#518 - Building a Custom House as Spec House

Building a Custom Spec House

0:00This is the second studio, hosted by the Architecture and Design Office fame. My name is David Lee, and with me is Marina Bore d'Aronay. The two of us are architects, partners at the office, and of course, hosts of the show. And today, it's the two of us, and we're going to talk about another common question we get from clients, which is, can I build my custom house as a spec house? I don't even know if it's a question they ask. I think it's a preconceived idea that a lot of them have.

0:30Yes. And so, in summary, the idea is that they want to make sure that the money they put into developing the house, the remodel, the addition, or the new construction, new house, is going to increase their property value by more than what they spent on the architect, designer, engineers, and construction. Right? So they want to be, they want to play developer. They think they can raise the property value, so that way, when they live there, they're going to enjoy the house.

1:01And if they need to sell the house, or they want to sell the house in the short term or long term, they're going to make a profit from the work that they've done. And we're going to talk about the challenges of that approach, when it works and when it doesn't work, and all the nuances with it. Right? Yeah. Sponsors. So, architects, design leaders, founders redefining the industry. If you want to shape not only buildings, but the businesses behind them, this is your moment. Future London Academy's Executive MBA takes you inside the boardrooms of Pentagram, Uber, Zaha Hadid Architects, and Google, where you will master finance, strategy, and operations from the people who already excel at them.

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2:47This is the Second Studio with myself and Marina.

Spec Versus Custom Homes

2:49Here we go. I think before we dive into that topic, we should probably clarify what is a spec house, what is a custom house. And if there is any other types of house. Yeah. So I think the terms spec house and custom house are probably, at least in our spheres, the most common terms to properly describe these two different types. And a spec house means that it's a house that's going to be built for profit. So the intention is to build it, to sell it to make money, or to rent it afterwards to make money. And also that, therefore, you don't have a specific user in mind.

3:23You have a market user in mind, right? Oh, this is for a family of four. This is for a millennial generation, like whatever kind of general buyer market. But it's not for a specific person or a specific family. That's different from a custom house in that it is designed and built for a specific person or family or, you know, specific tenant. Like a specific set of, you know, people. And I feel like, I mean, based on that description, a spec home and a custom home sounds pretty different to me, right?

3:54Yeah, they do. And then to clarify, too, it doesn't mean a spec house is not a custom design for the property. Yeah. So there are another set of houses called production houses, which, again, broadly speaking, means that it's a pre-designed house. It's like a tract home is another term for this type of thing. So a lot of suburban neighborhoods in probably across the world, but especially the United States, it's the same exact, you know, floor plan. Like 90% the same house that's repeated throughout the entire neighborhood.

4:24It's the cookie cutter one you see along the five freeways. Yeah, exactly. Those are production houses. And, you know, those are also oftentimes spec houses in a way, right? Because they're going to be- Specific market. Yeah. They're for a market of people. They're not for a specific family. Mm-hmm. But they're pre-designed. Mm-hmm. And then you get into like more kind of shades of gray, which is like a semi-custom, semi-production house where, let's say, if I'm a big developer and I do production houses, but maybe in a certain neighborhood, I offer buyers the ability to have some control over the design.

5:00Very, very, very minor. Like what are the appliances you like? What are the finishes? Or maybe the facade. But, you know, if I have a floor plan, option one, two, and three, and then each floor plan has different materials, one A, one B, and one C, two A, two B, two A. So that's like a, you know, semi, not, I wouldn't even call it semi-custom. It's like you have some more options. It's on a cart. But in the space that we're in, which is newly designed houses for properties, the two kind of routes are, again, spec, like it's going to be sold for profit, or it's custom, meaning to say it's an end-user design-oriented project.

Why Owners Want Both

5:38So why would a client think that they can mix, match, and intertwine spec and custom home? Like what's the, because I feel like, you know, the end-user is pretty clear in each of these options, right? So why would people want to try and merge the two or combine the two when they seem like completely different approaches? Well, it's financial for the, so let's talk, let's say the client for us is a person who wants to do a custom house, because that's like the majority of our clients.

6:09It's a financial gain or way of looking at things. So I think there's a few ways into the, yeah, into the conversation. There's like the, how the design thinking and design approach is different between these two paths, the financial differences and the schedule differences. But maybe more, another way to answer your question is the reason why people think that they can approach their custom house this way is because they're uninformed as to how difficult it is to turn a profit when you're developing a property with a single family house.

6:45And I think that probably comes from the fact, you know, like what the real estate market is like in the United States, right? Like everybody who buys a home knows and hope that when they sell it, they're going to sell it for more than what they bought it for. Sure. Right. So everyone in a way hopes to be a mini developer and, you know, make some profit when they, when they sell their property. And I feel like overall there is a, there is a huge weight on homeowners to kind of a, most like a burden to always be thinking about potential resale, potential buyer.

7:20Right. And, and, you know, as much as it should, I think it becomes sometimes a little too heavy, uh, on, on their shoulders and the way they approach thinking about what their house should be. Yeah. Um, which is important because if you're going to live in a house for two years, you know, you're going to sell it, then yeah, you could think about the market because the market is going to be here tomorrow for you. Right. So I think you probably should design for the market rather than design for yourself. In this case, if you're going to live in a house for 10, 15, 20 years, who knows what the market is going to be in 20 years.

7:50I feel like that burden should not be present, you know, today in the way they approach it. The timeline is a really critical one or how long they're going to live in the house for sure. And if you are in a major city that historically does well, Los Angeles, San Francisco, um, those are the main places that we're in, but other places like that. If you're talking about 10 years down the line, um, unless you're doing a, a ultra high end, you know, house that you're spending like thousands and thousands of dollars a square foot.

8:23If you're not at that end of the spectrum, okay, you're, you're, you're not spending that much money 10 years from now, your property value is going to go way up. So at some point it's, I think you're, I think what's challenging is that clients and owners, they have, they have this idea, but it's very vague. And despite it being vague, they do allow it to kind of bleed into the thinking about the, the custom house project to your point, like too much. And so for us, like we, because we are getting into the development world and know a lot more about it now, um, when you're a developer, you have to be very specific.

9:03Like, well, you should be very specific and real. I say should be because you'd be amazed people listening, how many developers do not know what the hell they're doing. And they just, they just, they don't know what they're doing. That's a different conversation. Um, so you don't want to be vague. And, uh, one of the vaguenesses that takes place is the timeline. It's like, well, how long are you going to be here? And that also sometimes tricky for owners because they're like, well, I don't know, you know, maybe I have kids, maybe it's just a new job. And maybe, uh, maybe I could be here for five, 10 longer. I'd like that, but I don't know.

