Unlocking the Perfect Fit: A Guide to Unearthing Your Dream Neighborhood

This is episode number 247 of The Homeowner Show. Well, whether you're DIY or looking to hire, we're here to help you find the best information and options for you and your home. My name is Kevin Hackett, and here with me is Craig Williams.

Hello, hello, hello, and welcome to The Homeowner Show. We're so glad you could join us for another live episode.

That's it.

Live.

All right, well, today's been a day.

Today's been a day.

It's— I actually— today's been about a day and a half.

Ooh.

I know, I know. It's—

What'd you do today?

Oh my gosh, it felt like it was just like one thing after the other. And it started off this morning with, uh, I, I took my youngest dog to go get spayed.

Uh-huh.

And so that'll be fun for the next 2 weeks.

Population control.

Exactly. Um, so I felt— so she's a golden doodle, she's a pretty big girl. And, uh, she got home this afternoon and was just standing there. She's a, she's a pretty hyperactive dog. Uh-huh. And she was just like—

she doped up high.

She, she didn't go anywhere. She didn't want to do anything. It was just like, there was just thing after thing after thing. And, um, anyway, here we are and it's 10 o'clock and we're recording.

Yeah, finally. So finally took a minute to get here. I power washed an entire home today.

Oh yeah, why?

Uh, my, my wife's cousin is, uh, fixing to put her house on the market and they need some help doing some stuff around the house.

That's right.

And so I showed up and I said, what can I do? And she said, power wash the whole house. And I was Okay. Earbuds in, I went to work.

Well, honestly, there's something oddly satisfying about power washing.

I like power washing.

It's fun.

Like, of all the things you could have asked me to do, that was probably one of the best ones you could ask me to do. I, I, I mean, like, and it, it was a, it's a lighter colored house, so you can actually watch the mildew come off with each swipe.

Oh, I like that.

Yeah, I love it.

Love it. It's same thing with like a, like a driveway.

Uh-huh.

Just see like the, the black. You're like, I did not know that my driveway was dirty.

Yeah, you didn't know how ugly it was till you cleaned it.

Uh-huh, exactly.

Well, so here's, here's, here's where I get into trouble. Okay, so on their front porch it was concrete that they had painted. Oh, but the paint, most of the paint had like peeled off. Like around the edges there was still paint. And so like I get in there with the power washer and like the paint starts coming off as I'm power washing and I'm just like, I can't stop until I—

I gotta get all the paint. The paint's gotta be gone.

Well, and I, I, I told him, I was like, look, I can power wash the whole house.

Mm-hmm.

Or I can do this because this is gonna take all day.

Uh-huh.

I'm gonna be satisfied if I get this done, but the rest of the house is not gonna get power washed. And they said, just power wash the house, Craig. Uh, leave, leave your OCD on the front porch and just wash the house. Would you please?

No. So I can't, but I will.

That's where we ended up.

Oh man, we have a fun episode.

Yeah.

Where do we wanna start?

Well, I'll start with this, man.

What?

So this is a product I've been using lately that I'm a huge fan of.

Okay.

Have you heard of Poncho shirts? Yes.

Yeah? I have, but I believe it's because of you.

Is it because of me?

I think so.

So I have 2 of them now.

Okay.

And they're my absolute favorite work shirt. All right, why? They're crazy soft, very breathable, but they look nice.

Okay.

And like, you don't have to iron them or anything like that, and they have a lot of utility to them. So like, I have 2 front pockets, but then I also have like a side zipper pocket where you could stick like your wallet or some sunglasses or whatever. It actually has an eyeglass cleaning rag on it on the bottom corner of the front shirt.

Nice.

Yeah, so like on the back side you can like fold your shirt back and it's got an eyeglass cleaning.

I mean, that I wouldn't need that, but sure, most people.

Well, I mean, you could clean your sunglasses, you could do whatever you need, you know, because people use their shirt to clean their glasses, so they just built it into the shirt.

That's smart.

Yeah, and it's just, I don't know, it's just a really, really good shirt.

That, that reminds me of like, like the 5.11 gear.

Yes.

It's just very well thought out and I like that. Like, why, why have we not been doing this for years?

Yes. Yeah. And it's, it's a pearl snap shirt.

Okay.

So you can get it in Western cut or you can get it like in a traditional cut. But like, I, huge fan. Love it. Nice. And they've, so like ever since I bought them, I've been getting the ads for the other ones. They have like some denim ones I really wanna try out.

Okay.

Um, but I such, they're not cheap. Sure. But they're a really good shirt.

And, and honestly, like that kind of stuff probably lasts a long time. Like I feel that way about like socks. Mm-hmm. You can pay a lot of money for socks.

I, okay. So like, I will say this, here's, here's the trick with them. I, I went on the chat boards with this and guys were mad because they spent a lot of money on these shirts.

Okay.

You can't take 'em to the dry cleaner.

Mm. That's a good point.

It will, it will ruin the snaps.

Your dad would not be happy.

No, he would not. Um, It's such a great story, but your dad, the dry cleaner, it's a great story.

Yeah, it's on one of our episodes.

It is one of them.

Yeah.

Yeah. So just go back and watch it anyway. So that's the one downside is you can't take them to the dry cleaner, but it's, it's, it's very clearly written in the instructions on how to take care of the shirt. But like so many guys, I took it to the dry cleaners and now my buttons are up.

And so you, disregarded the instructions.

You just didn't read the instructions. Yeah, so, but I get it because it's an expensive shirt and they're like, I should be able to take this to the dry cleaners.

So yeah, but if it's an expensive shirt, you probably got to do your own laundry.

It, it is astounding to me how many people don't know how to operate an iron.

Yeah, it's not that difficult. I, I will tell you, I didn't know before I went to college though. Yeah.

