Innovative Real Estate with Three Squared, Inc.
As specialists in efficient residential and commercial prefabricated design, Leslie Horn, Breck Crandell, and Jill Ramirez of Three Squared, Inc. share their greatest insights, tips, and case studies from their years of experience in the industry. They'll be giving you their best advice through, trainings, guest features, and Q&A segments so you can turn your innovative vision to a reality.
Innovative Real Estate with Three Squared, Inc.
So You Want To Build Your Own Home...
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So you want to build your own house but don't know where to start.
We've got you covered!
In this episode we run a mock introductory conversation with first time home builder GW Runkle. We cover questions about looking for land to how much you should budget for construction costs and everything in between.
Here's a glimpse of what you'll learn:
- How to plan out your budget
- What to look for when buying land
- Difference between construction costs and architectural fees
- Breck's project highlight of the week: Royal Home
Learn more about Runkle consulting here: www.runkleconsulting.com
Supplementary episodes:
Container Home FAQ: Structural Engineering with Bill Runkle
Ready to move forward with your project? Contact us here and we will put you in contact with the right member of our team.
Make sure to follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn to stay up to date on new project releases, trainings, and more.
Welcome to the Innovative Real Estate Podcast with your hosts Leslie Horn, Brett Crandall, and Claire Olilla. We're here to make your life easier as a real estate developer and teach you everything we've learned about designing and building innovative homes, multifamily, and mixed use structures. On this podcast, we'll be giving you our best advice, trainings, and QA segments so you can learn from our years of experience and make your innovative vision a reality. Welcome back to the show, everyone. We are stoked to have you on this episode, which we are going to be doing something a little bit different. We're going to be switching things up. You all know that we've been having a lot of fun bringing on guests on these episodes. And something that came up recently that we thought would be really helpful to do is to have almost like a mock intro call because we've got people reaching out to us and we often run through the same questions on those introductory calls. We're so happy to help in any way that we can. And we thought that what would be cooler than to just run through this on our podcast. And that way you can get all this introductory information in one episode and leave this episode with um everything that you need to move forward. And then if it uh if it's helpful, you can reach out and book a call from there too. So we have on GW Runkel as our guest today, who is interested in building and designing his own home. He's in the very introductory stages of planning and just wanting to set realistic expectations. And nobody's getting into. So he is going to be in the hot seat today, helping us with this mock introductory call episode. Uh, so you want to build your own house. And uh, before we get into the episode, we always kick off with a project highlight of the week. So, Brick, what do we got today?
SPEAKER_02We've got a whole new batch of stuff to talk about over the coming episodes. But today is brought to you by Fort Wayne, Indiana, which, if you're following, Fort Wayne is actually uh in a resurgence of sorts. Um, there's a lot of tech money going into that city. Uh good Midwestern town. Um, maybe one of the few places that I've ever met that drinks more than Minnesotans, but uh it's a good place to hang out. Uh, my heart's got a lot of history in Fort Wayne. But they are um, it's actually a city piloted program where they're going to put four homes side by side by side that are all unique construction and design um so that they could showcase the future of housing and infill developments throughout the city. Uh and we as Three Squared Inc. are are super honored to be two of those four projects. And we'll we'll cover the other one another day. But uh the Royal Home, as we're describing it, um, is going to be one of those two prototypes that is using homes technology uh in partnership and powered by the team here at 3Squared Inc. And it is uh, if you've heard me talk about my house that I am working to build, which we'll have lots of updates on that soon. Uh but the royal home in Fort Wayne, Indiana is actually uh a carbon copy of sorts of the Cochrane home. Uh so it's a very, very similar design. They are actually uh spurring for a four-bedroom configuration rather than mine, which is three. So it's a four-bedroom, two-bath, uh very, very efficient home uh that will be built out of a modified SIPS, so that's structural insulated panels. It's about 1800 square feet, and it will be one of the prototypes of future housing in Fort Wayne, Indiana. So we're very, very excited to get this one rolling. It's moving fast too. Construction's probably gonna start here within the next uh month or so. So stay along for the ride because this one's gonna be a fast one, improve what is to come. Uh, one last note on that one is that I think we are actually going to be pursuing passive house certification on this because of the construction materials and the systems. Um, we'll have a future episode actually really diving into um green building certifications, what they mean, which ones are worth it, which ones are not. But you can think of passive homes as the effective equivalent for residential projects, as uh the green certification that you might know of, which is the lead platinum certification, which is the highest certification for a large commercial building. So passive house is a really, really exciting development for us here at Three Squared, and we can't wait to see this one through.
