Heating and cooling with geothermal. Is that really a thing? So everyone talks about all these different ways to be efficient, to be green, to be responsible, to be all of those different items. And as a homeowner, is geothermal an option for you?

Do you live in an extreme climate or climate either one way where it’s either hot or cold and you use a lot of resources to heat and or cool your facility, right? Or your house.

If so, then geothermal could be the correct answer for you if you have enough space to go ahead and pull that off. So let’s go ahead and take a look at what geothermal happens to be. All right. So here we have a an example of what this is. And I happened to find this one, and I it was from our from the university that we that my sister and I both attended.

And Cornell University does use geothermal, as does one of our local schools with Frisco ISD. They use geothermal with all of their new items. But what geothermal does is it uses the earth to heat and or cool your inside space. So Cornell University uses the Earth way down to heat it, and it uses the lake to cool it. So they have extremes there in temperatures. And when it’s cold outside, you want to heat inside. And when it’s hot inside, you want to cool it down, right?

So that’s basically what they’re doing here. You can take this loop and you can see what it is. So the concept of geothermal is to take the outside unit that we have the heat, the heat sink element or the cooling element, and to allow the earth to do the work.

So if you think about it, what it’s doing is the AC in your home is extracting the heat from within the house and it’s sinking it somewhere and it’s putting it out into the air. So we have this unit outside and many people think that the air conditioner is outside and the heater is inside.

But what we have outside with our unit is this this thing that takes and attracts the heat and dissipates it and diffuses it and gets rid of it. And that’s exactly what is going on here, cooling it with the water. So within the water, there’s different things. You can have rods, you can have cooling instruments like a big plate, you can have a tube. And within the tube they can cycle some gel through it, kind of like an antifreeze.

And that can cool or get rid of the heat so that when it goes back to your home, it’s much more efficient. So if we were to think about this and I gave you some numbers, geothermal is at a C rating of about 30 is how efficient it is and it’s using electric inside to convert it.

But what’s happening is it’s a more efficient way to heat and or cool. So you’re getting a much higher efficiency rating than you normally would with a traditional unit, and it’s sinking all of that stuff into the earth.

So if you go deep enough into the earth, it normally ‘s about 50 degrees. So if you go dig down either 6 to 10 feet or you go into a body of water, you’re going to find that the water is about 50 to 55 degrees at about ten foot down or ten foot into the earth.

It’s about that temperature year round and it doesn’t change. So what’s essentially happening is the heat is leaving or the cool is leaving this unit as it goes through.

And it’s using friction. It’s using the earth to do all the work for you. And is this the way that things are going? I don’t know if you have enough space. It like something that works. We’re going to go ahead and take a look at something else here.

And this is another unit which is placed within the earth, right? So this is a community that is putting it inside their man made retention pond here. So within this, you see it’s all aligned. It’s ready to go. They put stone inside it. And if we were to zoom inside there, what we have is the unit inside, and that unit itself is the item that is dissipating that heat within it.

So if we were to scroll around here and zoom in and see if we can find an even better picture than what we’re going to see is that that is what’s going on is taking the surfac

Writing with the brand Kenny Parcel So, yes. So I attended the NAR Leadership Conference last week. I am the incoming president of CCAR, as we know, and they had a leadership conference just for the incoming president. So it was really, really cool.

And they announced their new initiative for 2023 as well as their leadership for 2023. So Kenny Parcell is a realtor from Utah who has been elected to be the president for NAR for 2023. So, you know, everything was kind of focused on his initiatives and what his vision is for, for the future.

So his agenda, it was really cool because, you know, I had no idea of this, but it’s totally in line with kind of what my thoughts and vision are are for for CCAR in my presidency next year. So it was really cool.

It was kind of like the State of the Union address that Jerry Jones gives before the season starts. For the Cowboys. This is that kind of version of it.

But off, you know, straight out of the chute, Kenny, when he came out and started speaking, it was like, wow. I mean, it was impressive from the very beginning. And I had met Kenny one time in San Diego, and this is kind of a funny story. We they rented an amusement park for for us. We were at a conference. And so we were all there. And there was this one. I don’t even know what it’s what it is. It’s just some little exhibit or booth that you hang. So you. Hang from this bar and it raises you up, right?