Rizzler, you know how to use an iron?

Yeah.

All right. Okay.

Okay.

Mama's raising him right.

There you go. I did not know until—

if she's listening, I want to make sure she heard that.

That's right. I didn't know how to wash my clothes either until I went to college. Yeah, my mom did it all. I didn't know.

That explains so much of you.

And I now know I don't enjoy it.

She was protecting me. Yeah. You're gonna hate this.

Yes, exactly. Well, I think that they should The poncho, is that what it is? Yeah, poncho. They should, we'll promote your product. Just contact us.

Yeah, yeah, I'll wear one every episode.

There you go.

Give me 7 of them. That's right, one for every day of the week.

Yeah, I'll be a happy boy. Okay, there you go.

All right, so, well, we had a title to this one. What was the title of this one, Kev?

Well, it's How to Find a Good Neighborhood. Yeah, there's probably a lot we can talk about. And I know one of— I don't know if you still want to talk about one of the things that we talked about.

Oh, the controversy that's going on right now?

You want to discuss it?

Oh, absolutely.

Well, let's start there.

Yeah, because we talk about beer on the show from time to time.

It's true.

And we are a stranger to cracking the lid of a Bud Light.

Yes, we are.

Because we like good beer. Yeah, because that stuff is not good. And we proclaimed it as bad beer long before this nonsense started.

Correct.

Yeah.

However, there's a lot of people out there that want to drink a lot of beer.

Yes.

And therefore they drink that beer.

Yeah.

That's really the only— in my opinion, there's really only one reason to drink a Bud Light, and that's because you want to drink a lot of it.

Yeah, I think it's true of that. I think it's true of Lone Star.

Oh yeah.

Pretty much any of the lights.

The light stuff.

It's because you just want to drink a lot.

Yeah, exactly.

Which I'm not a fan of drinking a lot.

I'm not either.

I'm a fan of my 2 bourbons.

Yeah, I'm a fan of your second one.

We'll get there, buddy.

Okay, so explain to the world if they don't, if they've you know, they've been living under a rock, which is fine.

Yeah.

What's been going on?

Rocks are cool.

I, I like rocks.

Yeah.

So I like living under rocks even.

If you, if you haven't been paying attention, um, which this to me has become the greatest game of hold my beer, uh, ever.

Yeah.

Yeah.

Good one. Well done.

And so, well, and actually the, the second one actually happened before the first one, which is a confusing sentence.

It is, especially when I don't have any context.

Yeah. So, I mean, chronologically, there's been 2 controversial things that have happened in the beer world. The one that's gotten the most notoriety has been Bud Light, where they purported, or at least the person that they were talking about having a sponsorship with, made a big deal about it online, which is a person named Dylan Mulvaney. They sent him a can with their picture on it, and the world went nuts.

Right.

And understandably so.

Right.

So there's been a massive boycott now of Bud Light, so much so, I think when I called you yesterday, at that point, their sales were down over 35%.

Right.

There have been people posting pictures of Bud Light now running promotions in stores offering $20 rebates on cases of beer.

What?

Yes. Essentially giving the beer away for free. And a lot of people are speculating that they're doing that in order to boost sales so that they can show that they're climbing out of the hole that they've now dug themselves into.

That's ugly.

So Basically, everyone got mad. Dylan Mulvaney is a trans person, right? And I mean, I mean, I think probably the best way I could state this is like, the people that drink Bud Light are not the audience that you want to be promoting your product to with a trans person.

Clearly, the writing's on the wall.

Not— well, I mean, like, I think anyone with common sense would've said, this is probably not the best person to promote the beer. It's not to say anything bad about that person, which we, I mean, we might be able to, who knows?

Sure.

But regardless of any of that, that's not the point. It's not the vibe of the product.

Right.

So, and they have a person out there that gave an interview and was like, well, we're trying to change the community vibe of Bud Light. And it's like, well, that's dumb. You have one of the biggest brand names in beer. Just be happy with your position.

Let it be what it is.

Let it be what it is. Start another beer and let it be the beer for them or whatever. But no one ever said that you couldn't drink Bud Light if you were trans. No one ever said that. It wasn't a thing. I'm sure it's served in bars of that ilk all over the place.

Yeah. And it's one of those deals where now you've just put it out there.

Yeah. Now you're saying like, this is who we are.

Right.

And so the people that are uncomfortable with that are like, okay, cool, cool. Because there's lots of other crappy beers out there that I'm willing, more than willing to drink.

That's right. To the tune of at least 35%. Yeah.

So one of those other beers is Miller Lite.

Right.

Miller Lite came out with an ad talking about, I don't even know how to put it, man. They basically came out with a women's empowerment ad saying like, hey, we've, we've been jerks over the years and taken pictures of girls in bikinis in order to promote our beer.

We're chauvinists.

Yes. Okay. We've been chauvinistic throughout the years.

Yeah.

We're stopping that now. And this is the end. This is the end. And I'm not kidding. Like, you can go look this ad up and watch it. The whole point of the ad is like, hey, back in the day, women were the ones that brewed the beer. And so now we want to promote women brewing beer today. So what we want to— we're going to stop taking pictures of girls in bikinis. And in fact, if you have pictures of girls in bikinis with the Miller name on it, we want you to send that in to us. We're going to buy that back from you, turn it into compost, use that to grow hops, and give those hops away to women who are brewing beer.

Okay.

And that's the ad. Now, it's a rather clever one. It's supposed to be hip and cool, and she's kind of funny and all this kind of stuff. But it's just so tone deaf, again, to the people that drink Miller Lite.

Yeah.

The people that drink Miller Lite go to NASCAR. They don't— the reason you have any sales at all is because you took those pictures of girls in bikinis and the guys at NASCAR bought the beer. I'm not saying that taking pictures of the girls in the bikini was a good thing to do, an ethical thing to do. None of that.

