[00:00:00] Intro: It's around the

[00:00:05] Eric Goranson: house We have a very special show that we've been talking about doing for about four years and we finally did it I sat down with my friends at the homeowner show a texas based youtube channel and podcast That talks about the many things that homeowners are interested in not only home improvement many things that affect your lives This is so much fun We're going to do something completely different that we've ever done in the show and this is going to extend into our number two This is an amazing fun An informative round table discussion.

[00:00:36] Intro: We have a great time diving into some subjects and glazing off of others.

[00:00:41] Eric Goranson: Now

[00:00:41] Intro: let's get

[00:00:41] Eric Goranson: started

[00:00:42] Intro: with my friend, Craig Williams and Kevin Hackett. When it comes to remodeling and renovating your home, there is a lot to know, but we've got you covered. This is around the

[00:00:52] Eric Goranson: house. Well now shows brought to you by pyramid heating and cooling serving in Oregon, the Portland metro area and Bend, Oregon.

[00:00:59] Eric Goranson: And [00:01:00] they're your one stop shop for heating and cooling and indoor air quality. To find out more, head to pyramidheating. com. Oregon CCB 59382. Welcome to the Round the House show, the next generation of home improvement. Thanks for joining me today. Hey, we are sponsored by Monument Grills. If you want to find out more about the next barbecue you should be looking for, and they're under 900 bucks, take a look at monumentgrills.

[00:01:25] Eric Goranson: com. This episode has been something we've been talking about for probably four years. And I have my good friends from the homeowner show, Craig Williams, Kevin, Mr. Hackett. Welcome to Around the House, my friends. Hey, good to be on. This is so fun, guys. We've always talked about doing something like this.

[00:01:47] Eric Goranson: I've been on your show, but we haven't really gone the other direction with this. And always fun to sit here and chat with you guys because it's always a good time.

[00:01:54] Craig and Kevin: We finally sent you enough Bitcoin to get on. Oh, I know. Thank you so

[00:01:59] Eric Goranson: [00:02:00] much. I love the new Aston Martin. That convertible is so beautiful. I got to thank you guys.

[00:02:05] Eric Goranson: And man, you guys have been killing it out there. Our pleasure. It's that Texas money. There we go. Wow. Yeah, that's why it was a performance car, not electric. So I guess, wait a minute, I guess Elon's back down in Texas. So I can't say that anymore.

[00:02:19] Craig and Kevin: That's true. He's. He's showing up in pretty big ways. I've heard his, his campus is pretty massive.

[00:02:25] Craig and Kevin: Yeah,

[00:02:26] Eric Goranson: absolutely. Let's talk about you guys first for my audience today. I haven't learned about the homeowner show and You guys do an amazing weekly home improvement podcast that gets all over the board. That is very enjoyable to me.

[00:02:40] Craig and Kevin: Awesome. Thanks. Yeah. We, we started this a little over right about six years ago.

[00:02:44] Craig and Kevin: And our, our whole goal with, with this podcast is not necessarily any type of DIY. It's more of a, Hey, if you own a home, there's, there's no one that really tells you. How to own a home better. And nobody really talks to [00:03:00] contractors and says, Hey, tell me about what you do and why you do it and how do I not get scammed by someone that I don't know anything about or, or anything like that.

[00:03:08] Craig and Kevin: And so we just, we thought, you know what, we'll get some contractors on our, on our podcast. We'll talk to them. We'll find out more about what they're doing and we don't know anything. Craig and I are pretty dumb whenever it comes to this, but we talked to a lot of really smart people, so that's how that goes.

[00:03:21] Craig and Kevin: Yeah, no, it's, it's, it's, it's. The goal from the beginning was to just help people find the stories in, in these contractors businesses, because that's, that's the way that you connect with the people who are working on your home. That's how you find the kind of quality people that you want actually taking care of your stuff.

[00:03:37] Craig and Kevin: And then the other side is, we want them to honestly talk about could the homeowner potentially do some of these things themselves. Or is it something, something they should stay away from? And a lot of times it is, it's, it's something they should absolutely stay away from either because of codes, because of safety or other reasons that they need a license to do some of these things properly.

[00:03:54] Eric Goranson: Yeah. And I like that you guys come from a Texas perspective, right? That's your, that's your. Backyard [00:04:00] there. And it's always fun to see what's going down on your neck of the woods. Yeah, we, we definitely, uh, get on

[00:04:05] Craig and Kevin: a lot of local contractors. So, and, and we've talked to, there's a couple of niches we haven't hit, but we've hit, we keep finding that we keep finding new ones, stuff that we'd never heard of, but anyway, yeah, we, we are continually looking for new people.

[00:04:19] Craig and Kevin: We do, we also do like product reviews and. And we talk a lot about real estate and it's 1 of those things where we are, we're always fascinated by the way the market rises and falls and what affects those types of things. And we're, we're not any gurus whenever it comes to that, but we do our, we do read and we do our research and we try to help people understand, like, where, where's the market fall and how does it affect.

[00:04:42] Craig and Kevin: Your home that you currently own, or if you're looking to buy and what does that look like?

