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Podcast

Show Notes

Scholastica website:
www.scholasticapdd.com

Daily Record Articles on Scholastica:
www.canoncitydailyrecord.com/2019/04/10/redevelopment-of-st-scholastica-academy-campus-still-in-the-works/
www.canoncitydailyrecord.com/2021/02/17/18drscholastica/

Tax Increment Financing:
urban-regeneration.worldbank.org/node/17

Canon City PUD Zoning
qcode.us/codes/canoncity/view.php?topic=17-17_17&frames=off

Renaissance Zones in Michigan
detroitmi.gov/departments/office-chief-financial-officer/ocfo-divisions/office-assessor/renaissance-zones

Guest:
Phil Lund
Scholastica PDD
P.O. Box 2023
Canon City, Colorado 81215
(720) 585-5301 | Office

www.scholasticapdd.com
www.facebook.com/ScholasticaPDD

Transcript

Wyatt: [00:00:00] If you can build it here, you can build it anywhere.

Barna: [00:00:02] I think I'm just going to say that if you don't like something, change it.

Wyatt: [00:00:05] OK? If I build one on wheels, you know, what are my hurdles? If I build one without wheels? What are my hurdles? What's local code requirement going to drive me towards?

Barna: [00:00:13] You could be 60 years old and you want to move your parents into an accessory dwelling unit. They have to go over the same hurdles as a 20 year old that doesn't want to have the lifestyle.

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.

Wyatt: [00:00:37] Barna's got a list, maybe first and foremost, something that we've not done timely. Phil, would you care to introduce yourself to who may be listening?

Phil: [00:00:48] Sure, are we on?

Wyatt: [00:00:49] Oh, yeah.

Barna: [00:00:50] We've been on.

Phil: [00:00:50] Oh, we have. OK. Nice to know.

Barna: [00:00:52] That's how we do. It's just like a little like a warm up and then we just kind of start going,

Phil: [00:00:56] Yeah, I'm glad we've got a good editor at this point. So. Yeah. My name's Phil Lund and I am the leader for this Scholastica project is my big project in Canyon City. And Scholastica was a girls school for 110 years. Catholic Girls School started in 1890 and concluded around early 2001, 2002 right in there, and the campus was pretty much vacant since that time. It's seven point five acres, has a number of buildings on it. Some of them had deteriorated to the point that they needed to be torn down. They had an asbestos problem which both have rectified. The buildings are gone that needed to be in, the asbestos has been removed and all the buildings as well. So we're turning those into condominiums. And also we've got some commercial space and it's got a historic building on it that is going to be now part of Hotel St. Cloud. And that's news, by the way. And also, there's 13 lots on the north end that are going to be single family homes.

Wyatt: [00:01:55] And so this was for those who who don't have the picture in their haven't visited Canon City, can't see it. This is kind of like a city block

Phil: [00:02:03] Actually, two.

Wyatt: [00:02:05] Two city blocks without a street in the center. So it's one parcel and there are several streets that kind of converge and almost like point, you know, at this particular parcel that you're talking about. And the location is amazing. It's right near the Hogbacks. You're near downtown. So you get like this super cool thing geographically just just in the make up there, you guys are reusing the old buildings, the ones that you can. Yep. And and you're going to create an opportunity where someone could live, work and play very, very nearby. And that's kind of like kind of setting the stage of what it is that you guys are going to bring.

Phil: [00:02:41] Yeah, that's exactly right. And if you go to Scholastica PDD, PDD stands for Planned Development District dot com, there's quite a lot of information there that people can see. It shows a picture of the campus and all the buildings, et cetera.

Wyatt: [00:02:53] Right. And so and we've talked about PUDs. Now we're going to talk a little bit about PDDs and basically how you can almost set up your own place, parcel, if you're going to change some of the building rules, if you will, and how some of the zoning makeup works. You basically take a chunk of land, can write some of your own, even if you wanted to have a smaller square footage or if you wanted to have.

