Regulations and Real Estate with Eric G!

Hey everybody, this is Craig from The Homeowner Show. We got a special episode for you, uh, this week. We were able to sit down and go on Eric G's show, uh, Around the House. Uh, we had a good time talking with him. I want to go ahead and thank our sponsors for this show, Lone Star Appliance Repair and True Texas Solar. Thank you guys for sponsoring everything that we do. You can always find their information down in the show notes. Uh, but without further ado, let's get to the show.

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, take a look at monumentgrills.com. This episode has been something we've been talking about for probably 4 years, and I have my good friends from the Homeowner Show. Craig Williams, Kevin, Mr. Hackett, welcome to Around the House, my friends.

Dude, good to be on.

This is so fun, guys. We've always talked about doing something like this. I've been on your show, but we haven't really gone the other direction with this. And, uh, always fun to sit here and chat with you guys because it's always a good time.

We finally sent you enough Bitcoin to get on.

Oh, I know it. Thank you so much. I love the new Aston Martin. That convertible is so beautiful. I gotta thank you guys. And man, you guys have been killing it out there.

Our pleasure. You know, well, that's— it's that Texas money.

There we go.

So, wow, we'll get you out here one day.

Exactly. I guess, uh, I guess Elon's back down in Texas, so I can't say that anymore. That's true. He's He's showing up in pretty big ways. I've heard his, uh, his campus is pretty massive. Yeah, absolutely. Well, let's talk about you guys first for my audience that, you know, 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. Awesome, thanks. Well, yeah, we, uh, we started this a little over— well, right about 6 years ago. And, uh, you know, 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, you know? And, and no one really talks to contractors and says, hey, you know, tell me about what you do and why you do it, and, and how do I not get scammed by someone that I don't know anything about or anything like that? And so we just—

Yeah.

We thought, you know what, we'll get some contractors on our, on our podcast. We'll talk to 'em. We'll find out more about what they're doing. And we don't know anything. I mean, Craig and I are pretty dumb whenever it comes to this, but we, we talk to a lot of really smart people. So that's how that goes.

Yeah, no, it's, it's, I mean, the, 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. And then, you know, the other side is like, you know, we want them to honestly talk about like, could the homeowner potentially do some of these things themselves? Or is it something, something they should stay away from? And, and, you know, 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, or, you know, just other reasons that, you know, you need a

license to do some of these things properly.

Yeah. So, and I like that you guys come from a Texas perspective, right? I mean, that's your, that's your, Backyard there, and it's always fun to see what's going down in your neck of the woods. Yeah. We, we definitely, get on a lot of local contractors. So, and, and we've talked to— there, there's a couple of niches we haven't hit, but we've hit—

We keep finding them.

We keep finding new ones.

Yes.

Stuff that we had never heard of. But, anyway, yeah. We, we are continually looking for new people. We do— we also do, like, product reviews, and, and we talk a lot about real estate. And it's one of those things where we are— we're always fascinated by the way the market, you know, rises and falls and what affects those types of things. And we're, we're not, you know, 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 kind of understand like where, where's the market falling and how does it affect your home that you currently own, or if you're looking to buy. And, you know, what does that look

like? Well, especially with the, with the National Association of Realtors changing all the rules, right? All of a sudden, that lawsuit just went, alright, Ctrl+Alt+Delete, reset. There's a new game. Yeah.

It was a national hissy fit is what it was.

Oh, yeah.

I mean, and like, you know, at the, at the end of the day, it was just, it was really what it was is you, okay, now you have to sign a contract before you can go look at a listing with a, with a real, real estate agent.

Yep.

Or realtor.

Yeah.

And that's really what it came down to.

Yeah. But the, the difference that it made in the way Real estate is sold is dramatic. It really is dramatic. And 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 paperwork that has to be done.

Right. Yeah.

Well, and then there's the negotiation side of it too, right? Where like, hey, wait a minute, I'm going to have to pay you?

Right. Yeah. Yeah. The actual money's going to have to exchange hands rather than just like the ball shuffle that That's been happening for years.

Yeah.

Which, which I think is a good thing. I mean, I think, I think everyone needs to have skin in the game.

Well, and that's the other problem that I see with this as well, is that, you know, 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 all, like you said, the ball shuffle.

Yeah.

Yeah.

And that, that's really all it is. I mean, like you're just, you know, paying, paying more. for the house that you're purchasing in the long run rather than, like, sharing the costs on the front end with, with the buyer. Um, but I, I'll tell you, I think, I think a lot of this moaning and groaning about this is about to go away. Just, I mean, I mean, at the time of the recording, I think yesterday, uh, Jerome Powell announced that we're guaranteed a quarter point drop in interest rates.

Mm-hmm.

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.

Yeah, wait a minute. You mean the government might be involved in our monetary policy? What are you talking about? They're going to tell us they're not.

No, I know. And that they want to manipulate you with your money?

No. Oh, geez. Someone's being manipulated out there with politics. Really?

Not in Texas.

By golly. Maybe out in Oregon. Oh, geez. I don't know. Go, go Mariners! So come on now. I wore all my gear just for you today. Just exactly. Yeah, I know you did. So let me look backwards and see where you're at in the standings.

You gotta, you gotta turn around, don't you?

Right. Yeah, I do. I'm afraid we're gonna end in the same spot, buddy. I know. Hey, it's the Mariners. As much as You know, being a former Seattle native, I mean, that was my team. And guess what? We always end up in the same spot. Yeah, right in the middle. It's kind of like the Dallas Cowboys and making it to the Super Bowl in the last 30 years.

Wow, you're, you're really, you're really pushing all those buttons today.

Yeah, I'm hitting on all cylinders right now.

I love it, I love it. Just, just remind him that Texas Tech almost lost to like a D1 school and we'll get the trifecta.

Oh man. Wow, here we go. It's okay, I can take it, I can take it. Yeah, Craig's still trying to grow a mustache. It's fine. Oh, that's awesome, that's awesome. I love it. But yeah, we gotta talk a little sports smack, that's for sure. Absolutely. Of course, of course.