SPEAKER_01That's off, Breck. It's it's an exciting time in Fort Wayne for sure. And it's also an exciting time here. And I remember when uh I don't know, it was a month ago, I think. George, that's when you reached out, and the highlight of your of the email was uh podcast, the real cost of building. And you're like, hey, I've been you've been so you guys, we have a listener who's downloaded and watched um and seen and heard our podcast, which is exciting. We always love that. Um, but he said he really liked it. I'm just gonna read it. I really enjoyed your newest podcast episode, maybe too much, because now I want to have an architect design a home for me rather than just buying whatever I find out on the market. Pretty exciting because, you know, we oftentimes get people here who are first-time developers. If you are building your house, you are considered a developer. I want you to hear that. We get those people coming in, and then we also get people who've tried to go down a route with people who didn't know what they were doing. And uh just recently uh had two a lady come in and she started working with somebody else. And oh my goodness, now we are having to pick up all the pieces because uh that team did not quite know what they were doing, and um, she needs to start over, which is super sad. So this is a really great episode. We're so excited. George, I'm so glad that you were able to reach out and that um wanting to really know about this entire process. So welcome, welcome to the podcast.
SPEAKER_03Thank you very much, Leslie. Uh my uh my name's George Runkel. You may also I go by GW as well, so you'll probably hear both in this podcast. I um I do the office administration for Ronkel Consulting. Uh, our principal was a guest on a previous episode. And I've as uh Leslie was saying, I've never owned a home. I'm about a year away from time to start looking to buy, and I've known people that have gotten custom homes and I'm envious, and then listening to that podcast just made me think I want to do this, but oh my god, I don't know where to start, I don't know what to ask. What do I do? Uh so I'm just here to learn. Thank you.
SPEAKER_01No, thank you.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, we're grateful to have you on. And um, like I said at the start of this call, we're gonna run this very similar to how we would like an introductory call. And what you just shared is so similar to what I hear on every call. It's like, I don't even know where to start. Like, can you tell me even what to ask? And so the main things that we usually cover on those introductory calls are your land, where are you located? What's your budget? Do you have a construction loan? Do you have a general contractor? And so this is just a bit of a preface of some of the items that we're going to be diving into today. And so I'd love to just open it up to you and just to kick off those questions, you know, do you have land yet for this project? Give a give the listeners a feel for where you're sort of at in the planning process.
SPEAKER_03Sure. So I don't have land and I don't even know how to figure out my budget. I know what my income is, I know how much debt I have, and I'm a veteran, so I know I have a fixed interest rate. So um I assume the bank would tell me what my budget is. Um and I've been told that there's a general rule of thumb that four times your salary is about the most you can afford for a home. So conservatively, I would say that my budget could not exceed 400,000 total. Um so realistically, with the cost of land, what I would be looking at is um you know going into a subdivision and then making custom edits, I think.
SPEAKER_01So awesome. Well, I I just want to interject. We that was probably the most succinct answer we've received from anybody.
SPEAKER_04I was gonna say the same thing.
SPEAKER_03Well, the good news is you already know way more than most people that call Claire. So I was I was about I was about to roll in and tell you like the specific needs I had for the layout, too.
SPEAKER_02I guess most people have that, but the difference that you brought to the table is you started the conversation around a budget. Yeah, I've got there's there's the key because like most people just come to us with a design and they're like, Hey, I've got this amazing design that I've already worked on. I'm like, okay, great. Are you an architect? And they're like, No, I'm like, good, I'm glad you called me. First of all, second of all, what's your budget? And they're like, Well, I don't know, I just want this. And I'm like, okay, this is gonna cost you $750,000 or more, and they're like, Oh, I don't have that, and I'm like, Okay, that's why we're having this conversation.
unknownGood.