[00:04:47] Eric Goranson: Especially with the, with the national association of realtors, changing all the rules, all of a sudden that lawsuit just went, all right, control, I'll delete reset. There's a new game.

[00:04:59] Craig and Kevin: Yeah, it was a [00:05:00] national hissy fit is what it was, but at the end of the day, it was just, it was really what it was is, okay, now you have to sign a contract before you can go look at a listing with a, with a real estate agent or realtor.

[00:05:11] Craig and Kevin: And that's really what it came down to. Yeah, but the difference that it made in the way. Real estate is sold is dramatic. It really is dramatic. And you can't, you can't, you can no longer just call up a realtor and be like, Hey, can you show me this house? I'm really interested. And because there's, there's paperwork that has to be done.

[00:05:30] Craig and Kevin: Right. Yeah.

[00:05:31] Eric Goranson: And then there's the negotiation side of it too. Right. Where, Hey, wait a minute. I'm going to have to pay you.

[00:05:36] Craig and Kevin: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The actual money is going to have to exchange hands rather than just like the, the, the, the ball shuffle that's been happening for years. Which, which I think is a good thing.

[00:05:45] Craig and Kevin: I think, I think everyone needs to have skin in the game.

[00:05:47] Eric Goranson: And that's the other problem that I see with this as well is that in the past it was like, okay, the seller is paying for everything and the new buyer doesn't really get to see what those costs are. It's just been [00:06:00] all, like you said, the ball shuffles.

[00:06:01] Craig and Kevin: Yeah, and that's really all it is. Like, you're just paying, paying more for the house that you're purchasing in the long run, rather than sharing the costs on the front end with, with the buyer. But I'll tell you, I think, I think a lot of this moaning and groaning about this is about to go away just at the time of the recording.

[00:06:19] Craig and Kevin: I think yesterday. Jerome Powell announced that we're guaranteed a quarter point drop in interest rates. And there's, there's a lot of people who are putting pressure on him to make it a half point. Yeah, no question. Before the election happens, which big surprise there.

[00:06:33] Eric Goranson: Now, wait a minute. You mean the government might be involved in our monetary policy?

[00:06:38] Eric Goranson: What are you talking about?

[00:06:39] Craig and Kevin: They're going to tell us they're

[00:06:40] Eric Goranson: not. No, I know.

[00:06:42] Craig and Kevin: And, and that they want to manipulate you with your money. Someone's being manipulated out there with politics. Really?

[00:06:50] Eric Goranson: Who would have thought? Not in Texas,

[00:06:51] Craig and Kevin: by golly. Maybe, maybe out in Oregon.

[00:06:54] Eric Goranson: Oh, geez. I don't know. Go, go Mariners. So, I got to say that with your [00:07:00] Texas Rangers stuff over there.

[00:07:01] Eric Goranson: I wore all my gear just for you today. Thanks for you. I know you did. So, let me look backwards and see where we're at in the standings.

[00:07:09] Craig and Kevin: Oh, man, you got to, you got to turn around, don't you? Yeah, I do. I'm, I'm, I'm afraid we're going to end in the same spot, buddy. I know.

[00:07:17] Eric Goranson: Hey, it's the Mariners. As much as being a former Seattle native, that was my team.

[00:07:23] Eric Goranson: And guess what? We always end up in the same spot. Yeah. It's like the Dallas Cowboys and making it to the Super Bowl in the last 30 years. Wow. You're really, you're really

[00:07:34] Craig and Kevin: pushing all these buttons. I love it. I love it. Just reminding that Texas Tech almost lost to a D1 school if they get the trifecta. Oh man.

[00:07:44] Craig and Kevin: Oh, here we go. I can take it. Yeah. Craig's still trying to grow a mustache. It's fine. Oh, that's awesome, man.

[00:07:53] Eric Goranson: That's awesome. I love it. But yeah, we got to talk a little sports smack. That's for sure. So of course, absolutely.

[00:07:59] Craig and Kevin: Of

[00:07:59] Eric Goranson: [00:08:00] course. Hey,

[00:08:01] Craig and Kevin: he doesn't come back at me. Cause I don't care. Yeah, there we go.

[00:08:05] Eric Goranson: I'm just happy.

[00:08:05] Eric Goranson: My Seahawks are two at us and we, we become two in 10. Then I go, Hey, we had a good start. So, Hey, it's normal. This is normal for the Seahawks. They, they jump out pretty good. Yes. And now, so we've got a new coach. So that's that whole thing. And you're like, okay, who's this cat? He came from where? So, well,

[00:08:22] Craig and Kevin: but Pete Carroll came from, he was in college forever, but then he jumped up.

[00:08:27] Craig and Kevin: And so he did, he did all right for you guys.

[00:08:30] Eric Goranson: He did. He was a legend. And we've, we've been a little versatile the last few games. So we'll see what happens. I don't want to date the show too much, but it's one of those things that I'm like, Hey. If we can keep some kind of a winning record, I'll be happy this season.

[00:08:43] Eric Goranson: The new coach thing is never super hot for any team out there.

[00:08:48] Craig and Kevin: Sure.