Phil: [00:03:17] Yeah. Totally.

Wyatt: [00:03:18] Less buffer zones in those kinds of things.

Phil: [00:03:20] Yeah. So the original are the owner. We purchased it from Homes of the Canyons who I represent, Tom. They were going after the PUD and we switched to the PDD. So the PUD is the plan unit development, which is basically focused on housing than the planned development district is allows for the housing, but it also allows for commercial as well.

Wyatt: [00:03:38] So you get a mixed use version of a PUD instead of a PDD.

Phil: [00:03:42] Correct, the PDD has the mixed use the PUD has the housing.

Wyatt: [00:03:45] Sorry, did I say it backwards? I probably did.

Phil: [00:03:49] We'll make sure.

Wyatt: [00:03:50] It's just It's all too far, too fast, so Barna is literally staring at a sheet of paper and I think he's going to run you right through the gauntlet.

Phil: [00:03:59] Fire away.

Barna: [00:04:00] No, they are easy ones so. Well, so you're in the real estate project. How long have you been in Canon City?

Phil: [00:04:07] I came for real estate projects in June of 2017. And I don't I'd known about Canon, but once I started staying down here to work on those houses, I loved it and decided to stay put. So 2017.

Barna: [00:04:21] Yeah. Where were you before.

Phil: [00:04:23] A little bit in Denver for four years. And before that the rest of my time was in Michigan.

Barna: [00:04:27] Why Michigan?

Phil: [00:04:29] Because I was born there,

Barna: [00:04:31] So you escaped too a good job.

Wyatt: [00:04:33] Yes. I mean, minus, well Sage, you've been around, I mean, in and out, but pretty much everybody sitting in the room, many of those who we've spoken with are transplants to the area. And we found something that was appealing. It was recreation, if it was slightly smaller, living with still access to larger cities not too far away.

Phil: [00:04:53] All that.

Wyatt: [00:04:53] All of that stuff. Right? And whether.

Phil: [00:04:56] The whether it's fantastic.

Barna: [00:04:57] I moved here from Ohio.

Wyatt: [00:04:59] Exactly.

Phil: [00:05:00] Well, it's certainly great. But Michigan, I don't want to kick it does its thing. It's good background and everything. But I've always wanted to live in Colorado and wanted to make sure that that happened in life. So here I am.

Barna: [00:05:11] We'll get into some more pointed, difficult questions here. So you went over the list of all the things that you've already accomplished and you kind of describe what the property looked like when you started?

Phil: [00:05:23] Well, when I first became aware of it, it was a pretty run down. There was lots of weed growth up to your waist and lots of animals on the property, which was great, had lots of mature trees and completely not in use for anything. And then that was when I first became aware.

Barna: [00:05:43] It was basically abandoned right>.

Phil: [00:05:44] It was completely abandoned. And the prior developer took out a lot of the trees. And and I'm not I won't say anything negative there. Those trees would have been nice to be on the campus, but he had a completely different vision than what the vision is that we have. And I actually was helping him work with the city for a period of a month. And then he approached me about actually purchasing it from him.

Wyatt: [00:06:10] I used to run, but I was telling you guys both when we visited the other day, like I would to go up the back of Skyline. This would be 2014 when I was out in Canon City before I would come to that property every time. And it was just like the possibilities. Right. But I mean, not knowing boo at the time, especially about how anything like this would go really how long something this would take to actually accomplish how much energy would have to go into it. And this is before we even talk about money.

Phil: [00:06:38] Yeah. Right. At that time. And it still is. There's a fence around it. We look forward to bringing the fence around of and have people go through it. But it was one parcel when we purchased it and now it's 18 parcels. So we went through that subdivision process and through with the city for creating the PDD. So I'm pretty familiar with working, at least with Canon City on that front, too.

Barna: [00:06:57] So so the question I've heard about the Scholastica project, just from some people I know who are not involved with real estate, is why has nothing happened?

