Buildin' Buildings: RE Development

Mike Romero [0:00] And all that's going to happen is guys like me are going to start looking outside of Asheville. We're going to start looking outside of Buncombe County, right? And this is just going to be a place for millionaires. That's fine. It is what it is, if that's what we want, right? But I think we all have an interest to have a little bit more diversity here in Asheville.

Speaker 2 [0:14] Hi, I'm Sabrina West, your local mortgage expert with guaranteed rate. We provide you and your clients real talk in real time. I am a mentor, investor, and money mortgage expert that provides you with customized consultations with a behavioral finance approach that helps you build wealth through real estate. We believe in clients for life, so reach out today for your customized consultation.

Zac Ruiz [0:36] All right, so, first, we're gonna start with some housekeeping. Kind of five minutes tell you what's going on. Get you acclimated to the AVLmeetup experience? Then we're gonna have a five minute breakout session where you can finish buying that drink, if you so choose. Uh, and we'll try to make a deal. After that, we're gonna do... a little feedback, we're gonna do a lot of feedback. We're gonna do the Rui's report, kind of tell you what's going on the market, and set the stage for supply and demand, which is directly related to housing supply, and build and build. So we're talking about tonight.

Then we're gonna give you another 10 minute opportunity to get up and talk and do the thing, to continue doing what you're doing now. But at that opportunity, we're gonna flick the lights. I'm gonna coordinate that a little bit better. And you're gonna come back respectfully and quickly, and it's gonna be amazing. It's gonna be a big difference from what's happening right now. And then, after that, we'll have our panel discussion on building buildings with our three distinguished panelists, there we go. And then Audience Q and A. The more time we leave for you, the more insight you'll get to get. So, uh, if you're new to AVL, meet up, welcome, right?

And our goal is to bring the movers and shakers in Asheville, all under one roof, so I highly encourage you to talk to everyone around, we try to curate the crowd and to bring the right people. Like, as we said, the movers and shakers. I am joined tonight by my co host, Muzerre... There you go. Very cool. Unfortunately, Rodrigo is not unfortunately. He is on vacation. It's amazing. Um, but yeah, there you go. We're joined by Ray Ray tonight. Who's gonna take it from here?

Speaker 2 [2:17] All right, welcome, welcome everybody. So, as you may or may not know, we are about that net profit philosophy. And that goes into our Formula 4 success. So we believe for success, we've got to have three main components, and that's what we specialize in. Networking, education and transactions. So we provide some time for you guys to get together, and you could only be that one handshaker, that one conversation away, from that next Big Deal, or from that next great relationship. So, speaking of networking, raise your hand, how many realtors in the room? All right, all right, good stuff. Good stuff. How about investors? I like it when your hand stays up. Yeah, there we go. Look at that.

And lenders. I know I've met some new ones tonight. There you go. You're gonna need money to build homes.

Zac Ruiz [3:07] There we go. Pay attention to those hands.

Speaker 2 [3:08] Good to have you and service providers. Do we have any service providers? Represent, all right. I think... Green energy people, some buildings.

Unknown [3:15] And rec.

Speaker 2 [3:16] And then how many non real estate peeps do we have in here? We are open to the public. There you go. Okay. We got one bricks. He might be trying to get a drink. Oh, well. Good to have you guys. Good to have you. So, of course, we want to provide you with opportunities to talk amongst yourself, and we will do that throughout the night, but please, whenever I saw y'all taking pictures, taking video, so please tag us, so we can be a part of that experience at AVO Meetup. Also, for volunteering, if you would like to volunteer, and thank a round of applause for our lovely volunteers tonight at the front. Whoo, whoo.

If you would like to volunteer, you're gonna see Ray Ray, by the way, that's me, and I'd love to have you volunteer next time. So, we actually have a new way, you can get plugged in with volunteering. So there is a volunteer application super easy to use. You know, we have the tech guy, right? Keeper of the datas here. made it super easy. So if you see upcoming events, You can actually tag that volunteer button and choose what you'd like to actually do. Set up, tear down, facilitate, or welcome table. And, of course, you'll get a full rundown when you come in, but, ultimately, just around, pleasing the crowd, making sure everyone gets checked in good. And education.

So, of course, if you've been coming here, we've been in business for two years. Two over two years? And we've had over 3,241 hours provided to our lovely audience. So we do specialize and love the education portion.

Zac Ruiz [4:40] And then, finally, tying it all together is transactions. That's ideally why you're here in the room, right? So there's basically three ways that we try to facilitate doing more transactions. One is the member directory. If you signed up for a free account, put in your information. That's that simple, right? Please fill out your profile. People can find you when they're looking for someone. The second is the matchmaker service. If you took the survey, when you checked in today, you can see on the website, at the top rate, you'll see Deal Matchmaker, right? If you said you want to buy, then we connected you with the names of the people who are looking to sell.

If you're saying you're looking to borrow, we connected you with the people looking to lend. Great feature, highly encourage you to take advantage of that. Small catch, small catch. That's only available in person, on site, while the event is going on. All right? So you got to come to have fun with that feature. And third is the have, wants, and needs board. We launch this, a meetup or two ago, it's as simple as typing it in, and you'll see that. So, from that, we have someone looking for distressed property, is Rick in the crowd, by any chance. Oh, man, Rick's hustling, 'cause look, on the next one, someone's looking to subdivide land, and there's Rick again, right?

So, good, get involved with people, put it out there, we'll have someone find you ideally, and then real estate photography. Jason in the crowd, by any chance? Well, you got to do all of it, right? You got to post the thing and then also show up. But so that's what that is. Your only one conversation away for your next deal. And like I said, we're gonna give you five minutes. And at the end of that five minutes, you're gonna come back, and you're gonna be quiet and respectful, and we'll let the show continue. So we'll flick the lights starting now, talk amongst yourselves. All right, so, any chance anyone put a deal together?

The fun thing is, oh, you must still be talking 'cause you're putting that deal together, right? There you go. Katie in the front. All right. So, uh, look, come on. Is that not motivating to you? We're gonna talk about data, guys. It's gonna be awesome. Or data, it depends, right? Tomato, tomato. So we're just gonna kick right into it. So if I didn't make it clear, my name's Zach Ruiz, I run this thing called the Ruiz Report. And so we were on month 47, if you could see that tiny, tiny, little red dot. And we're gonna be talking about supply and demand, basically. All right?

So, at the Ruiz Report, we equip realtors and investors, with data driven market insights in this 10 slides, we're only gonna go over, like, three of them, basically. And then giving them industry leading training to be the local economy of choice. And you're gonna get the shortcut to that tonight with respect to supply and demand. Whoa. And we're gonna start with graphs. We're still figuring out where this projector hits, and it hits right here. At least it's only for, like, 50 slides. So, uh, graphs, as I like to say, the pretty shapes and colors. That's all it is, guys. Right? So all the graphs are gonna follow this pattern.

On the far right, you're gonna see a month with a box, and that's the report month in question. Almost all the way at the end, you're gonna see a red box, and that's the same month, year over years. So when you're like, what has happened this year? It's in between those two numbers. Right? And then you'll see that we have two months leading into that. So we get some season outity. So this is 15 month total. So what did it look like this time last year coming into this month? So you can kind of get a really fuzzy crystal ball as to what's happening. And every graph follows that pattern. So with that, congrats, you are now graph analysis.