SPEAKER_03So you can credit your previous episode, then the one that Leslie cited, because I had no idea how expensive architectural plans were until that episode, yeah. So, you know, but if we had done this episode three months ago, I'd say, money?
SPEAKER_00What and Leslie?
unknownReally?
SPEAKER_00I know you want to jump in here, Leslie. I just want to point out for anyone interested in that episode, he's referring to episode 50 uh 53, which is all about the real cost of building. So we'll have Carly link those in the show notes, and y'all can go back and listen to that episode too if you'd like.
SPEAKER_01Awesome. You've been living in Texas a little too long, y'all. I just heard it, just okay for the record. It's been two years. I know, I know. This is hysterical. No, and and I mean, even today we were on the phone with um with some with some clients. We did some due diligence for them. And you know, Breck, you blew my mind uh with your with your spot on immediate cost of construction because you know, and they're in a difficult little flood area. Nonetheless, you know, you always really worst case scenario, not worse, well, as a as a minimum, always just put in 10 to 12 percent on a single family home for architectural and engineering cost. That's it, bottom line. You might not spend all of that, but you're gonna be happy that you budgeted it just period. All right.
SPEAKER_02And you're gonna need another 18 to 20 percent to cover the rest of your soft costs. Yep. Usually if you're coming to us and the conversation was, I got a half a million dollars. I'm like, great, you have like $375,000 actually, because you have a lot to pay for in order to get to that point. You have architecture, engineering fees, you have permit fees, you have inspection fees, you have water and sewer taps, or you have to dig a well and put in a septic tank. Like these things are not free. Those are fixed costs that no one else dictates except for the municipality that you are trying to develop your project in. So it's good to think of what is my all-in budget? Then subtract the cost of land, and then you have two-thirds of that left as your construction budget. The other one-third is going to be dedicated to your soft costs, which includes everything that I just talked about. And so are we talking, you know, George, when you say you got about 400 to work with, is that your all-in cost, or is that your cost of construction because you've done some math?
SPEAKER_03No, that is absolutely the top to include uh the little fees that the realtor tax on at closing. So that is everything. And I had just shown why I'm here. I had no idea about the municipal costs and the fees or anything. So I've got that written down, that formula. Thank you.
SPEAKER_02And is that 400 also inclusive of land acquisition?
SPEAKER_03Yes, that's why I'm kind of thinking my best bet is to go to a subdivision that's being built and to be talk with uh the people that are the salespeople there. But I don't again, I don't know what to ask. Yeah, don't know what to do. And I would be open to waiting to buy a home so that I could buy a piece of land and put a home there, you know, or maybe buy a teardown and renovate it or tear it down.
SPEAKER_01So since you don't have your land, I think it's a really good time for just a couple of sentences that we can talk about on what to really look for um in in your land acquisition. Because first of all, it's got to be jump in.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah, go ahead. First thing is what George has already established, which is a pre-approval from your bank, which tells you what your budget is. Yeah, number two is now you got to find land. All right, sorry.