Phil: [00:07:10] That would be in error to consider that to be true just...

Barna: [00:07:14] After you listed all the stuff that you've already done? Yeah, I'm asking why has nothing happened?

Phil: [00:07:18] Well, let me just tell you what has happened. And so maybe that'll answer that just a bit. So we purchased it in May of 2019 and by July of 2019, we were tearing down buildings. They actually started on July the 8th for the demolition. And prior to that, we actually had to remove all the asbestos in the buildings that were being torn down. So that occurred between May and July. And July they went until August 31st with the demolition and getting that all hauled off. So we took down the Gym, we took out the pool, we took out the tennis courts. We took out the walkway that was between the residence hall in the classroom building. And we also took down the theater that was attached to the classroom building, which was doing a great deal of damage. And at that point, we're still in the process with the subdivision process with the city. So we concluded that approximately in November of twenty nineteen and if you recall, in January or March, our rate in there COVID hit. So that certainly slowed things down. But last summer we spent the time basically removing everything in that building, the residence hall that needed to be removed. So you're talking about flooring and all those rooms were full of closets and beds and on and on. And it took us several months to get that out. There were removing the piping. You can't see that from the street. You don't notice anything is going on. And then we're also working with investors. And the process there is that we're focused on creating a historic tax credit. And we just got that through the city on February the 15th. So that process took a period of time. And now what we're doing is finishing up all the things with the mechanical engineers. And, you know, that's 36000 square foot building. And we've got to make sure it functions in the future because you can get sued and we don't want negative things happening for the people. So everything's got to be done right as far as the planning process. And that allows for the execution process, which we hope is going to be June or July to take place. What we're right on the final end of the mechanical engineers, we get the bids. We submit that to the state for the historic tax credits that comes back and we can get the investors involved. And we just closed on building not two days ago, three days ago now. Also, the historic building was purchased by Unbridled and they're going to attach it to the Hotel St. Cloud.

Barna: [00:09:34] Ok, there's a there's another method of financing, which is the tax increment financing.

Phil: [00:09:40] TIF, yeah.

Barna: [00:09:42] What's the process with that? Because that was in the paper in Canon City and people read that and then they called me with questions. So they tax and financing. Are you using that? And what is it?

Phil: [00:09:55] Not decided yet. They created an urban renewal area, which is what you have to have to allow for TIF and tax increment financing. TIF allows for you to basically borrow money. And the money that you're going to pay back for that loan comes from taxes that you would pay. So it's offsetting your specific taxes for up to 25 years to pay back that loan taxes that you would normally pay. So the city isn't losing anything. It's all it's the increment is the actual growth that you get from your taxes that of basis right now. And then the growth that you put in, the increase in the taxes because of the development you've done, that's what's captured and pays back that loan. So we're not using that for sure. For the residence hall, it's possible we may use it for the commercial buildings. Although I have to tell you, my first instinct is not to be a fan of those kind of things from the government. I appreciate the government there to help, but it also is typically a long bureaucratic process. And so it's not something that I'm going to completely jump in on if we've got other avenues to pursue. No offense towards you folks in Canon City. I appreciate you, but it is what it is and those kind of things.

Barna: [00:11:07] So just to clarify for for me, the tax increment financing. So that's a benefit for somebody who's a developer because you're adding value to a property that is abandoned or has a low current value or it's not generating taxes right now or not that much. And when you improve it, you get significantly more tax revenue. And that difference is what is paying this loan. So you're improving. That's something that isn't making any money. You're turning into something that's making money for the government or for the city.

Phil: [00:11:41] That's basically correct. And it's supposed to be used when you're right there. And if you could just get just a little more, it would put you over the top. And so then the argument is, OK, we can use the future taxes that you're going to put based on the valuation that is increased because of the development. Let's capture that.

Barna: [00:12:00] But it's also not like you just call up somebody at City Hall and you go, hey, I want this to financing taxpayer financing. It's actually a long process. You got to negotiate with everybody that would be getting those taxes for them.