9:34Maybe my job takes me somewhere else. And so in, in, in a project for all decisions, not just like this kind of financial conversation, but for all decisions, it's the vague gray area when the client doesn't have, they don't know what they want or they don't know what it's going to be. That's always the part where we have, everyone has problems. Right. But yeah. So if a client knows they're going to be there for 10 years and I'm like, then why are we even talking about resale value? That's, that's, that's like two administrations from now that's two and a half administrations, but who knows what's going to happen in 10 years?

10:06Um, you know, if it's shorter term, then it's a different conversation. But yeah, again, I do think people underestimate what it takes to actually turn a profit doing a spec house. So I think there is kind of like two sides to the financial aspect of thinking about a home, right? There is the resale financial aspect of like, I'm buying this house for X much, I'm sending it in X amount of years, and I'm hoping it's going to sell for that price. And then there is like how much I'm putting in, into doing the work to make today the house that I own, the house that I want.

10:40Yeah. Right. And I think there is also maybe a misconception that custom homes are always very expensive or that spec homes are like super cheap. And I think it really, again, it really depends on the equation between how much money you're putting in, how much money you're going to get out, where you're putting that money into. If you're putting a bunch of, you know, fancy, expensive finishes, and it doesn't make sense for where you're at, you're not going to get that back because it's like, you know, tailored to you and the market doesn't care about gold doors or gold toilets.

11:12You know, like that's money down the drain. Like you're not going to get that back. Around the drain. Around the drain. Yeah. Yeah, no, I think it's true.

Design Overlaps and Special Moments

11:20So let's talk about like some of the design differences.

11:24So we get the question a lot in design and like, oh, I don't want to, I want to make sure that when we're creating this house, you know, I am thinking about potentially selling it. I'm in that kind of category where I don't know, or we're talking about a shorter timeline. I want to make sure that we're not designing something that's too specific to me, or really, that's not actually the question, designing something that the market is not going to like. And I would say for the average person or family, the average user, there's like a 90% overlap between what they will want and rather what they will feel really good in.

11:59And also what everyone else that's a human being in this cultural region will feel good in, right? Um, so there's actually a lot more commonality than people think. Uh, the, the parts of the design where things get quirky, you know, we can pluck stuff out like fixtures finishes, you know, that, that layer, the, the aesthetic layer to the project is definitely something. Like if you're into a dark moody scheme throughout the entire house, well, that's definitely not for everybody. I also don't think it's great to go too far at the other end of that spectrum and say, well, I'm going to do something super vanilla.

12:34We see on Zillow all the time, because I think there's a blandness to it that would not command a high resale value. Um, so there is threading the needle and I also think too that, you know, getting even bigger picture design wise, it's like, what is the architectural style? Um, is it, are you doing something that's more avant-garde, like a lot of modern contemporary forward thinking architects like to do? Is that something you should, should, you should build, you know, quote, for the market? And the, again, going back to the idea of vagueness or gray area, there's not a math equation for this.

13:08And so it's a series of kind of judgment calls and conversations with, you know, with us, uh, with builders, with developers, with real estate agents, like the homework that we do to talk to the people. But they're just conversations. No one has like hard mathematical data about, okay, if you do this Eve detail, what does that mean numerically in terms of percentage chance of resale? Like that doesn't exist. Um, but it's, but anyway, so my original point was that I do think there's actually more overlap than people think. I, I agree. And I think, you know, you know, like when we do, for example, remodel projects, right?

13:41A lot of it is fixing the floor plans because there is some quirkiness or it's inefficient or like, it doesn't make sense for like a family of four to live in that space. Right. So if, you know, you start your project and you have a good floor plan that, that, you know, if you have X number of bedroom and bathroom, it flows well, it's well proportioned. They're located where it makes sense on your property. Like those are things that the buyers would respond to. Like that's, you know, now if the room is pink and they don't like pink, well, before resale, you repaint it. I mean, I think there is also like what makes sense for you and what you like, what's easily fixable.

14:14If you were to sell the house, which paint, it's not that expensive and you can easily like transform a room by just changing, changing the color. Right. But I think also what's oftentimes, so there was kind of like checking the boxes on, you know, like X number of square feet, X number of bedrooms and bathrooms. Is there like dark rooms, pink room, white rooms? But then I feel like people often underestimate the importance of, is the home special? And if someone comes and visit this house versus the next three houses for sale down the street, would they prefer and remember this one or would they go with the other one?

14:49And why would they go with the other one? Right. Is it, are you asking for too much money? And this one is like too expensive. So they're going to look at the other two or are they going to remember only this one? Because it was a unique moment in the house that everyone was just like, wow, this is incredible. Right. And I feel, and those are not necessarily, you know, features that are easily, you know, listed in a database. Right. Like those are more like emotional responses that people have when they experience a house. Right. And I feel like, you know, that should be in a custom home for sure, because you're, you're, you're, you want the design, you're paying for the design, but that should also be in a spec home because that's what's going to make the house stand apart from the other ones listed in the neighborhood.

15:34Yeah. So I was talking to a developer colleague the other day who we might, might work with and he was asking, he's not, he's not, it doesn't have a design or architecture background. And he was asking him like, what would you do? How would you design a spec house successfully so that it sells well? And I'm like, well, first there's like the base, the basic check, check boxes. Like you mentioned, like, okay, for this area, what size of house is selling? How many bedrooms, how many bathrooms are there in, again, this cultural region? Are there specific other amenities?

16:06Like in other places, courtyards are huge. Other countries here, maybe not interior courtyards, not so much, but powder rooms are common. Pools are common. You know, so all that kind of like basic program, program. Um, there's that and I would cross that, cross check that with, um, real estate agents we know and say, this is what we're thinking. Like, let me know if I'm way off here. Um, but I, I told them, I said, the other thing too, is like, we got to have good feeling spaces in good light. And then we want to create intelligently, meaning cost-effectively and efficiently, one or two

16:40wow moments where you walk through the front door and you're, and you're hit with this moment of awe. And you want to do that, you know, a couple more times in the project. Maybe you turn the corner and there's this, we had a vista that's lined up perfectly to a tree or the pools and I'll access with that or, you know, whatever it is. Um, or, you know, do you have a skylight at a certain place or a clear story window? So when it's most of the day, the lights cascading on a certain wall, like, you know, things like that, you do want to set up moments like that, because I think that of experiencing a house,

