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Conversations and rants about Civil Engineering with Denny Howell, P.E.
Alright. Welcome back to episode 14 of the Bearded Engineer. I'm Denny Howell. I'm the Bearded Engineer. And today, have Mike Zappitelli with us who, among many things, he's also the president of the Home Builders Association.
Speaker 2:Thanks for having me, Denny.
Speaker 1:Yep. Appreciate it. Tell us so tell me I know a little bit about you, but I wanna hear more. But tell everybody else a little about you.
Speaker 2:So like Zappitelli, Zappitelli Homes, I'm a second generation builder, not your average typical builder.
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:I self perform up until about eight years ago. I grew up. My father's been in this since '73, so I was, you know You
Speaker 1:weren't alive in '73? No. I was. I was three at least. I was at least here.
Speaker 2:I've been I grew up you know, my trade's carpentry. But as I started, you know, growing up, you know, I'm involved with plumbing, electrical, every, you know, know, trade there. Went to school to basically appease my mom after, you know, high school to get the piece of paper. Right. Yep.
Speaker 2:Even though I could just fall right into my dad's business, but it was probably, you know, beneficial. And
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:Went to Pennsylvania College Technology, came out, was running my dad's company, and went back from management to Drexel. And then, you know, after that, I'd gotten involved.
Speaker 1:Did know you were with a Drexel? Did I know that?
Speaker 2:I don't think so.
Speaker 1:No. Oh, man. I like it 10 times more now.
Speaker 2:Got out, got involved in some commercial construction with Mainline Health. And I kinda just construction wasn't for me, so I fell back to the residential and I really got involved with, you know, additions, renovations, that type of thing and started, you know, picking lots, small lots here and there and
Speaker 1:Yep.
Speaker 2:Going off. So it's I have a son now that's heavily involved at nine years old. Oh, nice. So hopefully, you know, it seems like he's pushing towards the third generation there.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. Well, it's kind of we come came through some similar paths. I want Joey who who set us all up in here is my nephew. And Joe's dad works with Glen White.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:But before that, my brother-in-law Dave and his brothers all worked for Big Rich Vishniewski in Downingtown. And I started out with those guys as a framing carpenter and and kinda doing the same thing. It was I think they were actually better days. There were days of there were no petty bones yet, really. At least we didn't we didn't have any and there were no nail there were just we didn't have any nail guns yet.
Speaker 1:We started to with hand nailing. But I got to know a guy there that that worked for Vishniewski, who he was like a superintendent really, but he said he was a civil engineer. And, you know, when I'm I'm 18, I was like, well, shit. I you know, I wanna I wanna be the guy riding around in the Jeep Laredo and telling everybody what to do. So I'm gonna go to school for civil engineering.
Speaker 1:And we had a we had a group of painters of when my brother-in-law hears this podcast, They were all from Maine. Their last name was a Thibodaux and they had this they would stain all the trim. This one girl would sit in the garage and stain trim and I would come out and grab it. And then one day she was like, ah, I'm not gonna be back. I'm going down to Drexel.
Speaker 1:I that was February my senior year in high school. I never even heard of Drexel before. Didn't know what even I didn't apply to it. And I was like, well, I'm gonna I might try to go there. I went there and, you know, not even it didn't end up doing what I would thought I was gonna be doing.
Speaker 1:Right. But it's funny how we both kind of came in through that through that pathway because I always did like construction a lot and I liked framing a lot.
Speaker 2:I love framing and that's still my favorite part of the the beginning phases of the houses, the development, my still favorite part, seeing it come out of ground.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Just seeing, you know, the pull up on the job in the morning and have a foundation in there and the, you know, lumber is delivered and by the end of the day, we got a floor on, we have some outside walls stood up. Back then we stick framed everything so all the roof was stick framed. There was no there was no trusses yet, know, and just did that and
Speaker 2:That was
Speaker 1:be in two weeks, you'd be in and out.
Speaker 2:Definitely my dad's time that you're working. He'll still pull out a, you know, hammer and nail and Yeah. By the time I go and get a framing gun or finish gun.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Right. There were met there's many stories and many life lessons learned for sure framing back then. But but so I'm sure your your dad would agree, but like, have you seen this building industry change dramatically just in the time you've been in it?
Speaker 2:I've seen a lot change, and I I say this to people all the time. I've seen a lot change from time that I would say 16, 18 Yeah. With the Internet. The Internet on our side kind of I don't wanna say ruin the industry, but it gave people too much information Yeah. And makes them it just it frustrates everything on our end Yeah.
Speaker 2:And convoluted.
Speaker 1:It it wasn't so whether you whether you know any of the of the main I know you're, you know, president of of the HPA, but the Mainline Builders was like this little small group of builders. And back in the day, they would let a few engineers be part of the mainline builders. I was one, my old boss Barry Walsh was one, Chester Valley was one, and we would have meetings over at Applecross, Applebrook, our luncheons. And we had one where group came in and they were talking about that people are gonna stop shopping for houses by just driving around with a cup of coffee and driving through neighborhoods that they like, that they're gonna shop on the Internet. And we were all like, no one's going to do that.
Speaker 1:That's ridiculous, know? And they're going, well, you know, they'll be able to sort houses by price and by number of bedrooms and school district. And I'm telling you that we all looked at each other in the room and we're like, we don't know where you're from but that's not how houses will be bought in Chester County. And then we blinked an eye and then that's how it's done. Mhmm.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. It's changed like hugely changed. It's
Speaker 2:it's unbelievable at this point in time, the amount of information and even, you know, houses that we had on the market, what can be done with the house, like a virtual walk through, you know, people, you know, out of state, out of the country even are virtually walking through our houses at this point and buying from there.