And then your feet are off the ground. And it’s you know, it’s a contest to see how long you can hang. And I mean, I did it. Several people did it. I mean, it’s really hard to do that if you haven’t done that. And so. You know, sitting standing back, observing was Kenny. And someone in the crowd was like, Kenny, you got to come do this. You’re an athlete. And he was like, No.

I mean, he’s very just kind of chill and low key is like, no, no. And then they kept on and on and on because Kenny was an athlete, played football. So you see him, he starts rolling his sleeves up. Get ready comes up there. He did it and he hung there forever. We were like, Wow.

So the challenge is, can you hang for 60 seconds?

Can you while or longer I think is over a minute. And that’s, like, really super incredible.

Very, very impressive. So I was like, okay, who is this guy? And then fast forward to now, it’s like, oh, he’s the incoming president. Wow. All right. Yo, Kenny. So, you know, we’re going to be talking about more things that actually I’ve learned from Kenny just in that week of conference. But we’re going to start out with what is in RS Initiative for next year.

And this is Kenny’s kind of you know his year to kind of roll all this out. So we’re going to start with a video, which is the story of the mission, which is the theme is Ride with the Brand. And it’s about us, you know, supporting the realtor brand and sharing it within our communities so we can, you know, bring awareness to who we really are and what we stand for.

We’re not just transaction based. It goes much deeper than that. So I think this is a pretty cool video that Kenny put together and we’re going to show it.

In the Old West. When a cowboy rode for the brand, it meant they had signed on to the mission and goals of the ranch owner. It meant they were committed and were a dedicated team player. It meant that they promised to protect the brand as though it was their own. The theme for 2023 is not riding for the brand, but rather riding with the brand.

Because you, the members of the National Association of Realtors, are the brand. The brand is you. And the brand is us. We are the brand. It’s who we are. It’s bigger than any one person. And for years, great leaders like you have protected and safeguarded the brand. Thank you for writing with the brand and giving your very best. Our brand represents the best of people who truly love our community and the people who live in it. Buckle up. We’re riding with the brand in 2023.

So I don’t know where they did their retreat,

Okay, guys, we’re going to run over a little bit today, but we do have Dr. Blake Bennett here. And I just want to we we talked about how property transfers without a will.

Now we’re going to talk about with a will. And we’re going to be brief because I know we’re holding you over, but we do have him. So we definitely want to take advantage of of our time with you. So let us know some things. Just because you have a will doesn’t mean everything. Oh, well, okay. No problem. Right.

Absolutely. You know, it’s number one is probate. Everyone thinks, oh, with the will, I’m going to have to go through probate. And that is true. There’s thresholds for the value, I can say.

So what is pro can you just let’s simplify it like I have a will, but it has to go to probate. So what does.

That I believe that the threshold is the state is 75,000 or more and that’s where you go into court and all the debts are settled up and then it’s divvied up amongst the heirs per the wills instructions.

So yes, and there’s normally an executor to the wills.

Who and it could cost some money. It can. So, you know, that’s just that’s a pain.

It is a pain. But I can say that if the surviving spouse is on the deed, then it doesn’t have to go through probate. So that’s nice. That’s nice. You know, after it’s not held.

Up if the surviving spouse is on the will. So what is is on the deed. Is on the deed. Yes. What if there’s. Children. So you have a will. The children divide everything.

Well, it depends. It depends. I mean, if you don’t like one of your children, you can cut them out of the will, literally. Wow. That’s the nice thing is with the will you get to state? This is how I want my estate divided up. I will say that, you know. You’ve got to be careful whenever you draft a will.

I’ve been to enough meetings where I’ve heard lawyers speak about intergenerational transfer, transferring property from yourself to your children and grandchildren.

And let’s say that I left a house to my son, and my daughter gets the Mickey Mantle rookie card that I have stored. That’s in the way, really.

I don’t I know I don’t have that, but I think one of them just sold for $10 million. And so the wills read and my son gets the house and my daughter gets the Mickey Mantle card. Well, I sold them a mickey Mantle card three years ago to pay for hospital bills, let’s say.

So the Mickey Mantle card is gone. My son still gets the house. My daughter gets nothing. So that’s the importance of, like you mentioned earlier, updating that will and making sure this is how it’s going to be divided so that that’s one of the big, big.