SPEAKER_01No, that's perfect, ma'am. But yeah, when you find your land, you want to find, you know, be in a neighborhood that you want to live in, right? That's first and foremost. So that's the first thing I would do. And then I would start looking at your land cost in that neighborhood to see if it's feasible, right? So, for example, if you want to live, you know, downtown Atlanta, oh dude, man, a single family lot is gonna be super expensive. And it'll probably eat up half of your construction budget, right? So you've you've got to be mindful also in your capital stack, which is the amount of dollars, right? If you've got 400,000 to work with, then you're gonna need to say, okay, I think um, I mean you can reverse engineer it this way. All right, I'm gonna do a very modest 1200 square foot home. Let's just do something like that. And if if my costs are gonna be, I don't know, 175, 185 a square foot, get my calculator out. Breck, you're usually the mic, you probably have already done it in your head, but you know, you've got let's say 1750, I know, times 1200. So now, okay, that's 210,000. That's fantastic. Um, I've got a schedule about um, you know, 60,000 of that. Um, so I'm gonna add 60,000 of that to um my uh uh all my soft costs, right? So now you're at 270,000. Well, okay. Now you've got literally $130,000 to spend on land. Now, if you wanted a larger house, you know, that doesn't even include a garage, by the way, right? So this is how you you start with the you start with, okay, here's my construction cost. Um, this is the sized house I kind of want. Maybe it's 1,500 square feet. So $1,500 times actually, I better use $185 a square foot, just in case, you know, miss conservative here. Um, so it's $100, so you're at $277,000 for construction cost. You're gonna add um from there, I'm just gonna say $70,000, um, which is now you're at $347,000. So you've got about $50,000 for land, which actually I think there's probably some nice suburbs that you might be able to pull some land around. But you also you also want to be mindful really quick that in any area you go, you want to make sure that it's in an area that you don't have to work with the Army Corps of Engineers or any wetland authorities or things of that sort. Because we've also had situations where people have put money on land, they didn't realize there is a reason why nobody had built on it, which because it was in a swamp or a wetland designated area. Breck, you want to have anything or or uh Claire, anything to add to this?
SPEAKER_02Well, if it looks too good to be true, yes, which I've had to deal with the back end of that conversation multiple. Yes. But uh just to refresh people, and I know we've covered this in a fully dedicated episode, but like you got to know your land. Um you have to do your diligence and dive into the information around it. If it looks really cheap compared to uh comparable properties in the area, then there's probably something that you're missing. Like that time when we pulled a survey and found out that there's a two-foot gas line that ran right down the middle of the we couldn't develop anything. Um so you wanna you want to pull survey, um, you know, obviously, so that you know the parameters of your lot and you know if there's any you know hidden features that don't you know meet your eyes when you're walking around on site, and then you want to know where your utilities and services are coming from and going. Where's your water? Where's your sewer? Do they exist? And where does your electricity come from? Because those are all you know predominant features. You also want to look at, you know, if you've got a bunch of trees or vegetation on the site, what condition are they in? You know, and these are these are all easy things to get to the bottom of. You can have a quick phone call with you know your zoning department over at the city, and they can give you most of that information. You can call an arborist and consult with them on an hourly basis to just let you know if this tree is worth saving or if it's doomed, and you know, you just added $5,000 to take out this 60-foot tall 100-year oak tree or something, you know. So you just want to know your lot before you pull the trigger. And they give you the opportunity to do that, but that's pre-development costs. So that's not even part of like your overall budget, it fits within the budget number, but you gotta keep in mind that some of these costs you're gonna have to have cash on hand for. So I would say if you're going into a project at 400,000, have $40,000 in cash that you could keep the process moving. Because if you have to wait until you get a bank loan in order to support you and just paying for a site survey or consulting with somebody to find more information, you're gonna get stuck. Uh, and so you want to be able to keep things moving forward. But as we've talked about, that cash that you're putting forward, as long as you document it very carefully, can typically be applied to your bank loan as part of your down payment. So if they're requesting 20% down, and I know this is probably not a bigger conversation for you because, as you know, a full service vet, you have some options for financing that you know lay people don't have. Um, but in any event, you could track this, and all that money that you were spending in cash to consult with people can be applied to your loan as part of your down payment.
SPEAKER_01And mind you, that $40,000 is separate from the land cost.