Speaker 1:We were I was just at a luncheon yesterday with some commercial construction guys and Elevate Construction. And this guy told us that their superintendents wear like a camera on their top of their hard hat. It's almost like a camera that like Google Earth uses. Really? And when they are walking around in the building each day, AI and it's recording it and using AI as to its location within the building.
Speaker 1:And then they can correlate that back to the plans and they can at any point in time like log in and get like a status report of what what the building state is in that day. As long as our superintendent
Speaker 2:That's crazy.
Speaker 1:Never heard of that. Didn't either. Never heard of that. As long as they're walking through, so they obviously do walk through, and they basically get real time recorded updates of everything that's going on, electrical, plumbing, framing, all that.
Speaker 2:That's insane.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. So you have to wonder, and I was sitting there listening to it and kind of thinking of the same thing that you said because we do work for a lot of builders. We do work for lot of national home builders. We do a lot of work for builders like like what you do and custom builders and smaller stuff.
Speaker 1:And I know how demanding I know how demanding it is on us just doing a little plot plan for someone for their house. And that's just lines on a plan. I can't imagine the, you know, the amount of detail and hand holding that you go through, walking them through like the biggest purchase of their life.
Speaker 2:There's a lot on the back end there. And my sister works, you know, very closely with me to kinda handle that back end
Speaker 1:Yeah.
Speaker 2:With the clients so I can focus on the, you know, the office, the field. I'm still I don't think I'll ever give that part up. I'm still, you know, in the field all the time, and, you know, here and there, I'll strap on a belt and Yeah. You know, do some more of the custom finishes there. But it's a lot, and it's, like I said, going back to the Internet, you know, just for because we're dealing with this in a real time now, You know, somebody's picking out, you know, lighting or appliances or whatever.
Speaker 2:And, you know, we have vendors that we deal with, but we're going to them saying, you know, they picked this. This is the price. Right. You gotta figure it out type
Speaker 1:Figure it out. Right. Well, you know, I just saw a thing on on the news the other day that I don't know how true it is, but that like they're saying that the next generation is kind of swinging back to wanting to be like brick and mortar shoppers again.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I'm and I'm wondering, like I would never buy a car offline and order a Carvana car. I'd wanna go down and like sit in it and drive in it and see But what it looks I'm but I'm old. But I mean, we've all been bitten by ordering something from online that then shows up and it's not what we thought it was gonna be. And wonder how much more this is like a pendulum that we discuss here all the time. How much more it's going to shift back?
Speaker 1:Like it went custom home builders building houses and having a very close relationship with their buyers to then this more detached one where they're just buying shit online and making their selections there. So if it's going to go back now again and there's going to be and if it does, there's gonna be a lot of builders that will be at a deficit because they won't have that ability to kind of walk work with our customers or everything. We I mean,
Speaker 2:we were at one point, you know, and I wanna say COVID was probably a bigger part of it. People were coming in. They're like, oh, know, we have to be at this number. You know, we have certain standards, and I won't go, you know, below them. And you'll, you know, find something online and be like, you know, this looks like that product, and it's half the cost.
Speaker 2:Well, it's coming from, you know, China, wherever.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:I'm not touching it. I'm not warning it. Nope. You know, a plumber electrician's not gonna touch it or warn it. We've ordered, you know, light fixtures that came from Ukraine, and they don't line up with, you know, an American sized picture box.
Speaker 2:Right. And Right. It's not everything looks great in a picture until you try to mechanically put it together.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I think that I I truly do believe that we are moving. We're seeing it in our business. We are moving from it being the way business was done to when then you're ordering everything offline and then you've been kind of been getting people are becoming more savvy to what that stuff is. And not that there's not those that just have plenty of clients that come in and say, I want to subdivide my property.
Speaker 1:I have no money. I don't want I can't do this and do that. And we're always like, well, that's unfortunately going to be a problem because it's expensive to do it. It takes a lot of effort. It takes a lot of knowledge to get through it.
Speaker 1:And we're really seeking those people that appreciate what needs to be done. It's no different than anything else. I mean, whether you're hiring an attorney or your accountant, it doesn't seem like the cost of any of those things are going down with the efficiency of the Internet being behind it. Right? I mean, just we just need to find ways to get back to dealing with customers.
Speaker 2:I think that, you know, touching on that, that's a bigger part of this. Even go back five years, you know, the land cost, the approvals, everything, it just keeps getting higher, higher, higher. And Yep. That's something that's not advertised online. That's something that I spoke about last week at an event, and that's something that, even realtors don't realize, and you have to kinda educate them on that.
Speaker 2:But that's definitely something the consumer is not seeing is what's before we get that foundation in the ground, how much it costs to get to that point. It's just not you know, you wanna spend a million dollars on a house, honestly, that's the cost of, like, a base Yeah. Build right now without the land.
Speaker 1:Right. I mean, I was I'm not gonna name the township I was in last night. Not that it wasn't a good meeting. It it was. But I did a plan in this township a while ago, and I I think I told this one time before, and they didn't like the layout of the if I showed you, it just was a regular subdivision.
Speaker 1:But what they really didn't like was seeing what their ordinance allows, you know. And so they said, well, then if you can make it better, then, you know, feel free. So I did. And I kind of adjusted it, no more density. I came back with a plan that had the exact same density.
Speaker 1:I just made the lots smaller, which they needed to be. I mean, no one you probably know this, but the average tract home community house is not on a one acre lot. It's not even on a half acre lot. It's probably on a third of an acre lot or we would call it a 17,000 to 19,000 square feet. I just made the lot smaller, which made us have more open space, which preserved more woodlands and had less disturbance.