So, first slide is volume and activity, and all we're looking at here is the height of the bar. The height of the bar represents how much real estate happened in Buncombe County across all property price ranges, and it's for residential property, right? So the red bar is active listings. That's how many listings were available at any time throughout the month. If you log on right now and you're looking in your price range, you might think there's only 12 homes for sale, and that's true at that moment, but throughout the month, there were more. And so the height of that red bar is the total number of homes.

And then the green is a combination of those that sold and went under contract, and together, if you ignore the withdrawn and expires, that's all the real estate that happened. So all we're seeing here is that last year, remember that trend I was telling you, it dipped down in the winter, and it did the same thing this year. So, with our fuzzy crystal ball, It looks like spring will have sprung, and bring back more real estate. We'll see. And here's where we're gonna stay here for a while. This is kind of the whole night, actually. So this is listing impendings. This is my favorite slide. It's got a sweet pro tip, if you see there in the yellow.

And so, the red bar is the new listings, and that represents supply. How many new listings went on the market in the report month? That's the height of the bar. The green line is how many went under contract. So how many were taken off the market, are no longer available for sale? Right? And so keeping an eye on this is keeping an eye on supply and demand, and that's kind of why we're here tonight. Supplies, build and buildings. Right? So this story tells the story, the slide tells the story of sply demand. And here's how you interpret it. When the red bar is above the green line, then that means we added more homes for adding supply to the market. And when it's below, we took homes off.

Right? So for three years, we've been taking homes off. Except recently. Recently, we have been adding homes, right? And even though that didn't happen, if you look where I'm blocking most of you, the last two months, it looks like there was parity, or we actually reduced inventory a little bit. But basically, look, so supply has been increasing. This has not been happening for the past three years. So since we've been consistently adding some ply, some curious things have been starting to happen. So let's look at it. One of them is home prices. Right? So if you look at the pro chip here, you're seeing that the monthly price fluctuations is not what you want to look at.

You see this big spike? Don't worry about that. It's 'cause some very expensive homes probably sold. And so the two lines, the red line is the average. So if I took all the homes that sold, divided it by how many homes sold across all price ranges, that's my average. So you can see that the average is higher than the green line. It's 'cause we have a lot of expensive homes selling, pulling the average up. But the median, the green line, which is what we kind of look at for our purposes here, is if you took all the homes that sold, and put them in order of the least expensive to the most expensive, what's right in the middle?

And that's telling us that 50% of all homes that's sold in Buncombe County, last month, were $440,000, or more, or less, depending on how you look it up. Right? So let's look at this, right? So if you look at the trend line, which is the yellow line there for the year, we are very much up into the right. Right? The trending, the trending prices are still up into the right. But it looks like if I put a red line over there, It looks like we've been taking a bit of a hit lately. It looks like we've been taking a bit of a hit lately since about June, right? Remember, don't worry about the little blips. It looks like the median price has kind of been coming down a little bit. Right?

To be clear, I still think we're seeing price deceleration. And as we looked at the graph, it's still up into the right, especially depending on, like, how far back you're looking at, and that's what's happening, how long I own my home, and do I sell it, right? I still think it's decelerating. But another curious thing I've noticed is days on market. And so this is days on market. If you remember our difference between the average and the medium, exact same thing. But now, instead of the price, it's how long did it take from the moment it was listened, so the moment it accepted an offer. That's your days on market. So across all price ranges, 70.

Now there's some builders in the room who leave homes on for fun, and so that messes with our average. And then the median is 29, so it's looking like 50% of homes sell in a month or less. Right? But let's look at it again, from that same period from June, looks like it's going up. Looks like it's taking longer. Right? So that is an indication of the price being a thing, right? Because if they lowered the price, presumably, someone put an offer. So we're fighting right now. We're fighting that battle. So homes seem to be taking longer to sell recently. And how does this apply in real time? So the other software run is REMC.co.

And so, if we look at residential in Buncomb County, between $5,000 and $600,000, which is about our average price, right? Look at this, 50% of homes, the median, our favorite number we keep talking about, the middle number, have been on 93 days. So 50% of active homes have been listed for 93 days or more. Or, if you put it another way, it's 50% of homes that haven't sold yet, have been on for at least 93 days. Right? So if you come a lot, we do this kind of song and dance every time is the market tanking. Let's look at the median. And usually, the median flies down to, like, 9 or something, right? And it tells you, Hey, you should be pricing correctly. But look at this.

It's still taking, on average, two months. Well, on the media, right? It's not an average. 50% of homes took two months or less to go under contract. So 64 days or less. We've been used to, like, 19 or something like this, right? Curious. And then another curious thing that I saw about days on market is if you were here for the urine review, going back to 2020 when I restarted the report, look at the red line, right? It looks like, on average, homes are selling faster, right? So if you zoom out far enough, it looks like the median, which is down there, we're staying pretty steady. We have been for about three years. It's a pretty flat line. Right?

But the average, everyone across the board has kind of been coming to their senses and selling faster. So homes seem to be selling faster overall since 2020. So what's happening? I don't know. Curious things. Curious things. We may be at some sort of a market inflection. And here's the last part about the data driven. But when I talk about supply and demand all the time, There's another graph behind that graph, and we're gonna get into Zack's Economics 101, part three. If you've been coming, part one and two are about monetary supply and printing money, and how that all works. So we're gonna talk about supply and demand here.

And we'll do it really quick, and I promise you're gonna understand everything. So this is a demand graph. When I was in school, I'd say demand down. That's how I would remember, right? And so what is the, what does it say? Right? So this basically says, right? So think of cookies. If there's a lot of cookies that I don't worry about it, and I give them away freely. So price is gonna go low. The more of a thing there is, the less it's gonna cost. Right? That's why the demand curve slops down. So let's add in supply. So on the left, you see price, right? So the y axis there is price. And the x axis is supply.

So what I was talking about earlier, as you go more supply, you find your line, and it costs less. But when you add in supply, arbitrarily, down the middle, right? Why is this chart important? Because it illustrates the idea of an equilibrium. And what is that? That's where the lines intersect. And what is that? So that's the equilibrium price and quantity. And you can read that, but just think of that. If there's enough of something and enough willing the people to pay for it, then that's the price you're going to end up when everything's okay. Right? So the quantities, the number of houses that are bought and sold at the equilibrium price, kind of self defining. Right?

But what happens when demand exceeds supply? That's the situation we're in now? There are more people that want to live here than there are houses for them to live in. And, in fact, I'd say that's happening around the U.S. We're gonna talk about that. So let's say, in this imaginary thing, we're at the bottom here, there are 50 homes. So we go, and we go to our priceline, and we find that at 50 homes, people will have to spend 700, $700,000, but 700 in this thing, to get that house. But if you look at the equilibrium point in this perfect market that doesn't exist, but this is, you know, just to illustrate an example, the equilibrium point would be about $550.

So what we're seeing there is higher prices due to supply and demand. There's not enough supply, there's more demand, so prices are increasing. That's what's happening right here, right now. Okay? The price that consumers are willing to pay, increasing, increases if supply is low. Just think, if you've ever wanted anything that was hard to get, you had to pay more for it. Makes sense, but now you're seeing it in a graph, right? So this is what's happening across the United States. I think there's, like, a 10 plus year deficit versus people come in and want to buy homes versus the homes available. Right? So how do we lower prices? We can shift the supply curve.

