In today’s episode, we’re diving into more breaking headlines in the real estate industry.
Dan and Anthony are given a list of 5 pieces of recent real estate news, and they give their opinions… out of context.
What does dropping lumbar prices mean for development? Why would the University of California invest $4B in Blackstone?
And, they also share their connection to a national story… Christian Lawrence and his modular commercial real estate construction.
Find out all of this and more real estate news in this episode of Multifamily Investing Made Simple.
Tweetable Quotes:
“When it comes to offsite modular manufacturing… as soon as we can get those scales of efficiency on the manufacturing line, you could see these costs dropping really rapidly. But until we see those costs drop rapidly, I don’t think people are generally gonna mass adopt this.”– Anthony Vicino
“It’s tough for them because no one’s taking out any new debt. And if you know any mortgage brokers in the residential space, I mean, 90% of the money that they make is from refinances, which are pretty much just not happening.” – Dan Krueger
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*Transcripts*
Tepid Takes Pt 2
[00:00:00] Anthony: Hello. Welcome back to the podcast today. We are jumping into the, the, the, the hot soup. That is the news. How do you feel about the hot
[00:00:23] Dan: news, Dan? Uh, I thought we were doing te takes. We’re doing hot takes. Let me hot soup. Let
[00:00:29] Anthony: me refer to my notes. Ah, yes, yes, it is right here actually. I did order, I did order today’s news.
Lukewarm, lukewarm room temperature. Okay. Okay. That’s good to know because 68 degrees, I, I’m going to need to send this back to the kitchen real quick. Too hot. Too hot. This, the soup is too hot. Okay, so I’m going to send this back. We’ll get to those for some tepa takes, but before we do mm-hmm. Maybe, maybe we have an appetized, an app aif.
No, those come after. Appetizer .
[00:00:59] Dan: [00:01:00] Wow. Uh, is that you asking for some bad investing advice?
[00:01:05] Anthony: Yeah. Maybe it’s something that we can like, you know, nibble on. Nibble on ?
[00:01:09] Dan: Yeah. Nosh. Oh, this is off to a weird start. Yeah. What’s your bad investing advice for the week? Bad investing tip of the week is that, uh, when you’re investing, you want to try to find the best possible returns with the least possible down.
Okay.
[00:01:25] Anthony: Yeah, that’s it. You can leave. I want good returns. I want limited downside. Those are the metrics you should be looking at. Those are the only ones I look at. Mm-hmm. .
[00:01:33] Dan: But there’s another one. What’s another one? The other one is, uh, I don’t even know what to call it, but it’s the, the non, non, this feels made up the non-financial.
Um, returns, quote unquote, that you get from an investment. Oh, like the warm and fuzzies? Yes. And I say this, yes, because tonight we are having a investing for impact and stuff. Yeah. A party for all of our investors. Everybody from the company’s getting well, everyone’s divided. Not everyone’s gonna be there, but, uh, [00:02:00] We’re, we’re putting down a little shindig for our investors.
And, um, it’s just one of the ways that we give back to ’em. In addition to sending returns out, um, we also wanna make sure that people feel appreciated. And so we’ll throw parties, we’ll send gifts, we’ll do all this kind of stuff. And, um, that’s another kind of return that you get. And it’s, it’s important.
And the way I’m gonna try to tie this back to, to the bad investing tip is that, yeah, returns are great, but if you. Like the people that you’re investing with, if they don’t talk to you, if they don’t answer your questions, if they don’t even seem to care about you. Right. Sometimes those, those good returns aren’t, aren’t the, the, the full picture aren’t worth the stress.
Yeah. There’s other factors that you need to be concerned with. Um, and we say it all the time better on the jock, not the horse. You gotta underwrite your, your operators. Make sure the communication’s in line with what you want and make sure you, you actually like the people that, that you’re working with.
[00:02:53] Anthony: Um, what are you gonna wear tonight to the party? I’m gonna wear my party. To stay tuned and see what those look [00:03:00] like. Party pants. I got party pants. I think what you’re talking about here goes, there’s a couple things. One is, we’ve talked about this before, that it doesn’t really matter, um, how great the returns are.
If, if in the process of earning those great returns, it was the most stressful thing in the world, right? Mm-hmm. , I would prefer. 15% returns with fantastic communication, very stable, no roller coaster ride, rather than a 25% return, where I didn’t know at any point what was happening in the deal. It felt like it was on the razor’s edge.