Speaker 1:You fit the same house on a smaller lot. You have no more impervious and I'm fighting an uphill battle on it. Know, they're just like, don't know. And we nothing against. I appreciate all the volunteers that serve on planning commissions, but they don't ever really go through any kind of formal planning training.
Speaker 1:And I think that unfortunately, just the way developments progress in Cheshire County, that it's we're just at odds in the minute. I've never walked in a door, Mike, and had someone be like, I'm so glad you're here, Denny, and so glad. I I walk in knowing that I'm, like, basically in a gauntlet, and I'm gonna be, you know, spending years trying to get things approved. And that's all translating to the cost. Right.
Speaker 1:To the cost.
Speaker 2:So I had, you know, and again, I'm not gonna mention the township, but
Speaker 1:I'm not gonna get back this one. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Now we had something approved around here that I worked hand in hand with the planning commission, and they were I was extremely thankful with them and, you know, reciprocated back to us. I said this was it's actually nice sitting, doing it this way, you know, tell me what you want, tell you what I want, and we come to, like, a mutual agreement. But why that's happening and all, you know, six meetings happening with that, there's billable hours between the engineer, the attorneys, you know, everybody there
Speaker 1:Oh, yeah.
Speaker 2:Plus the, you know, bills coming from the borough. And that's, you know, the part that nobody sees. So everything looks great on paper, but there's a huge bill after that.
Speaker 1:If you know, and the builders see it and you would, you know, you would see it, but if I were to break down like in a pie chart how much of my time was spent designing the project and how much of my time was spent revising it over and over and over again, it's ridiculous. I would venture to say of the entire project, maybe 25% of the cost is in the design and the other 75% is in revisions. And look, I'm all for the peer review revision process, but we all know, I mean, anyone in my business knows it's way beyond it goes way beyond that. I would love the ordinance to be reviewed against the plans, and I certainly welcome critiquing of mistakes or errors, but it's that's about 10% of the review. The rest of it is not that.
Speaker 1:And it's expensive. And I don't really think it results in a better plan at all. Not at all. We I said this one time before too, and I would love to see we do a lot of work with AI in here and we because I think it's coming no matter what into our business. We're gonna have to find a way that we're gonna use it.
Speaker 1:But my son has actually uploaded plans to an AI program that will do a review of them against the ordinances and against, you know, inverts and pipe lengths and it's not perfect, but it's pretty It is pretty good. You know, it would be awesome if you submitted plans to a municipality and they were reviewed once by AI and maybe once by their consultant and that was the end. It doesn't work that way. Not yet.
Speaker 2:Doesn't work that way and it's that's also time savings there too.
Speaker 1:Of course.
Speaker 2:Turnaround time.
Speaker 1:Right. And predictability.
Speaker 2:Yep.
Speaker 1:I mean, I was in, like I said, a township last night and there's an army of consultants. And I know them all. I like them all. I get their comments. We have good relationship and we can usually come to an agreement on them.
Speaker 1:But, you know, though comments will conflict and the land planner will make a comment that maybe is against what the engineer had suggested and you get yourself caught up in a little bit of a quagmire trying to work your way through it. And unfortunately, that's all just money. All of it. So that the you know, I know we could go on for years on the affordable housing problem in Chester County, but it's I'll set it's never going to change until we simplify the process. We simply can't I can't get them approved fast enough.
Speaker 1:You can't get them built fast enough. Keep up with it with the demand.
Speaker 2:No. And that all again, that all comes into the, you know, beginning cost before you even get a foundation on the ground. Right. You know, just before I came here, was having this conversation with somebody about a local property and it like, you can't go any lower, any tighter to appeal to buyer around here.
Speaker 1:No. No. And the other thing that we use is what that we've seen, which is crazy, is that you go and I see this with my clients that that develop property for the national homebuilders. They they tie up their property at a price. That's fine.
Speaker 1:They end up spending two, three, four years with me getting it approved. Meanwhile, they've they've then signed an agreement sale to sell it to somebody. Right. But when that four years comes, the property is worth way more money. A lot a lot more money, you know.
Speaker 1:And then there people who are kind of looking to try to renegotiate and trade and it just makes for a messy process. It really does. Yeah. I wonder, like, so what is on the HBA's radar these days for how they would like to see things? I mean, I'm I'm on the regulatory side, so I talk to them about that sometimes.
Speaker 1:I'd like, what do you see it, like, changing in in that building world?
Speaker 2:So the biggest thing that we're implementing right now is a full time staff member that's gonna be going around to each township and getting involved to get everything more not more or less regulated, but try to get everybody on the same page so it's consistent through each township because we're getting, you know, permanent turnaround times, you know, approvals with the planning commission, board of supervisors, everything to try to get everybody on the same page. Basically, call, you know, a third party consultant. Mhmm. And we're just you know, we're picking starting with the top problem makers and, you know, working our way down the list there.
Speaker 1:We we have a we have a fantastic person starting here in about in about a week or two weeks graduating from Westchester University. Okay. Actually worked here last summer with our stakeout crew, surveying, did an awesome job. Went to Westchester Masters and Planning, but she sat here with us a little while ago and she had done a study on an ordinance like on a comprehensive plan and ordinance in the Southern Chester County Township.
Speaker 2:Okay.
Speaker 1:And part of it was, which I thought was very interesting and pretty much aligned exactly with what we see, was she conducted a couple of focus groups with different demographics and different age groups. And, you know, she's hearing loud and clear from the younger people, obviously, that they want more affordable housing. Want any affordable housing. And they want access to entertainment and places to shop and places to, like, eat and drink and to go out. And then as you can imagine, as as she pulled those as people went up in age, then they wanted less and less and eventually just wanted everything to never be developed and to stay open fields.