Right.

None of that. But this is the brand that you built. You just destroyed it.

Know your audience.

You, you have an audience anymore?

No, they had one. And, uh, those people are probably not taking down their pictures.

Yeah.

Or their posters.

From, from a, from a, a moral perspective and a father's perspective of 2 daughters.

Yeah.

Good on you.

Right.

From a business perspective, Morons.

Well, yeah.

Morons.

Yeah. You're destroying your brand.

So, and essentially telling people, hey, I know that you've, you've been drinking Miller Lite for the last 30 years with that poster that you bought in 1978.

Right now you're a bad person. Yeah.

How dare you repent?

Right. We'd have feed the hops. Yes.

But please continue to drink our beer.

Yeah. Good luck with that.

And it's not going to happen.

No.

It's not going to happen.

You know who's really loving all of this?

Who?

Coors. They—

Look, here's— yes, because here's— if Coors is intelligent, which I'm not sure that they are.

No, we'll find out. We'll find out.

If Coors is intelligent, and again, I'm not saying that I would do this or that I think that it's a good thing.

Disclaimer is there.

I think it's a bad thing.

Right.

But if Coors was smart, they would double down on the bikini ads and the posters, and they would use it on recycled Miller paper.

Yes.

Printed on recycled Miller.

Well, because the truth is that people of anywhere, they react.

Yeah.

And, and the reaction is going to be like, show me how I can defend myself. I want to defend myself.

Yeah.

And, and sure, not buying their beer is the best that I've got until I have the option to go over to that guy who's actually—

and celebrate them.

So yeah, yeah, yeah, that's— I'm, I'm gonna go over there because I'm, I'm waiting for it.

Like, like, and, and not be— again, not because I think it's like a good thing, I just think it would be a funny thing.

We talk about Disney often.

Yes.

And, um, that, that's what Universal has done for the last 2 years. They've just poked at Disney going, oh yeah, you have to make a reservation to get into their parks? Not at our park. Yeah, that's exactly what they've been doing. They've been using, you know, like reactive media and propaganda to get people to go, that's clever, I'm actually going to do it.

Yeah, you know. Do you hear they're opening one in Texas?

Yeah, it's up in Frisco. Yeah, yeah, it's going to be targeted for like 3 to 11-year-olds.

Mhm.

Uh, pretty brilliant. Uh, really, really cool. They're also opening one in Las Vegas. Have you heard about that one?

I haven't heard about that one.

So the one in Las Vegas is, um, it's basically 100% all, all every day that they're open is Halloween Horror Nights.

Oh my gosh.

Yeah, so that was pretty smart actually. Like, people that like that Like, you can do it in March.

Yeah. Yeah. Why not?

Why not?

Why not? Those people that are like, why? I love Halloween all year long. Now you can go.

Congratulations.

Yeah. That's— is it gonna— is it associated with any resort?

I don't know. I, I did— I— you know now what I know.

Okay.

That Universal—

Have you ever been there?

Yeah.

To Vegas?

Uh-huh.

Yeah. That's a, that's a weird town, man.

Yeah. I— now I was a lot younger.

Uh-huh.

And I've not been as, as an adult.

Oh, you haven't been as an adult?

I do think that it would change a lot in my mind.

Okay.

Yeah.

Yeah. When did you go? How old were you?

I was 9.

You were 9? I went when I was— the first time I went, I was— let's see, how old was I? It's either 15 or 16.

Okay.

And I was handed flyers as I walked down the street.

Oh, yeah, I'm sure.

That was bizarre.

I'm sure it was.

It would be bizarre now as like a 42-year-old man, but it was really bizarre as like a 15, 16-year-old kid.

What do I do with this?

That lady handed this to me.

Right. I think I should put it in my pocket. Did you?

Just light it on fire.

Right.

Yeah, exactly. So, all right. So we're, we're, we're, we're gonna, we're gonna work through how to find a good neighborhood.

Well, okay.

This via Kevin and Craig.

Yeah, exactly. And, and I think that, I think that that story, the Bud Light story.

Yeah.

I think it actually plays into the idea.

Uh-huh.

And, and let me, let me, talk about another story that I think will help our, our listeners at least understand the direction we're going with this. So, uh, one of our friends, mutual friend, posted on Facebook about, um, her, her child who is medically diagnosed with a disability.

Right.

And The school that they are zoned to will not recognize that medical disability, medical diagnosis, and are at the moment at least refusing to test the child to get them services at school. So this is crazy in my mind. Like, if you've got a medical diagnosis, I believe that the school should go, okay, that's valid.

Yeah.

First of all. Second of all, if our process is they have to be tested by us before they can get services, that ought to be like your ticket to punch to get them tested.

Okay? Right.

But apparently that's not happening. And rightfully so, she is outraged by this.

Well, yeah, because the school is acting like they're smarter than the doctor.

Exactly.

Yeah.

And on top of that, her child has been getting in trouble at school for some of the behavior being displayed that is 100% associated with the disability. Okay? So, of course, the comments were like, oh, well, over at our school, we moved to this other school district and we're having the same problem. Like, it's not even better over here.

Right.

Um, I actually posted, uh, you know, in a— as a comment that, you know, we're in a different school district, right, that we moved to very specifically. And looking back on it is a great decision because both of my kids get services and we have great, like, great luck with that. Like, our, our fortune is being at that school because it's really helping our kids.

So Well, let me say this because I'm a little familiar with what's going on with your kids, which is not ADHD.

No.

I can imagine in a lot of school districts, they are trying to quell ADHD diagnoses.

I wouldn't be surprised.