It was up one day down the next day, like, you know. , how you make your money matters. Mm-hmm. . And so I think that’s a really big thing to consider when it comes to returns. Isn’t just like, what’s the, the number on the sheet, but okay, what’s the ride? What’s the rollercoaster that’s gonna get us to that number?
Yeah. When it comes to investing, I want it to be like the teacup ride. It’s fun, but I don’t ever think I’m gonna die.
[00:03:59] Dan: It depends on how [00:04:00] old you are, if you’re. A teacup ride is scary.
[00:04:03] Anthony: That’s legit. That’s legit. That’s totally fair. .
[00:04:06] Dan: Well, I, I thought about this because there was this, um, uh, new, uh, Bernie Madoff thing that popped up on Netflix the other night.
Um, I forgot what it was called. If anyone sees it pop up, you can skip it. There’s nothing new there. But I watched a little bit of it and um, in there they had a lot of his investors talking. Uh, what the experience was like with him and this guy had like the best returns out there. Um, suspiciously good for obvious reasons, but something that, uh, a lot of people were saying is that if you asked him too many questions, he would say, here’s your money back.
Go somewhere else. Mm mm-hmm. interesting. And so, yeah, the returns are great. And there were tons of people who were just like, whatever. Like, don’t ask, don’t tell. This is, this is just how he is. He’s not transparent. It’s like a black box. If you ask the wrong questions, he gets mad and kicks you out. And people just dealt with that because the numbers on the paper were so good.
But there’s a lot of big red flags there that had they listened to [00:05:00] our podcast, they would know. It’s that have good
communication.
[00:05:04] Anthony: Man, this one’s a, it’s a tough one too, right? Because we’ve talked about how, like, if Warren Buffet came to us and gave us the opportunity to invest, he’s like, gimme a thousand dollars, you, you’d probably just give it to him.
No questions asked. Right? And that’s kind of the price that you pay for, you know, getting into bed with the top tier person, cuz they, they have that leverage because they know they don’t need your money. They can go and get it somewhere else, but then you as the. You have to wonder, like, is it really worth getting that top tier return if you’re gonna be treated like, you know, a horse being taken out behind the barn to be, you know, put a bolt in the head?
No, I’d say no. Yeah, no thanks. In general, like, I don’t want to ever be looked at as though I’m a dollar sign. You know how like in the cartoons, like the wolf will look at the sheep and like, like he’ll start salivating and like he just sees, like he doesn’t see a sheep, he sees a lamp. . Mm-hmm. . That’s how I feel when people look at me and see money, they feel like they don’t even see my, my baby blues.
They [00:06:00] just see a dollar sign. Yeah. And I’m like, come on guys. I work, I work hard on this complexion. It’d be nice to be, at least, to be seen . If you guys are watching on YouTube, I am wearing a white shirt in Jan in, in January in Minnesota. I am as pale as it can be, is a
[00:06:16] Dan: questionable outfit. , I will say, I’m, I’m looking up the monitor here.
Our lighting helps. Does it? It’s a, it’s a warm light we’ve got
[00:06:24] Anthony: here. So the light in this room is good because we have ’em turned pretty warm. Yeah. These lights come out pretty orangeish did, which helps my complexion. If I go out into the other room and use different lights, suddenly I turn into a ghost.
And you notice this on Instagram because we do, we’ve record in all different places in the office. Sometimes I look like I just got back from the Caribbean. Sometimes I look like
[00:06:43] Dan: Casper. You gotta, you gotta get some makeup, man, when you’re on camera.
[00:06:47] Anthony: Yeah, read make up. Let’s put that on the, the to-do list.
Um, ooh, ooh, ooh. Do you see who? Look who’s coming? It’s uh, it’s our waiter. Oh, Jesus. He’s he’s got, he’s [00:07:00] got a, Ooh, they, those, those, those bowls of, uh, new soup aren’t even steaming. Those look frozen. Those look . That looks like Porsche. Okay. Thank, thank you sir. Um, thank you for tepid. Our news, we really, okay.
So today, for those that don’t know, this is a, this is a new segment that we’re trying out. This is only the second time we’ve ever done it. We’re doing tepid takes where we, uh, Reid went and pulled some headlines from the news, the news. Um, Dan and I have no idea what these are about because one, we don’t read don’t read the news,
So this is all gonna be very new to us and we’re just gonna off the cuff, gonna talk, talk this through. And last time we did this, we, we had a little bit more context. We actually had the articles. So this time all I really have and is some titles. So this is gonna be very tepid. Yes. I wanna, let’s do it.