Speaker 1:And the problem and that's fine. I mean, I can we all have different opinions. But the problem is that you then put those those personalities on a board and it becomes almost impossible. Like I do this for a living. I can look at five or six planning commissioners.
Speaker 1:I can see the few that are agreeing with me. I can see the few that are completely not agreeing with me. Unfortunately, it seems like the ones that don't agree or have the biggest voice.
Speaker 2:100%.
Speaker 1:You know, no one wants to stay like, I agree with you, Dennis. Just, you know, you're and it's an uphill battle. Both my kids in this business now too, and they're with me last night and they see what it's like. But I would love to see there some kind of I don't know how it ever happened. I'm I'm on the board of Chester County twenty twenty.
Speaker 1:We discussed the planning issues of the county. We would love there to be some standardized way, and I hope that there will be I mean, it won't happen overnight, but certainly we recognize the different personalities of a township and, you know, where you're at.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:How you overcome it, I don't know.
Speaker 2:You know, the the planning, storm water, everything, if that can kinda be standardized through Yep. Each township will be great. And then, you know, back to your point in the beginning, you know, introducing AI to that, to be able to get through you know, I have a small little three lot in Yep. Local borough around here. And the amount of time that we spent letting residents voice their opinion.
Speaker 1:I know.
Speaker 2:And that ties it up. So what could have been two meetings turned into six.
Speaker 1:Yep. And and look, I you know, it's a fair point. Where I where I was the other night, it's a small change of the ordinance. Like I said, no more density. It's a it's a better move.
Speaker 1:It's all the way around. There are members that that see and agree that. There are also members that say, we need to notify all of the residents that this could affect and give them their chance to come out. I it's mean, I'm all for the process, but there once that once that that happens, then things are just going to stymie down to almost nothing.
Speaker 2:Right. I'll just
Speaker 1:see what happens.
Speaker 2:All for everybody voicing their opinion, but there's gotta be somebody there to control it and not go down the path of, you know, what color the shutters are gonna be and you know, is the sidewalk gonna be brick or concrete? That's, you know, all behind the scenes
Speaker 1:work there. No. And in simplest terms, they're just leaders. Right? I couldn't stop the military and say, okay, who wants to go around to the right?
Speaker 1:Who wants to around to the Who doesn't wanna fight at all? Who wants to just go home? You would never get anything ever done. Right. You know?
Speaker 1:So you've gotta have someone that's going to, like, lead and take control, and we don't it doesn't seem like we have a lot of that going on.
Speaker 2:No. Which Not by any means.
Speaker 1:No. It makes it makes we we wrestle with this all the time. And I I think I said on one of my later my earlier podcast that, you you know, we we know the personalities of I'm not talking about the people, but of the township. Like, I could say, like, X township is tough. This township is easier.
Speaker 1:This township, you know, doesn't like, you know, traffic and this township doesn't like this. But we had hoped as elections went on and and people come on and off boards that a lot of those would change. And that's that's this is like, know, I'm gonna make it a political discussion, but like term limits at the municipality, I think are are I think the term limits are needed everywhere. But we see it on the micro level here. You'll get a township supervisor and he or she will be in there for thirty five years.
Speaker 1:And they're the single largest personality to deal with in the township. Sometimes until they die, you don't you're it's not there. But I mean, we really need like, I I think what what what this girl said to me the other day is you need to have the younger people coming in and getting on the boards and and having their say. Otherwise, they're just having things dictated for them.
Speaker 2:A 100%.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I don't know how you eat. Get it done, I'm all for anything that supports getting it done. Maybe I hate the phrase raise awareness, but if it takes that, I'm gonna be on the advocacy committee of a nonprofit I'm on for our Transportation Management Association in And Chester I'm gonna definitely push that, that there needs to be We've got to move past the perceived notion of let's just try to stop everything and try to move towards let's make things better and work with what we've got. I mean, we live in the most probably the most desirable county in the country.
Speaker 1:Right? And it could be so much better. It could be.
Speaker 2:You know, there's parts, just as you know, in this area that need to be redeveloped or, you know, redone, but it's you have people on the boards that are forsake this conversation, my grandmother's age, know, pushing back that, you know, we don't want any more housing. And then somebody next to home saying we want affordable housing. Yeah. Somebody next to them, that's I'm all for it.
Speaker 1:Right. And how do they ever come to some kind of an agreement? Look, we you know, thank God we have the ordinances. Last night, I was asked a question about about pipeline comments that were in my letter. And was I in agreement?
Speaker 1:And I said, well, I'm I'm in agreement that I meet the pipeline ordinance. I'm not in agreement that I meet the comments that were made that were not ordinance related. They were just basically we think this is too close or or whatever to it. But we've got to have that framework to try to that's really our only guiding light that we've got. Otherwise, we've got personalities.
Speaker 1:I can appreciate them. I can definitely see where someone like your grandmother wants it to be this way and someone who's maybe 50 wants their kids to be able to afford to live near them in the township and not have to move away and where a young person wants to be able to get going. But there's got to be something in place that I said New Garden Township just wrote a new ordinance and I think it's amazing. They've recognized the need for flexibility. They recognize the need frankly, I think my personal opinion is that they want to keep their labor force down there.
Speaker 1:If those if those businesses down there, the mushroom growers move out of the area because their labor can't afford to live there, then that will change the whole face of of the entire area.
Speaker 2:Absolutely.
