Los Angeles County Builder Insight with Member Mike Marshall (LA 966)

Transcript:

Steven Butala:                   Steve and Jill here.

Jill DeWit:                            Hello.

Steven Butala:                   Welcome to The Land Academy Show, entertaining land investment talk. I'm Steven Jack Butala-

Jill DeWit:                            And I'm Jill DeWit, broadcasting from sunny Southern California.

Steven Butala:                   Today, Jill and I talk with member Mike Marshall, who shares his professional experience with us here at Land Academy.

Jill DeWit:                            He's also in sunny Southern California.

Mike Marshall:                  Really. Absolutely.

Steven Butala:                   His signal's going through satellites and stuff, but I really think it's like three miles from each other.

Mike Marshall:                  I know, yeah. Exactly. No, it's great. Lucky to be here right now. Weather's beautiful, so I'm grateful.

Jill DeWit:                            It is.

Steven Butala:                   We ... Before we get into it, let's talk about your position at Los Angeles County and what that's all about, and man, I got to tell you before you even start how beneficial it is to have you in our Land Academy crew.

Mike Marshall:                  Great. Yeah. No, absolutely. It's been a pleasure helping people out and being a part of the group, absolutely. My experience over the last 15 years has been working in different jurisdictions in Texas and here in California, basically with the planning departments, and so heavily involved in land development, land use, and that kind of thing. I come from more of like the land development side of the equation, and so a lot of my experience and a lot of my contacts are in that world specifically here in Southern California and Los Angeles. I deal with anything from ... Beginning of my career, it was anything from small residential additions and everything, but where I'm at now I'm working on large residential subdivisions for large home builders. Maybe 1200 residential units for KB or for party homes. Working on hundred thousand-square-foot large commercial developments as well.

Mike Marshall:                  Right now, where I'm at is kind of like these larger projects, larger subdivisions. Maybe annexation projects for different jurisdictions, but a lot of what I'm doing like I said is really more working with developers one on one, bringing their projects through the entitlement process. When you look at a development project, you'll have the beginning part of it where there's the entitlement process basically giving you the approval to do the project, and then you have maybe going through your building permit process, getting your building permits issued and then going through construction. I'm really more on the front end from the conceptual part of the project all the way through the actual granting of those entitlements, and that's really where my career's focused on in the last 15 years.

Steven Butala:                   I'm gonna ask the question that every single person who's listening to this really wants to ask and they're thinking. Why is it such a pain in the ass to get anything built?

Mike Marshall:                  Especially in California.

Jill DeWit:                            I was fixing [crosstalk 00:02:43] to say [crosstalk 00:02:44] totally.

Mike Marshall:                  That's the thing. My career is like the total polar opposites. Texas is so different. Texas is a lot easier comparatively than in California. California is a lot about like you said, environmental regulations. Just that loan and how steep those are in California. Slows the process down and that means that it's more money and there's less certainty from the developer's side of the equation. What they want is they want certainty more than anything else, and the process doesn't allow for them to have that certainty,