And I'm not saying that they're right in doing that, but it's become so rampant for parents to want to Man, I don't want to accuse parents of doing bad things, but I think when parents see bad behavior in kids, it's easy to then say— and I'm not saying our friend did this.

No, she did not.

But I have seen it where it's like, your child's misbehaving, maybe we should just drug them.

And really, you should probably discipline a little bit better.

Maybe.

or something.

Take the belt out the loops.

Right.

I don't know, but, you know, maybe it's worked in the past.

Yeah, it did on me.

But you know what I mean? I mean, I can see school districts going like, hey, we need to have stricter policies on moving kids into programs that give them resources for this.

Sure.

Because it's become such a thing.

It has.

Um, and again, like, doctor diagnosed it, like, fine.

Different situation.

Yeah.

But like, if you— if, if, if this person was just walking up going, hey, you need to test my child because of this, okay, we, we need to see some evidence of it ourselves and we need to do our due diligence. Okay. As it is, maybe as an institution, as a school, that's, that's where you're at. I will tell you, for, uh, my daughter specifically, She was making all A's and B's.

Mhmm.

And really mostly all A's.

Right.

I, I actually, as soon as I said B's, I don't think she's made a B. She's made all A's.

Mhmm.

And specifically in the, the subject that was in question, like, she's making high A's.

Right.

Because she compensates really, really well. She's very smart. She compensates really well. And so they were like, well, we you know, she's making all A's and she's doing well in school. We're like, yeah, but she, she's having issues. We advocated for her, her teacher advocated for her, and they tested her and came back with a positive, uh, test.

Right.

And that's all it was where we were. This mom has more than we had. We didn't have a medical diagnosis from a doctor.

Right.

She has more than we did to go in with, and she's not getting the support that she deserves.

Right.

And that her child deserves. And so I think that this all plays into, and even what we were talking about with, with the Bud Light thing a little bit, there's, there's situations in life that you want to choose how you're going to fit your life into that thing. Okay, whatever, there's situations all over. What direction do you want to go? And I think that there are a number of things whenever you're purchasing a home that play into all of that. Obviously, um, you have to— you really need to do your due diligence. We've talked to a lot of mortgage brokers and, uh, real estate agents on our show. You do your due diligence on what you can qualify

for.

Sure.

And what you can afford. Okay. That— so let's just take that off the table.

Right.

Let's say that there is not an, an option that we're gonna talk about that you can't afford.

Mhmm.

And, that you don't qualify for. Okay? So everything is affordable. Everything is qualified. Now let's talk through what are some things that you should, as a homeowner, look for. Look for. And I wanna put way at the top of the list, Mhmm.

school district. Yeah.

If you have kids, I, I think that you need to consider what school district you're gonna put them into.

And, and I think, I think that, I think that's fair. Um, but there's a lot of people out there.

Yeah.

Me included.

Sure.

That it doesn't matter.

It doesn't matter. However, you're still paying taxes to 'em.

Well, you are still paying taxes to them, but like, if you, if you don't believe that the school district or public schools are gonna give your kids the kind of education that you want, it's not gonna be as much of a contributing factor.

I agree.

That being said, I think you should still look into it because I think a lot of people go into homeschooling, go into private schooling with rose-colored glasses on and end up getting frustrated and burned out and putting their kids back in public school.

Right. Exactly. And there could be reasons for that beyond—

Multiple reasons.

Yeah.

For, I mean, like my, my friend who passed away, I mean, they'd homeschooled their kids for all their lives.

Yep.

And all of a sudden, both parents are gone. The family members that took over raising the kids, I mean, they did the best that they could, but like, they ultimately ended up putting them back into private and public schools.

Sure.

And so, you know, where you are, you know, and let's be honest, good school districts, have better home values.

They do.

At the end of the day.

They do.

So it's, it's not, it's not necessarily a philosophical question as it is just like a smart financial question, because if you're in a good school district, your home values are going to be a little bit higher than the other ones that aren't as good as that one.

Without question. And they're going to continue to grow. And so, but, but I guess part of my point is, okay, let's take, let's take public school off the plate. Let's say private school. Well, you still wanna be in proximity to the private school you wanna be at. Right? Like, whatever that is. I mean, I don't really wanna be driving 45 minutes to take my kid to school.

Sure.

One way. You know? So there's that. I think there's also even with, I mean, one of the great things, especially around here, that's really, really grown over the last few years, maybe 10, are these co-ops.

Co-ops.

Co-ops are amazing for homeschool kids.

Yeah.

And, and I'm an advocate, Like, if you want— if you're gonna homeschool your kid, like, put them in a co-op. That's amazing. Well, again, research co-ops, right? Like, figure out where am my kid gonna be in an option to be in a co-op that I agree with, that is gonna teach the direction that I want to teach, uh, all of those sorts of things. So I still think that even if the public school isn't the thing for you, yeah, there are still school considerations that you need to think through.

Yeah. So like, like for us, my, my daughter is starting high school next year. Yeah. But she's going to a hybrid school. So she's only going to school Tuesdays and Wednesdays. I mean, Tuesdays and Thursdays.

Right.

That's it.

Yeah.

So like, it's, it's, it's a 30-minute drive to the school that she's going to, but it's 2 days a week.

Could do that.

That's, I mean, that's no problem.

Sure. Especially the direction it's going is toward where you have to go most of the time.

Most of the time. Yeah. Like we're gonna be—

Not always.

Next year is going to be a little bit different because our oldest is going to a different school than our youngest. And then our youngest, our younger 2 go to a hybrid school as well. It's just going to be a different hybrid school. So it's going to get a little complicated, but they're well within driving distance. Look, in Houston, if you got to drive 30 minutes, that's nothing. It's nothing.

I got to go to the grocery store. It's that far. It feels like it.