SPEAKER_03Okay. Now we've already established I don't know anything about this uh process. So how do I know if the salesperson is taking advantage of me with the square footage cost? Uh Leslie, you had thrown out just 175 to 185 per square foot. How do I, as a layperson future buyer, find out how what the cost of construction per square foot should be? So that I'm not taking it.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, there's a couple of tricks up our sleeve that number one, you know, there's there's a couple of websites out there. I I don't know them off the top of my head. I find that they are they're not conservative. I find that sometimes they lowball and and have lower numbers than what I think. If I were somebody buying a house, I would probably make a couple of calls to general contractors and say, hey, what are you building single family homes for? That's exactly what I would do. Now, the challenge is you probably have to call 10 of them in order to talk to one. Um, and I would just have a small list of questions. Hey, dude, I'm not gonna, or or lady, do that, whatever. I'm not, you know, I'm not gonna take up a lot of your time. I have three questions. Number one, what is the average cost of construction for a single family home here in the Atlanta area? What are you building them for? Number two, uh, is that does that number include your fees? They had they make money too. And then number three, um, I would ask them do they have time in the next year to build a house? So I would I would keep the conversation, don't waste their time. I would keep it to two minutes, three minutes, five minutes, nothing, nothing more than that. So then now you have an idea cost of what that construction is. The other thing I've done sometimes is I'll go in and you can actually find out new construction cost by going and finding homes for sale that are brand new. And so I just I'll go in. I did this in Texas uh for a Texas project. I went in and I looked and said, okay, new construction um homes, I think it was on Zillow, and they it came in at, you know, you can buy this new home for you know, 1400 square foot home for 385,000. So I thought, okay, given the margins of the developer, just take a few things off there. I kind of got a good idea of what the new home was going to cost me. So there's ways that you can explore if you can't talk to anybody at GC, but I I would kind of reverse engineer it. Architects are not general contractors. We have an idea of what things can cost, but it's very unique to your town. Detroit is super high right now, 225 to 250. Although Breck is building his house for under 200,000, right? 185, 190. Holy smokes, unheard of here in the city. But we also know that Atlanta right now is also coming in a little bit lower. So we where we're working at, we do have some experience, but you are the developer. So you need to have that understanding of what construction costs are. The best way is just you've got to do your homework. Google.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. And it sounds like um, I live about 70 miles east of Atlanta. So I'm somewhat out in the country. For what I'm saving in cost of square foot because I'm not in a dense urban area. Am I going to pay for that another way in the cost of getting the contractors, the vendors out to where I am?
SPEAKER_02Potentially. I think that's part of like the the the third step, we'll call it the next piece of the puzzle is is going to be who's who's your team? Who's going to actually? Because depending on who they are, how big their operation is, has a big impact on that. Because contractors have what are referred to as mobilization fees. So if they're building a house that's 70 miles away, they have two options. They could either set up temporary housing, they could rent a trailer, they could stay in a hotel, um, you know, so on and so forth, or they're gonna factor in that 70 miles of driving there and back every time that they need to go out there. Now, a good thing to remember here is that a general contractor is better thought of as a scheduler and a buyer of services and materials, not necessarily the one swinging the hammer. Sometimes they are, but I'd say it's more often than not that they are just scheduling people and then following up and checking in with them. So it's a conversation to be had, and that's one of those really good first questions to ask when you're inquiring about general construction costs, you know, kind of vetting people and making sure that you understand who they are, because you really want to trust your contractor because it takes three to tango. It takes you as the builder, takes an architectural team, and it takes a general contracting team. And if any one of those three team members is a weak link, you're gonna suffer as an overall project. So you want to establish a relationship, a rapport with a general contractor as someone that you can trust, is probably the most important factor. I mean, knowing if they know how to build something is kind of important too, but like I would still honestly put trust like just over that. So we've reached now three three stages uh of getting there, and we're actually starting to now paint a picture. If this was if this was a sales call and you got Leslie Breck and Claire on the line, which would be a special treat. Um Claire, now that you know how much money, where it's going, and who potentially the team is, or if there's not, now you have a direction there. What would be like the next follow-up question that you would ask to vet someone who's looking to build and develop their own project?