17:14there's a lot to see and you need to have those scenes that stand out, you know, I guess similar to a movie, like what's the, what's like the big climax of the movie that everyone's going to walk away and say, that was a phenomenal movie, but they're really going to talk about that one scene, like in every conversation where it's about the movie and the way zooming out the way, like buying or selling and marketing works is you have to be memorable, right? Again, you don't want to cross the threshold where it's memorable, where it's so specific

17:47that it's weird and people are like, why did they do that? But you want to be memorable. And I think it's important to create those, those experience, experiential moments in a house. And that's a universal thing. You know, I think this also goes back to like the fundamental, yes, universal truths in good design and creating good space. They're kind of universal within a certain region. And if we're doing that, then that house spec or custom will automatically be in the top

18:1910% because most houses are absolute dog garbage. And that's kind of all you need. You know, it's not, it's not the simplest thing, but that's all you need to kind of cross that, that threshold, I think. Yeah. And that's why I think, you know, the cost of doing that isn't necessarily more than, you know, in a spec house or in a custom house, like you could have the same moves. You can.

Flexible Architecture and Floor Plans

18:43Right?

Flexible Architecture and Floor Plans

18:44You can. And so sticking on this subject of design, um, it's, it's also like you talked about repainting bedrooms. It reminded me that, you know, again, depending on how long you're staying in the house or keeping the house, you can build into the architecture, you know, things that are not going to change regardless of how much time has passed. You can also plan for certain things to change if you need to sell the house, like painting the walls or in other cases, I remember, I think we had a few projects where there was

19:14a room that was to be designed for the, uh, family and they were going to use the room in a specific way. Like it was a art studio or a theater or like whatever more, you know, the specific uses always end up being more like amenity or hobby spaces that are, you know, specific to a person. So we had done a couple of houses that had spaces like that and they were located in the house and had certain fenestration openings, windows, whatever doors to, to access the rest

19:45of the house so that it really made sense for that purpose, like for that custom unique purpose as whatever studio, whatever, whatever program. But it was also located and done in a way where five years from now, if you need to sell, then put up a partition wall, replace that door with a different door and boom, now it's a, now it is a bedroom, right? Because we've allowed it, we've, we've planned it so that we have a window at the right height, you know, whatever else. So it's, it's, it's, that's an example of, you're not changing, you know, the whole floor plan.

20:17You're not even changing the floor plan at all, really, but you're, you are architecturally changing easy things like partition walls. And now that house, when you do that is, is a much more, is much more aligned with a broader set of people rather than being, you know, a theater as an example. I mean, I think, and that's a good point, like that's probably one of the things that let's say, you know, when people are like, oh, what should, what should I avoid on doing that could basically decrease the value, the resale value of the house?

20:50If I, you know, in the choices I make today, right? Paint, we talked about it, you just changed the paint color. The kind of like more specific personal requests in the design of the home could not always translate and like, like those bonus spaces could be that, right? Like, I don't know, you do ceramics and you need ceramic studio, or you like a movie nights and you want like a giant theater in your home. Like those could be things that a potential buyer might be interested in or might not be

21:21interested in. Like let's say, well, they're blind and they cannot watch movies. Well, they wouldn't care about the idea. I'm not worried about blind people, but yeah. No, but you know what I mean? Or like, they don't care about doing ceramics. Like what, what is that space for? So the, you have like the, what we would call in tower design, the core and shell, which is to say the structural walls, the partition walls, the electrical, the MEP, mechanical electrical plumbing, the bones, and then you have like the drywall next year, you know, cladding. So you have like that raw architecture, but that other layer on top of that on the interior

21:54can completely change how house looks, feels, and its purpose, right? So there's wallpaper, molding, paints, and then there's millwork, shelving, built-in stuff that's much more expensive to swap out, but it's easily changed. You're not actually changing the architecture of the house. And a big delineation between the kind of these two scopes is whether or not a permit's required, right? If you need a permit to change the house, to make it ready for sale, that's probably something you could do, but if it's, if you're really thinking about resale, then you wouldn't want

22:27to rely on that, right? You'd want to be able to convert the house for resale without permits and do it very quickly and cost-effectively, and avoiding permits would certainly be the thing. Yeah, it's interesting, like the whole like, you know, staging and whatever. I feel like if you, I mean, again, if you look online, you're like looking to buy a house, like all the staging looks the same, it's always the same boring stuff, like every house just becomes another version of each other. Like, you know, it's just, and actually I do think it's kind of a side note, but I do

22:59think like very good staging that is very pertinent for this specific house that you're listing is very important to the success of a sale or not. I mean, at least to me, like when I look at listings and I'm like, this does not, and maybe that's because I'm a designer, I'm like, this does not belong in this house. You know, like it just doesn't feel, it doesn't feel true, which reminds me of that French TV show I was watching, you know, the real estate TV show where in Paris, which what was interesting there is that people who are not staging with like borrowed furniture, they're renting for a month or two, like they were selling their apartments with the furniture

23:34that they were using in that house. And what was interesting is that it felt much more, you know, cohesive and true to the place. And, you know, like oftentimes like realtors says like, oh, you have to let the buyer be able to project themselves. And that's true. Like you don't want to have your family pictures hung on the wall when people come to visit. Like that's not, and I was glad it was hard for them to like picture their own family pictures on the wall. But, but I feel like, and I also feel like maybe it's because once you live in, in your

24:05house, you know, your house and you kind of know like what wants to go where and what feels right and, and how it all feels together. And so, I don't know, maybe that's more convincing when it's not like a generically curated, you know, list of furniture that, that, that, that's used. Yeah. Yeah. No, I think so too. And I think that's also where it's kind of like jumping around here, but it's also where it's hard, you know, people are like, well, you should do like market research, see like what sells in your area and this and that thing is that, okay, if you look, if you look at

24:39the spreadsheet again, like the, the metrics, yeah, you could do that to kind of make sure you're not completely off the mark, but in terms of qualitative metrics and design metrics, that won't really give you much because it's mostly crap. It's, let's just face it, but there's nothing that's going to be amazing, right? Unless you're in an incredible neighborhood, then maybe if you're in like an Eichler, you know, neighborhood, then yeah, you should probably look at it and make sure you don't, you know, do less than that.