I’m gonna, I’m gonna, let me just put my. .
[00:07:58] Dan: I feel like we set the expect expectations [00:08:00] appropriately. Okay. Cool. Tepid.
[00:08:01] Anthony: All right. Number one, lumber prices continue to drop, but a combination of red tape and hikes and other material costs are driving repricing on new housing builds. Okay. My first take are wh why are we still talking about lumber?
I, I was over the lumber conversation two years ago. Mm-hmm. Why is this still a
[00:08:18] Dan: thing? Why are we still caring? Uh, it gets people to click. I mean, read clicked. It’s true. You saw lumber. He is like, Ooh, give that,
[00:08:24] Anthony: because lumber prices, if I remember correctly, and I probably don’t, they they spiked real bad for a while, but not, not four x.
Yeah, but
[00:08:31] Dan: not for like, but it was like any other six months. Spike it. Yeah. It was a few months. Yeah. And
[00:08:35] Anthony: then it started coming down and that was like end of 2020. Yeah. Here we are in 2023. I, I don’t know how this is still a topic because lumber prices haven’t been like super relevant for a while.
However, I am interested why they say, but a combination of red tape and hikes and other material costs are driving re pricing on new housing bills. I wonder if this has anything to do with steel importing from China. Red tape associated with that. I don’t know. I have no clue.
[00:08:59] Dan: Yeah, [00:09:00] definitely. I mean, they say other materials, but my guess is that they’re also, um, the labor costs are probably the, One of the bigger factors outside of materials, cause those prices will change relatively quickly, especially with China kind of, uh, pulling back on its zero covid thing and actually getting people back to work over there.
But, um, those labor prices are, are probably one of the biggest pieces that are keeping things up there. So I don’t know what they mean by red tape, but maybe you’re right. It’s the,
[00:09:27] Anthony: and I, and I do think the labor is the big reason why we see housing prices like so crazy. Right. Um, I can’t think of what other even materials that they use to build a house.
Doors, nails, like what are, what’s our door situation? A couple nails. Yeah. Nails. Uh,
[00:09:43] Dan: what else? That’s about it. You said
[00:09:44] Anthony: door and nails. The concrete is, is really just hopes and dreams mixed with water. So concrete’s expensive.
[00:09:50] Dan: Its so all so I don’t,
[00:09:52] Anthony: it’s always, I have much to say on this one except for lumber prices.
Why are we still talking about this? I, I feel like that’s not the thing that is. [00:10:00] Um, relevant anymore. It’s like we’re still talking about Beanie
[00:10:02] Dan: Babies or the point is houses are still too expensive, interest rates are up, and no one’s gonna buy ’em, so they’re gonna have to come down at some point. Yep.
[00:10:11] Anthony: All right. Number two, tough times ahead for commercial and multi-family mortgage markets. Oh, this is coming from MBA’s 2023 Commercial Real Estate Finance Outlook survey. Oh. They surveyed 55 executives of top commercial and multi-family mortgage finance firms for their outlook of the year. And they, I guess they, they think tough times.
Okay.
[00:10:30] Dan: That’s vague. That’s not a he. Well, I mean, I will say that. they are. If, if we’re looking at people from the mortgage industry, this is basically originators of, of, of loans. Oh, they’re getting smashed right now. It’s tough for them because no one’s taking out any, any new debt. Yeah. And if you know any mortgage brokers in the, in the residential space, I mean, 90% of the money that, uh, mortgage brokers make is from refinances, which are pretty much just not happening.
So, yeah, it’s tough for them. It’s, I guess, it’s, it’s tough for us in the fact that [00:11:00] we can’t really find many things that. Economic sense to run at. So we just sit here and wait, which I wouldn’t say that’s tough. It’s just like kind of boring. But yeah, if your livelihood is based on originating loans
[00:11:11] Anthony: and man, I feel bad for mortgage brokers.
Yeah. We have a lot of friends that are mortgage brokers when our heart suck, go out to, because you, they literally went from riding high on the hog. to having their feet just cut out from under them pretty
[00:11:22] Dan: quickly. Well, this is why you take all that cash that you make there and invest it in cash flowing properties like we do, so that when these things happen, you got a little something coming in.