Well, hey, I'm happy you can come back at me because I don't care.

Yeah, there we go. I'm just happy my Seahawks are 2-0. So when we, we become 2-10, then I go, hey, we had a good start. Hey, so it's normal. This is normal for the Seahawks. They, they jump out pretty good. We'll see what happens. Yeah, well, yes and no. I mean, so we got a new coach, so that's that whole thing where you're like, okay, who's this cat? He came from where, you know? Yeah, well, so, but Pete Carroll came from, you know, I mean, now, I mean, oh yeah, college forever, but then he jumped up and so You know, he did, he did all right for you guys. He did. He was a legend. And, and, uh, we've, uh, we've been a little versatile the last few games,

so we'll see what happens. You know, I don't want to date this 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. The new coach thing is never super hot for any team out there. Sure. For sure. So, well, I wanted to talk to you guys. I mean, you guys touch on so many different things out there. You know, we were just talking real estate and that's, That's, you know, that's a big one right there. And I think one thing that I wanted to go back to 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 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 3%, 3.5%. I want to pay you 2% because I found somebody that's doing first-time homebuyer stuff and they're only doing 2%. Well, yeah, I think they're gonna have to because the problem with first-time home buyers is they don't have any equity. They don't have— I mean, unless they've really done a really good job of saving their money and putting it away to be able to put a down payment, they're in, they're in a pickle. Because the, the thing is, the buyer used to pay all of the, you know, all of, all of the commissions. And so now they're having to not only come up with a down payment for

a home Now they're also having to come up with half of the commissions as well.

Oh.

Which, depending on the, the house, even for a starter home, that could equal, you know, a couple thousand dollars. And so, you know, it, it just continues to balloon for them. There's gonna have to be some negotiation. And, and I think that's gonna be the thing that, in my opinion, is gonna make it harder and harder for first-time homebuyers to get into a home. Because what's gonna happen is, I think You, you put a first-time home buyer up against, uh, someone who already owned a home and trying to negotiate that. I think the buyer's gonna wind up going with the person that has, you know, even if it's a little less money, it might up, might up,

wind up making them more money in the end because they may not have to pony up like you're talking about. So it's a, it's a game that's gonna have to be played and it's gonna change everything, I think. And then this, you know, I don't wanna get too much into politics here cuz 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 home buyer, I was just— somebody comes in with a first-time home buyer offer and they go, wow, that house was $400,000. Oh, you're a first-time home buyer? $425,000. $425,000. Yep, yep. They're gonna be able to move the ball at all. It's— yeah, it's not gonna change anything. I think it, I think it just pushes the ball down the road and

It's, it's one of those incentives. When I remember being a first-time homebuyer, 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, and here's, you know, going back, you, you mentioned it, we, we don't, we don't really talk a lot about politics on our show either. But the thing is—

That's not true.

We, we talk about politics. We try not to make it— we try not to take a, a side too often. There you go. Yeah, there we go.

There we go.

But I call, I call crazy crazy when I see it, though. So that's the other thing, too. Well, and, but here's the thing. Neither one of the candidates right now are talking at all about, about first-time homebuyers at this point.

That's, that's, that's, I, I think that's the point Eric's making, though, is like, I, I actually think Kamala made a really smart 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. I mean, like, there's—

There was no other plan besides that one.

Yeah. And it was, and, and like, look, we, we talked about it on our show is like, look, number one issue amongst Gen Z voters is first-time homebuyership.

Right.

You know, and like, and no one but RFK was talking about it at the time. And she comes in and says like, look, we're gonna— one of her promises is I'm gonna give $25,000 grant to first-time homebuyers. Well, if you're putting 5% down on a new home, that means that you can purchase a half a million dollar home.

Right.

With that down payment.

Yeah. That's, that's huge. But here's the problem though, is 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 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. Now you're putting people in and it just pushes the price up, right? That's that free market 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 it is, is, you know, and we— I think we talked about this a couple years ago, Eric, like, you know, the cost of goods is still just so high. Guys don't want to build.

That's the biggest problem. That's one of it. I mean, 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, man, across the country.

That's, that's not good.

That's— well, no, really low number. Yeah, it is, it is. But with, you know, 7, 8, 9% interest rates or whatever you got out there, that's kind of what happens is because there's just no demand either for it. Well, people are going, wow, I can't afford to buy that next house because I got a 2.5% or 3% 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.

Yeah. And the people that are having to move because of work are not selling their homes.

No.

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% that they're having, you know, when they move down to Miami or whatever it is.

Exactly.

You know, the, the point that Jerome Powell knocked down the other day was like, we're, we're, we're getting into like really low 6 territory, which it— I think can make people feel really good. And if it goes half a point, we're going to dip— if you have good credit, it's going to dip down in the 5s.

Yeah, once that happens, I think that yeah, you're right. I think game on. I think once it hits anything in the fives, I think we're gonna see a buying frenzy all of a sudden. People are waiting for that number.

The the only the only hesitation that he said the other day. Did you guys see that they got caught rigging the the job market numbers?

No. Oh, like by what? A lot.

A lot. And and so Jerome Powell came out and said like, look, I'm not very comfortable. With the job market numbers after we have the revised actual numbers that came back. And so—

Yeah. Plus or minus a million. It's okay. You know? Right?

And, and so he— and then that— well, and, and so you could take that a couple different ways.

Right?

I mean, it could be like, okay. The, the numbers aren't looking so good, so I'm not gonna 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. So, I mean, I don't know which way he's gonna go on that, but like, that's, that's what we're looking at. And he made that statement. And so it's like, we don't know what he means when he says these cryptic things.

No, it's, it's, you get up the tea leaves and try to decipher what he's got going there. But you know something, here's one thing I wanna 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 US. 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.

I mean—

Great example, city of Portland right here.

Okay.

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, maybe there was a riot and a burn down. We'll just say whatever it was, you can have $40,000, $50,000, $60,000 of permit fees just to get that building permit. Oh my goodness. And that's in a lot of major cities out there.

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?