Speaker 1:And we don't want that.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:But that's that's where we're we are headed. We're gonna open up an office in Center City, Philadelphia because I have so many people that I that I could hire that can afford to live here or don't want to drive to Westchester from where they can afford to live.
Speaker 2:Right. It makes sense.
Speaker 1:Right? So someone's like, I live in Bensalem. I just drove like going down in the Turnpike an hour every day.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:Sorry, Denny. We're not gonna go there. So we're, you know, we're finding ourselves. We're not gonna relocate what what we do here, but we're finding ourselves putting offices not as much in places where we're doing work, but more where we can find labor or where they can afford to live and they want to live. It's kind of interesting.
Speaker 1:Yeah. You know? I that's on the the the HPH radar. I've I've talked with them many times about trying to improve the process. I introduced a bill a long time ago that tried to change the way things were reviewed, but it didn't get didn't get very far.
Speaker 1:But I know that we've spoken about trying to reintroduce something to put a soft cap on the review process. At least a cap in the cost and at least a predictability on the time. I think you would agree that if you could say, alright, in eighteen months I can be approved, then you can kinda count on that and make your Yeah. At this point, we don't really No.
Speaker 2:It's just it's constant, you know, constant billing, and you have no idea. You know, some of these townships wait, you know, six months and then hit you with all of them Yeah. I the invoices.
Speaker 1:I have a client that you know very well who just got invoices that were like almost two years. Yeah. And then he just got, you know, I think it was like a $126,000 in invoices. Right. And it's like, well, what I mean, were there any inspection reports?
Speaker 1:I mean, again, I don't wanna make it adversarial or knock them, but we've got to be in this together and work on it. And it doesn't when you're on what we do, it doesn't feel like that's that's the case. It feels like the deck is stacked against you the entire time.
Speaker 2:I think we should try to pull you back into the HVA more. As we have been doing they're not mainline builder launches anymore. But Right. We have been doing them, and we have been bringing in, like, utility companies, Pico, Aqua, and bringing in some politicians. And, you know, the massacre.
Speaker 2:Should have been at it.
Speaker 1:Yeah. And they are. And and look, that's because back to what I said before, we're getting we're getting some some younger people that are that are being elected and all. It's not to knock anyone old, but we we know the world's changing. Right.
Speaker 1:When I grew up, I just walked into a while while I didn't get gas at it, know. And when wanna watch a movie, I went down to the video store and I rented a tape and I had to rewind it or take it back. Now we do things differently. It's important that and again, I think term limits would would do a lot for that, but it will be great to just I I'm encouraged when I see younger people getting involved in becoming decision makers and policymakers for You what we
Speaker 2:know, the local boroughs, you know, talking about here with the planning commission, they do have a, you know, a mixed planning commission board there, and it is nice to have you know, you went from, I don't know, call it 70 down to, you know, late twenties. Right. And it's the, you know, late twenties, thirties, forties that are pushing for this. Yeah. The older generations, like, I don't think we need this development.
Speaker 1:Right. And again But you have
Speaker 2:a building that's there that's deteriorating Right. That could, you know, bring in more tax revenue and revitalize the neighborhood. Yeah. And that's what they're looking at.
Speaker 1:That's what exactly. They're looking at it from a from a business perspective. Yeah. And again, I I guess that I I get set in my ways. I'm not that old yet, but so I can appreciate their you know, how they feel things should go.
Speaker 1:But I wish that there was a way to have a more collaborative effort and not it's getting to the point sometimes where we, especially with the planning commissions, I've gone to townships where the Planning Commission unanimously recommended approval and then we've gone to the supervisors and been denied. I've gone there and had the Planning Commission recommend against us and then go on to supervisors and been approved. So
Speaker 2:I've been in the same position.
Speaker 1:Yes. And and, you know, so it gets to the point then where you're just like, you know what, guys? We're we're just we've been out many times. We've had a circular argument and discussion about the project. At this point, just vote up or down and and we'll move on.
Speaker 1:Right. You know what mean? To just continually do it. I don't think that it's making anything better. I don't see the plan.
Speaker 1:And that that's the other thing that gets me going is the plan doesn't really change. We it goes through so many months and months, if not years of review. And I could show that plan to almost anybody and say, find out how it's changed. And other than my revision dates in the bottom
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:You wouldn't be able to tell. Everything stays the same. No planning issues. No nothing. We're just dotting i's and crossing t's and and no.
Speaker 1:So like I said, I could do this for hours and hours. You catch me on a bad day because I was out late last night to do it. So, you know, anyway.
Speaker 2:That's important, but that's what everybody needs to hear because it's again, you can't have an affordable house, which at this point, you know, I'm 40. An affordable house right now, you're 7 figures.
Speaker 1:Absolutely. Don't you think? Yeah. All day long. Yep.
Speaker 1:I mean, we have projects that are that are in that are West Of Coatsville where I grew up in between Coatsville and Parksburg, and they're in the high sixes and low sevens. Right. Or a nice house, but it's Our
Speaker 2:land cost around here. Right. And
Speaker 1:the approval cost, everything I know. Yeah. So, like, do you see the building community and process then, like, changing in the future? I mean, we've gone it wasn't that long ago there were really no national homebuilders. Really, the really big national homebuilder in the area was Toll Brothers.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:You know, there wasn't even a Ryan Homes yet. And now it's pretty much all nationals and then a few small custom builders.
Speaker 2:I mean, I'm seeing the nationals come in, you know, and you can look at it, you know, couple different ways, but I'm seeing nationals come in and do small infill lots, like, size of the stuff that Oh, yeah. I would be doing Yep. Which is good and bad. Right. The the custom end of it, you know, has you know, hasn't really changed on our behalf.