So normally, you'd remember the dotted one, we'd be running along it, like, just things would happen, but sometimes you can shift it. You can move it to the right. And when you move it to the right, that old equilibrium price, right? goes down because we go down the same supply curve, it goes down. So, what happens is you reduce that equilibrium price if you can shift the supply curve. And this holds with everything in life, but we're talking about houses here. Right? So I know what you're thinking. How? How do we ship the supply car? Let's go over a couple of ways. So you can change in production costs. So everything can get cheaper.

I don't own a bunch of factories and stuff that can really affect that, so that one's not really gonna work. So then there's technological advancements. Maybe we can finally get some robots to build these houses for super cheap, right? But we can't really do that one, so that one's not gonna work for our purposes. Economic conditions. Can anyone start a boom or a bus cycle? I can't. So at least for me, that one's not gonna work. Land availability. Well, we've got mountains in the way here. We are super restricted for land availability. And there's urban sprawl we'll probably talk about. There's the lack of water supply and facilities that we need to build. Can't really do anything about that.

Unknown [17:21] Right?

Zac Ruiz [17:21] But then there's government policies and regulations. That's something we can actually affect. Oh, let's talk about it. Let's talk about it. What happens when we affect government, right? So there's zoning laws. Zoning laws are generally restrictive, and a lot of times, for good reason, but not always. It's not always. If you can loosen some restrictions, it can have the opposite effect. It can actually shift to the right. Make more people able to enter the market than they would have otherwise. Building codes. We just had a big thing about building codes for quadruplexes and lower, right? But sprinklers, all sorts of good stuff. It's in a previous meetup, check the blog and show notes.

But changing building codes can shift the line 'cause more people can enter the market than we would have other ways. And there's tax incentives, right? Encourage people, make it good for their pockets to continue building homes. That's another great way to shift the curve. So basically, look, come on, right? Everyone knows this poster, vote people in, who will make a difference? That is, that is one thing you can actually leave here and do if you don't choose... There you go. One guy applauding. There you go. Right? Uh, AVL today actually just posted this. Look at this, you're gonna get your chance on March 5th. Go on, vote, do something. Vote in people, right?

Participate in local government. Maybe you are that person. Get involved. Maybe some of our speakers have done enough things. Who knows, right? To provide insight onto one of these distinguished panels. Right? Or you ready for this? Build. More?

Unknown [18:47] Houses.

Zac Ruiz [18:49] Right? Everyone here, after, you could talk to someone around here that'll either lend you the money, help you build it, invest with them, this room. It's filled with the people who can actually make a difference. This is me getting off my soapbox. Right? However, I really do something, man. You in the room. You're with the movers and Shakers. leave here. Right? So if that was a lot, if you're, like, graphs, oh, my God. So if you go to ReesReport.com, you can get all this training for free. You can watch all the videos over the 10 slides, so you can be the local economist of choice, gratis. As you see, it's five minutes each, bite size. I know my attention span, isn't that great?

Uh, so that's it. So let's recap, all right? Supply and demand. Now we know graphically, and we felt it in our pockets, as well. It's continuing to prop prices up. Curious, supply and demand things are afoot as a result of what's been happening. And the more supply, more better, right? I like that. So, look, now we have an actual table question. We're going to flick the lights. Everyone came back great this time. Really appreciate it. Here's the question. Talk amongst yourself. How can Asheville or Western North Carolina address its housing shortage, and what can your table do to help? And with that, we'll give you 10 minutes.

Speaker 2 [19:53] Hi, everybody, my name's Kimmy with American Eagle Home Inspection. We are your local one stop stop for all your home inspection needs in Western North Carolina. Do me a favor, pull out your phone. Find us American Eagle Home Inspection on Instagram. Give us a follow. You know what? There's only so much I can tell you about us in 30 seconds, but I promise you, you will not be disappointed if you check out our content. It's very entertaining. It's gonna tell you all us, all you want to know about us. So check us out on Instagram, and we'd love to be your one stop shop resource for your home inspection needs in Western North Carolina. Check us out.

Zac Ruiz [20:26] All right, everyone, welcome back. Welcome back, the moment you have all been waiting for. I'm sure. So we're just gonna get started, do the same thing last time, and eventually, it'll work. Um... Are you... Ms. Ray, are you starting up?

Speaker 2 [20:40] I believe I am. Are we ready to roll and roll? Let's do it. Okay, ladies and gents, if you could, in three minutes or less, what has your journey looked like to get to this point? Jonathan, if you'd like to get us started, please.

Jonathon Zetterholm [20:55] I am happy to get started. So, in three minutes or less, like any good entrepreneur, I've tried a bunch of stuff and failed. Um, so I grew up in the real estate development world, my dad was in the business, and so that was my summer and uh, summer jobs, evenings, weekends, uh, in middle school, high school, literally in the trenches doing whatever needed to be done. And, uh, then I got my GC license pretty much immediately after high school, uh, after the crash of 2008. I went to culinary school. So I got a culinary degree while I was not building things. And believe it or not, I learned a lot of fun applicable things that have helped in the building world too.

Uh, started a restaurant, moved to Lincoln, Nebraska, came back here, started, uh, building houses, and then in about 2018, we started building the houses that we're building now and recognized the serious demand as Zach was just talking about supply demand. So we started messing around with the model we have now and then made it official in 2020 and hence the name 2020 builders. So.

Unknown [22:23] Is Amanda? Amanda?

Amanda Williams [22:24] Hello. I'm Amanda Williams and our story. Thank you. Good to see you. I love looking out, seeing some friendly faces. That's good. So our journey started in 2018, the name of our company's JRO Investments, which are the 1st three initials of our three boys, Jackson, Ryan, and Owen. And I left a corporate job when our oldest was two. And we felt a calling for our children to go to a particular school, and I didn't want to go back to corporate world and traveling for that to happen. I really wanted to be there, to pick them up in the afternoons and all of that. And so JRO investments began.

And, uh, didn't have any background in real estate, no background of business, no background in construction. And we just jumped in and started flipping houses. Um, put in a lot of sweat equity, got really tired. And it grew from there, got connected with this guy right here. I saw that there was value in land, and that when you team up with people, you can scale. And you can still maintain work-life balance, which was really important to me and still is. And so we've just grown and learned and had lots of great people pour into us.

And now we are a real estate development and investment company, and we do everything from land development, partnering with builders for new home constructions, rentals, mobile home parks, all kinds of different things. So thank you for having me tonight. Awesome.

Unknown [24:06] Mr. Romero.

Speaker 2 [24:07] We can, we can go ahead. Yeah, good class.

Mike Romero [24:10] There you go. There you go. Don't be shy. Sorry, Jay Z. Well, first, you know, Zach and Ray Ray, thank you guys for putting this together. Amazing event as usual. And I'm Mike Romero, for those of you who don't know me. I'm with a company called A Marks Construction. I'm the BP of Development, and Kyle's the president of the company. He's a great friend of mine. We started working together about 4 years ago, but Journey started back in 2006. When I sort of had an itch, I think that everybody in this room gets about real estate, something sexy, something cool about it. And I decided to get my real estate license in 2006.