Well, great example, like in the city of Portland here 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. Oh geez. Then there's a transportation fee that's like another 7. There's all these different fees that they put on there. 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 and get people going? Because all of a sudden, if you could take $50,000 or $60,000 off the price of a house just in administration fees, yeah, that's better than $25,000 grant. Yeah. And

depending on, and depending on where you're at, like 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, uh, I had to get permits. I had to file permits for everything in order to build a house. But then there were no inspections on the back end. They just— oh, what? They just wanted the money for the permitting. There was zero inspections required. And so— That's right. You guys are not the state. You guys don't have the state-run building permit and inspections that a lot of states have.

We're literally the Wild West.

Yeah, 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 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 of it.

But here's the other one that'll mess with your noodle, Eric, is there's no zoning in Houston.

They just changed our laws here in Oregon to eliminate zoning. So now there's this huge battle because 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. Oh my goodness.

Yep.

Yep.

But 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, you know the Heights area. it's pretty famous. There's, I mean, it's a historic residential area of downtown Houston. And what you'll have are like these homes that are like close to 100 years old, and they will literally raze them to the ground and put a 3-story, you know, modern piece of junk.

Right. Well, they've made it here even harder now. 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 like '40 or '41, I think it is, you have to hand disassemble 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.

Are they concerned about asbestos?

Yeah, I would say asbestos and things like that. No, asbestos, that has 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 2x4s are kind of cool that are dimensional lumber.

Yeah.

Nobody's building with those. So it just goes in a pile and it never gets reused again. And again, there's another $10,000 or $15,000 on top of the price of the house. Sure. 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?

I've never even heard of that.

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. What? 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, you can put as many developments on— if you own both sides of the street, one side of the pro— one side of the street you can put nice beautiful development in there with homes and everything else. The other side you can't build on. Oh my goodness. So what does that do?

It pushes The land price is up because there's a limited supply. Yeah. So now that what was a, you know, $100,000 lot is a $200,000 or $300,000 lot just for a buildable piece of land because of the urban growth boundary. Yeah. I guarantee that would never fly here.

No, it would never happen. It can't. I mean, like, I mean, like we, we have 3 loops around Houston at this point. I mean, like there's nothing stopping it from expanding. And not only that, I mean, Houston has no control of some of the larger areas. I mean, they've tried that. I mean, uh, you know, Kingwood is a great example of that where they, they sort of stepped outside their bounds and tried to control something, really just trying to affect the political system in Houston.

Um, all right.

But like, you know, well, and they wanted control of the water. They had, they had a massive reservoir there and they didn't want anybody, you know, cutting off their supply.

Oh yeah, we have, we have another thing out here on 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, um, our public transit. Mm-hmm. And they run all these different things, and they're kind of a non-elected pseudo-government agency. That just goes out and spends money, and again, you pay your taxes on that. It's the best. Wow! 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 and

go, "Ah, we'll throw it away. Let's give us new ones." Oh my God! And it was just. massive amounts of waste. I'm like, oh, come on.

We have a similar situation with Metro here, except Metro is just the public transportation system.

Yeah.

And which is pretty much nonexistent. No, I mean, it's basically buses and then a light rail that nobody rides except for rodeo season.

Right.

It's a light rail train that goes from the— what is the stadium called now?

NRG.

NRG to somewhere. Yeah.

Well, but that's the thing, like here in Texas, That's the case in every major city. Yeah, there is no— and it's not just Texas, there's tons of states that are like this where there is no really good public transportation.

Well, not when you compare it to like Chicago, New York. It's not even close.

We have a, we have a massive rail line that goes, uh, light rail line that goes all the way across the city and goes kind of north-south, huge east-west. I mean, it goes all across the metro. But the problem is, is it's so dangerous to ride. Oh no. That—

what do you mean dangerous? Like there's like people will rob you or like—

oh, you could lose your life on it. Yeah, they literally could lose your life inside of it by some hoodlum. And okay, and it's really not been good for the communities that are adding the rail. So the new communities, people go, hey, we're gonna add rail down to your place or over to your place. They're like, I don't want that troublesome getting a free ride over to my place. And so They've— that's kind of 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, you know, it was like a third world country on there. You take your life into your own hands every time you go on there. I just— it used to be great to go downtown and I'd park

at a park and ride and cruise down with that, and now it's like, I'm out. Right. Yeah, I mean, and that, that just winds up bolstering these other companies, Uber and Lyft and, and things like that, because you still don't want to go down there and park. It's a whole lot easier just to You know, let somebody else take you, right? Yep, absolutely. Absolutely.

That's what they did at the rodeo, is they made it— they made it illegal to park there.

Yep.

To force people to get on their stupid train.

Yep, yep, they absolutely did. Crazy. It's wild. It's wild. But I think, you know, that's what it's going to take. And here's another thing that's interesting, you know, 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 houses are built inside. They're built inside and they're just built to a higher quality standard. And some of these spec builders out there are getting away with murder on some of the quality of these homes. They're just disgusting. Yeah. Yeah. They're throwing them up. I mean, literally throwing them up. And

You, you have to be very careful whenever you are determining— you, you're determined to buy a new home from a spec builder. You have to be on top of them 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 home that's been studded out and figure out whether the studs are the right space apart, whether the headers are done correctly, whether, you know, all the joints— Broken trusses, right? 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 sheetrock the next day. And so it's like you don't have a clue because it's just, it's unbelievable what they're doing. Yeah, you—

I mean, 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 That you want to build a home, go ahead and invest in a third-party inspector to do a—

100%, 100%, every time.

You know, several inspections along the way. And like, 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. Exactly what Kevin's talking about. Because once sheetrock and stuff goes up, there's stuff behind the walls you can't see anymore, right? And, and you'll never know. And like, I, I had one, and I think I've told this story on our show before, but like I had one. It was a— this beautiful young couple. They built a beautiful home, 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.

Oh, let's just load the carbon monoxide back into the house with all the greasy air.

And I was like— and, 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 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 were gonna have to hire the roofer to come back out.

Come back.

Seal it and, 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. And she's like, good thing you caught it because you probably saved their life.