That doesn’t really affect us in real estate, I guess, unless not really.

I mean, unless you’re looking at maybe someone’s going to contest that will because well the Mickey Mantle card doesn’t in the round anymore. I’m going to contest your ownership of the house and so they might be able to slow up the process.

A nice thing with a will is you get what’s called a step up in basis. So I buy the house in in 1985 and I live in it until I pass. And let’s say that that’s going to be in 2050. Well, the market’s kind of changed since then. What’s nice with the will, whenever it’s passed, is the value is placed on that house as cost basis on the day that you pass away.

And so your children, whenever they inherit that property, they can turn around and sell it the very next day and have no capital gains tax whatsoever. It’s because they they effectively inherited it market price and they’re selling it at that same.

Is there a time period? I thought it was two years.

Something like that, I believe. But that that’s very important. And I think that once a property and this goes beyond even the real estate get involved, but once once a death occurs and if property passes through the will, it’s very important to get our appraiser out and have them appraise that property so that you have a cost basis on the day of death.

Right. Okay. It makes sense. So as

And so then you’re going to have that estate without a will. It’s going to be separated into community property and separate property.

Okay. I’m going to pause you right there, because community property, I think it’s an assumption of a lot of people. Maybe you guys are different, but I think it’s an assumption. We hear this a lot in Texas. If we live in the home, if I live in the home with you, then it’s community property, 5050, right. Is that true?

No, no. And here’s here’s an example. Let’s say that you and your husband decided to move out of your beautiful home. And let’s say that your husband had inherited his parents home out on a lake, and you both moved into that house.

For the time being. And that’s where you decided just to set up shop for now on. That’s his separate property.

That’s his separate property without a will.

Without a will is separate. That’s his separate property. And so it’s it’s handled a little bit differently in in the state of Texas. If he were to proceed you in death, you would get one third of that separate property. But it would be for your life. You would have basically a life estate. And then it would pass to your children. So you would never truly own that property. You would have use of that real property. But you wouldn’t. It wouldn’t be yours.

So how would it get sold?

That’s going to be one that probably the children are going to have to get involved. If that house were to be sold after after the husband’s passing or the wife, whichever one had that separate property, you’re going to have to get those heirs involved and they’re going to have to agree to it.

So that’s on separate property.

Yes. So that’s that’s one situation. So let’s talk about the unfortunate that, you know, you and your spouse. I’m not going to say Mike and I, because this kind of freaks me out like this, that you and your spouse live in a home and one of you passes, right? You bought it together. You live in it together.

It’s community property. The spouse passes and you’re ready to sell.

There’s no will. 100% of that community property goes to the surviving spouse. Okay, so it’s yours, free and clear. But again, anyone could contest that. An heir could contest that along the way. So that’s why it’s so very important to get a will. It’s so very important to plan, right? Because if you’ve planned ahead of time, it takes a lot of the headaches off of the family.

So let’s go back to this question, not to put you on the spot, but okay, so this happens and I have 100% of this property.

Yes. So say there’s children like we have three boys. But what if there were three other boys somewhere else? How does that work? We have three boys together and three boys, not two.

That’s a blended family. So that’s a blended family. Selling without a will you say I have 100%, but is that right?

Right. And so, yes, if it’s community property, then yes, you would be able to keep that part. I’ve got some notes here, if you don’t mind, because we disclaimer here. I am not I am not a lawyer here. So I do I.

Should O.D. on here too, because she should have put this up up front that I am not a lawyer.

Neither am I and in a blended family, your children are going to get all of your half. So the the spouse that passes away in a blended family, their natural children will get half of that community estate.

Ok and then what about the other?

The other half gets the spouse gets the surviving spouse gets to keep their part. So I keep…. we’re not taking you and Mike right.

Now, are you? You, somebody else gets, the surviving spouse gets 50%. The other 50% is divided amongst the children.

Exactly right. The spouse that passed away and the children of the spouse that passed away would get their their half of the community estate.

It’s confusing already. Very, very confusing. So we don’t need to dissect this for clients. What we need to know is, is this to understand if this is a possibility. So if you go in and you have one single s

Fractional home ownership in real estate, specifically residential real estate that Shana and I are going to discuss this one real quick and see what’s kind of up here. So the concept of fractional home ownership is that you don’t reside in it yourself and you don’t like living it for so many days a year.