Speaker 2:I don't see it I see it getting tighter and tighter around here. You know, we're all looking. There's, you know, only so much land. There's only so many lots around here. Yeah.
Speaker 2:It's coming to a point where it's all, you know, like one lot that I actually sent you earlier. It's we're coming to the point we're gonna be revitalizing older neighborhoods, and that's gonna be the only way to do it around here. And I don't know that, you know, unless Nationals come in and buy an entire neighborhood and level it, it's gonna be, you know, onesie twosies for
Speaker 1:Especially down the Mainline, right, where everything is so valuable. But we often hear that they will run out of land, but I will tell you that if you go rent a little Cessna 172 there at Braywin Airport and go up in the air, you're not up there for a few seconds and you can look down and see that there is a lot of opportunity. But then, you know, I start looking at this is weird. I start looking at that opportunity basically against how many years it takes to get it done. Right.
Speaker 1:And it's almost like I'm always thinking, like, I probably have like two more dogs in my life. Right? If a dog lives like fifteen years, maybe, and that's thirty.
Speaker 2:Right.
Speaker 1:I got two dogs left. So I'm gonna choose carefully like my next dog or two. But like you look at ground down there and projects and it's like, all right, well, you know, that takes five years and that takes that takes whatever. So there's not, you know, at that pace, it just takes forever to get to get to get, you know, to go through that that land that's there. That's That's disheartening.
Speaker 1:Right?
Speaker 2:Yeah. It is.
Speaker 1:It's disheartening. Depressing. Right? Yeah. Yeah.
Speaker 2:You know, I look at it, you know, I look at it, you know, my eyes, what's this gonna look like in ten years when my son's, you know, ready to do this? There's, you know, a lot of second gen second generation, third generation builders in the association now. Yeah. And, you know, we're trying to bring in new blood younger than us. Right.
Speaker 2:Because, you know, people, for example, like Todd Pollack, you know, big name around here. Yep. Big custom builder. Yep. And, you know, he's retired out of the business.
Speaker 2:Right. And it just keep, you know, trickling down. There's
Speaker 1:Yeah. I did work for all your dads.
Speaker 2:Right? Work for plenty of builders in the association, you know, and Yeah. It's, you know, turnover, but, you know, what's there in the future? It's to focus on.
Speaker 1:It it it you know, like, we would see not that it says now, but we'd see these, you know, these news articles, like, someone's three d printing a house or, like, it's like, that's never gonna happen. But the national guys, they penalize everything. Most of these houses are most of the walls are being built up in their plants in North Jersey and they're being brought down and assembled. I think I think a few of them even put their windows in in them and have them shipped down. It's like at what point is there gonna be a clear divergence between pure production housing that is maybe maybe it's geared towards more affordable, but it's not right now.
Speaker 1:And then the custom housing and then that middle that middle builder that used to be the main builder is kind of gone. It's almost like squeezing out. It's almost to me like like the middle class being eliminated, and they're either being like the like two classes and it's not not there anymore, you know?
Speaker 2:It's know, growing up, I used to go down to Myrtle Beach, and that's where you would see them know, house after house down there. And they were and that was, like, late nineties. But they were cheap as cheap as can be. And you would see, you know, production analyzed. There were, like, ants down there.
Speaker 2:Yeah. And you start to see it slowly come this way. I I don't know. I don't see everything going production wise that way. I see it, you know, staying with the nationals.
Speaker 2:But for the these smaller infills Yep. You you can only spread your cost so much. Take, you know, the sticks and bricks out of it. You still have your
Speaker 1:and approvals and asphalt and pipe. There's a lot that goes into it. And none of it's getting none of it is getting cheaper. I said I I we have the affordable housing discussion all the time. And I've had many people who were not in the business tell me how they think there's an easy solution to it, but I don't think there's a solution to it at all.
Speaker 1:There's not. The solution might just be try to make more money because it's just not going to get any easier.
Speaker 2:Not by any means.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. I the one last thing I was gonna ask too is, like, do you see do we see construction techniques ever or any of that stuff ever becoming more, like, automated? I mean, we, like, like, we literally watch TV and see robots making dinner and making things and being in your house. I mean, like, at what point is one gonna be able to walk in and fix a loose doorknob or do whatever?
Speaker 1:It's gotta be coming to
Speaker 2:that point. Sounds crazy. Something coming. I mean, you touched on AI. I use AI also.
Speaker 2:Yep. My sister uses it. Like, it it's heavily involved in our business. And if you guys are using it, that's crazy to me. You know, I'll throw a set of plans in, let it read, and it's pretty damn accurate.
Speaker 1:But It's not it's not bad.
Speaker 2:You know, the trades used to you know, there's a big you can't get anybody in the trades, number one. Right. But I don't know I don't see robotics or AI coming in to, you know, change a toilet or, you know, pull a valve. I can see it for Not yet. You know, they have automated, you know, equipment for, you know, excavators.
Speaker 2:Right. Right. So could it, you know, go in and replace that? Sure. Could it go in and, you know, start replacing foundations?
Speaker 2:I don't see it for the pure craft Right. A carpentry, electrical, plumbing. Yeah. But mark the date today.
Speaker 1:I know. Five years
Speaker 2:from now, go in a different conversation.
Speaker 1:There were lots of things that we didn't think that could happen. I didn't think that, you know, when I said when someone said you'd be able to just get a movie like on your TV and I'm like, well, that's impossible. You can't send a movie through the air. I mean, how could that ever even happen, you know? And now look, now we like can do whatever we want on our phones and stuff
Speaker 2:like I mean, look, everything stored, you know, clouds and everything from, you know, ten years ago, we weren't doing that.