Phil: [00:12:12] That is correct.

Barna: [00:12:12] School district, fire district.

Phil: [00:12:13] Well, no, they've already got a tax. When they created the urban renewal area, they created an authority that can handle that. So that's got I think it's a seven member board and it's got representatives from fire district, et cetera, on there. So those people are already represented. And so if the urban renewal area that that group of people that got appointed to it pass it, then you don't have to go individually, negotiate. That's already begun. So that's a good thing that they've done. They've put that in place and a lot of cities have used this successfully. So it's something I'm not saying we're not going to use it. I'm simply saying that won't be my first option to quickly use it. And it would only be for the commercial building. So the classroom building in the chapel really is where we would focus on it. You know, Mr. Bullis, through they may choose to go for it with what they're doing with the historic building as well.

Barna: [00:13:03] And what you're doing, the historic tax credits.

Phil: [00:13:07] Yes, we certainly are doing those.

Barna: [00:13:08] And that's there's two levels of that, correct?

Phil: [00:13:10] Well, there's federal and state. So the state is if you're in a rural area like we are, it's 35 percent on the dollar for those dollars that are spent on approved kind of things. So that's inside the building. You're not going to get anything for the outside of the building. It's for keeping the lighting and all the things that go into it, even the elevators, for keeping it in a historic kind of thing. And then there's 20 percent that's available on the federal side. And that also is it's the same process that you go through. But you have to amortize that over five years so you can't pull it down. You get 20 percent of that 20 percent per year is what you get.

Barna: [00:13:52] And you have to own that property that you have this that we're using historical tax credits. You can't sell it, right, right away.

Phil: [00:14:00] It's, long as it's the same entity. So you had an LLC. You can conceivably sell the LLC in this LLC continues to own it. So this is something that the investors are wanting because they're they tend to be wealthy for the dollars that we're talking about. And so tax credits are something that is a real benefit for them. So that's the interest in making this happen. So future investors can take advantage of that.

Barna: [00:14:24] That's good to know.

Wyatt: [00:14:25] Well, and like we've talked. About a number of times, right, like the government, our government generally creates tax law to incentivize people who are wealthy. Right. And so they're they're incentivizing you,

Phil: [00:14:38] Especially in real estate.

Wyatt: [00:14:39] Yeah. Yeah. Reinvestment right inside of infrastructure

Phil: [00:14:43] Opportunity zones, all kinds of things.

Wyatt: [00:14:45] Yeah. And so oftentimes, though, at least in my experience thus far, is that people who don't know that that was written to be that way, they like to call them loopholes. Right. And but what they're not are loopholes. They are actual mechanisms built by the government to incentivize capturing people's investment. And that's one thing where it's I always kind of come back to that where I'm like, we need to make sure that we're explaining that this is this is just how it works. And that's actually an incentive from the top down. I's a tool.

Phil: [00:15:19] Yeah, it is a tool. And a philosophically, I'm opposed to the government picking winners and losers. Yeah. So I was heavily involved, quite frankly, with Renaissance zones in Michigan and Renaissance zones were coming into an area. You had to compete to get labeled that. But I am one of the guy who was the lead person for a two county area to get those in there. And so we had focused on a specific kind of business that we wanted to pursue, which was value added agriculture, because we had a lot of ag in the area and so often they just sell their crop and go someplace else and they add value to it, whether they put it in a can or whatever they they do to it. And so we pursued that with that. And we were successful getting six Renaissance zones, three different ones for three different are the two counties and they turned out great for 15 years. They waive property tax, all those things. So a government going into that doesn't get the benefit of those taxes for 15 years. But once those expire, all of a sudden that boom rises right up. And there you get those tax benefits. That was in the 90s. And so every community is getting the full benefit of those tax benefits, which included a gas company that was producing electricity, significant taxes that were there.