Oh geez.

And like, they—

it is crazy.

They'd been in their house a week.

Oh, it didn't take— oh, here's one that I heard from— yeah, here's one that, um, I heard going on, and it was a well. Okay, listen to this one. And this isn't even a new home construction story, but their well was Getting low and didn't have a lot of water. It was very acidic. 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 and do that. And so they put it under pressure like what they do with fracking, basically pressurized to 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 in to frack oil, you're now pulling whatever's in the ground back up even more. Wow. So all of a sudden you can be pushing, you know, 100 times the radon up through the well.

Oh, did it just explode?

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 that it was going to make their water softener with the— with their water treatment stuff that has the beads and stuff in it. Yeah, that was going to have to be treated as radioactive waste. Oh my God. Wow.

Where was the radiation coming from?

Just the ground?

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, you know, elements that are down in the soil. So you got to be careful with whatever you're doing.

Poked the wrong bear on that one.

Well, that's, 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, to make money. I mean, you know, when it's— when they— especially when there's no— again, this is— there's a catch-22, but behind all the all the, uh, licensing. You know, part of it is, hey, you know, 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. It's a catch-22, and, and it winds up creating a ton of problems. Well, I like how the state of

Oregon regulates that, and I don't— you 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, uh, the, uh, CCB is what they call it— these guys, the Construction Contractor Board, every contractor has to be licensed. If you're a handyman, you have to be licensed, licensed, bonded, insured. And they have agents out in the field following people around, and they'll pull up, they'll, they'll scope out a lumberyard 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.

And 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 if you get nailed the first time. Sheesh. And they hit them hard. But, you know, it's, it's also kept a lot of people from getting ripped off.

Well, the, the problem I've run into with this, with this kind of stuff is, you know, what, what ends up happening, like, in our industry, my industry, which is pest control, is we're licensed, right?

We—

and we, like, not only are we licensed, we have to have categories of licenses. to do different kinds of work. And but my, my biggest problem is not the unlicensed pest control company. My biggest issue is the unlicensed landscaping company that offers, you know, sort of like the shadow services of what I offer.

They're going down to Home Depot, grabbing something off the shelf and going around and saying they've got a solution for you.

Well, and I mean, honestly, they can buy the same stuff I can.

That's true. They're just going to the same stores.

They can't. I mean, because the landscape supply stores sell pesticides, and most of the time those guys aren't checking licenses. I know they're not checking licenses.

They're getting the sale off the gum.

Yeah. And, and so, but like, the, the governing board over me, which is the Texas Department of Agriculture, doesn't check landscaping companies because they're not governing landscaping companies. They're not in that, you know. And so like, you can, you can inspect pest control companies all day long, and, and I'm happy that they do that when they do that. Which is not often, but that you know like, but like 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.

Well, they 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. So what they do is they will troll like the Facebook Marketplaces, the Craigslist, the local sales groups, you know, the buy and sell whatever city, you know, how that you see out there.

Yeah.

And they will just scope 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— it's like, you know, Skip Adel and Catch a Contractor with Adam Carolla. Hey, you want to come over and take a look at my thing? Boom, you're nailed. Well, 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, I mean, it's, it's such a large state. It— there's so many miles, you know, thousands, tens of hundreds

of thousands of miles of road that people live on and trying to track down every, you know, Tom, Dick, and Harry that's swinging a hammer on, on any of this kind of stuff. And I, I think it would be an absolute nightmare to try to figure that out, especially when people can build whatever, wherever they want to, uh, without anything. So I'm, I'm just curious. Yeah, you guys could— yeah, you guys couldn't do that in Texas without having a state code. So we follow the International Building Code here. I think there's 11 states in the country that don't have a statewide adopted building code, and you guys are one of them down there. Yeah. 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 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 guys would have to adopt a statewide building code that would be adopted for everybody, and then they would have to say, okay, who has to be licensed, bonded, insured across the state?

Yeah.

And then they would have to say, okay, here's how we're going to enforce that. That's the problem. And I get it. I mean, if, if Mrs. Smith goes hires, uh, somebody come out and patch her roof off of Craigslist, and they show up over there, get up on the roof, and they fall off the roof while she's paid him $100 to sweep off her roof real quick and 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.

Yeah.

Yeah. And, and this, this truly is, Eric, one of the things that we, we try to help homeowners understand is like, look, if someone's gonna come out to your home, Make 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. In fact, I, 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 know, you couldn't fell this, this tree. And so I'm sitting there going, look, And are you gonna bring a cherry picker out here to do this? And he was like, no, man, my, my guy's gonna just shimmy up

there and cut it down. 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, right? You know, and how is that thing gonna bust up when you start cutting into it, right? Yeah, I mean, absolutely. And so, you know, my first question was, can you, can you show me your insurance and, and your your, you know, your, your information? He said sure, and within 30 minutes he had his people fax or, uh, email me— fax— had him email me over.

Hey, Grandpa.

Yeah, exactly. Wow, boomer.

Jeez, get off my porch.

That's right. They emailed me over the information and I was like, all right, sweet, get it done. And it— 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 and it would be a problem. Yeah, which 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 like either off the Home Depot parking lot, off of Craigslist or whatever. He was working for the homeowner, walking around doing some little cleanup jobs around there,

you know, literally just a 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. 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 because the kid got hurt. Oh man, just being a nice guy. Yeah, yeah, it's tough being a nice guy, you know that? It's tough. No, I don't.

It's expensive is what it is.

Yeah, it's just not worth it. That's— no idea, no idea. I haven't had the problem in 10 years. That's good.

Eric, are you guys, are you guys seeing the, the change? Are you guys experiencing any of the changes in homeowner policies for insurance like we are?

Not yet. I mean, everything's more expensive. The issue that we have here that's really hard is because we have so many trees, like in my area, I can go on Google Maps and I can't find my house because I have 100% tree cover over it.

Oh, okay.