[00:08:49] Eric Goranson: I wanted to talk to you guys. You guys touch on so many different things out there. We're just talking real estate and that's, that's, that's a big one right there. And I think one thing that I wanted to go back to [00:09:00] on that, that we didn't touch is I think what we're going to see is in that entry level market, like the people in those.

[00:09:06] Eric Goranson: Entry level first time home buying things. I think we're going to start to see a little negotiation on the buying side with the agent going, I don't want to pay you three, three and a half percent. I want to pay you two. Cause I found somebody that's doing first time home buyer stuff and they're only doing 2%.

[00:09:21] Craig and Kevin: Yeah, I think they're going to have to. Because the problem with first time homebuyers is they don't have any equity. They don't have, unless they've really done a really good job of saving their money and putting it away to be able to put it down payment, they're in, they're in a pickle.

[00:09:35] Intro: Roses are red.

[00:09:37] Intro: Violets are blue around the house with Eric G coming back to you right after the break. You thought it was going to rhyme, didn't you? We'll be right back.

[00:09:56] Intro: So many people with [00:10:00] the

[00:10:09] Eric Goranson: next generation of home improvement. If you want to find out more about us, head over to around the house online. com and make sure you YouTube where we show a lot of these things on video now. So let's get back to my friends, Kevin Hackett and Craig Williams from the homeowner show and talk everything about your home.

[00:10:26] Eric Goranson: Unless

[00:10:26] Craig and Kevin: they've really done a really good job of Saving their money and putting it away to be able to put it down payment. They're they're in a pickle because the thing is the buyer used to pay all of the, all of all of the commissions. And so now they're having to not only come up with a down payment for a home.

[00:10:45] Craig and Kevin: Now, they're also having to come up with half of the commissions as well. Which depending on the house, even for a starter home, that could equal a couple thousand dollars. And so it just continues to balloon for them. There's going to have to be some [00:11:00] negotiation. And I think that's going to be the thing that.

[00:11:03] Craig and Kevin: In my opinion, is going to make it harder and harder for 1st time home buyers to get into a home because what's going to happen is, I think. You, you put a first time home buyer up against someone who already owned a home and trying to negotiate that. I think the buyer's going to wind up going with the person that has, even if it's a little less money and mind up, wind up, wind up making them more money in the end, because they may not have to pony up like you're talking about.

[00:11:28] Craig and Kevin: So it's a, it's a game that's going to have to be played and it's going to change everything. I think.

[00:11:32] Eric Goranson: And then this, I don't want to get too much into politics because we try to stay away from it, but let's talk about the honesty here. If they give a 25, 000 grant to a first time homebuyer, somebody comes in with a first homebuyer offer, and they go, wow, that house was 400, 000, are you a first time homebuyer?

[00:11:51] Eric Goranson: 425, 000. 425, 000. I don't think that's going to move the ball around.

[00:11:55] Craig and Kevin: Yeah. It's not going to change anything. I think it, I think it. Just pushes the ball down the [00:12:00] road. And it's one of those incentives. I remember being a first time home buyer. The first time I bought a home, it was, it was a great deal. You know, it wound up, there were, there were a lot of incentives and here's that going back, you mentioned that we don't, we don't really talk a lot about politics on our show either, but the thing is, that's not true.

[00:12:16] Craig and Kevin: We talk about a politics. We try not to make a, we try not to take a, uh, aside too. Yeah, there we go. But I call crazy crazy

[00:12:25] Eric Goranson: when I see it though. So that's the other thing. That's it.

[00:12:28] Craig and Kevin: And, but here's the thing. Neither one of the candidates right now are talking at all about, about first time home buyers.

[00:12:35] Craig and Kevin: That's, that's, that's, I think that's the point Eric's making though, is I actually think Kamala made a really smart decision. Play at the debate. Yeah, because she laid out that was that was one of the only things that she laid out in the debate. There was no other plan besides that one. So yeah, and it was and look, we talked about it on our show is the number one issue amongst Gen Z voters.

[00:12:55] Craig and Kevin: Is first time home buyership and no one but RFK was talking about it at the time. [00:13:00] Yep. And she comes in and says, look, we're going to, one of her promises is I'm going to give 25, 000 grant to first time home buyers. If you're putting 5 percent down on a new home, that means that you can purchase a half a million dollar home.

[00:13:12] Craig and Kevin: Right. With that down payment. But here's the problem though, is

[00:13:15] Eric Goranson: that all that tends to do though, is it just pushes the market up? Because if you put that many people out there, it seems that the, it, since it's a market based thing, you throw more money into the market. It just makes the home prices, unless you have more inventory.

[00:13:28] Eric Goranson: Now you're putting people in and it just pushes the price up. That's the free market

[00:13:33] Craig and Kevin: problem with this. That's the huge problem is we have a lack of inventory and it's not there. Yeah. And the part of, part of it is, is when we, I think we talked about this a couple of years ago, Eric, the, the, the cost of goods is still just so high.

[00:13:44] Craig and Kevin: Guys don't

[00:13:44] Eric Goranson: want to build. That's the biggest problem. That's one of it right now. If you look at, I think I saw a figure today that 1. 1 ish million homes are for sale in the United States right now, across the country. That's.