Barna: [00:16:31] But this is also the argument against places like Wal-Mart, where a Wal-Mart comes into a small town. They get the 10 year, however many years of basically tax abatement just to get Wal-Mart in. And then they after the tax abatement is over, they shut it down and move to another town or move somewhere else where they get that again. So, whatever the rules are you can abuse them.

Phil: [00:16:54] That's right.

Barna: [00:16:54] You just have to know what they are.

Phil: [00:16:55] Yeah, absolutely. And I don't think I would be in favor of that scenario that you just talked about. I think that some competing against the local rural area and Wal-Mart's got sufficient enough business to to compete fully without those kind of things. So, you know, people try to create jobs and sometimes it works and sometimes it doesn't. As far as tax credits, often they end up paying more than what the job's worth. But. If you're familiar with economic development, there's a multiplier effect. So you're what you wanted to be doing is creating based jobs in a community, in a base job is something that has a multiplier effect. So you create something that does manufacturing. We're going to sell our output. Even what you're doing, Barna, you're going to sell your output outside of the community and new dollars flow into the community as a result of that. And that multiplier effect for every one of those jobs creates three to five other jobs, whether it's the waitress or it's the insurance agent or something like that. So you want to focus on those kind of jobs from an economic development standpoint.

Barna: [00:17:55] So those those are one of the things we kind of talked about before is I think it's actually my small town survival guide book that I have somewhere around here. But where you survey the community and you go, what do you need? What do you actually need? And if you do that with businesses first, I mean, you don't necessarily need to go to everybody in town and go, all right, where do you buy your shoes? But what you can do is you can go to every person that manufactures something. OK, what are your customers do before they come here or after they leave here? So I get stuff made in Canon City and for example, like you could interview them and say after you manufacture a part for somebody, where do they take it? Do they use it that way? Do they get anodized? Do they get it powder coated? Do they have another machining process after it or before it? And do we have that in this community.. Because why why are we why are we going to Colorado Springs or another community to anodized something? And why don't we work on building that infrastructure here? Because just for example, the stuff I do for IntelliQuilter or that business cannot move here is just can't because there's no anodizing. There's powder coating. Right. Just the fact that there's no energizing and there's no metal laser cutting. Right. Then that business cannot function here. It would need to go outside of the community to do all those things.

Phil: [00:19:20] Right. And good business people are going to make those valuations as far as where they can get their supplies, you know, the supply chain, et cetera,

Wyatt: [00:19:28] And the demand, too. I mean, they need to determine, like before you're going to put an anodizor in, they need to know that you need one. This is just like like anything else. I always bring things back to housing because everybody understands it. Like if there's no foundation guy, then there can't be a house guy.

Barna: [00:19:46] Well, let's bring them back to housing. So when, and economic development at the same time. So if you're looking at marijuana being legalized in Colorado, that's about the time I came out here a little bit after that.

Wyatt: [00:19:58] Is that why you moved here?

Barna: [00:19:58] Yes, totally, one hundred percent.

Wyatt: [00:20:02] That's joke.

Barna: [00:20:02] I moved out here for the skiing man. Haven't done it in a couple of years, though. Yeah, that's a problem. But you move out here, you you know, you start growth in an industry now you got to build a grow house or a processing plant or packaging plant. Now you you have to bring in those people to do all that. Where are you going to put them. So now you need housing. So now you're building housing. Well, who's building the housing. We're going to bring more tradespeople. Where are you going to put them. Yeah. You need more housing.

Wyatt: [00:20:33] You need temporary housing so that the guys who are here temporarily can build permanent housing for the people that are going to move here so that they then can take their turn to build their own house. Right now it's that chicken egg conversation of like, yeah, we need we need business. We need this. We need that. You need houses. Because as we've discussed and Phil, you know this and you're about to obviously take a big chunk out of it, hopefully provide a big chunk and back into the market inventory wise, right?

Phil: [00:20:58] Yeah, hopefully about 50 some units.