Which means that the insurance companies can't get a good satellite look of your house, which means they can't tell you that, hey, your roof's not in good shape because we zoomed in and took a look at it, or you need to get this off of your property because it looks like it's— you got too many things in your backyard or whatever. So I'm seeing less of that here, but I know it's a big issue across the country.

Well, I know one of the things that's happening here, and I know it's happening in Florida and Louisiana and and some other— and I, I think some of the Carolinas, um, is like they're changing the homeowner's policies and, and not really changing the premiums or the rates. And they're taking away things like roofs. Um, and I know like up in, like in your neck of the woods, like mostly in California, like they're taking away like fire, uh, coverage.

Yeah.

Um, and I, I think they're doing that in Colorado as well.

I'm—

and don't quote me on that, but I think that's happening in Colorado. Um, and so like, but like these policies, they're not like, again, the premiums aren't changing, the rates aren't changing, but you're just losing benefit coverage. Yeah.

And it's, that's brutal. Yeah.

And it's, it's because the, the, the brokers are, are going to these insurance sales and saying like, look, like we're losing our rear end on the amount of, you know, roofs that you guys have written. Um, and that we've had to now replace and pay out and they're upside down. Um, and so You know, I've been, I've been telling people for years around here, I was like, just get ready because it's coming. Like, they're going to take them away. And we lost flood insurance around here years ago.

Oh yeah. Well, greetings. Here's another one that happened to my, one of my best friends. Um, he had, he's been with like, I'll say it was State Farm for like 50 years, right? He's been, but probably 25. And, and I'll just call the brand out because this is what happened. He's had a $50 deductible all the way up. Well, all of a sudden they changed it to a $500 deductible. No conversation. They just at one point in the last year or two changed it.

Wow.

Instead of raising his rate, they changed the deductible. Didn't tell him, didn't anything. It was just, you know, so many people, including me a lot, don't go back and read their policy when they say, hey, here's your renewal stuff. Right.

Yeah.

You go, oh cool, same thing we had. It's a lot of paperwork. And by the way, your policy is not 2 pages, it's the 40 pages that they mail you or something like that. That is probably closer to your policy or more. So he didn't read it. Well, he had a small claim because I just put it on there and he's like, $500, where'd that come from? Yeah.

Which—

and then got into a big deal on that because he's like, wait a minute, I've been paying for this. And they— he, he's still kind of battling that out just because he's like, prove to me I changed my policy. Yeah, and, and, and that's, that's the thing is like you, you, you wind up getting to a point where you have no control over that.

Yeah, because you have to have it.

Yeah, because here, and here's one of the things that happened to me. Um, I, I had decided to change insurance companies. I had a buddy that was like, hey, I'm working, uh, working for this insurance, uh, company now. You want to, you want to switch over? And I was like, well, I mean, show me that it's worth it. And he showed me it was about the same, and I was like, you know what, My buddy is probably gonna be more of an advocate for me than this other guy that I had that I had— didn't know at all. So I'm like, you know what, equal coverage, get a buddy. All right, I think I'm okay here. So I literally just leaned on him. Hey, what do

I do? And he's like, here, I'm gonna take care of it. Hey, everything's live. You can go ahead and cancel your coverage. Perfect. About a month later, I get a phone call from him and he goes, dude, I got some bad news and I've been dreading this phone call all day. I was like, all right, what's going on? He goes, well, they're not going to insure your roof. And I said, what? What? And he said, yeah. He said, uh, somehow through underwriting, they've determined your roof is too old. They're not going to insure it. And I said, hold on. So you're telling me that I've switched to you, canceled my other insurance that insured my roof, Now I've

got an old roof that clearly needs to be replaced. Yeah. And they're not gonna insure it. And he said, they're not gonna insure it. I said, what are my options? And he said, the best advice that I can give you— and this, he said, look, I— this is not gonna help me, but I'm gonna give you my best advice. Call your old insurance back and say, I made a mistake, can I come back? And I did. And they allowed me to come back at my same rate. Now— Wow, good deal. Unbelievable that that happened. And that was about 5, 5 to 6 years ago.

Yeah.

Um, may not have happened that way this time. No, no. But the truth is that kind of junk is going to start happening over and over and over where more of these things are going to get taken away. Nothing is going to be replaced. And so here's the best advice that I can give. If you're a homeowner, you need to start stacking your money.

Yeah.

You need to start putting away cash for moments where something happens and you don't have— because the other option is you just put it on credit or you go get a HELOC or something so that you can just do something to be able to repair a roof. I mean, can you imagine— literally, can you imagine having to get a HELOC to repair Repair your roof, right?

Yeah, but like, here's the crazy— and I'll, I'll make— I'll just go ahead and make a bold prediction right now.

All right, here we go. Um, market.

Yeah, I think, I think within the next 2 years we're going to see an absolute bloodbath. There's going to be moaning and wailing in the streets from the, the roofing companies in all of the hurricane-exposed states. Oh, because they're like, look, this hurricane or hail, right?

Where whoever's getting that, both of those are probably equal. Yeah.

They're, they're most of those in the same area too. And so, like, that's true. These roofing companies, at least I know in Texas and I know in Florida, right, like, are highly lucrative.

They, they rely on the storms.

And it's, it's all insurance-based money, man.

Absolutely.

It's all insurance-based money. And, and, like, these insurance companies have gotten wise to what's going on, and they're like, look, we're making these guys rich.

Yep.

I mean, like, you, you can be, you can be a, a 5-man operation in the state of Texas and turn $10 million, no problem.

Yep.

And, and so these guys, I mean, like, they're gonna, they're gonna lose their butts because they're not gonna have the cash flow that they did before from these, from these insurance companies. And they're gonna have people that are having to take out HELOCs or get lines of credit, and the money's not gonna flow like it used to, and they're gonna have to figure some stuff out. And it's gonna be ugly for some of those guys.

Yeah.

Um, it, you know, it's probably gonna be good for homeowners. I bet you you're gonna see dramatic drop in price Yeah. For like the cost of roof replacement.