And I didn't know why at the time, but AB Tech was offering a construction management class. And so I went and I took the class and really sort of started to have a taste for new construction. Fast forward a year later, if you were in business in 2006, 2007. I like to say that I got in the business and the business got out and there was nothing to sell. And so I was with a real estate company, and an agent said to me, she said, listen, I've got this development that I'm representing, and you seem like you know what you're talking about. And I'd like to introduce you to the developer and see if you can help me try to sell some of these lots.

for those of you who have been around for a long time, that was a popular ridge over in South Asheville. So that was sort of my 1st taste of what a development looked like. And I remember having a conversation with Steve about the development, and I thought immediately, I'm like, I want to do that, right? And so, of course, I got fired because nothing was selling. And so if you've been in business for a long time, it's never this, right? It's all this stuff. And so it took a minute, but then I was very fortunate to then be with a company that had a development that needed an agent, Beverly Hanks, representing South Cliff.

And so they brought me in, Neil said, hey, um, we need some help with this development, will you, are you willing to do it, run sales and marketing and do that kind of thing? So I said, yes. And I said, yes, and then 6 months later, the developer came to me and said, we're selling this thing, and I knew for sure it was going to be out of a job yet again.

I was very lucky because the company, a company by the name of Mountain Funding, based in Charlotte, bought Southcliffe, and we put a deal together and they said, listen, not only do we want you to run sales and marketing, we want you to help us with project management and how to develop some of the areas in Southcliffe that were not yet developed. So I was very excited about that. I spent 9 years with those guys, and I said, I like to say that's where I cut my teeth. That's where I met Amarch Construction. That's where I met Kyle and we became fast friends. And after we sold everything out of South Cliff, you know, fast forward because I only have 3 minutes.

You know, I've never done a story. Those are gone. Those are gone. Yeah, so...

Unknown [26:57] Per usual.

Mike Romero [26:59] And so all that to say that, you know, Kyle came to me and said, hey, what are you going to do when I thought, I'm going to go out, I'm going to raise some capital. I'm going to do some development. And that night over a lot of scotch and many cigars. We conjured up the story about how we were going to grow Amarch construction, and we were going to get deeper and deeper into the business. And that was 4 years ago now. We've, you know, the company now that was over twice the size that it was when I got there. Um, we uh, we have had a lot of fun doing it. And I'm one of those people that wakes up in the morning and doesn't ever go to work and that never gets old.

It's so cool to do what I do that it just, it's never one of those things in where I wake up in the morning and I'm like, shit, I got to go do this thing again, right? So it's I've been very, very fortunate in that way.

Zac Ruiz [27:46] Awesome. Yeah you're right. So it was longer than 3 minutes, but we're here to hear what you have to say. So don't worry about it. There's some meat in the middle. We want to get to the good questions, all right? So, redemption song. You ready? What does your team look like succinctly? And then we'll pass it this way.

Mike Romero [28:04] So our team, so we have offices in Reynolds Village. We're about 20, 20 folks altogether. We have a person accounting, we have Tracy, who's our office manager. uh, Kyle, myself, and then we have an operations manager, a, and then everybody else is a project manager, a construction manager. And that's typically when we're hiring, that's really what we're looking for, project managers and construction managers.

Unknown [28:29] Well, there's me.

Amanda Williams [28:33] Uh, no, so we're pretty small. Really, a lot of my teammates are, and our team are a lot of you in this room that I've worked with and that help us do what we do. But we have Rick Mays, our project manager. He's with us tonight. My husband, we have fractional CFO, an assistant. And beyond that, it's a lot of external partners. That's how we do what we do.

Jonathon Zetterholm [29:00] So our team is 32 strong, and my favorite ones are here tonight. If you hear something from the corner, it's just them heckling me. We subcontract all of our work. So the bulk of our team is in the field, project managers, superintendents, and a handful of permitting sales, all the other good stuff that comes along with building buildings. We'll get into that.

Speaker 2 [29:31] So what does your average Tuesday look like when you're not here with all the cool kids in the movers and shakers of Asheville? Yeah, well, we'll stick with you.

Jonathon Zetterholm [29:41] My average Tuesday. So my Tuesdays are, uh, what I call like front of the house days, so more outward facing, uh, lunch with someone in this room, lunch with other people and uh, meetings. Um, not a whole lot of like internal work going on. And then, uh, often a peer group of some sort another or an advisory call and then AVLmeetup.

Zac Ruiz [30:12] So a specific answer for a specific day. So you have a regimented schedule, yes?

Jonathon Zetterholm [30:18] I have a very regimented schedule, yes. Awesome, Amanda.

Amanda Williams [30:23] Mine's not so regimented. Um, which I love. I'm the type that, like, I don't like to eat the same thing every day, do the same thing every day. So that's one of the things I love about real estate is no deals the same, no day is the same. But in terms of just rhythms, I mean, I'm a mom of three, so my day starts very early, 515 most days, getting up to get myself centered and ready for the day. Like today, you know, it was a site meeting, putting together plans for a new project. It was networking and meeting with folks, reviewing rentals, and then, you know, getting ready for tonight.

Mike Romero [31:08] On Tuesdays, I get up, and the 1st thing I do is I yell at my son, because he's not ready for school, and I'm like, get your ass up and go to school. That's how my day starts on most days, but, you know, if you wanted to know what my Tuesdays are like. I want it to be real. No, Tuesdays are actually my big meeting day, Tuesdays, I meet with all of our real estate teams, right? So if you represent one of our properties. We are going to have a call. We've got a scheduled call on Tuesday mornings. So Tuesday mornings between probably call it 7.30 and noon.

Most of it is calls with either, either investors that we're working with or partners that we may have on some of our, on some of our projects, or I'm talking to the real estate teams to find out how did last week go, how did we, you know, what's traffic looking like? I keep track of all of our all of our traffic and I obsess over the details, right? And so I always try to figure out, you know, where people are coming from, what people are looking back, and what their feedback is. So that consists of most of my mornings on Tuesdays is just to make sure that, um, I'm understanding what our people in the field, from a sales standpoint, is looking at.

Then we, you know, then there's phone calls with some of our investors and that's kind of giving them feedback on whatever projects we're working with them on. The afternoons, they try to keep a little bit light as they do for most afternoons. Um, but typically, you know, you know, I always try to meet with some of the guys in-house, to kind of prepare for the week, just because Mondays are just, you know, we're just trying to catch up from whatever came in on the weekend. awesome.

Zac Ruiz [32:37] All right, so we got 2 more softball questions, and then we're going to talk about how to do the thing, all right? So actually, last softball question, all right? When people want to get involved, I know people have reached out to all 3 of you, hey, how do I do what you do, right? If you can name one thing where you think most people screw up when taking those 1st steps, what would your one thing be?

Speaker 2 [32:55] They don't take the 1st step. That's a real answer.

Unknown [32:59] Yeah.

Jonathon Zetterholm [33:04] So, yeah, that 1st step, you don't know what it is. you don't know where it's going. You don't know what the rest of the path looks like. You have no idea what's in front of you, but, uh, what is it, a journey of a 1000 miles begins with the 1st step or whatever the saying is. So step out and just start doing something and work hard and make it happen.

Amanda Williams [33:25] I think the thing I see, people think they can do it all. And they'd want to squeeze every little penny out of the deal. And to me, there are so many people that know how to do what you want to do. And there's a lot of people that want to help other people do that. I wouldn't be sitting here today without all of the people that were willing to come alongside us, and that still come alongside us. So to me, the thing I would say is, don't try to do it all on your own. Don't try to figure it out all on your own. Reach out, get mentors, get partners, team up with people that know what they're doing.