Speaker 1:No. No. And now, you know, the county has written a data center guidance ordinance. These townships are obviously all gearing up against data centers. Again, I don't I think that not gonna be able to be stopped.
Speaker 1:No. There's no way. There's just no there's the one that's gonna go in East Whiteland, which we've done some work down there on that one. There's ones that are gonna be up in up in Limerick on the public side. They're obviously following the path of where there's power at.
Speaker 1:But they seem to be it's almost I almost kind of secretly enjoy it because it's almost like people are relieved if we're doing townhouses and not doing a data center, you know. I'm finally at I'm 56 not the worst guy that's coming into the township. But again, it's gonna be interesting to see how it plays out and how the county responds to it. I mean, that much traffic has really no traffic. It does have some storm water.
Speaker 1:Obviously, it's got water that uses for cooling. It's got sound. But, yeah, I don't know. I put a thing on this just a separate little rant. But I watched the news and I saw that Radnor Township was enacting an ordinance to make gas powered leaf blowers illegal.
Speaker 1:You see that?
Speaker 2:I was actually I was going through an approval at that time when it was brought up.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. We I was on my planning commission in Willestown and there were many discussions about about making hours with when you could mow your grass. And I was like, how you know, you could have like doctor or an somebody works at night, an anesthesiologist that they can only mow their grass like whenever they got out of surgery or got done. I'm like, how could we ever how can we ever go down that road?
Speaker 1:Know, it's like I said, we've all watched our county transform and watched our local governments transform. But to me, it's becoming harder and harder to even predict. So when I'm sitting down with a new client in my office and they're like, how long does it approve? Danny, like six, nine months? And I'm always like, I would like I would like to tell you it's that.
Speaker 1:Right. But I hate to say this, but I really don't know. It should be that, but it could be anything.
Speaker 2:You don't know until you're there. I mean, perfect example was being in a meeting, thinking you're gonna get through it, signed off, and you have one person that doesn't agree, you flip into a next meeting. Oh, it's a holiday month. We're not there. You flip into a next one, then you're
Speaker 1:gonna Oh, I know.
Speaker 2:Lose two months.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Yeah. You're it's just a war of attrition. You just have to just wear them down. I walked out of I walked out of meeting about a month ago with a client of mine and it was from my, you know, twisted perspective the meeting went well.
Speaker 1:From his perspective, didn't because we he thought it would just be one thing. And I said, hey, that wasn't too bad. I'm like, we're we're wearing them down. And he was like, they're they're wearing me down. I can't really keep doing this.
Speaker 1:And I was like, well, this is this is it. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Thick skin and, you know, I'll move through.
Speaker 1:Yeah. I was like I was like even more more like our experience. I'm like, summer's coming. When summertime comes, not as many people everyone wants to know, like, hey. I don't feel like going.
Speaker 1:I'm gonna go to the Phillies game. I'm gonna sit home and sit outside. They're they're they have a little bit less energy. There's a little window of approval time that comes good for us in the summertime. People are on vacation, things are a little bit more chill, they're little Well, better mood to try to think about when to ask and not ask for things.
Speaker 2:That shouldn't have to be like that.
Speaker 1:It should not. It should not. But we we learned a long a long lesson or hard lesson a couple years ago where we had everything teed up for a nice project that was proved. There was a, you know, I'll call it a tweak to the zoning ordinance that we were making. That was an improvement.
Speaker 1:It didn't involve adding density or anything like that. But it just so happened that it was gonna be voted on at the October. And we never really considered the fact that there were some elected officials that were up for reelection. People obviously, you know, they collaborate and coordinate with Facebook and online now and they came out in force and it was denied.
Speaker 2:Yeah.
Speaker 1:And I I to this day, I think it was denied because I think that the one the one elected official who was up for reelection probably felt like, you know, if I do this in the face of all of our residents, I'm not going to get reelected. And, you know, if that's I don't know if that's the best way to make a decision. Didn't feel like it was, but that's the way it went and that's the, you know, the hand that we're dealt with. So we try to just become more strategic on when we know how we do this process, but it's a it's a it's a never ending
Speaker 2:challenge. Was gonna say never ending game.
Speaker 1:Yeah. You were saying that your son is kind of, you know, at nine years old and active in the business. Like, do do you see, you know, do you see third generation coming one day?
Speaker 2:I do. Yeah. Yeah. So I actually do something to try to, you know, get him active in the trade just, you know, it was a joke when I was younger, like, I was on job sites, you know, since I was two.
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:I do something called a junior builders club.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's cool.
Speaker 2:Take, like, elementary school Yeah. Kids, his friends, and just try to teach them, you know, they built little, you know, lights, little projects to use Yeah. You know, all tools and get them familiar with it. You know, some some like it, some, you know, take it as time away. Right.
Speaker 2:Some, you know, really focus and, you know, excited to keep, you know, turning with it. But it's you know, he asks he asks a lot of questions. He sees a lot of things. He hears my conversations with, you know, everything that I'm on the phone. Everything's, you know, through speakerphone now.
Speaker 2:Right. He hears every word. So he's you know, he knows a lot for his age of, you know, what's going on. You know, some people my age wouldn't even Right. Understand.
Speaker 2:But he's, you know, definitely involved, you know, and anytime anybody asks him without any influence from me, my wife Yeah. You know, he goes, I wanna be in construction.
Speaker 1:Right. Right. That thing that's awesome. I think that that's that's really awesome. My my kid I have a son in the business and a daughter.