Yeah, I think that's a lot of people's experience around here. And a lot of people don't understand that about Houston. And I think Dallas is a lot the same way.

When I lived in Dallas, it was the same way. Now, when I lived in Little Rock, not the same.

Yeah, that makes sense. Yeah. And then Little Rock is a lot tighter.

It is.

But Houston, Dallas, Fort Worth, sprawling.

Oh, yeah, they really are.

Well, San Antonio is kind of becoming that way too.

It is, especially if you live in Bernie or some of these places.

Yep.

It's like, goodness gracious. There's—

Yeah.

You could be driving a ways.

So, so, yeah, I, I do agree with you that, you know, school should be a strong consideration.

Yeah.

Especially if you think that your kids are going to need additional help.

Mhmm.

Like our, like our friend.

Mhmm.

You know, she's, you know, she's, she's having to deal with it now, and that sucks. It is.

It really does.

And, and because once you buy the house, you know, you're—

You're stuck.

And if you've been there any amount of time, like, you're embedded.

You are.

And you don't want to— like, it seems silly to want to move to just go 20 minutes down the road to change school districts.

Yep.

Which is how it can happen. Also, school districts in Texas are weird. Most people, like, unless you've— if you've lived in Texas your whole life, it just seems normal. But school districts in Texas are weird.

Yeah.

Like, they're independent.

Yes, they are.

And so, like, each one can be vastly different from the other one.

Oh, yeah. Oh, very, very much so.

So they're not, they're not as regulated by the state as they are in other states.

Right. Well, and, and they get different amount of funding. Yep. And, you know, teachers are gonna be paid differently. Like, the amount of money that each student is allocated. Yeah. Is gonna be different.

In each school district.

In each school district.

You're, you're gonna have, well, I mean, like, even the way that we, like, like around here, we have, like, We call them ISDs, right?

Independent school district.

Independent school districts. They're not called that in other states. Yeah. And like, it's, it's like the most Texas thing you could do to call them like the independent school districts. It's like, yeah, like, look, look, you guys do what you want over there.

Yeah.

We're gonna do what we're gonna do over here. Right. Leave me alone.

Yeah. Get off my lawn. That's right. Get off my football field. Yeah. No, it's true. So, all right, well, that's one of my number ones. What, what do you got?

Um, around— so one of the big deals around here is utilities. So you— there's particularly down south from here, you have what you call mud districts.

Yeah, I had no idea what this was before I moved here because even in Dallas I didn't have anything related to this.

Oh, they're not, they're not gonna have—

Maybe they are now, but when I was there, there wasn't. And, and it was— or if there was, I just wasn't a part of them. Yeah.

And so what you, what you have, at least here, what you have are what they call multiple utility districts. And, and so like, you— what, what that is, is neighborhoods that are so big that they have their own utilities for their neighborhood. For their neighborhood. Basically a government agency, but that it's an— for that neighborhood that's operating the utility. So like one of the, one of the big ones near here is actually Bridgestone. It's one of the bigger neighborhoods around and they have their own water treatment system.

Yep.

For just that neighborhood.

Like where I lived, not, you know, before I moved.

Yeah.

They had their, their own, but it was it, it had a number to it. We were like number 3, but there were like a dozen numbers or something.

Right.

Right. Yeah. And it's like, we're number 3 and, and they had their own water treatment facility.

Right.

And, and you are going to pay a different amount. Mm-hmm. Based on where you're at. Yep. How much water is gonna cost, how much your sewer is gonna cost, how much your trash is gonna cost. You're paying into that utility district. Yeah.

Well, and, and let me say this, near where some of the main water treatment stuff and sewage stuff happens, which most of that time that's happening in the same facility.

Yeah.

It stinks.

Uh-huh. It does.

And so I, I know of a situation where some people had some spec homes built and they never went and saw them.

Oh.

And then when they moved in, like, every afternoon, it smells like sewage.

Ugh.

And it's like, why does it smell like this? Well, it's because the sewage treatment plant is right over there.

Your proximity is too close.

Too close. And, and so when you, when you get into situations like that, you want to know where your home is. You want to know where, where stuff is happening. How much does it cost for the water? How much does it cost for the sewage? All, all those kinds of things.

And, and those are things that a, that a realtor should be able to know and find out. In fact, you've got to, you know, a seller is going to have a seller disclosure and it's going to have those utilities on there. Call them, talk to them. Like, to ask your— if you don't know, ask your realtor. Like, tell me about this MUD district. I didn't know anything about it.

Right.

You know?

Well, and also like what utilities are available?

Yes.

You know, because nowadays, at least here, like natural gas access is a big deal.

It is.

Even for us, like, we, we have natural gas to our main house, but we have 2 other buildings on the property. Those 2 buildings don't have natural gas.

Yep. Same with ours.

And it's a pain in the butt.

Yep. It is.

You know, like, we're, we're fixing to drop well over $5,000 on a pool heater, and we're having to have a propane tank installed because we can't get natural gas over there.

Yeesh.

You know, and, and having a 200, having a 250-gallon propane tank is cheaper than having a natural gas line put in.

Yeah, that's the problem. The natural gas lines are very expensive. Yeah, yeah.

So anyway, so knowing, knowing what's available in that neighborhood for the property that you're looking at, crucial.

Yeah, crucial.

I mean, for me, it's like, look, even if you're not going to use it, having natural gas available, very valuable. It is.

And that's actually one of the things whenever we were looking for acreage, that we kind of just assumed we wouldn't have.

Right.

Uh, because once you get onto acreage, again, it's very expensive, and a lot of these places are so far away from the natural gas area that you're not gonna get it.

Yeah.

It's just too far out. And so you got to go propane if you want gas at all. We were fortunate to find that we are actually pretty close to the the natural gas supplier.

When you already had natural gas on the main house.