Yeah. We have it different out here cuz we don't have that. We don't have those losses as much. Right. Sure. So we don't have the losses that you have. We might get a windstorm or something and they get up there and patch it, but we don't have the hailstorms, the hurricanes. We have ice storms, but it's just, it's not lifting shingles up. You know what I mean? Yeah. So, so one of the things that, that I think is gonna happen and, and I'm, I'm, I'm interested to see the, the ripple effect that this winds up happening, but What I— what's gonna happen is you're gonna have, like you're talking about, you're gonna have shingle loss. You're gonna have all kinds of damage to roofs, and homeowners are gonna go, I— and leave

it.

Yeah.

I can't—

There's gonna be some people that do that.

Yeah. I can't— I can't fix it. I can't— I, I don't have the money. I don't have the knowledge. I, I can't do it myself. I don't wanna do it myself. Some of these homes, you can't get up on the roof.

Yeah.

Because of the, the, the rooflines. But, um, They're gonna leave it. And so here's what I think is gonna wind up happening. I think the insurance companies are gonna go, your roof has been decimated. I won't insure your house anymore.

There you go.

Correct.

Because—

yep. And you're gonna see that. So the ripple effect is gonna go far-reaching. And, and guess who loses? The homeowner. Consumer every time. Every time.

Yeah.

Yep. So here's what happens though. Is there gonna be some new startup company that comes in That will say, hey, I know your legendary company you've been with for 30 years isn't going to cover your roof. Call us today at 888, we'll cover your roof, right? Yep, that's it. Well, that's— what are they going to cover it at a different rate? Are they going to cover it at a— instead of being a $50,000 roof, is it now a $25,000 roof so that at least they can get a roof on it? That's— and that's what's happened with around here with flood insurance, for example. A whole different It's a whole different product. You can buy it from a number of different people and—

And for gobs of money.

It is so unbelievably high. And, you know, it's just one of those situations where it's like, okay, what are you gonna do? Are you gonna pay for the insurance at that ungodly amount of money? Or are you gonna shove that back and have the, you know, that, um, restriction on yourself to actually be able to do it? You know, the discipline. I don't know a lot of people that have that discipline. You know, it's tough. Well, great example though. Here's another thing that these insurance companies are doing. And what I'm seeing is, is they, you know, let's say you jump on to one of the online insurance companies that we see on the commercials every day and you sign up for a homeowner's policy there and they go,

cool, yep, we know the house, it's worth this, we're gonna insure this, you're ready to go. And you go, I'll take the max coverage. If you have a nice house that was remodeled Or if it was built before, you know, 1970 where you could have asbestos or lead paint, it's not anywhere close to what should be covered, right? The max isn't nearly there. Oh, I went round and round because, you know, as you know, over the last few years I've been remodeling my house and doing it for my TV show and everything else, and I've been putting in some really cool products because I'm showing off the latest and greatest stuff. Well, when I look at it, I did some quick math and said, okay, the price you're giving me for my small house,

I can't replace my kitchen and bathroom for that if I paid somebody to come do it.

Yeah.

That's a problem.

I think that's what a lot of people are bumping up against because you can cry foul all day long about how your premiums have gone up, how your rates have gone up. But like, did you cry? Like when you were able to sell your house for 40% more than what you paid for it during the pandemic?

Mm-hmm.

And like, so what do you expect them to do? Like, they're not stupid. They can look at— I mean, it's public information. They know what your house sold for. They can look at where the market's going and that it really hasn't come down that much. And so like, they have to adjust. They— because they, they can't be left holding the bag when you've been paying a policy that you, you know, when you, when you bought it, the house was worth $250,000. Well, now it's worth $400,000. And, and what are they supposed to do? They can't replace it for the $250,000 that you paid for it.

No.

They've got it. They've had— they have to change the rates. And it's like, you can be mad at them all day long. It's just, it's just good business.

Yeah. And that's the thing. It is a business.

Yeah.

Right? And they have the right to charge— They're not your BFF. They are not.

No. I mean, you know, go to the people that actually caused this mess and caused the inflation to happen in the first place, you know.

Oh, there we go. There we go. And we're back. So here's another one that I— this is another one that happened to one of my good buddies here. Uh, had a mountain cabin, had a decent insurance policy on it. We had a flood, we had a freeze where we had this big ice storm, shut the power down, pipes froze in his cabin. 2-story cabin up by Mount Hood up here. Beautiful cabin. He's sitting there one morning looking on his cameras and it keeps setting off, and it was water coming through a light fixture in the dark.

Oh geez.

And wow, you could see the water. So they had 2 half-inch water lines in the house break. Well, it's 2 hours from his house, so he drives up there. So you can tell how long that— and who knows how long that was running, right?

Yeah, by the time he got the pictures and then got out there.

Yeah, yeah, well, yeah, but the time he was looking on his phone and noticing the, the, the stuff going on. Who knows how long that was. Gets out there, calls his insurance company. Water damaged the entire place, 2-story place. Upstairs bathroom had a bunch of frozen pipes. So here's the problem. Insurance company goes, hey, first we're going to send out our remediation company. They send the remediation company out, and he had like a $200-something thousand— it's a cabin— a $200,000 policy. Remediation company that they suggested he use comes out. They send him a bill for $130,000 for remediation. Oh my gosh. To strip it down, dry it out, send him a bill for that. And he's like, I can't refinish the

inside for $70,000, right? Can't do it. No. So now he's in trouble. And he got way overbilled by the remediation company. So that is one of the things I learned from that is, wait a minute, you need to have a do not exceed with that remediation company so you know where it's going. Right.

Or like maybe ask the insurance company, do I have to use this company? Can I get 2 more bids?

Yeah. Well, the problem is, you know, it's a cabin, so it's like an hour out of town. So what companies are in the area? What companies will go out there? Because they're gonna have to go out there every day. Yeah. So there's a little bit more to that, but it was only, you know, there's still companies out there within 20, 25 minutes of it. So it's not that big of a haul.

Look, for $130 grand, I'm sure there's some that'll go with it.