[00:11:31] Anthony: I mean, that is a really good pitch for investing in multifamily, if I’ve ever heard of one, because honestly, like when times are good. You, we have, we’d have this tendency to think the times are always gonna continue like that. And the truth is like they’re not probably Yeah. Skip the Lambo by an apartment building.
Exactly. And then use the cash flow from that apartment building to buy the Lambo and you know, and then give it to me. All right. Number three, why those waiting for a return to normal in commercial real estate. Will get left behind. The effects of [00:12:00] Covid 19 pandemic and the shift to hybrid work are still rippling through the real estate markets.
Demand for residential and industrial spaces shot up while offices and shopping centers have been slower
[00:12:10] Dan: to recover.
[00:12:13] Anthony: Yeah, I mean this, listen, like it’s never about timing the market, it’s about time in the market. That’s a nice little cliche, little phrase. It rhymes, it makes sense and it’s true. . If you’re, if you’re waiting for a new normal or if you’re waiting for a return or to normal, if you’re waiting for interest rates to come down before you start buying again, like, yeah, you’re probably gonna get left behind because you’re, you’re living in the past and not adapting to what’s the, the reality of the situation.
[00:12:38] Dan: Mm-hmm. . And I think, uh, on our last type of take episode, we actually spoke about something, um, similar with the, um, office space. We, we had something about office space
[00:12:49] Anthony: in the last one, didn’t we? Yeah. There was a lot of vacancy. Like the utilization
[00:12:52] Dan: piece I thought was really interesting. Yeah.
[00:12:55] Anthony: What’s interesting here is they, they put office space and shopping centers in the same bucket [00:13:00] and say they’re both slow to recover, which I find really interesting.
I don’t follow those two, uh, submarkets very closely. My understanding of shopping centers has been that if they were grocery anchored in, in good locations, like. Performed really, really well for the last couple of years. No, that’s not saying all shopping centers, so I’m sure malls got got hose. But
[00:13:19] Dan: no, I think what they’re, when they say shopping centers, my guess is they’re not talking about the grocery anchored strip malls with the nail salon and that kind of stuff.
I think they’re probably talking about a more traditional. Shopping center that’s mostly retail based and their anchors are Nordstrom’s, Macy’s, like, I think people got so accustomed to just buying everything online that there’s just not that many people going back to the mall to buy something on Nordstrom.
They’re just gonna go buy it online. Well that’s,
[00:13:48] Anthony: well, I was listening to a podcast the other day, and again, I don’t know anything about this space, but there’s this guy who he, all he does is, uh, shopping centers. And what he was saying is that there’s actually been a renaissance [00:14:00] of. In brick and mortar, it’s actually bouncing back.
Yeah. It’s like putting a big chunk into the Amazon space because people are just kind of like, I, I like the shopping experience and going out. Yeah, I agree. And because, and that they brought up a really interesting thing is like, he’s like, you know, listen, like my wife, she just likes to go shopping for the experience.
Yeah. And I was like, oh, that’s interesting. I, I, that makes sense. I like going to malls actually. Like Jamie and I would go for walks there all the time. I like the. of being around people, but I don’t, I don’t buy anything. What are you laughing at? He’s laughing at
[00:14:31] Dan: me. 10 in the morning with your new balanced sneakers.
I do.
[00:14:34] Anthony: I got my head balanced. I do guys. Do I look like a man who walks briskly anywhere?
[00:14:39] Dan: Yes. . Yeah. If you have your new balance, I got my new balances on. I pump those up pants hiked all the way up to your nipples. I can see it now. Oh dear. All. So, yeah. Um, what’s number four? I don’t know. Um, the University of California invested $4 billion with a b with Blackstone to buy up [00:15:00] rental apartments and student housing, which they see as the bright spots.
in the real estate market this year. So University of California gave money to Blackstone to put into apartments and student housing, identifying those as the bright
[00:15:14] Anthony: spots. Can I, there’s a couple things here. I, I’m curious about University of California, what that’s not, aren’t they usually like University of California, Santa Barbara?
Or Sacramento, university of California. I think it’s one endowment for one. Big old, one big old boy. Okay, so my question is, what’s 4 billion in their, in in their total allocation? Small. Like, I don’t have a context. Is this, are they dealing
[00:15:37] Dan: with a trillion? I I was actually just watching a little uh, thing on this recently about university endowments and how freaking big they are.