[00:13:55] Craig and Kevin: That's that's not good. No, that's a really, really low number. It is.

[00:13:59] Eric Goranson: It is. [00:14:00] But with seven, eight, 9 percent interest rates or whatever you got out there, that's what happens is because there's just no demand either for it.

[00:14:08] Eric Goranson: People are going, wow, I can't afford to buy that next house because I got a two and a half or 3 percent interest rate right now. And if I want to go upgrade and add another bedroom to the house, they go, wow, that's way too much money to add that. I'm just going to wait until interest rates go back down again.

[00:14:24] Craig and Kevin: Yeah, and the people that are having to move because of work are, are, are not selling their homes. No, like this, this is a consistent thing that we're seeing across the market is that people are hanging on their homes. If they're forced to move out of town, they're turning them into rentals and then just sucking it up and paying the 7 percent that they're having when they move down to Miami or whatever it is.

[00:14:43] Craig and Kevin: But the, the point that Jerome Powell knocked down the other day was like, we're. We're getting into like really low six territory, which I think can make people feel really good. And if it goes half the point, we're going to dip. If you have good credit, it's going to dip down in the fives. Once that happens, [00:15:00] I think that, yeah, you're right.

[00:15:01] Craig and Kevin: I think game on. I think once it hits anything in the fives, I think we're going to see a buying frenzy all of a sudden. People are waiting for that number. The only, the only hesitation that he said the other day, did you guys see that they got caught rigging the job market numbers? Oh, like by what? A lot.

[00:15:19] Craig and Kevin: Oh, a lot. And, and so Jerome Powell came out and said, look, I'm not very comfortable with, with With the job market numbers after we have the revised actual numbers that came back plus or minus a million. It's okay. Yeah, right. And so he and that and so you could take that a couple different ways, right? It could be like, okay, the numbers aren't looking so good.

[00:15:38] Craig and Kevin: So I'm not going to be as inclined to drop the interest rates or hey, these job numbers don't look so good. The economy really needs some help. The best thing I could do is potentially drop the interest rates more. Okay. So I don't know which way he's going to go on that, but that's, that's what we're looking at.

[00:15:54] Craig and Kevin: And he's, and he made that statement. So it's, we don't know what he means when he says these. Get

[00:15:59] Eric Goranson: off the [00:16:00] tea leaves and try to decipher what he's got going there. But you know, something, here's one thing I want to talk about, and this is something I talked about on my, on the podcast, on my weekday special the other day, but we have a huge problem in many cities across the U S.

[00:16:14] Eric Goranson: Have you guys paid attention to what the development fees are for some of these houses that if you wanted to build on a, on a lot in a city, what they're charging for permits these days? No. Great example, city of Portland right here. If I wanted to build a 2, 400 square foot house on a lot that previously had a house on it, that was maybe burned down, torn down.

[00:16:37] Eric Goranson: Maybe there was a right and a burn down. We'll just say whatever it was. Okay. You can have 40, 50, 60, 000 of permit fees just to get building permit. And that's in a lot of major cities out there.

[00:16:54] Craig and Kevin: That's what I was going to ask is, are we seeing this across cities? Are we, is this being targeted in like specific areas?

[00:16:59] Eric Goranson: Great example, like [00:17:00] in

[00:17:00] Craig and Kevin: the city of Portland here,

[00:17:01] Eric Goranson: outside of where I live, here's the crazy thing. They have a parks and rec fee that I think if you're over 2, 400 square feet or 2, 200 square feet. It's 15, 700. Then there's a transportation fee. That's like another seven. There's all these different fees that they put on there.

[00:17:22] Eric Goranson: I look at it and say, Hey, if you want to get affordable housing out there, why don't you limit those permit fees to 5, 000 bucks and get people going? Cause all of a sudden, if you could take 000 off the price of a house, just in administration fees, that's better than 25, 000 grant.

[00:17:42] Craig and Kevin: Yeah, and depending on and depending on where you're at, I live in an incorporated area of our of our city, which basically means I still have to do certain things, but they can't make me do other things, but I had to get permits.

[00:17:56] Craig and Kevin: I default permits for everything in order to build a [00:18:00] house. But then there were no inspections on the back and they just wanted, they just wanted the money for the permitting zero inspections required. And so that's right. You guys are

[00:18:10] Eric Goranson: not the state. You guys don't have the state run building permit and inspections that a lot of states have,

[00:18:16] Craig and Kevin: right?

[00:18:17] Craig and Kevin: We're literally the wild west. Yeah, it's, it's, it really is more of a county by county type of thing. The way they're going to run it. Or city by city or city by city because it's it the thing is like that this the city has incorporated the area that i'm in They don't care. They really don't care whether or not it's up to code They just care if they get their money on the permitting side Around the

[00:18:39] Intro: house.

[00:18:39] Intro: We'll be right back with our friends from the homeowner's show. You don't want to miss this We'll see you on the other side of this commercial break I'll show[00:19:00]

[00:19:07] Eric Goranson: the next generation of home improvement. Thanks for dreaming today If you want to get a hold of me here at the show Head over to AroundTheHouseOnline. com and make sure you're following us on social media and our new YouTube channel where we'll see a lot of these things up on video in the future. Now let's get back

[00:19:23] Craig and Kevin: to the homeowner show.