25:10But in most places, there's no, there's no design standard, there's no design guidelines on like what is good, what is bad, like the trends to avoid, you know, the, like there is no training on that front. Yeah. So you purely rely on like the professionals you hire to try and kind of like guide you toward that. Yeah, I know. That's true. And I think it's largely because just most of the stuff out there is just bad and, you know, people have to buy what's out there. So if the stock, if a hundred, you know, units or a hundred houses are for sale, 95 of them

25:45are going to be bad. So those are the, so 95 of them sell and they're, they're bad. And, and, and the badness keeps repeating itself because that becomes the standard. That's, it's, it's, it's, it's not great, right? But the upside for anyone who's a developer or development minded, then as a client or owner of a custom house, well, then the bar is set very low for you to exceed design wise. Now, maybe pivoting and talking about the costs and the more financial aspects of all of this, because you had mentioned that doing, creating a beautiful moment in a house doesn't

26:19necessarily mean you have to spend more money, uh, if, if that moment is in a custom house versus a speculative house. And I think, um, that's true. There are a lot of ways to create those special moments and have a great house all through and through, um, that while being very cost effective and that it come. And so from a design, from an architecture standpoint, what are the ways that we think about that briefly? It's engineering is the first thing, right? If we're doing crazy big cantilevers or big spans or things like that, we know intuitively,

26:54okay, well, we need a giant piece of steel to go across that section. Does that fit this budget? Maybe, maybe not. Um, also folks should keep in mind that spec houses come in different ranges in terms of their construction costs. And then ARV, they're after repair value or basically the value of the property once the project is done. Um, so it's, so sometimes a spec house, you've got to build it for, I mean, this is, these are LA numbers, so they're going to be skewed for everyone else. They could be, they have to be built for 350 square foot, which for LA is insanely dirt

27:28cheap. Other times you're gonna have to spend $800 a square foot for that spec house. Um, you know, because obviously those two houses are in different markets and different neighborhoods. Uh, but anyway, so, um, designing, uh, uh, uh, in a way so that the house is beautiful but cost effective, it's the engineering, it's the square footage, right? Um, it's also the amount of glazing. Uh, glazing is a really expensive thing. That's another item. And then we think about, okay, what are the brands, uh, window brands and door brands we

27:59could work with that are cost effective but have the kind of profile we want? Are we concerned about fire resiliency? What does that mean with, in that selection? Um, and then it's, it's, beyond that, the next thing is, is, is like probably finishes throughout the house. There's also like foundations costs, but that's more like site specific rather than without, within our control, you know, hillside things, more money, basements cost more money per square foot generally. Yeah. And I think, so that's true. Like finishes, like, you know, I mean, you can tie the bathroom, have a beautiful design and the tile is two bucks a square foot.

28:30Yeah. You don't have to spend $20 a square foot and shop at Ansaks, the most expensive tiles to like make it amazing. Yeah. So there's kind of like, again, a misconception that spec equals cheap and custom equals expensive. Like you could have a custom design bathroom that's using cheap materials and it still works great and looks great. It's about efficiency. And I think that's how spec homes should be thought about is there are homes are trying to be efficient in their spending and in the effort that, in the energy that's been put into thinking about them because, you know, there is the cost of the thing, like how you

29:07built it. Yeah. There is the, the equation, the math equation of like buying and selling the property, but the efficiency, I think in the, um, spec house relies also heavily in being efficient in the design process of, you know, getting it done. And that's the biggest gap between a spec home and a custom home is not really the other cost that we just discussed. It's that process, how quickly you can make decisions, who's making the decision. Oftentimes they are much more cost effective because there is no client, right?

29:37Like you're designing for a user that is not present. It's not, it's not part of the conversation. So you're assuming your, your, the choices and, and making your decision that way rather than, you know, you know, throwing the ball back and forth between you, your husband, your kids, your architect, and going around for like three months and then making decisions and going backwards and redoing things. And that's really the big difference between the two. And now a quick break to thank the sponsors who support the second studio. You know, the big firms like SOM, Stentec and Big, they have a dedicated materials person,

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Timelines for Custom and Spec

31:19Okay, so let's talk about timeline. Then we can talk about money. So, yes, that is the big difference. So we get asked all the time, like cold calls, like, well, how much would it cost for you to do this house? How long will it take? And that's all the information I have is like just a square footage. And as any architect listening, my response is always, that's not enough information for me to know what it's going to take. Some offices have a set fee per square foot, and it does not really move.

31:51But that's because they're probably operating in a very specific, like, subsection of house types, and they don't operate outside of that. So, for example, if an office does ultra, ultra high-end stuff, then their fee is going to be appropriate to that, and they have a fixed fee per square foot. And they can easily tell anyone, that's my fixed fee per square foot, because they're not even going to entertain the idea of doing a house for cheaper. That's not within their, they don't care. But for those of us who have a bit more flexibility like we do, because I actually enjoy, by the

32:22way, working on really expensive stuff, and then things that are words like the constraints are tight. I think they're both interesting and rewarding. But anyway, so if you work in a range of, with a range of budgets and people and properties like we do, then we need a lot more information.

32:38But where I was going with all of that is when we're asked, well, how long is it going to take, my response is, well, let's say we're talking generically about a 4,000 square foot house, maybe somewhere around there, maybe three to six, you know, something like that. We're not talking about 10,000 square feet. We're not talking about 1,500 square feet, okay? The timeline for a true custom house where the client's involved and they're making decisions is about 10 to 12 months for design and documentation. So for the layperson, that's us designing, that's the site planning, it's the architectural

33:12design, it's the interior design slash interior architecture, all the finishes, fixtures, appliances, specs, you know, of the kitchens and everything like that. And then there's permit drawings involved, there's construction documents in there, there's design development, there's renderings, there's all that stuff.

33:31Briefly, that timeline does not necessarily include the approvals timeline of the city, because depending on where you are, that could be done in six months, it could be a year, it could be two years, that's a different metric. But 10 to 12 months, and for a lot of people who don't know anything about this space, they're like, that is an insanely long time to take to design a house. I'm like, I agree, it's a long time. If I took that same exact house, and in the end, the end result, the same exact thing, same square footage, same material, same property, same everything, and we did it without

34:04a client, we could be, have all that stuff done under four months, maybe even three months. Which is to say, that that, call it nine month, eight month gap, whatever that difference is between the two, is because we're working with a client. And it's not to blame the client, it's not to say that clients are slow and stupid, but it's just, there's revisions and rounds of communication, right? When we have, I don't want to go too far off on this tangent, but when we have a client presentation, once every two weeks, I'd say, the client needs, they always need, whether

34:39or not they know it, at least a weekend, two, three, whatever days, to think about it, then come back to us, and then we revise. Sorry, in a spec house, we won't even have that. We would just have a quick 30 minute internal meeting, boom, done, on to the next thing. Well, that's the thing, so it's not even the time that the client needs to think about things, it's not even the amount of how many revisions we need to do based on their feedbacks, it's also that we have to put together our thoughts to communicate them to someone else. And that does take time, and it kind of like, you need to do it by steps.