Mike Romero [34:07] Great answer. Mr. Ramiro. I would say, you know, I had this conversation with somebody recently. Patience, right? What people forget is that the, as an old business associate of mine used to say, he says, I don't understand why anybody want to get into the development business, everything takes so long. And it just does, right? And so if you're coming from another industry that maybe moves a little bit faster. This industry just doesn't move that way, right? There's too much bureaucracy. There's just too many things that are in the way, right?

And so what happens is, and I see this all the time, because I get approached by a realtor that said, hey, I'm working with this developer that now wants to sell this piece of land because they couldn't make it work. And 9 times out of 10, the reason why they couldn't make it work is because they weren't patient enough to take the steps that they needed to take in order to get from where they were to where they needed to be. So, inevitably, they either run out of time, they run out of money or they, you know, run out of patience. And so, to me, patience is the number one thing. If you're going to be in this business, you got to be patient.

Zac Ruiz [35:11] That is a perfect segue. So now, I guess number 2 and 3 things, right? So the question is, what are the 2 most important decisions when deciding to purchase a lot? Now, this is one of the meteor one, it's going to go in a lot of different directions. But for each of you, what are the 2 most important things? So, basically, when we were on this phone, we were speaking about backing it out, using a little bit of math, like, does it even make sense to buy it right now with these costs? However you wanna answer?

Mike Romero [35:33] Kind of as a joke, I always say, water, sewer. Those are my two my 2 decision makers, right? No, I mean, I think that when, at least for me, like when I look at a piece of land, I'm just trying to figure out how many doors are going to fit, right? Whether I'm doing townhomes or I'm doing single family, right? So those are the things that what most people, they'll just jump in and they'll say, oh, it's, you know, 6 acres or 7 acres and they're just going to make assumptions, right? We have a very different approach and well, I'm going to tie up the property and the 1st phone call is going to be to one of my engineers so that we can sit down together and figure out topography, roads, utilities.

So then Nan, I know how many doors I really have. Because what you tell me your land is worth means 0 to me, right? Because I don't care what you think your land is worth. All I care about is what does my performer look like, right? Can I get 30 houses or can I get 50 houses? Those are 2 massively different numbers, right? And so we've been in properties where we thought we were going to get 50 and it turns out it's going to be 30 and I'll just walk because the numbers just don't make sense because now you have a seller that says, oh, my land is worth X.

And I'm sure if you've developed, or if you bought land here, you have people, you have sellers, right, who have agents, who have told them, your land is worth, and your land is only, like, my calculator is the same as her calculator, the same as his calculator. We all use the same exact math. So if it doesn't work for me. I don't mind passing on it. If it doesn't work for me, I just walk because it's not going to work for either of them. And then inevitably they'll kind of come back around and we have another conversation.

Speaker 2 [37:03] So with that formula you take to figure that out, how long would you say is this safe due diligence period for you to be able to have those meetings and look into that?

Mike Romero [37:10] So, you know, to give you an example. I've spent a year and over $100,000. I did that last year. We spent a 12 months on $100,000 on a piece of property and we walked because it just didn't make sense. It's arbitrary, right? Because it's not every piece of land that's not going to be the same, right? We've got one that right now that we're looking at that they're giving us an entire year of due diligence just because we have to get the property rezoned.

But as soon as I put that property on their contract, I have to start spending money, my engineers are free, my time isn't free, so I would say if it's a pretty straightforward, when I think of Baker's Creek out in West Asheville, I think originally I asked for 4 months of due diligence, we ended up pushing it back about 6 months, but it's going to take you every bit of 6 months, depending on the engineer that you're working with, depending on the utility guys that you're working with, because you just want to get all this information on the front.

You don't want to spend a 1000000 bucks on a piece of property, think you're going to get 40 houses out of it, and then it turns out you got 28 because then everything goes out the window. So I tell people that ask for all of it and be up front. One of the things that I talk to the agents about, I'm like, listen, this may take 4 months or it may take six. So you as a seller, you're going to have to be patient. And I try to get in there and there's something that I do. I know it's not popular and a lot of people don't do it. I'll go talk with the agent, but I'll go talk to the seller themselves and explain to them why this takes this long and how the system works.

Because if they buy in, and you need two more months, they're gonna give it to you. Amazing. Amanda.

Amanda Williams [38:44] Okay, so the 1st question. Um, the 2 the 2 biggest things. So we don't do as large of projects as his company does. Our largest is so far has been 21 lots. We're more infill building minor subdivisions. That's a sweet spot for us.

Zac Ruiz [39:03] Infill, what do you mean when you say infill building?

Amanda Williams [39:06] Infill. So I'm talking about single lot work within Buncombe County, city of mostly city of Asheville. We don't do a lot of single lots anymore. We're mostly subdividing and doing 6 and under kind of small developments, which work well. So for us, you know, time is money, when you're a smaller company like this, and your pockets aren't quite as deep. And so, for me, two of the key things I'm looking at, of course, is acquisition costs, but also time and cost of development, which I can figure that out pretty quickly, right? Like, if I need to do a sewer line extension, if I need new easements. If I've got to figure out access, if the city of Asheville is gonna make me widen and pave a road.

Been through that a few times recently. So there's all these different things, but, you know, you have to be so aware, and that purchase price matters so much. And you cannot overassume, like he has said, what you think you can do. And you really need to understand how much money is it going to take to get that land to do what you think it can do. Right? And how much time is it going to take to do that? Because if we invest several hundred thousand dollars, and we think that, okay, we can get this project done in 12 months, but that ends up taking us 18, 24, 36, that's a whole different return. That's a different return for our investors, it's a different return for us.

And when you're a small business, that is a significant impact on cash flow. So, acquisition cost, but also time and cost of development.

Speaker 2 [40:46] So knowing that, is there a general rule of thumb ratio for the price of the lot versus the price of the home.

Amanda Williams [40:53] For my company, no, but we are not the builder. We are investors and land developers. Okay? So we do joint ventures, we do prep land for builders. All different things like that. So for me, that's not what I look at. I'm really looking at how much value can I add to this land? And is there enough margin within that? So if I acquire a piece, you know, a piece of land, and I can create 5 lots, and my total lot cost all in developed is gonna be, let's say, $60,000. But I know that when you put a house on it, I could either sell it to a builder for whatever, 80, 85,000, okay? Or if I put a house on it, we're gonna gain that equity when we sell that house.

So that's what our company looks at, which would probably be a different answer for an actual builder. Yep, ah.

Zac Ruiz [41:45] Uh, Mike, do you have a rule of thumb and then Jay-Z, if you...

Mike Romero [41:49] Yeah, 16 to 20%. I try not to go above 20%. You know, one, six, 16 to 20%. which may be relevant to you guys as you guys are developing it, right? And because I would assume that when you're developing real estate, you're looking at the area comps and you're saying, okay, if I'm going to sell, if I'm going to flip this to Mike. We've done this before. We bought 75 lots. There were ton home lots, right? They were ready to develop 75,000 bucks apiece, right? But there was a performer, sort of already there. It made it easier for us to look at it and be like, okay, we're at 18% land to house value, then we can start working the numbers from there if that makes sense.