That's what we did. And so, you know, but it just so happened that whole neighborhood happens to have natural gas in the neighborhood.

Yeah.

At the— we had meters, you know.

And, like, to, to that point, there are some really nice gated communities near you that I know about that have no natural gas.

And they're, they're right next door. Yeah.

And they, they— you just walk in the yard and there's, like, these giant propane tanks because they wanna cook on with with gas.

Right.

And what are you going to do? And in that same vein, so utilities, I think, is a big deal. School districts are a big deal. One of the things I think a lot of people assume and don't actually check on is data access.

Yeah.

Having internet capabilities.

Right. And who Who you're getting it from.

Who you're getting it from.

Yeah.

You like, there's a lot of times in neighbor— it's becoming less and less so because of our friends over at TACUS. Um, but you know, there's a lot of times when you move into a neighborhood, there is one company and, and yeah, that's the way providing internet access.

That's the way it was whenever we moved into our previous home.

Yeah.

There was one and it was Suddenlink.

There was, that was, that was the case here.

And it was awful.

Yeah.

I mean, it, it, the, it was the same one here as Suddenlink. Yeah.

And, you know, you know, good on them, I guess, for like locking it down. Yeah. For 20 years.

Yep.

But we, we kicked 'em to the curb as soon as we had another option.

Right.

Because it was awful.

Yeah. Yeah. You, you need to be checking on all of the services that are available at your house when it comes to utilities. Uh, you know, internet.

Well, internet's such a huge one now because so many people are deciding to work from home.

Yeah, well, even, even if you don't work from home, like, your TV's connect— like, there you can't—

everything's connected.

Everything's connected. Yeah. So unless you're willing to go and, and do satellite, which there are companies out there that do satellite internet and satellite TV and all that kind of stuff, which you can do, but you, you need to know that going up front, you know.

I mean, a great, great example is the, the house I power washed today.

Uh-huh.

My, my wife's cousin's house. When they moved in, it was a great property.

Sure.

But then the pandemic hit and their kids were homeschooling from doing remote school from home, and they were having to use a hotspot off of a cell phone in order for all 3 of their kids to log in and do school remotely.

Almost impossible.

It was next to impossible. It just didn't happen most days because they didn't they never needed anything else other than a cell phone up until that point. But all of a sudden, dad's having to work from home, 3 kids are having to log in, and they're all logging in via a cell phone hotspot.

So challenging.

And it's because the place that they lived is pretty rural and had never had any sort of hard line put in, so they couldn't do anything.

Right.

And they're just stuck, right? Like, what are you going to do? You're going to go to the— like, you're going to— like, they're, they're rural, so you're going to drive to like Starbucks, which is like 15 miles away with 3 kids doing school, which by the way was closed because it was a pandemic.

You can't win for losing.

No. So I mean, like, you know, and, and, you know, like everyone, everyone's saying, you know, like, well, okay, what's the, what's the next one? What's the next pandemic?

Oh yeah.

You know, and it's— they've already shown us, like, look, if it happens, they'll lock us down, right? Oh, and you, you better, you better have access to data.

Yep.

Because I mean, at this point, reliable access to data is probably the way I should put it.

Sure. If we were to have another one in our lifetime, they're, they're almost going to be like, you should have known. The first one, it was like, I'm not talking about the pandemic. I'm talking about getting your stuff together.

Sure.

Like data. The schools can only do so much.

You should know.

It's happened before.

Let me say that I am convinced that more people will die even if it's a less deadly virus, if we have another one, just because so many people are going to be nuts to this. Y'all screwed us last time. It was ridiculous. I'm not doing it again.

Yep.

And then those people are gonna get sick.

Yep. You're right about that. So I think—

I hope we don't have another one.

Oh, please. Let's not.

So, alright.

Here, here's another one that I think is, is very closely related to what you're talking about with, with utilities. And that's HOA. Or POA.

Or POA.

Sure. You need to know the difference in the two.

Yeah. And do you know who John Oliver is?

I don't.

I think so. He does a late night show on HBO.

Okay.

You'd recognize him because he was a character on Community.

Oh, okay.

Yeah, he's the British guy.

All right.

So his name is John Oliver.

Okay.

So he does kind of like a Jon Stewart-esque show on HBO called Last Week Tonight or something like that.

That's funny. Yeah.

But he did a 30-minute segment a few weeks ago on HOAs.

Really?

Yes. Just like berating them, ripping them to shreds. Yeah. Parts of it were funny.

Yeah.

But 30 minutes, that's a long time. It was dumb.

Yeah.

It was like, okay, so clearly you've run out of things to rant about.

It's like us ranting on it.

Angie's like, like, we have so many negative things to say. Here's the— all you have to do is to log into Nextdoor and find out that no one likes the HOA.

None of them.

No one. Um, even though they all— like, if, if you were to ask those same people who jump on Nextdoor and be about their HOA, if you ask them if they would move into a neighborhood without one, They don't want to. They would say no.

And, and there's a couple of reasons. One, because they like how pretty their neighborhood is.

Right. And 2, they want that Yard of the Month sign.

That's what they want. That's exactly right. And 2, they don't want a trailer house being parked next to their, you know, their brick home.

Yeah.

Which, that's fine. I don't care what you live in. What I care about is, uh, what my house looks like in comparison to yours. Like, that's, that's what these people are But so yeah, they're the— but you need to know what your regulations are.

Mhm.

I mean, I'll tell you, before we wanted to move my mother-in-law onto a house on our property, and so before we could do that, before we bought the land, we made sure— because it was— there's a POA there— we made sure that the bylaws did not prohibit— or the deed restriction, that's actually what it is— prohibit a second home being put on the property. And actually, there is a restriction. Uh-huh. You, you can put a mother-in-law, uh, home on your property, but there is a minimum size. It has to be at least 800 square feet. Oh, well, okay.