Wyatt: [00:21:00] Right. Fifty some units. And the fun part about that is that is ballpark, what we've heard, close to 10 percent of what the housing is, is behind inside of Canon City. We still need close to 500 units there. Florence is 200 units behind, 300 units behind.

Barna: [00:21:17] A couple of years ago or like a year ago, I think the conversation was about 300 units.

Wyatt: [00:21:21] This is ridiculous.

Barna: [00:21:22] I think a couple dozen were built.

Wyatt: [00:21:24] Right. And so without having a healthy market, real estate wise, five percent vacancy, three percent, let's just call three percent even close to vacancy right now. People can't afford to do that here. They can't afford to move here because there's well, there's no place to go. So supply and demand comes in and the rental market is super high. Now, there's a generation of people paying too much rent. They can't save any additional money and they'll never be able to purchase because they can't get a down payment for enough equity in the eyes of a lender. Right?

Phil: [00:21:57] Right, and you're talking micro economy. And there's macro forces that are in play with that as well as far as interest rates being historically low. And as a result, the house price doesn't change much. If you're just looking at monthly payment, that's great. But you're also seeing great appreciation on the upside as far as the cash of it, because interest rates, high interest rates mean lower housing prices and those to go hand in hand, and so from a macro economy, the interest rates are low, we're catching that that houses are certainly appreciating here. And then the forces of people wanting to get out of Dodge as far as Denver or other major cities at this point and coming to a small town environment, which is fantastic I might add.

Wyatt: [00:22:39] And so the demand is super high. Lending is super cheap, from a from a percentage standpoint. That's right. And so we end up kind of with this. How do we how do we fix this? Because now building materials are so high that it's more expensive to build than to buy in certain respects. Right. Depending on your design. And there are some ways to kind of game that, but you have to find ways to become creative. And so what's the fix?

Phil: [00:23:07] Yeah, I always said that, at least on my observation, is that people who live in a rural area, small town and rural area have got to be at their best game to make it work. Because you talk about the things Barna was talking about as far as even supply chains and all those pieces fitting together what you were talking about from a housing standpoint, this is not easy stuff and it's something that if you're going to be a good business person and survive all the changes that are taking place either on a micro or macro stage, you got to be at your best game. And it's something that you just can't be kicking back because, again, the issues we're talking about are pretty complex. And my observation also is that it spins up that all those things that we were talking about, supply chains, builders, plumbers, housing, real estate, if it's going one way, it feeds up and goes. And but I've seen it going the other way and I'd rather see it, the problem being that it's going up as opposed to going down, because it's when it's the problem is that the last one out turn out the lights. I can tell you that that is not a fun environment to be in either.

Wyatt: [00:24:07] Was that the 08, 09?

Phil: [00:24:08] It was in Michigan. It had happened a couple of times. Michigan catches the flu when the rest of the country catches a cold. And so in 2001, 2002, they had a pretty good recession as well. And there

Barna: [00:24:20] That was a dot com bubble bursting?

Phil: [00:24:22] It was. But it's the manufacturing. So it's when people stop buying automobiles or appliances. Michigan gets hit. They've tried to diversify and they've had some success with that, not just being completely tied to manufacturing, but it still is such a significant percentage. For instance, in the county I was in, which was representative, we had 25 percent of the jobs were manufacturing. And that creates that multiplier effect that we're talking about because those are all based jobs. So if you take out the manufacturing or it goes down, you're impacting multiple other segments of the economy. We actually had that there was a company called Electrolux that took off to Mexico when that was the going thing and their whole supply chain, as Barna was talking about, had come in to feed them. So they had extruders and all kinds of plastic people, various pieces to put together a refrigerator, which was the product they were making when they left. Either the suppliers had to go to Mexico themselves or go out of business.

Wyatt: [00:25:18] And and that's. Yeah, you got now you have you have support staff that doesn't have a place for it. So the job market becomes unbelievably competitive just to survive.

