'll be kind of I think, you know, I was blown away when I came to this town that we didn't have one of those. Because you go to any other old town in Colorado. And you got one of those soda fountain candy stores in there and so Cinda with two sisters going to run it. But we're building out concept once again. It'll be turnkey. She'll walk into a ready, ready to run business. And so and then we're going to shift to the hopefully shift back to the bowling alley. And try to get it open by fall.

Wyatt: [00:46:45] If there's anybody that if I heard correctly, that's like I really want to run a bowling alley and I know how to make one grow, and I think I could keep up and I think I can contribute, but I don't have any money. Well, this would be an opportunity for you. If you love bowling, you wanted to create a culture that they need to talk to you.

Roger: [00:47:03] Yep. And other concepts, too. I mean, what's the next concept? I don't know. After the bowling, I'm looking for one right now. But it's like to me, if it, if it's a concept and I think it has feet and legs that I'm willing to invest in it. And, you know, and if someone comes along and says, hey, I want to I want to do this business, and I think this would work great. And but I just you know, I don't have the infrastructure to do it or a place to put it or whatever. Then I'm you know, I'm always ears.

Wyatt: [00:47:30] I'm going to do it. I'm going to do your signoff for you. If it's got feet and legs, I'll build its brain. And with that, I'll do mine. I said what? I said, Bon Voyage.

Roger: [00:47:40] Thanks, guys.

Barna: [00:47:40] Thanks.

Wyatt: [00:47:42] Thank you, man.

Barna: [00:34:38] Follow us, like us, share, subscribe. Follow us on YouTube, Instagram, Facebook or wherever you consume your podcasts.

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