35:11You can't just present the whole thing, because clients wouldn't be able to understand, digest it, or make any decisions that way, right? Where if it's all done internally within the design team, like you said, it's like, okay, what do you think of this? Should we do this A or B? Okay, let's do A, and that was a two-minute conversation. There's no presentation, there's no hour-long meeting, there's none of that, right? There's no meeting notes, and so in that internal meeting, the things that we're looking at as an office are really rough, sketchy things. We know as professionals that this undercooked option that's abstract to the layperson, we

35:45can dismiss it, because we see where it's going or not going. But for a client, it needs to be developed in a way, graphicized in a way, presented in a way so it's legible, so they can make a decision. And also, keep in mind that the way to have an efficient process with a client and build efficiency so you become faster and faster in working with them throughout that period is to, in my view, show them options at the beginning, more so at the beginning, because

36:18each of these three options are valid, yes, but also, and so they have choices, yes, but also so that we are building up a relationship and understanding of how they think, not just what they like and don't like, but how they actually think. So in the next meeting, we know almost instinctively, no, this doesn't fit the client for whatever reason. And so you have to build in this kind of amount of process, presentations, and whatever to build up that joint knowledge.

36:50So it does take a lot more time. I do think, though, if we switch gears and talk about developers, proper developers, the mistake that developers make is they cut everything, right? Because the more they cut, the more they earn, because it's money in their pocket for later on when they sell. So construction costs get cut. We can talk about that. But they also cut all the soft costs. And soft costs, for people who don't know, are the costs, they're not hard costs.

37:21Those are two different things. Hard costs roughly means construction costs. Soft costs is everything else. The fees for engineers, architects, designers, line designers, permit fees, civil, survey, geotech, all those things are soft costs.

37:37They cut all the soft costs professionals. They go cheap on the engineer. They go cheap on the architect. They go cheap on everything. And the problem is, and this is a useful lesson for custom house owners, like normal people. The problem is, when you do that, you run into all kinds of problems, headaches, the budget gets blown, schedule gets blown, the design suffers, like you name it, and it's bound to go wrong when you cut all those people down too much, because those are the planning people. You know, it's like walking into a, I don't know what's a good analogy, a war zone without

38:11some kind of strategy involved. It's not going to go well. But that is the mistake that developers make, because they're trying to cut everywhere. But it's like you're cutting your feet off before you even start the race, kind of. And that's a mistake in, yeah, I feel in general. Even sometimes clients think, oh, do I really need, you know, to hire this person? Can we just kind of like figure it out in other ways and stuff? And it's really whatever you invest in the soft costs will make the hard costs a lot more efficient, a lot faster, sometimes even a lot cheaper, because you had enough time to

38:45think about what needs to happen. Yeah. Right? When you are like trying to take shortcuts at the beginning, and then like you're trying to solve the problem as you're building the thing, it never works out. Like it just never works out. I can feel anyone listening who has experience in these industries, they're shaking their head at like, decisions during construction. I don't want to deal with that. You know, I mean, it's a tempting thing. You know, everyone wants to try and spend the less amount of money if they don't have to. Yeah. But I think you do have to understand that it's actually going to be worse in the end

39:19if you do that.

Client Decision Making Dynamics

39:20So then the question is for people listening who are not architects, it's like, well, if I'm threading the needle, right, meaning to say that I'm going to live in this house, so it's for me, but also I do, I'm likely going to have to sell it in the shorter term, or I might sell it in that kind of scenario. Like, is there a middle ground between the three-month timeline and the 12-month timeline on the extreme ends? And the unfortunate but truthful answer is it depends on you, the client. It's completely on you.

39:51Again, if it's just us, we'll fly through this thing. Um, and, and the other challenging part with that truth is that most people, if they've not done a project before, and most people building a house have not actually built a house before, you don't know how you're going to thread that needle. You don't know how you as an individual are going to respond and deal with situations and deal with decisions when you have two paths in front of you, the spec house path and method

40:21of thinking a decision versus a custom house. You have no idea until you get into it. And I think on the, you know, on a personal individual standpoint, and it's even especially more complicated if you're in a relationship and you're doing that with a partner. Yeah. Um, you know, if, if you're a couple, if you've never like took on a project together of any sorts before, I mean, you know, one could say, well, having kids is, you know, having a project together. Yeah. And you could actually look at that and see like, who does what with the kid and like,

40:52is it equal? Do you agree? You know, that type of thing. But like, if you are a couple and you're, you know, doing a home project, you have to think about how that relationship is going to go. You have to think about, you know, communication, how you're going to make choices. Are you, are you like, how well do you know your relationship? Because it will impact how smooth, efficient, painful, or fun the process is going to be, um, you know, on, on, on doing that, that home project.

41:22Yeah. And, and, and it's hard to know if you've never done it. Right. It's really difficult to know. So I'll say this as a guiding principle, every single owner client that we've ever come across, worked with, or known, or known through colleagues, every single one, they overestimate how efficient and kind of clean and hands off and quick decision-making, you know, skillset that they have. They've, they overestimated by a lot. One of the reasons is that when you get into the process, when you start, you're like, yeah,

41:54boom, quick decisions, I'm done. And you do that. And then at some point during the mid or end of SD, or maybe even DD, it varies for the person. Like, I don't know what it is. A light bulb goes off and they suddenly realize sometimes subconsciously like, oh, this is a very serious project that I'm doing. This is a massive amount of money, a lot of time, and it's going to be permanent. Let me go back and like really look at the stuff that I've approved from the last four months of work.

42:25And then they, then, you know, then you approach your architect and say, okay, guess what? I'm thinking now, I'm not sure about that. And the architect's like, what? We've been building the last three months of work based on that decision. Now you're changing that. It's fine, but that's going to cost you time and money or something. The value of me saying that, I think for, for owners and clients is like, you got to keep that in mind. Like, take it seriously. Because if you don't do that at the beginning and you take it too casually, you're, it's going to, you're going to convert at some point. You will.

42:56You will convert at some point, have that revelation, and then you're going to have to undo stuff and it's going to be, you know, not great. You know, it kind of reminds me, you know, when you're in like school, in high school or whatever, you do your homework and you're like, yeah, whatever. I've done my homework here. Here it is. Took me two hours. And then like the big exam, you know, comes at the end of the trimester or whatever. And you're panicking because you actually do not remember the stuff you've, you've, you've learned during your homework because you didn't care that much. And now you're like, oh shit, I've got all this stuff I need to figure out.