No doubt. Right? Right. But you know what I mean? It's, it's, and that's the stuff where homeowners going, well, that money's been spent. What do I do now? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. And I think, I think again, going back to where we started in this conversation, that's one of the reasons that Craig and I do what we do. Like, it's not that we're going to answer every question. What we are going to do is we're going to give you enough types of things to think about that you go, I wonder if I could ask this question, or I wonder if I could ask that question, or I wonder if this person might know something. And, and ultimately, if you're going to take on the responsibility of owning a

home, right, you, you have to get to a point where you're going, look, I don't just get to go, you know, golf every Saturday. I'm gonna have to take care of my home. I'm gonna have to do the things around the house that need to get done. And it's, it's, it's a shame whenever we wind up going, hey, one of the best investments I can ever make is owning a home. And yet I can't make that investment because of how much money it's gonna cost me to own a home. You know, it's a catch-22. Yeah. And like we were talking about earlier, and that's one of the biggest things, I think modular house you know, housing.

And I'm not talking about my grandmother's 1976 double-wide she had, but I'm talking about beautiful homes. I mean, there's a company that, uh, that is down here for me, uh, Champion Homes is their parent company across, but there's Skyline here, that's the division. But these homes are gorgeous. I mean, 12-foot island, quartz countertops, you know what I mean? Just—

Yeah.

Beautiful homes. And what they're doing now is they can ship them out there, so they have the Just looks like a real ranch home because they pull them out there, put them up on a foundation, and they're ready for garage framing. So it has attached garage out the front. So they place the home, and in 10 days, by the time they put up the walls, get the garage door installed, the roof on that tied in, in 2 weeks you got a perfectly ready-to-rock house. Yeah, and it's, and it's, and it's, you know that it's built with a certain amount of standards. And it's quality control. Yeah, quality control on that. That's, that's very interesting. Uh, my mom and dad are in a situation where they're trying to figure out what they're going to do as far as housing goes. Uh,

they're getting older in life and, um, they need a home. And so, um, it's an interesting situation. Um, this might be a really, really good option. And I think that's one of the things, exactly to your point, is that there are a lot of people that are going to go have to go, look, what can I do to lower the cost and And, and, and know— an older person know that they're gonna walk into a home that they're not gonna have to, you know, worry about. It's done well. Oh, yeah.

No, I think that was the appeal of the tiny house movement that we saw too, is people were willing to live in much smaller, you know, confines and save a bunch of money. Um, but I think, I think—

Yeah, but I— but here's the thing. I love my wife. I don't want to be in a 450-square-foot house with her.

Exactly. I think we caused a lot of mental health issues.

I could guarantee she doesn't want to be in a 450-square-foot house with me either. So, right.

Yeah, I mean, we might could swing it if I was like on 200 acres because she'd just never see me.

But well, if she had her 450 on that side, you had your 450 on that side, that could be a cool thing with a middle— with a middle ground. I get that. It just depends on if it's on a boundary line though.

I was like, well, just come back to visit every once in a while.

Time lock gate between the two. Yeah. Visitation.

Great, dude. Okay, I got to tell you guys, so my life actually changed yesterday with a tool that I discovered.

Okay.

And I know that you guys probably aren't into this, but I fit the stereotype of the Texas dude. Like, I've got horses. I love working cows. Like, I grew up with that stuff.

Hey, man, I had a 20-acre farm, so I get it. There you go.

So, okay. So you might actually appreciate this, and you might already know. You probably already know about it. I didn't until yesterday. I went out to a buddy's place a couple weeks ago, and he needed— he didn't know how to put up a barbed wire fence. And I've put up gobs of barbed wire fence. And so I went out there, and you were driving T-posts and all this kind of stuff. My wife tells me the other day, hey, I need you to put up a temporary barbed barbed wire fence in this area so we can get some good grass for the horses. And so we can go out and replant and all this kind of stuff. I was like, okay, so I'm gonna— I'm gonna go to the store, I'm gonna go get a T-post driver, get some T-posts. And I've already got the

barbed wire, the ties, all this kind of stuff. And I'm at Tractor Supply, and it says spring-loaded T-post driver. And I'm like, what is that? And I was like, well, I'm gonna give this booger— because I've always had like, you know, like the 25-pound—

Oh, that's I have one on my other side of this wall. I have one hanging out right there. There you go.

Yeah, I mean, they're fan— they're— and they do it. They, they get the job done. Let me tell you something, spring-loaded T-post driver, it's like half the weight. And like, it doesn't make sense until you put it on there, but like, you slide the T-post driver down, and so all you're having to do is all the downward motion. It picks the T-post driver up for you. Ah, that's how the spring looks.

Cool. That's the hard part.

Yes. And like, I'm like, this is This is like three quarters of my exhaustion driving T-posts is having to pick that stupid thing up.

It's the shoulder work you're doing more than anything else. Yeah, exactly.

I knocked that thing out in like an hour and a half.

Oh my goodness!

Nice. I was like, I'm the man.

See, I cheated. I had a an attachment to the tractor that would just with a hydraulic thing just go.

Just push them in.

Push them in.

There you go.

Wow. That was cheating. That was cheating. It was an old. It was. It was. It was. Farm shop welding 101 piece. I don't know what it was made out of, but it was a little hydraulic ram that you could put up there and just it if it didn't take your arm off, you were lucky. But sketchy, you know, it was just super sketch, but it worked.

So I've seen guys try and do it with like the front bucket. It just never goes well.

Like no, no, no, no. You're just bending post. You're just bending post.

Um, yeah. But I I have used like the the post hole digger. Like the, the drill on the back of the, uh, on the— yeah, the tractor. That thing's magical.

Yeah, those things are awesome.

I mean, yeah, done.

Yeah, that's cool. I have a cool tool here at my house that is— if you're doing concrete work, oh, this thing is the best. It's called the mud mixer. Have you guys seen that?

No.

No. So it is about the size of a big wheelbarrow.

Okay.

And it has a hopper, electrical outlet, hose, uh, hose, garden hose into it. And you bust open about 6 concrete bags, you could fill the hopper up, and it automatically mixes the water to the right consistency. And there's an auger and it just mixes concrete in about— each bag takes about 60 seconds to kick out. Oh my goodness.