Do they—

something you need to know.

Do they refer to it as an ADU?

No, they refer to it as a mother-in-law suite.

Really?

Yes, it's exactly what it's referred to as. It's a little outdated.

Update your bylaws, people.

But then, but then here's what's interesting. I was talking to one of the board members the other day, and he said someone tried to build a 2,000-square-foot house as a mother-in-law suite. And he was like, that— the problem is that's basically a second residence. Yeah, that's what they're trying to avoid. They want to give you the opportunity to build a second house, but they don't want a second residence. They, they want these acreage lots. You know, it's 3.5 acres for mine. Some of them I think are as big as 5, but Um, they want them to be single-family homes, right? That's what they want. That's what the POA put into place early on. Well, you need to know that if you want to do something different than that.

Yeah.

Um, you need to know what the fees are associated, and are those my only fees? Because again, the last neighborhood we lived in, uh, there were POA fees, and then there were club dues. that you were required— because it was a country club, right? You're required to pay at least the minimum club dues every month, and the POA dues were due quarterly. So guess what? Every 4 months or 3 months, you got about a $250 bill. Well, you need to know that. Yeah, you know, and so be aware of what you're getting yourself into.

Yeah, because a lot of people would be like, oh, it'd be really cool to live on a golf course.

Sure.

Until—

Until you're paying $80 a month for club dues and $250 every quarter.

Yeah.

All of a sudden, you're close to $2,000 a year that you're paying for your house, and it's going nowhere to your house.

Yeah.

It's going to the neighborhood.

Yeah. It's not going to your principal.

Nope.

Yeah.

That, I mean, that could be for, for our house, it could have been an extra, uh, house payment.

Yeah. So I mean, you, you, you talk about like $2,000 over the course of 30 years, right?

That's a lot of money.

That's a lot of money.

It is.

Right?

Yeah.

$60,000.

Yeah. Oh yeah, it's a quarter of a house.

You hit that on your principal, you hit $60 grand on your principal.

Yeah, it's coming down quick.

You're knocking like 5 to 7 years off your note.

That's exactly right. Yep.

That's nuts.

It is. And And, uh, it's funny, we went from that to the POA that we pay for right now. It's $150. Yeah. A year.

Right.

That's not a month.

That's a year. Now, but like, what, what are you guys getting for that though?

Well, it, there's no real benefit as far as like we're getting a certain, like the, I mean, there's a few little things like they make sure that, that, uh, like the, the front entrance looks nice. There's that.

But beyond that, the front entrance of the neighborhood.

Yeah.

Okay.

But beyond that, you're paying a little bit to make sure that the, the deed restrictions are enforced. Yeah. That's it. So they've got people that drive around, just kind of look and see, do they have, you know—

Here's, here's what I've always wondered about that, man, because there's, there's always those people, right, that drive around, take pictures, and then ultimately send letters.

Yep.

So do those people get paid?

Yes.

Really?

Uh, well, I think some of them do. I think there's always that, uh, I'm gonna use the word Karen.

Sure.

There's always that person.

Uh, Karen Bud Light drinking.

Exactly. Um, there, there's always that, but they're like, for instance, there are, there are people in our POA that are on the board.

Yeah.

That, that's part of their job and they do get paid for it.

Yeah.

Now it's not much. I mean, I'm paying $150. I'm paying— basically what I do is I pay $50 an acre.

Mm-hmm.

Is what I do. You pay by acre and it's $50 an acre right now. So, right, it's like nothing. But so it doesn't afford me much, but it, it at least affords the ability that if someone has to have a lawsuit, lawsuit brought against them because they've got a, you know, broken down car in the front of their yard, that's not legal, then we'll take you to court and there's some repercussions.

Sure.

So yeah, that's about it.

So one, one of the ones that I, I, I think is really helpful is to actually talk to locals. And I, I think, you know, if you, if there's a neighborhood that you're interested in buying a property in, I would almost go, I would find the closest restaurant and go have lunch or dinner.

Yeah.

And find out from, talk to the waitress, talk to the hostess and get a vibe because the people that are eating at that local restaurant, because if it's not a chain, like a local restaurant and kind of get a vibe for the place that you're talking about moving to because this is the, find the restaurant that's closest to that neighborhood.

Yeah.

And then go for lunch or dinner and see what the vibe is like in that place. And have a conversation with your waitress or waiter and see like, hey, what's the clientele like in here?

Right.

What's the— how are you guys doing?

Yep.

A lot of people coming in?

Mm-hmm.

What do you hear about the neighborhood?

Right.

Is this an area you'd like to live in?

Yeah, it's a good one.

You know?

Yeah.

You know, because they'll tell you, sure, like, hey, like, no, there's a lot of jackoffs that come in this place, and I'd never want to live here, right? Okay, well, those are going to be my potential neighbors, right? Like, he just told me that they don't treat the waitstaff very kindly, and he would never live here, or she would never live here.

So now you have a choice.

Yeah.

But you, you have information though.

You have, you have additional information to add to the, to the pile.

Yeah.

Um, so I, I think, I think that's a pretty, I think that's a pretty good strategy to, you know, and then, and then also, so I asked, I asked ChatGPT like, how, uh, how do I find a great neighborhood to buy a house in?

Okay.

And, and so one of the ones, it came up with 9 suggestions.

Oh. Interesting.

Which were actually— I may actually ended up posting it to see what people think. Um, but, uh, one of the ones that it came up with, number 7, was consider future developments.

Ah.

Which I think is a great suggestion.

Uh-huh.

But almost impossible to know.

How do you— I mean, the, the best you could do is like call a city planner.