Unknown [42:24] Mr. Zedder, home.

Zac Ruiz [42:26] Which question we're going with here? Well, if you pick pick and choose. If you have your own ratio, go for it.

Jonathon Zetterholm [42:32] Otherwise, We tried to stay under 10%, but that hasn't been happening lately. Right. The 2 things was a question of the 2 things that we look at when we acquire land. Yeah. So we're we're in a little bit different business than these 2 up here, we do a lot of single, uh, single lot. We don't do a lot of subdivisions. So we're looking at individual build sites. And so really the 2 things we look at are, can we build one of our houses here and two, can we sell it for a profit? And we have projections and spreadsheets that we punch in all the information on and it spits out a number for us and tells us why we can do it or not.

And that varies greatly depending on all the variables, public utilities versus drilling a 1200 foot deep well or whatever.

Zac Ruiz [43:22] So for the for the studio audience and those folks at home. How many, when you're talking about single, single lots, how many single lots do you have going right now?

Jonathon Zetterholm [43:30] Uh, we have 74 homes in our construction right now, and I would say, probably 80% of those are single, single lots.

Zac Ruiz [43:43] Right. So to get to that scale, just to drive it home. If you don't have these numbers laid down and if you don't have your performas and if you're not playing the game, it's going to be tough. It's gonna be tough.

Speaker 2 [43:52] So thank you for sharing. So would either of you like to share some red flags that you've learned along the way, which have deterred you from buying a piece of land that you could share?

Amanda Williams [44:03] City of Asheville. Oh, we're gonna get there.

Zac Ruiz [44:07] We're gonna get there. Don't worry.

Amanda Williams [44:12] I don't see many people disagreeing with that. Um There's so many. The thing about land, okay, when you land is risky. A house, you can walk into a house, and you can see that something's wrong with the foundation. You can see that something's wrong with the roof. There's so many things you can see. And with a home, just about anything that you find, you can fix, to maintain the value or improve the value of that asset. Land does not work that way.

If you miss something, if you miss that it didn't have the right access, if you miss that, um, well, the sewer line is actually 10 foot too far this way, and it requires an easement, and that neighbor hates development, and it's never gonna give it to me. Right, right? If you miss, there's so many things, and they're hidden, they're not obvious. And then add on top of that, that you have to navigate the municipalities, you have to navigate the utility companies, you have to navigate. Is it a state road, a city road, a county road? Is DOT gonna get involved? There are a million things.

that you have to understand, because if you buy that land and you miss something, You're stuck with it, and the value you paid, it's no longer worth. And it's also can't do what you thought it could do, and you're stuck. It's not as easy to get rid of that as a house. So it's very difficult to narrow that down to one or two red flags. There's some very obvious ones, like access utilities. You know, there's some very obvious ones, but it's, land is more complicated than you think. Awesome.

Unknown [46:06] So, Mr. Romero.

Zac Ruiz [46:07] The owner is yours for this next question. It is 708, and we try to get Q and A around 715. So those are the parameters. All right. But no, no, no, this is a big reason of why this meetup is happening, all right? So during our affordable housing meetup, the Q and A session got a little spicy, all right? There were some words exchanged between the city and the county, right? So, Mr. Ramiro, with the time remaining. Are there any strategies that you would recommend, and then everyone jump in based on what time is left here? When dealing with the bureaucracy that does come with developing land.

So it sounds like the biggest red flag is, one, it's the unknown unknowns of the land itself, but then also it's the system, right?

Mike Romero [46:46] So I will say that, you know, we have a big project in North Asheville that caught a lot of flak, and we finally did get approved. And I did learn that the city of Asheville really was behind the project, right? And so they did their best to really, you know, do it right, but make sure that the project got approved because the project did make sense. And the reality is it was my right. So there is understanding how to navigate through the red tape, right? And not losing your shit as I have a couple of times, like just trying to build those relationships, right? And bringing projects that make sense.

And then being sensible when they do things like what we were talking about earlier about the, you know, my $40,000 in lieu of a sidewalk and where they just take my $40,000 and they're like, oh, yeah, we'll put it into other sidewalks. That was not, that was not the answer that I was looking for because that's $40,000 for us that we're passing along to then to the consumer who then, you know, will complain about the fact that there's no affordable housing, right? So it is, it is tricky. I think the city of Asheville, um, has is struggling. I think they're trying. I feel, at least for the past few months.

They're trying to do a better job, but you said something when you had your presentation. And this is something that I get it. Nobody wants to be involved in politics. Nobody wants to deal with all, you know, I think that we, as collectively, as a group in here, particularly because we all really have the same interests, need to get more involved and it can't feel like it's a left thing or a right thing. Republican. Forget that. What's good for our city, right? And then put politics aside.

And then let's put people in place in this city that are pro development, because we see it, we've seen cities like Greenville, grow by leaps and bounds, and it's because they have the right people in place that are interested in growth. And our city, 10 years from now, will be will be thanking every person in this room if y'all got involved and push that agenda forward because as we all know, that's something that we need here. And all that's gonna happen is guys like me are gonna start looking outside of Asheville. We're going to start looking outside of Buncombe County, right? And this is just going to be a place for millionaires. That's fine.

It is what it is if that's what we want, right? But I think we all have an interest to have a little bit more diversity here in Asheville.

Zac Ruiz [49:03] We'll take a round of applause. There you go. And so when you think about, like, how it affects it.

Mike Romero [49:12] Don't post that anywhere because I don't want to get any phone calls later.

Zac Ruiz [49:14] You are at the wrong meetup. All right. So when it when it goes there, right? So you've got the owner of the land, the realtors and people in between, the developers, the tradespeople, building it out, the family that gets to live there, the secondary market where they sell it again and again, the tax basis money that comes. This is something that we should all, I think, take an active role into the extent possible. So thank you very much for that. Amanda, we had spoken on the phone. We're talking about DOT and the fire marshal. Do you want to chime in here with any strategies to kind of deal with the lay of the land?

Amanda Williams [49:43] Well, I think, hire a really good project manager that's really good at networking and making friends. That makes the world a difference. You can't change the rules, but you can make it easier to learn them and learn how to navigate them, and relationships do matter. There's certain things that you just can't change. And so instead of trying to fight those things, and, like, he said, like, get all upset and all the things that come with that and make enemies, learn what the rules are, and be solution oriented. Right? Like, I think a huge part of being a real estate investor is being someone, you don't get discouraged by obstacles. You don't get discouraged by problems.

You're an obstacle navigator. That's what you do. That's so much about what working in real estate, you is. And it's no different working with the city or municipality. So do your research, work with people that know what they're doing, focus on relationships, and navigate the obstacles.

Mike Romero [50:48] Thank you. And have a good lawyer. If you'd like to add anything.

Jonathon Zetterholm [50:54] I would guess I would just echo what both of you have said, and that nothing happens without a person making it happen. So the importance of the relationships, the importance of the person on the other end of the phone. You're not you're not dealing with the city of Asheville. You're dealing with someone who has a life and a kid that they had to kick out of bed that morning to go to school, um, someone that just had a fight with the person sitting next to them in their cubicle or whatever. So, um, learning how to navigate the obstacles, particularly, um, in the people world.

When we started doing more than like 2 or 3 houses at a time, it became clear really quickly that we weren't in the homebuilding business anymore. We were in the people business. And so that, yeah, learn, learn people and learn how to navigate that well and treat people, right?