SPEAKER_00Honestly, at this point, I would provide resources and next steps. So we do have some resources if anyone's interested in seeing like our full project portfolio, or we've got some really awesome presentations as well that lay out case studies and things like that. Most recently, we've got a really great one for vacation rental projects, for example. But at this point, for people who don't have land, who are in these early planning stages, there's really not much that we can do or would even want to move forward with until you have those items checked off. So this is usually the point in the conversation where we've established, okay, here's where we're at, and here's your homework moving forward. Of course, timeline plays into this. You know, if you know that you're not in the financial or readiness position at this point to move forward, then this becomes like, okay, let's prepare. So a couple of pieces here. Of course, you're going to want to get a pre-approval from your bank as far as just determining what your budget even is to work with. Because uh, as we mentioned earlier, a lot of people come to us and they're like, great, like, how much can I build this for? And it's like, that's really the wrong question to be asking. The question is, how much do you have to work with? And George, you came to the call already with that perspective in mind, which is very refreshing. But we've got pre-approval from your bank, just to recap, that's next step. We've got finding your land and keeping in mind those elements to look for in a lot and to simplify. I know we went in really deep on some of those details, but just to simplify like anytime there's gonna be a ton of trees on a lot, or if there's gonna be a ton you need to clear, or if it's really slanted or sloped, or if it's super duper far from any other um home or anything like that, those are gonna be maybe red flag isn't quite the right word, but they're definitely considerations to keep in mind as far as yeah, as far as dollar signs.
SPEAKER_03So let's fast forward then. Let's say that I've gone, I found a lot, I've bought it. I now have a half acre, which used to have a home, but the home's been demolished. So there are utilities, it's right on the main road. And to my surprise, the bank was feeling generous. Even after buying that land, I still have a $400,000 budget. So, you know, because they gave me a larger loan than that. So I was able to buy the land. So we now have a vacant lot with utilities that's $400,000, and I have $400,000 to spend. So what next?
SPEAKER_00Hooray! We celebrate, yeah. And uh then we get started with design. So here with our team, we've got a three-step process: design it, draw it, and then we collaborate with your builder for the construction phase. So step one is where all projects get started with us. Typically, that retainer can come in anywhere from we'll call it 9,000 to 12,000 for a single-family home. And then through that stage is where we perform the code and zoning review. We create a design that works for your budget. And we're very honest with you along that way to make sure that we're not getting to the end of that stage and it's not fitting your budget. And uh, from there, once you're happy with your design, just to share with everyone what happens after that. Step two is more for the construction document phase and permitting, which we guide all of our clients through and help them through that permitting process. And then step three is where things get fun, hammer starts swinging, we collaborate with your builder and get the thing built.
SPEAKER_02Now, in the design process, you get you get thrown to me and my crew. Uh now you're no longer dealing with uh with Leslie and Claire, and so you're dealing with the architects. We've we've got our proverbial saying around here. It's like, all right, I design everything, uh, I'll charge you a hundred bucks. If I design and you watch me design, it's 200 bucks. If uh I design and you help, it's 500 bucks. If you design and I help, it's a thousand bucks. If you design and I watch, it's three thousand bucks. And if you do everything, it's gonna be five thousand bucks. No, no, I say that in jest because different people come with different levels of experience, and I have seen you know, some people with really thoughtful designs sketched out when they come to us, and we could work with that, most certainly. Um, but there is a profession here um that needs to be acknowledged. And so, you know, you you get the hint. Like, you know, we we offer a service, so let us do our service and work with us. And the more information and communication that we have throughout that process, the better. Um, because you're gonna have a better result um in the outcome. So it's just just to keep it in the back of your head that, you know, let professionals stay in their lane. And then that's what we'll do to reciprocate with you, is that we will stay in our lane and let you manage the parts of the puzzle that are really important to you, as will the builder. But like I said, it's really that trifecta of all three of these parties working together that's gonna bring this vision to reality. Um, and you're just gonna feed information that whole time. Because there are responsibilities to the owner uh, you know, throughout the process that's really clearly described in the contract documents that we utilize. Um, because the the AIA, Leslie, you want to chime in on that? No, you go ahead.
SPEAKER_01I want to I want to chime in right after you do this.
SPEAKER_02Oh, yeah. No, the AIA documents have been pretty well resolved to very clearly describe the parameters around what the architect does, what the owner does, and what the builder does. And so you'll actually see bullet-pointed lists of like, okay, so I, as the owner, need to do this, this, and this in order for the architect to do their thing. And we really covered that on the first half of this call. Uh, and then it describes exactly what the builder does and what the repercussions are if any one of us doesn't do what we're supposed to when we're supposed to.