Really 4 billion for University of California. Probably. Probably isn. Uh, more
[00:15:49] Anthony: than 10%. Yeah. Okay. So that’s, that’s helpful to know is like, that’s a big number for me. But for them, is it meaningful? Maybe not. Like, maybe this is actually isn’t a big bet. It is interesting though that Blackstone is going [00:16:00] so hard at rental apartments.
Um, . I mean, that’s kind of what they’ve been doing for a long time. I, I’m curious what their, this isn’t new for them, I don’t think. No. I guess what I was thinking of, I got, my mind went to, uh, injuries and Horowitz and the bet that they made with, um, Adam Newman. Mm-hmm. , that’s, that’s not obviously connected to Blackstone, but for some reason my brain went there.
For those that don’t know Adam Newman, he was the guy that started WeWork, kind of disgraced ceo, kind of forced out and now he’s back with some new shenanigans. Flo, is that what it’s called? Yeah, that’s right. Flo, where he got, I haven’t heard
[00:16:34] Dan: much about that since the initial big flurry
[00:16:36] Anthony: of information.
There was a lot of excitement, but no, there was no details and now it’s just been radio silence for six, seven. , no
[00:16:46] Dan: clue. He’s just managing a bunch of apartments now and there’s just nothing really to talk about .
[00:16:50] Anthony: They’re like, oh yeah, this is just a multi-family investing. Yeah, they’re
[00:16:53] Dan: cash flowing a little bit and super
[00:16:55] Anthony: exciting, super boring.
We were on, um, a quarterly investor call today, um, [00:17:00] with one of our partners just getting caught up about how the portfolios performed over the last quarter so we can get our ducks in a row for investor communications, which are gonna go out here in, in the next week or so. And those calls sometimes are really, Because it’s like, so how’s it going?
It’s a little
[00:17:15] Dan: bit better than we’ve thought. ? Yeah.
[00:17:18] Anthony: It’s going. Going nothing. I would’ve thought it would
[00:17:20] Dan: just like a little bit better. Boring.
[00:17:22] Anthony: All real estate vacancies, low expenses are low. Cool . It’s, it’s working. So it’s not sexy. It’s not, it’s not the exciting stuff where it’s, I mean, sometimes it’s like our build our building burned down.
That, that’s kind of
[00:17:36] Dan: exciting. But Yeah. Well, I mean, we used to do heavier lift deals. Yeah. And so the stuff we’ve been buying recently is, is just so stabilized. It’s just like we get the keys and then it’s like, okay, uh, there’s nothing that needs to be done right now, so we’re just gonna go back to the office and file some paperwork and.
Hey is all
[00:17:52] Anthony: right, let’s keep going. So number five, this is an interesting one. Uh, it says this 29 year old CEO is constructing apartment buildings out of [00:18:00] factory produced modules, and it might make homes more affordable for renters. So this ceo, his name’s Christian Lawrence, and his company is called Rise Modulars based out of here in the Twin Cities.
Uh, they got like 150 employees, 400 units under construction. So we actually sat down with, uh, Last year when we were starting to look at new development and, and trying to gauge if that was something that we wanted to dip Invictus’ toes into. And we sat down with him and he’s a bright guy. He’s sharp and he’s definitely doing something really interesting, which is they’re, they have this factory and just assembly line.
They create these. More or less boxes, houses in a box or apartment units in a box that then they take, they build ’em all there in the factory and then they take ’em on site and just stack ’em kind of like, um, big storage container units, almost like, think about like a semi-truck that’s like a mod. or a pod as they call it, and then you just stack ’em and you can create a two bedroom, one bedroom.
And so it allows them to bring the cost of construction way, way down, be really efficient because they’re doing [00:19:00] it all offsite rather than doing, waiting to do it onsite after all the concrete and foundation stuff has been done so they can just build way quicker.
[00:19:07] Dan: What I thought was really cool is that, um, picture like a, um, um, a storage or what, what are they called?
Um, Um, like a shipping container? Yeah, shipping container. Yeah, that’s what I’m looking for. Picture a shipping container, um, that type of shape. And he could actually put these together, almost like Legos to make, you know, any kind, like, so you’re not just working with these little rectangles, but they come fully finished.
So like these get shipped out and they’ve already got the appliances, the flooring, like everything’s already in there. , click it in a place and like obviously you gotta like hook up some utilities and electrical and stuff, but it’s like a, everything’s done on the inside. Mm-hmm. and it just shows up like that, which I thought was super cool.