How much, how much does one of those run?

A few grand.

A few grand. Okay, so it's, it's high enough price point to keep people away, but like magical enough that you still want it.

Nah, but they're in rental store companies across the US. The rental companies are buying these things up and you can rent them. And I tell you what, it is money. And you could put mortar, you could put concrete, um, you could put all of it through there. If you're doing a fence, you can literally— it's You're just dragging along. You could literally sit there and, you know, be driving down a fence line with the truck with a pallet of, of bags in the back of it, and you're just pulling around like a wheelbarrow. And it swivels as well, so you could have the thing coming out the side, you're just rolling it, going right over the top of the hole, and you're putting in a bag and a half of

concrete or whatever in it, and you're just going down. It is money for fast.

Wow, I was gonna ask how that thing moves around. I assume it's got some wheels and you just Roll it around.

Just 2 big, huge big wheels, and then it's got kind of like a wheelbarrow front on it that's wider, but it's super stable. And you start cranking, that thing is awesome.

I'll tell you what, Kevin turned me on to this, and we used this for, uh, some 2 gate posts at my buddy's place that I was talking about. Is that, uh, foam concrete?

Oh yeah. Yep.

I mean, I mean, like, it's expensive.

It is, it is expensive, but like, it's solid in a pinch.

It gets the job done.

It sure does. It sure does. It's a, it's a whole lot easier to use. Uh, you don't— you can pick it up with one hand and not even— with 2 fingers you can pick it up and, uh, you're good to go.

Yeah.

No, if you read the bag though, it does say non-structural use only, so you're not building a deck with it. No, no, no, yeah, yeah, yeah. No, we, we, we built, uh, like a, a 3 to 4 foot fence. I mean, it was like, yeah, not nothing Nothing tall, nothing load-bearing.

Putting posts in the ground, I get all day long.

Yeah, yeah, exactly. So I have a new safety thing I've been playing around with here in the shop, and it's right behind me. If you look over my head, see it right here? Oh yeah, I see that. That is something cool that's just out. Flame detect. Watch your ears here, guys. I have a lighter. I'm gonna kind of guard it. Watch this thing.

I detected a flame.

That, that, that thing was, uh, that was quick. That— well, yeah, I mean, it was— didn't— does it just detect immediate heat? How does that work? So it does, uh, it detects the flame in the entire room. So if you have a house, like if you're in a living room where you've got finished walls and stuff like that, normal ceiling, literally it could be playing with matches behind the couch and it sees the infrared of the flame. Oh my. And then it sends you a push notification on your phone that it detected flame. So how does that work? Like, I mean—

Candle companies everywhere hate that.

Right. Yeah. There's a new one coming out. They have a new model coming out that says if there's someone in the room, it will go for so long, like in a kitchen, like if you had a gas stove, for instance, right? Right. And you're cooking. And if you're gone for like 7 or 10 minutes or whatever it is, I haven't seen all the specs on it, but in 10 minutes it's going to say flame detected in this room. Are you sure it's okay? And if you don't come back within so many, it'll give you a warning.

Huh. Now hang on. I thought they outlawed gas stoves.

Oh, come on. They just made— we're in Oregon here. They just made heroin illegal again a couple of weeks ago.

All right, we had enough. That was fun.

That was a cool experiment that failed. So used to drive me crazy. I could literally walk down the street with a glass of wine in my hand and get kefs on me, but if it was heroin or cocaine, they'd ask me how my day was going.

Oh my goodness, can we have some, right?

Yes. Yeah, no, no, seriously, you, you could do heroin on the on the front steps of City Hall, and they'd say, g'day, sir, as they walked in. But if I had a glass of wine, they'd go, you know, we have open container laws. Oh my goodness. Can't make it up.

I've actually seen some videos recently of, uh, Americans going over to Europe and like just how shocked they are of everyone just walking down the street with alcohol, right, consuming.

And all— it's like Vegas, you know, Vegas, you can get away with that a lot. You know, you walk around.

Yeah.

You know, but here's the other thing that's crazy too with that is that, you know, they had those laws that were here and they've turned that around. But there is one thing that there is— if you live in a major city across the US and you have this homeless, you know, problem on your city streets, a group of people here figured out and won and forced the city to enforce it. You know what they did? They grabbed a dozen people that were disabled in that they were ADA. Maybe they were in walkers, maybe they were in wheelchairs, and they sued the city of Portland and said, you are limiting our ADA access with allowing people to sleep on the

sidewalks and street corners. Oh, so you are limiting our access and we're suing you for a billion dollars or whatever it was.

So it's like class action suit.

Yeah, yeah. And, uh, they, they lost. And so now the city had to go back and actually do something about it because they were gonna have to write out a massive check unless they resolved the issue. So the ADA laws actually took care of this here and got them working on the issue again where it was just being ignored.

So I really thought—

Gotta give it to them for being—

we're gonna say they outlawed cat and dog ownership.

That's only in Ohio.

That's good.

Sorry, I couldn't resist.

No, it's worth it. It was totally—

I couldn't resist. Well, guys, we're running out of time. We are well beyond what a normal radio show is, and we could do this all evening, but, uh, always fun hanging out with you guys.

You too, man.

Yeah, no, we, we had a blast. Thank you very much for having us on your show. It's been awesome. Yeah. Thanks guys. I appreciate it. And where do people find you guys if they wanna check out what you hoodlums are doing down there in Texas? How do they find you? Yeah, well, you can find us pretty much anywhere you listen to podcasts. We're everywhere at The Homeowner Show. You can find us on Facebook and YouTube. We're putting stuff out all the time, reels and content all the time. The Homeowner Show. You can also email us at info@homewonershow.com and a hold of either one of us and we'd love to hear from you. All right guys, thanks for coming on today, man. This time went fast and, uh, always a good time. We will definitely do it again.

Thanks, Eric. I'm Eric G and you've been listening to Around the House. There we go, there we go.

Boom, boom.

Uh, we didn't go too sideways. If I cancel it, will he still be there or will he go away?