[00:19:25] Craig and Kevin: Here's the other one that'll mess with your noodle, Eric, is there's no zoning in Houston.

[00:19:29] Eric Goranson: They just changed our laws here in Oregon to eliminate zoning. So now, now there's this huge battle cause it was this whole thing. And so now you're going to see that same thing where literally you could put a high rise in the middle of a residential neighborhood.

[00:19:43] Craig and Kevin: Oh my goodness. Yep. Yep. That's, that's exactly what it is in Houston. And so you have. Like here, you have historic communities like the Heights, which I mean, if you're from Houston, the Heights area, it's, it's pretty famous. There's, it's a historic residential area of downtown Houston and what you'll have are like [00:20:00] these homes that are like close to 100 years old and they will literally raise them to the ground and put a three story modern junk right here

[00:20:09] Eric Goranson: even harder now.

[00:20:10] Eric Goranson: And let's, let's stack on top of this. If I think it's 1940 or 41 is the kind of demarcation line of the house. If you are trying to tear down a house that is built before 40 or 41, I think it is. You have to hand it disses and recycle the products. You can't go in there with an excavator. You got to send guys in there with hammers and crowbars to tear it apart.

[00:20:35] Craig and Kevin: Oh, man. Is it concerned about asbestos? No, asbestos, that has

[00:20:40] Eric Goranson: to all be abated. Lead paint abated beforehand. So you're tearing a house down. They got to go in and remove all the asbestos. They got to go in and remove all the lead paint and then tear that thing apart. And so much of that house. Doesn't have value because as much as those old 1920s two by fours are cool that are dimensional lumber, [00:21:00] nobody's building with those.

[00:21:01] Eric Goranson: So it just goes in a pile and it never gets reused again. And again, there's another 10 or 15 grand on top of the price of the house. And then our, one of our biggest problems here, and I don't know if you guys have this down there, but we have this urban growth boundary. Do you guys have that there? Never even heard of that.

[00:21:19] Eric Goranson: Okay. So what they do is there's this whole municipality that's tied in with the state and they go, okay, your Metro area, we don't want urban sprawl. So we're going to have this urban growth boundary and you can't build outside of that. So if you have a street out in the country that has farmland on both sides, and that street is the middle of the urban growth boundary.

[00:21:42] Eric Goranson: You can put as many developments on if you own both sides of the street One side of the one side of the street you can put nice beautiful development in there with homes or everything else The other side you can't build them. Oh my goodness So what does that do it pushes the land prices up [00:22:00] because there's a limit apply so now that's what was a 100 000 lot is a 200 000 or 300 000 lot just for a buildable piece of land because You Of the urban growth boundary,

[00:22:13] Craig and Kevin: yeah, I guarantee that would never fly here.

[00:22:16] Craig and Kevin: No, I can't. Oh, we have 3 loops around Houston at this point. There's nothing stopping it from expanding. But not only that, Houston has no control of some of the larger areas. If they've tried that, Kingwood is a great example of that, where they stepped outside their bounds. And tried to control something really just trying to affect the political system in Houston And they want to control the water.

[00:22:40] Craig and Kevin: They had a massive reservoir there and they didn't want anybody cutting off their supply

[00:22:44] Eric Goranson: Oh, yeah, we have we have another thing out here in the west coast like in our area here. That's crazy it's what they call metro and it is the trash it is the Zoo, it is the our public transit and [00:23:00] They run all these different Things and they're a non elected pseudo government agency that just goes out and spends money.

[00:23:09] Eric Goranson: And again, you pay your taxes on the best. It's the best. And I was just watching on somebody's social media page where they had worked for them as a mechanic. This awesome chick had been working as a mechanic in the bus shop. I think it was. And she had to quit because she was so ill at the waist that they would take stuff that was perfectly good.

[00:23:26] Eric Goranson: God, we'll throw it away. Let's give us new ones. And it was just massive amounts of waste. I'm like, Oh, come on,

[00:23:33] Craig and Kevin: but we have a similar situation with Metro here, except Metro is just the public transportation system.

[00:23:38] Intro: Yeah.

[00:23:38] Craig and Kevin: And which is pretty much non existent.

[00:23:40] Intro: No,

[00:23:40] Craig and Kevin: it's basically buses. And then the light rail that nobody rides, except for rodeo season, right?

[00:23:46] Craig and Kevin: It's a, it's a light rail train that goes from the, what is the stadium called now? NRG. NRG to somewhere. Yeah, that's the thing. Like here, here in Texas, that's the case in every major city. Yeah, there is no, and it's not just [00:24:00] Texas. There's tons of States that are like this, where there is no really good public transportation.

[00:24:05] Craig and Kevin: Well, not when, not when you compare it to like Chicago and New York. And we have, we have

[00:24:10] Eric Goranson: a massive rail line that goes light rail line that goes all the way across the city and goes. North, south, huge east, west. It goes all across the metro, but the problem is, is it's so dangerous to ride

[00:24:24] Craig and Kevin: that, that what do you mean dangerous?