43:26And it's kind of, um, yeah, it's, it's true. I think it, I think you have to take it very seriously. I think a lot, most clients we have, they care about, you know, things in the end. So it is not just, oh, pick A or B. It's like, really think, do you want A or B? And then back to the, the kind of the fork in the road of spec versus custom decision making for even specific items. Like what is the design of the kitchen? What is the finish, the materials of the kitchen? Am I going to use this, a marble or quartz or whatever, what are like really specific

43:57things when you are getting, working with a partner, like you said, it becomes even more difficult because multiple times in a project, both partners will come out of left field out of nowhere with a decision or an opinion. And the other one's going to be like, what? Like that is a expensive thing that we're going to spend money on that we shouldn't do because this is spec house. And then they're going to be like, well, no, this is custom house. And so what happens is there's going to have to be that conversation, but which is fine.

44:28It gets worked out. But the, but the point is that like, when you have these two opposing forces that are driving a decision making process with one or two people or three people or four people, like it quickly becomes very confusing. And it's also, it's our job to make sure that like, how do I say it? The project is well balanced. Like you don't want to have it be, it be through the cost, through the feeling, through the

44:59whatever of like, you have weird moments where they went cost effective and they're clashing with something that's very specific and expensive. Let's say, um, you don't want that felt in the house for sure, but also even mathematically, it's like, well, should you be spending $800,000 on windows? If this is going to be a spec house, like, you know, because you like the feeling of steel, uh, it is up to you, but I can tell you with like the, the overall construction cost breakdown, like this is a weird thing.

45:31Cause it's so like that example for, as an example is so far off into left way off the spectrum of what a spec house would be doing for an average spec house, not like one in the Beverly Hills or something that it's, it, it doesn't, it doesn't make sense anymore. And so I think there is a little bit of, a little bit or a lot of that for us of kind of making sure that things feel balanced and don't get too far off, uh, because that forces things to not pencil or to, you know, to feel weird, weird in the end. And I think, you know, in terms of clients too, I think they need to know themselves and

46:07see are they like, what kind of home is best for them? Is it a custom home? Is it a spec home or is it even a production home where you just pick from a catalog and you don't have any of these back and forth decision-making process? Because let's face it. I think everyone, again, every homeowner assumes that they're going to be a developer because they're going to make profits sending their home at some point in their life. I think most homeowners also feel like they can handle or remodel a new construction project. And I think there is probably very few people who would be honest with themselves and be

46:41like, I'm not cut to go through that kind of process. I just need, and I'm very content. Just pick, give me the catalog of all the homes you've designed. Yeah. I'm going to pick this one. And the only decisions I'm going to make is select what kind of kitchen cabinet I want, what type of faucet I want, and what's the color tile in the bathroom based on the five choices you give me. But how many people would say that to themselves and actually follow through? Like 0%. Well, and also I think there is a kind of like a social category that's associated with

47:15that. True. And I think, well, let's face it, people who go with their cookie cutter homes and like if you pick from a catalog, that's what they can afford. And, and you know, they're kind of content with that because that's what they can afford. And I feel like if you kind of fall above that, you wouldn't even want to look there, right? You just look at the custom route. Thank you. You think so, but everyone- But I'm like, but you should, should you really be dismissing the other category? Because maybe it's just, it just fits you better. For me, it just goes back to the principle that people underestimate how picky they're

47:47going to be. We have, we have someone that we're working with and they made a very smart observation and they're not an architect. They're like, you know, I'm building this house. I'm going to be very effective with my decisions. I'm like, okay, cool. Let's see how it goes. And then they're like, you know, it's weird because I've, a lot of, you know, they've had friends, colleagues and neighbors build houses or like, it's weird because when people go to build a house, they suddenly become the pickiest people on earth. Why are you suddenly turning into this like anal person? Yeah. And, but again, to my point, it's for good reason because it, oh my God, I'm spending

48:19a lot of money on this. I want to get it, get it right. But so let's say there's a pre-designed house because we have one of those and we have a set of material options. We have three options in our case. You can choose one of those options. We've had people approach us and say, well, I'd like to tweak, I'd like to make some small changes. That's sent in an email. Immediately. We know these are not small changes. The thing is, and I said before every house, especially custom one or one that's been designed and people actually, you know, has been thoughts been put into it is a very complex 3D puzzle.

48:52Yeah. Will you have a dozen or more different trades and systems all weaving together to make it work? You might not know, but that beam was sized for this specific span. It was located to avoid duct work. It was located, it was specified with a certain type so we could have a certain connection so we could fit it in the ceiling. Why I want to push that, this thing out further. Okay. You're undoing half a dozen things with that one change. So like my point is stepping outside of the prefix menu or the, the options that are

49:25in front of you, it, it very quickly across the threshold into what would be considered like true custom thinking, custom costs, custom timeline. Like a lot of work has been done to make these very neat pre-designed packages for you to select from. And I think therefore it seems like, well, I can make a change and that's easy because I can easily select A, B and C. Why not just do C1? But C exists because of months and months of R and D to make C be all integrated and work.

49:55So it's, you know, what's the analogy like pulling at the thread on a ball of yarn? You pull and very quickly the whole thing just kind of unravels and you have a lot more work to kind of put it back together. And that's something people should keep in mind too. It's not as easy to, you know, make some of these changes. Real quick in terms of timeline too. Construction timeline for a spec versus custom house are completely different things. In the development world, time is money and you need to design and build ultra fast because

50:26every month that goes by is more interest to be paid, more property tax to be paid. You're just losing money every month that goes by. And every developer knows this. You got to build ultra fast. Custom houses that are for an end user, which means that the person who's funding this whole thing, they're going to live there and they're going to be a lot more particular about the quality of this thing being built, right? They're going to look at the corners and say, that's not a clean corner, fix it. And a spec house, eh, maybe it's okay. And the hundreds of people that are going to circulate through the house, are they going

50:57to care about this little thing that's not perfect? Probably not because the spec house and all the spec houses are done that way. So the finished quality of a custom house is much higher. That takes a lot more time to do that. And through and through, generally speaking, the build quality of a custom house is going to be greater, like from the bones, like all the way through compared to a spec house. That also means to say that spec houses, a lot of them are built with immoral shortcuts

51:28being taken place, like things that should just not be done. And there's also, they're built cost effectively where they work. Like it's not like they're doing, the builder is making a cardinal sin, but they're doing something that if this were to be like a custom house you're going to live in for 10 years, you'd probably do it differently.