Phil: [00:25:26] Absolutely.

Wyatt: [00:25:27] And like a good analogy that I was in, I was in Don Halix history class, fourth grade or fifth grade or something like that. I can still remember the analogy that he used. And he said, because we're from a rural or a rural community in northern Minnesota. Yeah. Everybody in the classroom that's a kid is like they understand hunting. Right. Because there's a there's a field, let's pretend there's a field and it can supply 100 deer to eat. Right. But now there are 120 of them. How many of them perish because of starvation? The answer is; all of them because they don't ration themselves. Right. They are constantly in competition until the last one has a turn on the lights. And that's what we kind of see having.

Phil: [00:26:07] You had a good teacher there.

Wyatt: [00:26:07] He's he was he was great. And I fifth grade? You know, I mean, just to get that, like, welded into my brain where I'm like, wow. So too fierce of competition. All all boats sink. Right. This is not going to work and understanding like well well yeah but everybody gets a little bit. No that means nobody makes it.

Barna: [00:26:28] So is that where, is that where we are right now with real estate in this community. Where the competition has become so fierce that you're really leaving a lot of people out to suffer. I mean, I have a renter who he's been coming here for like two years. I had vacation rentals, is actually probably the last one I'm going to have over at the mobile home park, because there's more of a need for long term housing in the short term. So he's been coming out here for years trying to buy a house. He has a budget. Can't find anything, couldn't find anything a year ago. He really can't find anything now, but he's still trying. But he also loves the weather, comes out here to hunt and do a bunch of other stuff. So are we at a point where it's back to haves and have nots?

Phil: [00:27:16] You know, it could change all year for sure. The housing market crashed like it did in 2008. But there's my understanding is that the market is not many houses out there, like 35, 40, 50. I think it makes for the whole of Fremont County as far as for sale. And so people are staying put as well. I mean, the weather and all the great things that we know about Fremont County as far as a place to stay means also people aren't putting their property up for sale, even though they probably could get their maximum price on the property, that is for their time period of owning the thing.

Wyatt: [00:27:48] Because they can't replace that house unless they leave the area, right?

Barna: [00:27:51] Yeah, well, you got to go. If you're selling your house, you have to go.

Wyatt: [00:27:55] Yeah. It's just it's it's kind of crazy to think that that's where we are. So now you've got a you've got a load of real estate agents that six to 12 months ago were absolutely slaughtering it. But now there's no inventory. Right. So they they have no products to sell. And that for me is like the beginning of that group trying to figure out how the hell they're going to make it, because now they're like, we either have to create inventory or I have to find a way to have people move out of the area so different ones can move in. Right. Because that's really all we can do. We're kind of stuck. And we can't build fast enough. We can't find trades guys fast enough, can't find enough concrete guys.

Barna: [00:28:36] We can't bring them in. So there's a lot of there are a lot of good things happening here in Florence, you know, at Emergent. And a lot of jobs are coming in. Like, where do you put them? Yeah, same thing. Like, OK, I need I need a framer. Where is that guy going to go?

Phil: [00:28:51] Well, everybody's got to be involved with making that transformation as well, and including city governments or governments in particular, they in a situation like this. And they should all the time, in my viewpoint, not view themselves as a gatekeeper, that you got to get through us to get a permit, but they need to be a partner in the progress and the growth. And that's really just a cultural mindset, because a government that is working to help and get the building permits out and make sure that we make it really fast, that if there's a new subdivision happening, that we can get that on the market. And if they view themselves as the gatekeeper that you've got to get through our gate to get that, I'll tell you, they cost thousands upon thousands of dollars and they frustrate the situation to no end that even developers say it's just not worth it.

Wyatt: [00:29:44] Developers and builders will both walk away from an area where that's the mentality. Right. And Lester had similar things to say about about how he believes our local government should behave and operate and what its modus should be, right?

Phil: [00:29:56] Right.

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