[00:24:26] Craig and Kevin: There's like, people will rob you or like, Oh, you could lose your life tracks. Yeah.

[00:24:30] Eric Goranson: They literally could lose your life inside of it by. Some hoodlum and it's really not been good for the communities that are adding the rail. So the new communities, people are, Hey, we're going to add rail down to your place or over to your place.

[00:24:44] Eric Goranson: And they're like, I don't want that troublesome, getting a free ride over to my place. And so they've, that's really put a thing on that, but they removed all the police from it for a few years here in Portland. And it was just a, it was like a third world country on there. You take your life in your own hands.

[00:24:58] Eric Goranson: Every time you go on there, I just, [00:25:00] It used to be great to go downtown and I'd park in a parking ride and cruise down at that and now it's, I'm out. Yeah. And that, that just

[00:25:07] Craig and Kevin: winds up bolstering these other companies, Uber and Lyft and things like that. Cause you still don't want to go down there and park.

[00:25:12] Craig and Kevin: It's a whole lot easier just to let somebody else take you. Right? Absolutely. Absolutely. That's what they did. That's what they did at the rodeo is they made it. They made it illegal to park there to force people to get on their stupid trip. Yep. Yep. They absolutely did.

[00:25:25] Eric Goranson: Crazy. It's wild. It's wild. But I think that's what it's going to take.

[00:25:29] Eric Goranson: And here's another thing that's interesting. I think that manufactured or factory built housing to me is going to be one of those big things that is going to take over the world here as far as affordable housing, because a lot of these factory built house houses are built in, they're built inside and they're just built to a higher quality standard.

[00:25:48] Eric Goranson: And some of these spec builders out there are getting away with murder on some of the quality of these homes. They're just, oh, yeah. Disgusting. Yeah, yeah, they're,

[00:25:57] Craig and Kevin: they're, they're throwing them up, [00:26:00] literally throwing them up. And you have to be very careful whenever you are determining you're determined to buy a new home from a spec builder.

[00:26:07] Craig and Kevin: You have to be on top of it because the problem is. On top of the fact that they're throwing it up so, so fast, they may do something so quickly that you can't even go in and find out whether or not they did it correctly. Yeah. And most people don't even know what correctly looks like. So being able to walk into a, a home that's been studded out and figure out whether the studs are the right space apart, whether the headers are done correctly, whether , broken trusses, right.

[00:26:33] Craig and Kevin: All that stuff. Yeah, exactly. All of that winds up being one of those things that you, you and, and again. Let's say you even did know about it. There's sheet rock the next day. And so it's, you don't have a clue because it's just, it's unbelievable what they're doing. Yeah. You like, one of the things I talk to people when they say they want to build a home, I said, look, once you have identified your contractor.

[00:26:55] Craig and Kevin: If you want to build a home, go ahead and invest in a third party inspector, a hundred percent, a [00:27:00] hundred percent, a multi time, several inspections along the way, and let the inspector set the standard for when the inspection happens. So, so that they can come in and, and be your third party advocate to make sure that things are done right.

[00:27:13] Craig and Kevin: Exactly what Kevin's talking about, because once sheet rock and stuff goes up, there's stuff behind the walls. You can't see anything and you'll never know. And I had one, and I think I've told this story on our show before, but I had one. And it was, uh, this. Beautiful young couple. They built a beautiful home.

[00:27:26] Craig and Kevin: And they were having some issues inside and wanted me to go take a look at the attic and I went in the attic and there was a vented pipe that wasn't terminated and didn't go through the roof. And it was just exposed to the attic. Oh, no. And I followed it back and it was the exhaust for the gas stove.

[00:27:40] Eric Goranson: Oh, let's just load the carbon monoxide back into the house with all the greasy air. Yeah.

[00:27:46] Craig and Kevin: And I was like, I immediately got on the phone with an inspector that I trust and I'm like, Hey, like, I'm looking at this and I'm sending, I'm sending her pictures and I'm like, what is this? And she's like, that is a contractor that had a roofer come out before the plumber had a [00:28:00] chance to put his pipe jack on the roof and they decided not, it was worth their while not to cut a hole in the roof because then they're going to have to have hire the roofer to come back out.

[00:28:10] Craig and Kevin: And seal it and do all this kind of stuff. And so they just left it. And I said, so they didn't have this house inspected. And they said, she was like, no, there's no way an inspector missed that. No. And she's a good thing. You caught it because you probably saved their life. Oh, geez. House a week.

[00:28:26] Eric Goranson: Oh, oh, here's one that I heard from.

[00:28:28] Eric Goranson: It does not

[00:28:29] Craig and Kevin: take long.

[00:28:29] Eric Goranson: Yeah. Here's one that I heard going on and it was a, well, okay, listen to this one. And this isn't even a new home construction story, Joan. Change that, Tom. We'll be back with our friends from the Homeowners show just after these important messages.[00:29:00]

[00:29:12] Eric Goranson: Welcome back to the around the house show. The next generation of home improvement. We've been sitting down here with my friends from the homeowner show. We've got Kevin and Craig and we're having a great time. Now let's get back to that program. Their well was getting low. So they called up a few well companies and they said, Hey, let's go ahead and frack the well and put it under pressure.