It’s not like a timeshare. Right. So it’s different than that because like a timeshare in that classic case would be 12 people would buy it and you get it for a month each or 52 people, and you get it for the same week each year, but not personally. A huge fan of that myself, but like whatever. Right?

So this is strictly an investment. This is an investment. So think of it as like a right, right. A real estate investment trust, but just for specific properties.

So you own everyone, you put a certain amount of money is no, you can’t use that. Well, you could like you could rent it and happen to be the same person that rents it.

It’s like the real estate stock. Stock market.

Yes, almost. So that’s pretty much what it would be. Yeah. It’d be like stock market for for real estate. But you’re buying an individual stock, which is an individual house or property, not like collectively a larger assortment of it.

And then somebody would be professionally managing it and then you would own a fraction of it.

So is this good for maybe if you have a first time homebuyer and they have some money saved, but with the current market, it’s difficult for them to purchase. All right. So they can go in and take their, say, $5,000 that they’ve saved for a home and have an interest in a property.

You know, I don’t see that it’s really any different than buying any other stock or any other investment.

Right. But what it’s doing is it’s allowing people to invest in something that might be appreciating or going up in value that’s backed by a physical asset. Stuff like this is probably going to further propel real estate prices on an upward trajectory because any time that so, say this takes off and even just 1% of all the homes are bought like this. Right. And people start turning to investing money in something like this.

Right. Instead of pick whatever other investment they could have. Now you have less supply, right? Because something else competing is purchasing it like a foreign investor or a business or one of these.

So with this can count as like the institutional yes. Buyer definitely would the corporations. And so somebody would buy it and then they’re taking.

Yeah, they’d be basically divvying up this and they’re going to.

Have like this and then they’re going to have some type of ownership of it and get paid to like manage.

So basically I’m going to go buy this house and I’m going to have these investors that control, you know, when you have like a what’s it called? We did it with an E o the company that controlled her basically.

Yeah. I’m not sure the exact word we’re looking for, but anyway, yeah, basically your investors are controlling what you’re doing.

Yes. So they’ll be their desire will be to raise rents and to push the push the market higher and to do it for a profit. Right. And they’ll want to get in and out. And I don’t know that there’s enough appreciation, right. In homes that you can pay all these different fees, so to speak like a CD.

Yeah. I mean, there’s going to be fees all over the place, right? Yeah.

And I know about that. So we shall find out. But maybe this works your money under the mattress and wait until you have enough to to buy it yourself.

Yes. I don’t think this is an entree or an entry point for you to get into home ownership by buying a fractional home ownership like it’s a stepping stone to buying a home. It would be no different, in my opinion, for any other investment that you would be making right now. From the real estate perspective, I think it’s taking properties off the market, so to speak, and it’s allowing for more rental properties in single family residences.

Which I think is a

Every day real estate accomplishments. So each morning you wake up. And each night you go to bed, hopefully in that order. Right. And throughout the day, you have different accomplishments that you get done. Sometimes you might write a contract. You may sign a listing agreement.

You might do one of those things. But other days, you might be working on things like building your brand and meeting somebody for lunch, inviting people to the party or whatever that happens to be for you, right? For that day.

But each day you kind of need a quality score of a certain amount of things that you add up. And you go through the day and you try to accomplish things and you may have small accomplishments, but they all add up. It’s cumulative. You get like this cumulative quality score for what you do for the day, and you need to do things every single day, right? But you just need to be thinking about short term, medium term, long term. I to bring in volume business how to bring in high price point business.

So think about what you need to accomplish today. Like as in right now on a Can’t Stop, Won’t Stop Wednesday, which is the perfect day to be thinking about something like this. Right. And some days it might be that you need to put in a little more effort. Some days things might just happen and you get to take the afternoon and lay in the pool and just enjoy yourself and whatever that is, because you already accomplished stuff in the morning. But don’t let the day set on itself without some type of accomplishments.

Sometimes you need to burn the midnight oil or wake up earlier to make those things happen. Right. So last night I send my last message and got it out and it was something that I had to work on. And I said to myself that like, I’m going to get this done by the end of the before, by the end of the day. And my definition at the end of the day might have been a little bit different than I was initially thinking. Right?