So it’s really like, Uh, like, I forgot the numbers specifically, but like way faster. Well, it’s traditional.
[00:19:55] Anthony: What’s so much interesting, it’s so interesting by the manufacturing side of me was really geeking out [00:20:00] on this because, you know, think about one of the big issues with the building process, again, like you have to do everything in an order of operations.
You gotta go in there, prepare the dirt, and then you gotta put the foundation and then you start framing and then the electrical guys and then, you know, like all these people that are in the line can’t get started until the person.
[00:20:18] Dan: Eight, nine months maybe, depending on the size.
[00:20:19] Anthony: Yeah. But here it’s like they can in a day do an entire pod and all the, you know, electrical, plumbing, the, the framing, all of it gets
[00:20:26] Dan: done.
Yeah. You just like draw the building down and it’s like a little bit more than that, but it’s like, I, I feel like it would, it would take a, a project that would, uh, If done the traditional way, let’s just say it would take six months to, to do from start to finish. Um, they do it in like a month or
[00:20:43] Anthony: something.
I can’t remember. It’s really fast, all with the numbers. It’s way faster than you’d think, and the cost wasn’t significantly cheaper because then you do have transportation expenses. Getting it from here to there, there are other issues that, that prop up. Um, what, what’s your feeling [00:21:00] on this as like, is this the future of.
[00:21:02] Dan: I’ve never been in one. Yeah, that’s a good question. Um, so assuming it, it feels good and it functions and it, it lasts and has some stain power, I gotta imagine it’s not, I mean, we’ve been buying some buildings, um, for years now that are like historic brownstones that, I mean, those things are gonna be there forever.
I don’t think these can compete with the longevity, but what I will say is the economics probably make a lot of sense. , um, for at least the first few years because if you’re able to start getting revenue in the door months sooner, yes. Even if the cost is relatively the same, but you start getting revenue in that much sooner.
Like the economics are gonna be vastly different than a traditional building. But my guess is they’re probably not gonna last a hundred
[00:21:39] Anthony: years. So I believe, I believe Elon actually used prefabricated walls to build the, uh, gigafactory, um, out in. . Mm. And what was interesting about this is that, that, that is like one of the biggest factories in the world.
It’s massive. And they were building it in record speed because all these parts and [00:22:00] pieces were prefabbed offsite and then brought in on a train, and they, they built this thing like way faster than anybody anticipated. Yeah. So I do think that there’s a lot to be said about pre-fabricated materials being done offsite, and that’s, that’s what we’ve seen for a number of years actually, is it’s not too uncommon to take pieces of the.
and build them offsite and then bring them and, and build them there. What these guys are doing a little bit different is like a lot, most 90% of the assembly is happening offsite. There’s something about this that sounds so obvious for the world of building, however, I feel like we are still so far away from this becoming, um, commoditized and like even the, the mainstream enough where if I want to go build a.
That this is gonna be the, the method for it. Because I think that’s where the real interesting use case would be for me. If I’m like, oh, I wanna go buy this home and it would, it would cost me to say a million to build it, but I could go and have it prefabbed and brought in and a fraction of the cost [00:23:00] because now we can do it maybe a half a million, right?
Like as soon as we can get those scales of efficiency on the manufacturing line, you could see these costs dropping really rapidly. But until, I think, until we see those costs drop rapidly, I don’t think people are generally gonna. Like mass adopters.
[00:23:16] Dan: Yeah. And at least for me, it’s a lot of, it’s going to have to do with like, how does it feel like when you are in one of these units?
Is it like paper thin walls? Is it field sheep? Does it feel flimsy? Like does stuff break a lot? Is it the same quality? I really have no idea clue. So I’d love to just maybe tour one of these properties at some point just to get a feel for what, what it actually feels like to be in one. Mm-hmm. So it’s interesting though.
Very,
[00:23:40] Anthony: very interesting. One. One other thing here is, you know, he has 150 employees and they have 400 units under construction. That’s a, that seems like a lot of employees for, and I know, I, I don’t, building is, is a big deal and that’s hard and everything, but, um, I would expect 150 employees working around the [00:24:00] clock to be able to crank out a little bit more than 400 units.