[00:29:32] Eric Goranson: And do that. And so they put it under pressure, like what they do with fracking, basically pressurized and see if they could shake it up a little bit for more water to come in. But the problem is, is like anytime that you're fracking anything, like when an oil company goes into frack oil, you're now pulling whatever's in the ground back up even more.

[00:29:52] Eric Goranson: So all of a sudden you can be pushing a hundred times the radon up through the well.

[00:29:59] Craig and Kevin: Oh, [00:30:00] did it just explode?

[00:30:01] Eric Goranson: No, it didn't explode. But here's what happened is they did it, but there were, there were, if they were going to use a water softener and use the whole treatment stuff, but there was so much radio radiation coming up through it, then it was going to make their water softener with the, or their water treatment stuff that has the beads and stuff in it that was going to have to be treated as radioactive waste.

[00:30:22] Eric Goranson: Wow. Where was the radiation coming from? The ground. Just from the ground? Yeah. Just from the ground? Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah, think of radiation. That can be radon. That could be natural uranium. It could be any one of the different elements that are down in the soil. So you gotta be careful with whatever you're doing.

[00:30:40] Craig and Kevin: Poked the wrong bear on that one. That's the problem whenever you have. People that don't have a clue what they're doing and a contractor that will do whatever they want to Make money. Yeah, when it's when especially when there's no again, this is there's a catch 22 but behind all the all the Licensing [00:31:00] part of it is hey people that are highly capable can go out and fix something and it's not the end of the world But then on the back end if they do it wrong, then there's they're not held responsible You are and it's just a It's a big, it's a big mess either way.

[00:31:16] Craig and Kevin: It's a catch 22 and it winds up creating a ton of problems.

[00:31:20] Eric Goranson: I like how the state of Oregon regulates that. And I don't, that's probably the only time you're going to hear that ever come out of my mouth. So we're talking unicorns here, but I got to give them credit where credit is due. Their contractor board here, which is the, the CCB is what they call it.

[00:31:36] Eric Goranson: These guys, the construction contractor board, every contractor has to be licensed. If you're a handyman, you have to be licensed. License bonded, insured, and they have agents out in the field following people around and they'll pull up, they'll scope out a lumber yard and see somebody that doesn't look like a licensed contractor and follow them and see if they're going back to a house that's under remodel.

[00:31:59] Eric Goranson: And [00:32:00] they're nailing dozens of unlicensed contractors. Every single month and they send out a list. If you sign up for it, they'll send you the list with the fines. And it's like 5, 000 bucks. If you get nailed the first time, jeez. And they hit them hard. It's, it's also

[00:32:15] Craig and Kevin: kept a lot of

[00:32:16] Eric Goranson: people from

[00:32:17] Craig and Kevin: getting ripped off.

[00:32:17] Craig and Kevin: But the problem I've run into with this, with this kind of stuff is what, what ends up happening like in our industry, my industry, which is pest control is we're licensed, right? We, and we, not only are we licensed, we have to have categories of licenses to do different kinds of work. And, but my, my, my biggest problem is not the unlicensed pest control company.

[00:32:38] Craig and Kevin: My biggest issue is the unlicensed landscaping company. Offers offers like the shadow services. Of what I offer,

[00:32:47] Eric Goranson: they're going down to Home Depot, grabbing something off the shelf and going around and saying, they've got a solution for you. And they honestly, they can buy the same

[00:32:53] Craig and Kevin: stuff. I can. That's true.

[00:32:54] Craig and Kevin: They're just going to the same stores. They can't because the landscape supply stores sell pesticides [00:33:00] and most of the time, those guys aren't checking licenses. I know they're not checking. They've never checked. And so, but, like, the governing board over me, which is the Texas Department of Agriculture doesn't check landscaping companies because they're not governing landscaping companies.

[00:33:15] Craig and Kevin: And so like you can, you can inspect pest control companies all day long and I'm happy that they do that when they do that, which is not often, but that's not the problem. The problem is the guys who are unlicensed outside of our field doing that kind of stuff. And I don't, I don't know how you wrangle that in.

[00:33:34] Craig and Kevin: They

[00:33:34] Eric Goranson: just got to expand their scope. So they go out and go after that. Just go after the unlicensed people doing it. And. Here's what I see. And this is how these guys get it. They'll be sitting on, they have a rule here that you have to put your CCB number in Oregon on an ad, a business card. If you post up your services on social media, you have to put it up there.

[00:33:54] Eric Goranson: So what they do is they will troll like the Facebook marketplaces, the Craigslist, the [00:34:00] local sales groups, the buy and sell whatever city that you see out there, and they will just scoop those out and they have people sitting in the office all day going, Hey, this guy's offering to build a deck. Oh, and he's not in our database and they'll say, Hey, you want to come over and look at skip Adele and catch a contract with Adam Carolla.