So I thought I would have it done. I don’t know, by two in the afternoon and then things happen. I thought I’d have it done by five and I thought I’d have it done before, after supper. And then I thought I would have it done before this. Right? And then I ended up pressing send on that and getting all my thoughts together and having it completed by 130 in the morning. But sometimes that is what it is and that’s what it comes down to. In real estate. You need to have accomplishments every day big, small and otherwise.

So what is your accomplishment today and how can you tie it back to what your dreams are to make those things happen? Big, small make them happen today on a Can’t Stop Won’t Stop Wednesday. See you soon.

Travis Cupp this man gives back to the industry. And I’m Mike Acquisto. I’m here to kind of talk about some of the stuff that you do as an educator as giving back to the industry within the real estate profession. Right. So you are a mortgage lender and you’ve done a great job there. And you know, one of the things that came up that when we were talking about this was that you’re you give back and you educate and have different classes. And to be able to do that, you have to have success within the industry first. Right.

We talk about these different things at different levels where when you first start within anything, you have to do enough to survive to like be able to like feed your family and eat and like exist. Then once you fulfill that, then you can move on to like more lofty goals, like giving back to others in need or specifically to the industry that helped you out. Right. So kind of talk about a little bit of that.

So, you know, and I kind of learned a run almost before I walked because I learned the stuff from a training perspective before I was even really involved in it. So I’d already kind of had it just jammed in my head. As far as the VA things, you know, I’ll teach classes, you know, sometimes I’ll try and do direct outreach straight to the veteran because every veteran ought to know that they can have multiple homes. They ought to know if they’re only buying one home with their VA home loan that they don’t have a purchase limit. As of 2020, the Navy Blue Water Act, most people don’t know that.

They think there’s a cap somewhere. You know, you can build some serious wealth in real estate. And that’s one of the things that makes you feel good about your stuff by the end of the day. So, you know, especially I was in Colorado when I started my career and there’s a lot of active duty people, right. The the difference in wealth between a renter and a homeowner is tremendous. Like the average renter has about $6,000 in assets. The average homeowner has over 300,000.

And when you look at a 24 or 26 year old getting out of the military, the difference of having a house with 100 grand in equity and you’ve got a lower payment might go up over time if you’re renting. The difference between those things is just it’s it’s incredible what you can do. There’s different financial strategies, take cash out and sit on it while you find your career.

It is really, really incredible. And I talk about that a little quite a bit. So let’s just put a pin in that right there and discuss just that one item for a moment. Right, that one single act of buying versus renting and the struggle that might be at the moment. But if you’re able to like just like put in that fortitude to do that, right. So recently, homes have went up in value dramatically.

They’ve appreciated. Right. And people have gained 100 and $200,000 in equity in their home, 250,000, whatever that number is. That’s happened recently for people. And I think about that, right? Like how much that really is because that’s the value in their home or the equity appreciation is akin to like a savings account, right? It’s their money. It’s just like a long term savings, like a safety deposit box for their savings that they kind of can’t access it all the time.

But if you think about that and you look at people’s normal savings rates, right, like I was just talking to one of my great friends and you know, he said he saves $1,000 a month. And so in saving $1,000 a month, how long would it take to get to 250,000 in savings?

Very well done or year.

Yeah, right. So thinking about this, that’s amazing. And how much money would that person made total over their whole 20 year time frame to save that amount of money? Right. Right. So this individual probably has to make two and a half million dollars, right? 300 or $3 million to get back to this over this length of time to be able to save that amount of money. Yeah. Right. So it’s unbelievable how much it really is because it’s li

In a changing market. How long is an approval good for? Well, it depends. So we’re going to answer that question out with Shana. She’s here to help us walk through this one.

And the issue is, right now, we have changing interest rates. Right. But there’s other times when we have job market changes where we have pricing changes, we have all these different items going on and we have an approval issued.

And if your client has not been able to find a home and it’s been a few weeks since approval and maybe they’re kind of at the top of their other price point. I mean, it’s 30 days really safe anymore. I think that before you pull the trigger, if you’re having to go significantly over, then you need to talk to the lender and find out, you know, does this impact them? Does this change their monthly payment dramatically?