Why Custom Homes Do Not Pencil

51:50You'd use a better grade of lumber, for example, or you'd make sure that wall was actually plumb. Or you'd use maybe copper fittings instead of, you know, plastic or like with the list kind of goes on. Right. And so the, anyway, the timeline for these two things are also very different. And when an owner or client asked a builder, can you again, split the difference, do somewhere between a spec house and a custom house. It's like of the thousand components in the house, pick and choose, you tell me what you

52:20want to do. And it's just not feasible to really have that detailed of a conversation with a client because who has the time for them to educate themselves and learn about these things and then go through that list and then weigh the pros and cons of each. It's not possible. So that also means that for better or for worse, like you said at the beginning, I think at some point you just have to trust that people are, the professionals are taking your language and your desires and then translating that into what it means for the project actually.

52:51But that translation is just built on trust. Right. So if we, you know, if we take the assumption again that you could do the same moves with a spec home than you can with a modern, with a custom home. Right. Why would a custom home not pencil out? Uh, so why is it too expensive? I mean, basically. Is that because people just go too, too far into the design? Like they don't want to spend too much money into the finished product?

53:21So it doesn't pencil out, which means that, right, the cost of the project exceeds the added value to the property. And there's maybe two reasons why that happens. The, the first thing that drives up costs, let's put it that way. Fundamentally it's client driven stuff, right? They, the, the design timeline takes longer. That's more money. It's not like designing a house in three months is going to be the same fee as designing a house over the course of 12 months. So that's an added cost, right? The upgrade, call it upgrading of materials or the layouts or window packages for their specific

53:55use. That's another thing too, where in the spec house parallel universe, we'd go with a different set of finishes or windows. Um, and then it's the build quality, but there's also other things too, like, uh, you know, basically the cost of construction, what it comes down to really is the cost of construction now has shot up more. If there was to be a chart, it's increased more than the rate of the property value going up to generally speaking.

54:25Yeah. And so now it is, especially today with the way things are in the world, it's really hard actually to be a developer. It's, it's not easy. Like that goes back to my early point. People think it's easy. It's not. Once you have a performer and you actually run the numbers, meaning to say you have comps, comps are never as high as you wish them to be. It's easy to be an optimist, uh, uh, you know, wrongly an optimist as a, as a developer, a pseudo developer, the comps are lower than you want them to be.

54:55The construction cost is high loan terms or whatever they are, 9%, 10%, whatever you have, uh, you have to pay the real estate agent to buy that, buy the property. You have holding costs, you have property taxes. Then when you go to sell the property, you have to stage it. You have the marketing cost. You have the photography cost and you have the real estate agent cost again at the back end. And then in LA, if you're selling above, was it 5.5 million or whatever amount of money

55:25you have the ULA tax, which is the called the mansion, a mansion tax, which is, uh, four, four to five and a half percent of the, of the ARV of the final sale. So like when you factor in all of these things, the amount of net profit is a lot less than people think. Like it, that number just goes, and then you're like, Oh my gosh, I thought we were building costs effectively and we're going to have this much, you know, net profit.

55:58Okay. Now I have to actually decrease my construction costs even more. How the heck are we going to do that? And so it is not easy. Um, I would say, uh, you know, this is more like for just spec houses. The, the broad rule is thirds land could, should cost a third of the total amount. Construction should cost a third and then you sell for that additional third. So let's say it's a million for land, a million for construction and then three million sale. Like, no, yeah, roughly, roughly speaking.

56:28Um, but my point is that when you're doing, when you're a developer and you're doing your due diligence, you run through all those things. Homeowners don't do that. And so they, they just imagine the optimistic version of that pro forma, but it's not real. It doesn't exist. But that's only pertinent if you're doing a spec home and you're, again, you're trying to sell that property you're doing with the next few years, right? If you think about it as your custom home, you're going to live in it for 10, 15 years. You can't really do that kind of pro forma because you don't know what things are going

56:59to be then. So that, that goes back to the issue, uh, again, of clarity and timeline. If we're talking about 15, 10, 15 years from now, then this is a pointless conversation for the thought, thought process for the owner to have for the most part. And even doing performance won't make a difference. The performer will be based on a short timeline cause that's the best we can do in predicting the vote, the current market. So even that doesn't really apply, you know, to, to, to a 10 year, uh, timeline.

Financial Realities of Development

57:24So is there kind of like a, a maximum timeline that you could think about on a project? If you do a pro forma, like let's say I'm buying this property. I want to develop a house on it. I probably going to live in it for like, I don't know, two to five years. Five is probably pushing it, I would say, but around there is, is you can still do some kind of best, uh, guessing as to where things are going to be for sure. But I guess my point is that people like nice things and they were trained now with Pinterest

57:55and AD and Instagram to see really expensive, nice things. And so folks see that they think it's going to cost a certain amount. They realize it costs this amount and they still think that, oh, I can sell the property for whatever amount to make money, but the numbers just don't pencil. So as a general rule of thumb in the short term, if you're doing a true proper custom house, do not assume you're going to make money on that property.

58:25Unless you run a pro forma, a real one and it pencils out. If it, if it does then great, but unlikely. If I'm, if I'm thinking hypothetically of two to this, the same property and one is custom versus one is spec, you know, the custom house version might cost between $750 to $800 a square foot, hard cost, construction cost. The spec house in order for, in order for it to pencil and for the ARV, the, the, the, the sale value to be there and for the net profit to be anything like reasonable, you probably

58:55have to build it more like 550 or 500. And you, when you think about that difference with, let's say it's 250 a square foot, that's a huge difference, uh, in total costs of the project that you have to cut out somehow somewhere. And it historically like that reduction, that cost savings just doesn't happen when you have an owner at the wheel, at the helm, and they're the ones really dictating the quality of the overall, um, outcome through the layout that finishes the window, all the stuff that we

59:28mentioned, like that, that difference quickly disappears. It goes back up to a custom house price or close to it. And then the profits not there. Um, so, so I, I think like my advice is that if you're in there, if you're an owner or a client, you're in that position, you were wanting to thread the needle, run a performa. You, I don't know, chat's not, not perfect, but like have, I don't know who you, I don't know, call us, I guess, but, but like have someone help you actually think through it.

59:58And then you'll at least get clarity, uh, about where, where everything will actually fall. So you can say, okay, like the weight on your shoulders, like you said at the beginning. Okay. Now I'm not, I'm not really gonna be worried about, you know, making a profit cause it's not even close to working out. So I'm not going to bother with that. You know, I'm just gonna be worried about my budget and my living experience. And that's it. I'm not gonna be worried about this vague future. I don't know if doing a, like doing a performa, if it's your custom home, like for you and your family for the next 10, 15 years, like it's, it's not even worth doing.