Zac Ruiz [51:54] Yeah, so beautiful. And as you applied for that, I do have to add one thing. This is a free event. We don't get anything for you guys coming here. What we're hoping to curate is a business environment where the movers and shakers know each other, so that when there's a problem on the other side of that contract, you can reach out and talk to that person who kicked their kid out, that you remembered meeting somewhere, and you got them a drink, and it was pretty cool. So we really encourage you to speak with everyone and to meet everyone. That is why you're here tonight, the net profit. We'll pass it off to Raya to take us home. Wait, this is free? We're not gonna... Well...

Speaker 2 [52:32] All right, two last questions to sum it up. So first is, what is the most important thing that you're trying to solve in your business right now, and you can't say land, Jonathan, if you can start?

Zac Ruiz [52:42] And we do want to leave as much time as possible for Q and A. So these are rapid fire.

Jonathon Zetterholm [52:46] Well, like I just said, we're in the people business. So I'm trying to run a business with a lot of people. That's the biggest thing we're trying to figure out, particularly how to lead people to lead people. So there's a there's levels to this thing, as they say. So leading people is one thing, leading people to lead people is the next level, and I'd say that's the, it's not a challenge, I guess. Well, it's definitely a challenge, but it's not something we're afraid of. just what we're figuring out right now.

Amanda Williams [53:24] Diversification of revenue. This is a cyclical business. And sometimes it's not always about maximum profit every single time. Sometimes it's about sustainability and scalability. And so for us, we're very focused this year on diversification of revenue, and becoming a sustainable business, that can weather whatever storms may come.

Mike Romero [53:52] Expansion, for us, is sort of the thing that we're the most focused on right now, trying to figure out how to get into the different markets, you know, some here within North Carolina, um, you know, areas like Raleigh, but, you know, even as close as Waynesville, Hendersonville, areas where we haven't done um, as much business, but with a goal of being in South Carolina, Georgia, and Tennessee.

Speaker 2 [54:13] Awesome. Okay, lastly, before we open up for audience Q and A is how can people get involved, join your team or fund your deals if you want to get us started.

Mike Romero [54:23] So for the realtors in the room and land brokers in the room, that's typically who we deal with the most. I mean, we've got great lending sources. We do, you know, business with some of the people that are in this room. But I would say if you've got a piece of land out there and you think it's, you know, good for development, definitely give us a shout.

Amanda Williams [54:43] One of the ways we're diversifying revenue this year is we're launching into some consulting work so that we can begin to do for others what we do. We think that developing and investing in real estate should be attainable and accessible to more people. We started very, very small with not much, and we want to help others do that as well. So whether that is that you have a small pot of money and you want to get involved. We bring in investors, you know, lower level entry points. If you are a builder that's building a handful of houses and you want to be able to scale and build more, we can help with site development, funding, all of that sort of thing.

So, I'd say those are the two ways with us.

Jonathon Zetterholm [55:33] If you have any land that Mike doesn't want. We'll take it. So that's half ingest, but the other half is true. We'll take all of Mike's table scraps because that's what we want. We don't want the big 20 unit plus subdivisions. We want to stay in that minor subdivision under 10. That's where we like to live. So if you have land or if you're an investor with land and would like to do some deals together, we have an opportunity for investors to be involved and make a healthy return that way. So those are 2 great ways to get involved.

Zac Ruiz [56:16] Awesome. So I encourage you to come up and say hi if you haven't already, but in our show notes, so we send one email a week. The next email that you get on Tuesday is a recap. will include links to how to get involved with everyone. So on that, if we could please get a round of applause for all of our speakers. And with that, we will take it to Audience Q and A. And so I'm gonna do this annoying thing, where you're gonna say, Oh, I have a loud voice. But I'm recording it for everyone to listen to the podcast. So after you talk, I'm gonna repeat the question, all right? So, who would like to go first? Sir?

Unknown [56:51] All right, so the question... In Ashville, where it's hard.

Zac Ruiz [56:55] The question got more complicated. So the question is, for people getting started, just so they can have some back of the napkin math going on. How long does it take from the time you get under contract to ready to go? Year and a half.

Amanda Williams [57:09] I'm not the builder, so I'm depending on them for vertical. I'd say anywhere from 6 to 12 months.

Jonathon Zetterholm [57:19] Yeah, we're on the other end of the spectrum. We only do infill lots. So all the hard work has already been done, and that's not the truth, but we do a lot of hard work. But we can be in and out if it's ready to go with utilities in place in 5 months.

Zac Ruiz [57:38] So reading between the lines is find somewhere with utilities in place. It's an in-field.

Amanda Williams [57:43] Hire us to get it ready. Hey, look at that. Okay? There you go. Good job. Good job.

Zac Ruiz [57:48] I do like that idea by the way. That was good. All right, any other questions? Looking left. Looking right. That surprising. awesome. Really? All right, cool. Do you have a question you want to ask? Oh, wait, we have one more. Mr. O'Beary. All right. So we got a we got a great one. For the rest of the time, it seems. If you could give us some examples of unnecessary bureaucracy, kind of stomping the cogs of the wheel of your machine, it looks like Mike... Whoever wants to take it. As you know, we make sure that every one of our speakers is at the top of their game. So we're excited to announce that Altemus is a proud sponsor for this month's AVLmeetup.

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Amanda Williams [59:12] I can give a simple one. Oh, let's hear. I'll give a sample. You probably have been through a lot more of it on much larger scale than we have. So, we had 2 projects recently. One of them was actually a city maintained road. Um, and luckily, we had already been through this with the city, so we knew it was coming. We knew to look at this dear and due diligence this time, but it's a city maintained road. Okay, that residents have lived on for, I don't know how long.

And they, in the city of Asheville, there's just a lot that needs to happen in terms of internal communication within the city, when they approve a subdivision to record, you can get your subdivision, the subdivision of those lots recorded. Okay, and approved. That does not mean that you can pull a building permit. Those are two very different things. And so right now, a big challenge is the fire marshal in the city of Asheville, and the intentions are good. They want safety. They want to make sure that as their increase, we're getting all this increase in volume and density, that if there's an emergency, they can access those homes to serve those residents. That's a good intention. Okay?

But what's happening from a development standpoint. and particularly in the space that Jay Z and I do a lot of work in, which is more attainable housing. The cost ads that are being put on us for very small lots is significant. So we had one project. We just took one lot, subdivided it into two, okay? It had previously had one house on it. So we added one additional house to the neighborhood. They hit us with almost $35,000 of paving cost. Now, when you're trying to deliver homes that sell for $300,000, and you're only building two, there's not enough margin for that, right? And we can get 325 for those houses. So that's what we listed them for, right?

We had another one, it was six lots, city maintain road this time. They made us widen the road, pave it, and add a fully paved fire turnaround. That was another $30,000 to $40,000 of additional cost. And so, that's one of those things that the intentions are good, but there's unintended consequences that trickle down to really impacting affordable housing.

Mike Romero [1:01:51] Yeah, we've gone through the same exact thing. We're in it right now with a piece of road that's been there, there's houses on the left. There's land on the right, where you can add nine, which now will be eight homes. And same thing. They're making us do the entire road. They're making us put in a turnaround. And my feeling is, well, wait a minute. You're the city, so you get all the benefits and 0 the cost. And this is where these things just kind of, this is why, you know, my soapbox, right? This is why we don't have affordable housing, because the song is the city doesn't get involved and put some real interest behind helping builders and developers create affordable housing.