SPEAKER_03And as the buyer, who's giving me that list, or do I have to find it myself?
SPEAKER_02Well, that would be in the contract documents that we work out together because you can also think of the whole relationship as a V shape, because you will come you will have a contract to direct with the architect and direct with the builder. The builder and the architect will never have a direct contract with one another, but we're always gonna work through you to problem solve in every situation. Okay.
SPEAKER_01And then the other side note is what it's helpful when you get to the first design kickoff meeting. Breck and Jill are gonna ask you three questions. You know, do you own your lot? You're gonna go, yay, I own the lot. Number two, um, what's your budget? Um, and you're gonna go, oh, well, I've been a pre-approved for. I mean, like, yay. And then the third one is um, what's your programming? What do you want? Do you want this a three-bedroom house, two-story, um, all those other fun things that really come involved? So be prepared for that. Bring in, bring pictures of inspiration. Um, you know, peruse the internet, set up a file, um, and just start putting things in there that you really like. You know, these are things of inspiration. The point I really wanted to make though is do not waste your money by buying plans. They're dumb. Um, it is a waste of money. Now, I say that because a lot of the plans out there, people are, I mean, we're seeing it all the time. And and and that is a very broad statement. We have plans, they don't waste your money, but we see a lot of plans out there that will waste your money. Um, and so don't, you know, even if it's $200, just copy and paste, like just screenshot, give us all the inspiration of what you like and what your style is, but you don't need to go out and spend money on plans. That was my point.
SPEAKER_02Plans without a plan are a waste of time.
SPEAKER_01Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And I mean architectural plans without a plan of action as a result, yeah, are it's that's one of the easiest pieces of the puzzle, honestly. Like you described a miracle scenario where you've got this perfect land with plenty of space, you have all your utilities, and you got a budget for the house. Well, hot dog. We can really get going. All right. Well, in conclusion, there, George, is there any outstanding questions that you have left in starting this process? Otherwise, I think we could have a follow-up and do a mock version of when you get to that point, what would happen and how would we roll it out from there? Um, that'd be pretty interesting to see.
SPEAKER_03That was actually where I thought this was originally going to go. And um, that sounds like a great idea. Because, you know, as the new, as the never before owned a home, always lived in apartments and old duplexes. I don't know what's available. It's like if someone from 1990 was transported to 2023 to buy a new car, they would be excited about well, how many cup holders does it have? And is there an ashtray in the back seat? And you're like, Well, no, but you have a moon roof and a computer and it flies.
SPEAKER_01So this is great. It's so true. Oh, this is hysterical. No, it's really great. I I like this. Any final questions for us?
SPEAKER_03Nope. Thank you very much for your time. Um, if any of your listeners are interested in shipping containers for the structure of a home, they can go to our company's website, www.runkelconsulting.com. Thank you.
SPEAKER_02And we work in partnership with GW and his whole team uh because they do what we don't and we do what they don't. Um, they are, you know, the structural engineers that support our architectural efforts. And we've got, jeez, I don't know, two dozen projects in the pipeline that we're collaborating on. Um, and that's containers and also other alternative construction methods. Um, I would say most of the projects that we've talked on this podcast for the last like 15, 20 episodes have been in collaboration. Um, and we really like working together with this team. And we're we're both scaling as a result of this partnership, which I'm most excited about.
SPEAKER_01Yes.
SPEAKER_00Thank you. It's been a pleasure, GW. Thank you. And for anyone listening, if you'd like to continue the conversation and chat with our team one-on-one, you can book a call through the link in the description. You can also find the show notes in our description to see a bit of a recap because we covered a lot of ground today. And our goal and our intention is always to set you up for success with clarity and simplicity and take out the overwhelm from this process. So, thank you for tuning into another episode, and we will see you on the next one. We hope you enjoyed this episode. And if you found it so valuable, you want to connect with us one on one, click the link in the description to tell us all about your project so we can help you get started.