Like, but like good luck getting them on the phone or even figuring out who that is. I'm just saying that's the best option. Let me give you a for instance. My parents bought the property where our office is now, and never in their wildest dreams would they believe that there would be an 8-lane highway in their backyard 30 years later. But lo and behold, it's right there.

Yeah. You can hear every car. Yeah.

I mean, you could throw a rock and hit it. And now they're having a 3-story apartment complex built less than 200 yards away from where their home is.

Oh my goodness.

And it's getting ridiculous. And it's because it's such a rapidly growing area. They're having to put up cheap housing. Part of that is because the highway's coming through now. And when they moved there in 1992.

Was the zoo already there?

No. There's a zoo in their backyard. There is a zoo. We share their backyard. We have, we have a zoo for a neighbor. Yeah, it's a private zoo. It's pretty incredible. Have you ever taken your kids?

I have not.

You need to take them.

Yeah, I know.

It's incredible.

But, but it's— but again, we're proving a point, aren't we?

I guess.

How would you How would you feel about having a zoo in your backyard?

Well, initially when they moved in, it was just a cougar.

Sure.

They had a mountain lion.

Yeah.

And that was— and a pig.

That was all they had. Yeah.

A mountain lion. That sounds ridiculous to most people is like, oh, you know, all they had next door was a mountain lion and a pig. Like, okay, because what it is now is a private zoo with hyenas and timber wolves and bears. and otters, and I could go on and on.

It's amazing.

Yeah. And they're, and they're great people. Sure. Don't get—

don't—

I'm not complaining.

They have ostrich too. Well, they did.

Emus. We talked about that in another episode. I'm not telling that story again. I'm not telling that story again.

Oh, sorry. It involved an emu and a tractor. That's all I'm gonna say.

Have you heard the comedian's bit about emus in Australia?

No.

No?

No.

Do you know about this, Rizzler?

No.

Okay. I'm going to tell this story real quick.

Okay.

I don't know the year. I don't know the year. I can look it up real quick if you want, but I don't think it's relevant.

Okay.

Except for I know, I do know that there were tanks involved.

Okay.

So at some point in time, emus in Australia became a massive problem.

Okay.

Okay. And so Australia declared war. And like, I'm not kidding, they declared war on emus in Australia.

That's a thing.

And they engaged their national military to go in and wipe out the emu.

Oh my goodness.

And they lost twice. I wish I was making it up. Look it up.

Okay.

It's incredible.

Oh wow.

Like, you can, you can watch footage of the Australian military Rolling out the tanks, rolling out the jeeps. They're gonna go get the emu, and they lost.

Okay, so I typed in Australian war again, and that's as far as I got. I was gonna say again, it finished it. Finished it against emus. The number one search.

Yep.

Okay, and one of the dates that comes up immediately was.

1932.

Uh-huh. That's, uh, yeah, the Great Emu War of 1932.

Yep, yep.

In 1932, Australia started an emu war and lost. This is, this is too good, y'all.

There is, there's a comedian that does a great bit about this. I don't know his name. I'm sorry, gentlemen, you're Your, your bit about emus in Australia is amazing. Yeah, I, I don't know your name, but like, go search it, you'll find him.

This is even better. How Australia Lost the Great Emu War and What It Means. Here's what it means.

Guess who you don't want as your ally?

That's exactly right. Oh my goodness. Wow.

Yeah, we'll help you defeat the Germans. Like, look, you couldn't beat birds.

Yeah, they're like allies with the French.

Look, McDonald's took down emus.

That's true. Uh, I mean, if your dad could do it.

One shot.

You don't even have to try, apparently.

That's right. He's not Cowboy Jack. He's Emu Jack, the notorious emu killing bandit of Texas.

He's just too honest. Just too honest. Wow, that derailed really fast.

Yeah, but but knowing whether or not there's emus in that neighborhood would be really good to know.

Would be.

Yeah. And like, have you ever been around them?

Oh yes, I have.

They are shifty.

They yes. They will come, they will come up behind you.

They are legit raptors.

That, yes. And they're, they're fast and they're, uh, yeah, they're sneaky.

Uh-huh.

Yeah.

They get the, they do the thing with the neck.

Oh, they stare at you.

Yeah.

They're—

they got the beady eyes.

Yes, they do. But okay, so are you zoned for certain things? What—

Fair question.

Currently, are you zoned for certain things? Has the zoning changed recently? could it change again? Like, I mean, legitimately, I know people that have said, I'm going to buy this house because the, the backyard is a national forest, right? Nobody will ever build behind me because it's a national forest, right? So, I mean, I, I do think that location, when it comes to those sorts of things, you need to know.

Right.

You need to know those things. So I'm curious, what's another thing on the list? I've got, I've got a couple more, but I'm curious.

Um, let's see here. Evaluate property values.

Okay.

Um, the last one is trust your instincts.

I don't know. Listen, I don't know if you can.

I, I'm, I'm gonna put that right up there with like, listen to your heart, right? It's like, no, don't do it. No, listen, your heart's stupid.

Uh-huh.

It doesn't know what it's talking about.

No, especially whenever it comes to something that goes, ooh, shiny.

Yeah, don't— like, yeah, I, I understand what it's saying. Like, ultimately, you know what you like and what you don't like, right? That's fair.

Yes.

Do not listen to your instincts. Your instincts are stupid.

They are, um, especially whenever it comes to something that is like, uh, a short-term thing, right?

It could be a former crack house, and if you're a dude and they put an 85-inch television in the living room and said like, look, the TV goes with the house, you're like, I like this house.

Right. And a pool table.

Yeah.

Oh, thanks.

Sounds great.

Right.

Could be infested with termites. You're like, I'll buy it.

Buy it today.

Don't listen to your instincts.

No, don't do that.

Your instincts are stupid.