As long as they say, it's our problem, it's never going to get solved. Because we'll continue to get more money for the houses. And then you'll have people downtown complaining about the fact that there's no affordable housing. But us, the developers and builders, we're the bad guy. But the city doesn't do anything to help. And that frustration lives with us on a daily basis.

Zac Ruiz [1:02:53] So on that note, if anyone knows anyone from this city, we'd love to get him on the stage to respond, right? So, um, because we want collaboration, we want to solve these problems, all right? Did you want to ask your question?

Speaker 2 [1:03:03] Yes. So quick question. So what can realtors, since the room is full of about half 50% of the room, what can realtors and sellers do to understand the true value of their land, right? Land is and what we think it's worth, it's worth what someone will actually pay for it. So how can we connect those dots better for realtors and sellers? Yes.

Unknown [1:03:22] You wanna take it?

Amanda Williams [1:03:24] I feel like I've been talking a lot. So... you want to talk about it? You want me to talk? Okay, I'll talk about it. Okay. All right, I'll talk about it. So, just because it's zoned, R6, R8, or whatever. That does not mean that you can put the maximum density. Okay? If it says your minimum square foot lot is 10,000, and you have 50,000 square feet, it does not mean you can have five houses there. Okay? You have to... The biggest thing, I would say, is there's two things. If you're a seller, okay? I mean, this isn't what you do every day, right? But one thing you can do is you can understand what's being done around you. What are the comps, okay?

When I say comps, I mean same size land, same access to roads, same access to utilities. Okay? What's the value of that? Because that's a true comp. If you're a real estate agent, I mean, there are some, I know there are some amazing agents in this room, okay? But many are experts at homes, and lends a different ballgame. And so what I would encourage agents to do, reach out to people that this is what they do. You know? Another one of the services we're looking at offering is due diligence reports, and sales and marketing reports to agents, to help you be able to go to your sellers and say, this is the reality of what your land can do.

It can help you be more successful so you don't list a piece of land that sits there for a year. It can set realistic expectations for your seller, and it can help address this issue by pricing the land according to what it can actually do.

Mike Romero [1:05:16] So I'll tell just a quick story, and he's in the room, and I don't know whether he wants me to mention him by name. But there's an agent here that came to me and said, hey, we have this piece of land. You know, we love your feedback on it, right? This is what you do, right? You develop real estate. So, you know, before we go putting a price on it or before we try to figure out what this thing is really worth, what do you think, right? It's twofold, right? Because now he's got me on the hook to see the piece of land. I know what you're doing. And then, but two, he's also getting realistic feedback because again, we know each other well. He knows that my calculator, or calculators.

So it doesn't matter who he goes to that's doing development. We're all using the same math. So if I say to him, whether I'm interested or not, and because he's a friend, I'm happy to go and look at it and say, this is what I think is worth, right? I'm happy to, you know, do a little schematic, you know, my office and say, man, this is where utility, this is where the roads would go, this is where Stormtech can go, maybe you probably can get 12 doors out of the deal, right? Very different that if I look at it. It says, I could get 50 doors out of the deal, right? Because now he's got a little now he's got actual value of what a developer's looking for. So back to your point.

I know most of my friends are in the business. I've got a lot of realtor friends, but you mostly focus on single family, right? Find somebody and partner with somebody. Better to get a half a deal than to get no deal. So find somebody that they specialize in working with developers, that they specialize in working with land and collaborate with that person and help your seller get an actual deal as opposed to you sticking your finger. I think your land is worth a 1000000 bucks or worse, which is what really happens most of the time, is the seller tells you what to list that property for. And they're clueless, right?

And so if we don't educate our sellers, this is why you see all these pieces of land, they just sit there forever because the seller doesn't have it. nobody's educating them as to what their land is really worth.

Jonathon Zetterholm [1:07:16] I have something to add on that. If you want to increase the value and likelihood of that land selling quickly, then go ahead and get your water and sewer approvals in place, septic, public water, public sewer, anything like that, will be tremendously valuable.

Zac Ruiz [1:07:38] Would you, is there like an approximate multiple on that? Costs 10 grand to get it done. You can charge 20 more or anything or it'll just help itself.

Jonathon Zetterholm [1:07:47] The time, especially on a piece involving a septic approval, a time would be the valuable thing. Um, and you'd probably get a little more money for it. I don't have a number for you.

Zac Ruiz [1:08:00] Awesome. Well, so before we close out, to connect people in the room, are there any land people here that'd be willing to share some knowledge? I know we got Ultima sitting up front here. A couple of people know some things. If anyone wants to raise her hand, you know, reach out and talk to them. So on that, it is 7:30, guys. Told you we get you out on time, if we can get a great round of applause for our speakers. If you haven't already, there's food at the back, the bar is open for a while. Tip, well, tip. Well, I'm looking for my thing. Next up, next month when it chooses to work. Oh, there you go. We've got a director of operations.

So we have Caroline at the back who runs property management, and also a wholesaling business. We have Susan Alpen, who runs Curete and Katie Button, and everything like that. And then we just spoke with Jay Richards or Richardson, who is the COO of Burial Brewery. Came to do, what is it called? Well, you know, I lost my train of thought. But next month is Director of Operations. It is gonna be great. RSVP there. Give us your feedback. Thanks for coming. Hey, guys, Rodrigo here, wanted to say thank you for taking the time to listen into this month's panel conversation. We hope that you join us in person at next month's meeting. You can find out more at AVLmeetup.com.

We primarily meet on the 1st Tuesday of every month, but be sure to website AVLmeetup.com. You can also watch this conversation on YouTube at AVLmeetup. Also, I have a quick announcement. We started a property management company called Vesta Property Management. So if you're looking for third-party management for long-term rental. We'd love the opportunity to talk to you. Our goal at Vesta is to turn houses into homes and investments in 2 returns. If you're looking to work with a third-party management company that will allow you to have peace of mind and experience freedom around rentals. Uh, reach out to us. We can help make that happen for you. bestapm.com. What's going on, everyone?

Zach here to close it out before you sign off for the day. If you liked the data driven portion of today's meetup, then I'd love to take a moment to tell you about the Ruiz Report and REMC.co. If you're a real estate professional, then you know that you should become the local economist of choice, but you're probably unsure of how to learn the skills required. That's where the Ruiz Report comes in. We offer customized market reports to promote your business, training videos so you learn how to interpret the market data, and monthly quizzes to keep you sharp. Learn more at reseport.com and sign up for a free account to watch all of our training videos at no cost.

If you're more interested in the live data and some data and analytics dashboards, then I highly suggest you check out RAMC.co. REMC.co is the 1st of its kind, data and analytics dashboards for the real estate industry. Now you have to be an active participating member of the MLS in order to sign up, but it is unparalleled data on every market participant, whether that's an office, a listing, or one of the realtors. Again, you can find out more about REMC.co at REMC.co. As always, thanks for listening, and we hope to see you at one of our next meetups.

If you can't make it and you still want to be part of the movers and shakers, then sign up for a free account at AVLmeetup.com and get yourself into our member directory. Thanks again. See you next month.