1:00:30It's, it's do what makes sense for you. I agree. But what I'm saying is I think it's actually worth doing if they're going to have this subconscious idea that it's all going to work out mathematically if they needed to sell, to sell, because almost, almost everyone we've worked with, they have that thought in their back of their mind. And I'm like, right. You're letting that have some kind of influence into, into the decision making. Yeah.

1:01:00And sometimes they're not transparent at the beginning. They're like, this is custom. Sometimes they don't know. Like we, you know, and we don't know in, you know, the client's life. So like what other things, you know, they're working with and it's happening. I do wish that in general, more people would think about their home as their home, like their forever home, their family home, the home that, you know, would get passed on to their kids or their grandkids or, you know, and, and cause I think, I think, I mean, those

1:01:33are tangents, but I think that's also why there's just so many bad houses because we're just playing Monopoly house. Like we're, we're playing Sims. Yeah. Like I'll buy that one. How to store it, put three windows, lock a person in the pool, leave, you know, like, and then, and next, next, next round, next level. Yeah. And, and there's no, there's no commitment in, in a way, there's no personal commitment to owning a house or a property in a lot of cases because it's just like swapping cards. And I, I do wish that the, I don't know, the, the cultural mentality would change a little

1:02:06bit. So people would actually, if they care so much about the decision they're making that, you know, they would, they would keep those, those homes forever or as long as they can. But say, I agree, but I also think that's where the mindset that seems to persist is a result of misinformation or ignorance. It's not even misinformation. It's just ignorance. Right. Um, to put it bluntly, it's people thinking that it's going to work out mathematically,

1:02:37but it's, it doesn't. And once they, I think that's my point is that once they realize like, this is not even close to penciling, then they would be like, then let's just focus on our budget and what we can do with it for us. And again, as presumably we're not doing weird things like gold toilets or whatever the thing is we mentioned, then, then who cares about anything else? And I think you're so in the, it's interesting because if you think about, you know, people who bought houses in like the fifties, they bought it for like, I don't know, $70,000, right? And now they're worth like 2 million. Yeah.

1:03:07Well, okay. But they bought in the fifties. We're in 2026. Yeah. So it's been like how many years for that home to get to that point. Yeah. And I think that's also kind of the game we're playing today is kind of the, the, the quick immediate reward, like don't want to wait, like make quick money and all of that. And actually, you know, real estate, you don't really make quick money like that. Like the best way would be to, yeah, maybe buy the property, do it the way you want it, live in it for 30, 40 years. Yeah. And when it's time to retire, sell it. And then it would probably be worth 10 times what you bought it for, you know, at the beginning.

1:03:40Unless you're a professional developer. Unless you're, yeah. And so really to make things pencil out, to have a good net profit, that's like a real net profit, not like, oh, 15 grand net profit on a multimillion dollar property. You have to do all the things we described, like truly. You have to be super fast in your decision making, super fast in construction. You have to know what you're doing. You have to build cost effectively. You have to do the market research. You have to know that perform on all the things that I mentioned.

1:04:10You have to have a stellar real estate agent to buy and to sell. You have to do all of those things in order for it to work. Because any one of those things doesn't, you know, blows up, that hits you really hard. And like, again, that's my point. Like the difference between a professional developer versus an owner playing developer, is that owner who's never done any of this stuff and also is biased because it's going to be their house, are they going to really hit the marks on all the things that a developer has to be good at? No. It's not going to happen.

1:04:40Unless they're going to be really hands off, you know. Which, you know, has happened before. Like we're working with some people that are like that. So it's possible. I'm not saying it's impossible. It's possible. But you have to be extremely committed and disciplined in order to do it well. Yeah. It's really, really not common. And one of the things, like earlier I was talking about the balance of the projects, one of the things that gets out of balance is the soft cost, time, and fees, right? Specifically the architecture and design relationship and fees for a custom house completely different than spec.

1:05:15Like if an architect is hired by a developer, again, the timeline is a third of what it would typically be for a custom house. But the amount of communication is like barely exists. Developers say, okay, yeah, it looks like good plans to meet. Okay, fine. Submit. Boom. Done. So you have to go to another three hour long meetings. And the fee is proportionate to that. So what I'm saying is that if you're an owner, client, and you're doing this threading the needle approach, and you're looking at the numbers, and you're like, okay, I'm going to build for cheap.

1:05:50Okay, because I'm going to find a cheap GC or, you know, whatever. But I'm going to go through this custom house process, the architect and designer fee will be disproportionately high relative to that construction cost. Why? Because you're doing a custom design approach paired with spec house construction prices. So then you're going to say, as we hear often to the design professional, you're way too expensive. And the design professional is going to say, you're asking for a custom house. The fact you're trying to go low in construction costs does not change all of my work.

1:06:24In fact, it increases our work, if anything. So that's, I think, another thing for, you know, the average client owner to be mindful of is there's this balancing between the two. And that's also why professional developers, it's a whole package, the way they operate to make a pencil, it's a whole package, everything works together to hit for that very singular direct goal. That makes sense. So the conclusion is you can't just play a developer, you have to actually become one.

1:06:54Well, the conclusion is at least be very realistic and get clarity and run some numbers or help someone, sorry, or have someone help you run numbers before you just make kind of broad assumptions and let that guide your decision making and create problems in the process and workflow.

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1:07:12Yeah, so you can call the hotline, leave a message for David, and he'll probably look at your numbers. I'll talk to you. I'll talk to you. Which is 213-222-6950. Thanks, everyone, for listening. If you have comments, questions, or topics or things we should talk about, then yeah, you can text our podcast hotline, which is 213-222-6950. You can also find our office online, Fame Architecture Design, and the podcast has an Instagram, which is Second Studio Pod. The podcast is on Spotify, YouTube, Apple Podcasts, everywhere else.

1:07:45If you want to support us, then leave a review of the show and subscribe and like and blah, blah, blah, and all those places. And what else? We have a website, SecondStudioPod.com, all 500-something episodes. A lot of good content coming up, a lot of good guests, a lot of fun conversations. Anything else? Nope. That's it. Okay. Thanks for listening. Talk soon. Bye bye. Bye-bye. Bye by-bye. Bye-bye. Bye. Bye.

1:08:16Bye. Bye-bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye-bye. Bye. Bye. Bye. Bye-bye. Bye-bye. Bye. Bye-bye.