[00:34:17] Eric Goranson: Hey, you want to come over and take a look at my

[00:34:19] Craig and Kevin: thing? Boom. You're nailed. So let me ask you a question. Is this. This urban boundary have anything to do with that? Because here's my thought process on this. Like here in Texas, it's, it's such a large state. It there's so many miles, thousands, tens of hundreds of thousands of miles of road that people live on and trying to track down every Tom, Dick, and Harry, the swing and a hammer on, on any of this kind of stuff.

[00:34:47] Craig and Kevin: And I think it would be an absolute nightmare to try to figure that out, especially when people can build whatever, wherever they want to without anything. So I'm, I'm just,

[00:34:57] Eric Goranson: yeah, you guys, you guys couldn't do that in Texas [00:35:00] without having a state code. So we follow the international building code here. I think there's 11 States in the country.

[00:35:06] Eric Goranson: That don't have a statewide adopted building code and you guys are one of them down there But when you have a statewide code now this in my area here The cities can add a little bit here and there if they have something they want to add to it But there's that minimum code around there so they can roll around And anywhere in the state you have to be a licensed and bonded and insured contractor And so for them, it's pretty easy to go out and check it out They can just scope it out and say hey these people aren't doing it, but you're right You You guys would have to adopt a statewide building code that would be adopted for everybody.

[00:35:37] Eric Goranson: And then they would have to say, okay, who has to be licensed, bonded, insured across the state. And then they would have to say, okay, here's how we're going to enforce that. And I get it. Mrs. Smith goes hires somebody to come out and patch her roof off of Craig's list. And they show up over there, get up on the roof and they fall off the roof while she's paid them a hundred bucks to sweep off her roof real quick.

[00:35:59] Eric Goranson: And [00:36:00] maybe do a quick repair. That guy gets paralyzed. She's now paying his medical bills for life and she's paying hundreds of thousands of dollars because he was her employee.

[00:36:09] Craig and Kevin: Yeah. Yeah. And this, this truly is, Eric, one of the things that we, we try to help homeowners understand is look, if someone's going to come out to your home, sure that you ask for their insurance, make sure that you, that they are bonded to a certain amount so that if one of those things happens, then you're taken care of.

[00:36:29] Craig and Kevin: In fact, I had a tree at my house that. Man, this tree had been dead for a long time, but it had to be topped. It was not going to be able to be just, you couldn't fell this, this tree. And so I'm sitting there going, look, are you going to bring a cherry picker out here to do this? And he was like, no, man, my, my guy is going to just shimmy up there and cut it down.

[00:36:50] Craig and Kevin: I was like, all right, I'm, I'm not really comfortable with that because. Because this I have no idea how dead that tree is. How is that thing going to bust up [00:37:00] when you start cutting into it? Absolutely. And so my 1st question was, can you can you show me your insurance and your, your, your information? He said, sure.

[00:37:09] Craig and Kevin: And within 30 minutes, he had his people fax or email me fax. Has it had an email me over the grandpa? Yeah, exactly. Wow. Bloomberg. Geesh. Yeah, no, get off my porch. They emailed me over the information and I was like, all right, sweet. Get it done. And there was absolutely no issue, which is great. But I just, I wanted to make sure that I wasn't doing exactly what you're talking about, because here in Texas, you could get stuck with that.

[00:37:34] Craig and Kevin: And it would be a problem. Yeah.

[00:37:36] Eric Goranson: I've even seen contractors get stuck with that. I saw one, a buddy of mine. Was working on a project for a homeowner doing a basement remodel. The homeowner decided to hire somebody off of a worker, off of either off the home Depot parking lot, off for Craigslist or whatever he was working for the homeowner, walking around doing some.

[00:37:56] Eric Goranson: Little cleanup jobs around there, literally just a [00:38:00] day worker. And because the contractor told the kid when the kid came down there and says, Hey, I need to throw stuff away. Can I use the dumpster? And he goes, yeah, you can put it in the dumpster. That contractor when the kid got hurt later was responsible because he had given him direction.

[00:38:15] Eric Goranson: And since he had told him that he could put it in there, he was now covered under his insurance. And it cost him like 20, 000 bucks because the kid got her. Oh,

[00:38:24] Craig and Kevin: jeez.

[00:38:26] Eric Goranson: Just being a nice guy.

[00:38:27] Craig and Kevin: Yeah, it's tough being a nice guy.

[00:38:30] Eric Goranson: You know that now I don't

[00:38:37] Eric Goranson: It's just not worth it. All right guys, we're going to do a little bit of an audible right now I want to make sure that you guys get to hear the rest of the show And not send this out to our premium membership here for the podcast. So what we're going to do is we're going to continue This discussion with the homeowner show all the way through kind of a little bit of a test to see how this works into the second hour.

[00:38:57] Eric Goranson: Now, if you're listening on the radio and you don't have the second hour [00:39:00] being played in your market, don't worry. You can grab all of that. Just jump over to around the house, online. com, or just look on your favorite podcast player, podcast. com. And you're going to find the second hour of the show. Find out more about us here on around the house.

[00:39:13] Eric Goranson: Make sure you check us out at around the house online. com. And I'm here to help you with any of those home improvement questions and make sure you catch us on social media. Thanks for tuning in to around the house.