Right. And it could. You always want to, on your third party financing addendum, put a cushion in there. So I think having that conversation with the lender to say, hey, you know, you’ve approved them at a 5% rate right now. What if it goes to seven? What does that look like for the client? And encourage your client, your buyer to have that conversation with their lender so they know so they’re not, you know, hit with a surprise.

Taxes are going to be more. All of these things they need to factor in, you know, not just not just your lender approval but yeah, that falls into it. Your taxes. You know, so.

I would wonder my question to you would be, you know, your best course of action of after your client falls over when you say something about a 7% interest rate and they’re laying on the floor. You know, would you ask the spouse to help lift the person back up or would you make sure that you lift with your legs, not your back when you pick them up with your legs?

So that’s that’s the suggestion there. So that’s going to shock people when you say something like that. Right. And I think that’s what’s right now, we’re in a shock because people are like, oh, I could have got a 4% now I’m at.

Yeah. And then you say another number like seven, right. And then suddenly they’re like, whoa. And then so let’s walk through the the math that goes with that. So now all of a sudden, you have an approval letter, you have a price point in your mind that you’re thinking about, and then you have the double whammy.

Right. So the whammy of like the price going to go to this. So if the price goes up because it’s an in-demand property and you’re bidding above and then you have the interest rate changes because right now they’ve just been huge swings in interest rates. Yeah. All right. So now we have that. Then all of a sudden the amount changes. And the reason that important is because people get approved based upon different ratios. And the one that would be affected, their likely is their income probably is not swinging in drastic amounts.

Right. So they would either have to put down more money to get to the same monthly payment because there’s a thing called the their ratios, they’ll have their front end and back end ratios and you need to make sure that both are kept in line. Just a friendly reminder, the front end ratio is going to be all of just the housing expense on a monthly basis. Only that. And then the back end ratio is everything else in addition to the housing.

So that would be the car loan or any other liability divided by on a monthly basis how much their income is. Yeah.

So, there you go. So, you know, it could it could change drastically. But if you think about it, maybe they’re not having to go up as high. Right. Because we’re seeing that maybe we’re not seeing the huge overages as we’ve been seeing from this vista to sales price. So maybe it helps them out a bit.

But, you know, I, I like to always think and remember that whatever you’re doing right now, if we’re seeing inflation, we’re seeing things go upward with inflation, whatever you’re purchasing is going to the same thing as is happening, right? So what

Best location in the world. Like I can’t even think about where to live in remotely work whole world so Chad in right now where you think it happens to be in the world.

Well, yeah, well, we have it up over here, but we’re not going to it yet because we’re going to allow people a minute just to chat in and say where they think it would be. Okay in the whole wide world.

Yes. So name some places.And then what you want to do is then think about what impact this has on real estate, because things consistently change and, you know, the Internet and travel and everything that’s going on, it makes it that a world is changing faster and faster and faster.

Right. We’re getting to this point where things are just like super fast and quick.

Right, fast and quick and things also aren’t so far away anymore.

Right. Right. So you can do a lot of different things. Right? So where would you live? Right. So the best things are, you know, I would assume some of the things on the list are going to be cost of living. Right? Probably ease to get to things. So to travel, probably accessibility to entertainment and culture and museums and parks and hike and bike trails and nature and all that type of stuff.

Yeah, right. I would assume they would roll all that into it. So you probably have to have a good airport is one of my first first guesses, right? Yeah. It’d be nice and centrally located, so. Yeah. All right. Well, drum roll. Yeah, let’s see.

Oh. The number one city is in the US.

All right, but it’s not New York or LA. So now we’ve narrowed it down to the United States. Now we need to think a little bit more, and I think it has to be centrally located with a great airport. I think that’s going to be one of the first steps. I think it has to have good weather. Okay. And let’s keep going. So all of that would lead you to believe that, right? Correct. Okay. All right. Let’s take a look.

I can’t wait.

All right. That’s foam cars. Cute. Does that look like Dallas? No, it does not. All right. Union Station, downtown Kansas City.

Come on. Know what? Is that true?

Yeah. They put this list together and figured it out.

Yeah. Kansas City. We have friends who live there. Young. The kids friends move there.