Speaker 1:My daughter's a landscape architect, and my son's an engineer, of course, you know him. And both of them too, they they I don't even think I don't I don't think my kids ever rode the bus because when they went to school, I drove them to school in the morning. So they were either talking to me or hear me talk about work or I'm doing a work phone call and then dropping them off. But I would like to say that they both did have a choice in what they wanted to do, but they kind of almost didn't because they were just that's what they were exposed to. It's probably why, you know, RG Mannings always go and play football because that's all that they hear and throw and do.
Speaker 1:But I do think that I'm a huge fan of it staying, like, in the family and generationally because I think you're just making more possible successful routes for them to be in. I mean, all of a sudden, they kinda claw hard and get through it. And my biggest thing on our business is that it is it's disappointing for a young person that went to school for engineering. It's a noble thing to do and to get out and do your job in the office each day, still good, but then go to a meeting at nighttime and then have the experience, which is not positive. You know, you're being resisted, you're being fought, you're being critiqued, you're being critiqued professionally, and you can see where it, like, deflates people.
Speaker 1:So we try hard to just set expectations and be like, listen. Not personal, but they're not gonna be happy that you're there tomorrow night. You know? One person maybe, but not really.
Speaker 2:There's definitely you know, there's a lot of high highs and lows of this business. And Yeah. You know, a lot that you don't want. You know, there's stuff I don't want Mike to see or hear and
Speaker 1:Right.
Speaker 2:I'll come home some days and think, how's your day? And I'm just like, let's not talk
Speaker 1:about it. That's not talk about it. Exactly. Right. Yeah.
Speaker 1:Yeah. It and then then for us, we're coming home at, like, 09:30 or 10:00 at night, so you just come home and you're just like that's the other thing is, like, I just can't sleep. So I'm either come home just so freaking pissed off that I can't. I'm I'm rethinking what I said and telling maybe I should have responded and then I'm just like, I'm just can't you just can't slow your your brain down from it. But that's what we do.
Speaker 1:You know, it's like I said, it it's definitely changed a lot. I do enjoy the changing part of it, but I simultaneously can't stand it as well. I'd love to I'd love to I'd love to leave the business one day feeling that it was that it was made made better. I'm sure if we went back and asked, you know, your father and the other the builders that I worked for back in the day that they would all say it was way better back then.
Speaker 2:It was a hell of lot easier. Right. So much easier. All that even, you know, on your end, the engineering end, my dad never dealt with any of this. Storm water, you know, any none of this was Right.
Speaker 2:Around then.
Speaker 1:And and I don't even think I mean, I don't even think storm water's gotten better. It feels like we have more flooding. A 100 There's a there's a I guess, rabbit hole for forever, but I don't think the way stormwater is modeled and the way we do it is serving the county as well as letting some of the storm water lower in the Brandywine runoff rather than detain it and have it mix in. But, again, this is another example of where the regulations are, I think, are falling short for us. Well, hopefully, we can make it better.
Speaker 1:I definitely wanna try to make it better. I'm I'm all in. I did take a break from the HBA. I was nothing with the HBA. I took a sucker punch from when I tried to introduce that legislation up in Harrisburg and I was jaded by it, but I would love to revisit it especially in the face of AI and especially in the context of the words affordable housing are ones that are said more often than than they used to be.
Speaker 2:No. I'd get back in there and get involved. You know, we need Yeah. Everybody to advocate as much as we can because we're to get to, quote, unquote, affordable park, we need Yeah. Everybody behind us.
Speaker 1:Well, we need like I said, we need those young people that that want affordable housing to be able to, you know, get into these positions of being decision makers and helping God. Again, I don't I the the New Garden example is a great one. I don't know any of those of those elected officials, but they all seem to be fantastic. They all seem to be aligned. And for whatever it's worth, it feels like they they collectively have a plan of where they want to see their township go.
Speaker 1:And and they communicate that not only through what they do, but also through their ordinances and what's going on. And like to me, that is that is like actual leadership. Just having us be like, I don't like it. Like this, like that. You're not the person out there just has no idea what what to even do.
Speaker 1:Needs to be and it's not easy to lead, but there needs to be that in the county. And then maybe these peep these these these officials can then collaborate with their neighboring townships and try to solve larger zoning problems and things like that.
Speaker 2:Yeah. We need to the officials need to we gotta work together, you know, between engineering, builder, developer with the officials instead of just, you know, constantly pushing back at us.
Speaker 1:Yeah. Well, I can feel for them because I'm sure they get you know, you're out at the grocery store and someone's like, how the hell did you let that that that townhouse job get done? You know, I'm gonna I'm gonna vote you out. I mean, we're always gonna have have them, but they they need to be able to, I think anyway, defend their position that they took and explain it and articulate it and communicate why they did that rather than just kind of react to that. And then you and I and our clients are who's kind of being on the receiving end of that.
Speaker 1:And that's why we feel like sometimes we walk in and the and the, you know, the rug gets pulled off from underneath of us and we can't understand it. But it's, you know, like I said, it's it's it's a it's a difficult problem. I do feel for them. I applaud the New Garden. You should you should look at the ordinances.
Speaker 1:I think that that those those officials have done a fantastic job in coming together, whether they they meet on their own or they discuss it out in public, but they obviously have come together and came up with a vision of how they want their their township to be, and then they should be able to do it. Right? And if in six years they go off Alright. Let the new group come in and create a vision. That's how it should be.
Speaker 1:So that's my 2ยข, but I'll be I'll be glad to get back involved.
Speaker 2:So Look forward to it.
Speaker 1:Thanks for coming on, buddy. I do appreciate it very much. You got it. Alright. Thank you.
Speaker 2:Appreciate it.
Speaker 1:See you. Thanks, Bryce.