I don’t know. I got no idea. No, no. But no Christian’s a cool dude. I think he’s doing something really interesting. He’s sharp. He came from private equity finance. I can’t remember, something like that. He’s done something big brain before. Do you
[00:24:14] Dan: remember what the um, um, transport situation was? Was he handling all that in-house or did they outsource to like a third party for logistics?
[00:24:22] Anthony: I can’t remember, but I do remember, um, ask, talking to him about, that is the most complicated Yeah. Piece of the puzzle for sure. A hundred percent. And, and this, and that’s largely why the costs, um, aren’t too disparate, um, because you might be saving time and, and, but the materials are fundamentally the same.
And now you have this pretty, pretty large transportation cost. You think about one truck, one semi can carry, one pod and you know, these, these units could be a couple hundred pods.
[00:24:52] Dan: So, and we met, was it 2020 or 2021 that we met up with them? I wanna say 2021, because I’d be curious. Uh, I can’t remember how [00:25:00] long he’s been doing this is saying here, at that point he
[00:25:01] Anthony: had done three or four projects.
Okay. And we had seen one that he was in the process of building in St.
[00:25:06] Dan: Paul. Because I’m curious if like 2019 the price point was still as close or if that was a product of some of the craziness that happened from 2020.
[00:25:15] Anthony: That’s good point. Um, we should, we should, we should look into this and then come back and do another episode on it once we have a little bit more information.
Cuz maybe he has actually brought the cost down now. That’d be interesting. Yeah. But you should, all right. Those are my, those are our type of takes. I, they weren’t hot, you know, they weren’t ice cold either. There’s some
[00:25:32] Dan: sizzle in there. Cata? Clammy, I guess. Mm, clammy. Have you ever had borsch? I don’t think so.
I don’t even don’t like saying the word borsch doesn’t sound like something. I’d be like, Ooh, that sounds good. No,
[00:25:44] Anthony: no, I didn’t even really know what it is. Actually. I think it’s cold tomato soup, but it’s watered down reed’s gotta look at his face. It’s like watered down Russian soup maybe. It sounds like.
Yep. I’m not gonna repeat that. I’m not gonna repeat that on air either. , [00:26:00] we had so long we all were thinking
[00:26:02] Dan: it, but someday we’ll get a mic on you read, but Not
[00:26:04] Anthony: today. Not today. Yeah. You just decide your mic privileges. Revokes. . Anyway, that’s gonna do it for us, everybody. Oh wait, actually do we have a book?
We haven’t recommended a book and a hot minute. That one. That one seems like, uh, everyone’s read. It’s
[00:26:18] Dan: pretty self-serving. . Yeah. Oh,
[00:26:23] Anthony: I’m not reading anything. I’ve been reading the same book for like the last month and a half. Which one’s that? Uh, it’s called the Robert Collier Letters. Oh yeah, yeah. I You guys that last week it was about the turtle soup.
Man, this man made turtle soups on so damn good. Way better than Borsch. I’ll eat that , but Goch, I got that book. I’m still reading it. It’s really good. Um, but it, it, it’s, it’s, it’s something. That’s all I got guys. Love. I know that’s a really bad book. Recomme. Um, cuz I’ve already done that recommendation, but, um, I, I got nothing else off the top of my head.
I’m dry guys. A lot of books. [00:27:00] While I was moving this weekend, um, we discovered in an old box a book that my dad gave me for one of my birthdays. I must have been like 17. It’s the Army Survival Field Guide or Army field. , it was pretty interesting. It tell, tells you stuff like how to survive a rattlestick bite or how to put on a tourniquet or like if you’re, if you’re trapped out in the wilderness, like how to dig a hole so you don’t freeze to death.
Um, so maybe check out that book.
[00:27:27] Dan: Yeah. I don’t know how to do any of those things. I should probably check it out.
[00:27:30] Anthony: I don’t, I, you know, at the time when he gave me the book, I was like, dad, why are you, why are you this way? Who made you like this ? However, I have not died so, , how much of that can be attributed to the book?
I don’t know. You’ll have to read the book to find out. Did
[00:27:43] Dan: you actually read the whole thing? No, I skimmed
[00:27:47] Anthony: like, like I said, I know how to survive a rattlesnake by it. Turn a kitt and dig a hole. . Those are . I think I also know how to make a latrine, but that’s about it. . Okay, so start. So check out that the Army Field Survival Guide or Survival field guide, [00:28:00] something like.
Google and I’m sure it’ll pop up. And, uh, I’ll do it for us guys. We’ll see you in the next episode.