Yeah. So there you go. So Iceland Air put this together, and they had an analysis. I thought they were defunct. Maybe it’s just me. I thought they were out of business, but so it goes. Kansas City all. They have barbecue and a good jazz scene.

Wow. Yeah, I guess it’s centrally located.

I don’t look at Kansas City, Missouri, of having like an international airport, like an easy.

I don’t know. Well, just because I said that would have been part of my criteria doesn’t mean that they took that to be it. You’re a traveler. Well, they they looked at happiness index. So. Kansas City.

Austria. Hey, we’ve we drove through Austria.

Okay, let’s see what else we got. New Zealand, Denmark, the U.K., Canada.

Australia. Yeah, Germany. You know, we really like Germany.

We drew we flew through Frankfurt, Germany. I think I actually had my car impounded in Frankfurt, Germany, if I’m not mistaken.

Okay, one true story. One of our family vacation. True story. And no sleep. And Finland.

Okay, so of all the places in the world. Kansas City, Missouri. Come on. They’re just trying to. Somebody paid a lot of money to try to boost their economy there.

It might be the only place that Iceland might be. These might be the ten locations that Iceland air flies to directly, most frequently. So I’m not exactly sure how relevant that list is.

That’s funny. But no, it’s it’s got to be at least reasonable.

It’s right in the middle. Yeah. And so the reason to talk about these things and I’m actually super happy that we were not like name number one on the list because if we were, then there’d be even more people coming here and there’d be even more demand and more popularity. We have been a victim of our success here in this area is people then see it and unde

Alternative building materials for residential construction specifically. So we’ve had all these different spikes in different directions and there’s a shortage of this. There’s a shortage of that. I can’t get enough of this or oh my gosh, the price of and whatever.

And what happens is things need to continue moving along. Yeah, right. So we’ve had problems with lumber prices. All of a sudden we’re like, bam, way up here. And I would ask you today, because this is being recorded, what are lumber prices right now? So think about lumber prices.

And I would ask you real quick how our lumber prices are right now, that’s just one input. But if I’m asking you right now without looking it up, what do you think lumber prices are?

Look it up. No. So our lumber prices up or down? Right. Right now. Where do you think they are? So they got up like 1300 or 1600 for like just like a little bit, but they got up to like 12, 1300. And, you know, they had historically been around 405 hundred and 600. So the question would be, what do you think lumber prices are currently at?

Because that’s an input. And then there’s alternative methods of construction, because here locally, people normally do build their home with wood, right. As a framing material. But there’s other alternatives as prices go up. There’s metal studs, which they use in commercial, and those are a little bit more expensive. There’s concrete blocks that they use now. So that’s the thing. As prices change, all of these other materials become less.

We saw home, you know, I guess it was. Last year, a couple of years ago, started to be built with the concrete blocks. And I thought, what did you think about that? That’s a solid house. It really.

Is. It’s solid, secure. You insulate it. It’s not going anywhere.

And then there’s ice. There’s ice caps. And those. There’s like it’s pre construction where it’s put together prefab and then brought in and then that’s all done. So it’s kind of like made in a factory and then comes to you and you like, install it and put it together.

And like a commercial building, you’ll drive by and all of a sudden it’s like, wow.

That’s fast. Exactly. So that’s how they’re able to accomplish that. So these alternative building materials, as one thing goes up, the other becomes more attractive and sometimes it’s pricing, but sometimes we just fall into a habit and you’re like, Well, that’s not how we do it here in Dallas. We don’t do it that way. Right? And then all of a sudden you’re like, Well, why? And then you’re.

Just like, Well, everybody else does it that way. And that’s that’s the mentality, right? Yes. Because it’s always been done that way. And that doesn’t make it right. It’s worth the the due diligence to find out what are the pros and cons of this? Who’s done it around here? If it works for a commercial building, why wouldn’t it work for a residential home? These commercial buildings are, you know, a lot of times.

I don’t know. So maybe you’re going to start going with tilt wall construction for your house you’re just going to bring in and, like, oh, and stand it up and then have all open space in the middle.

Tilt wall construction for one storeys. I don’t know. It could work totally fine. Yeah. All right. Well, anyways, there’s alternatives. And what is one? And there’s different ways. So I would say open your mind and think about these different methods as you run across them. Pass along to us.

Yeah. If you hear of any builder using alternative products, that would be interesting.