The Future of Home Sales and Marketing

00:00:02:11 - 00:00:27:08
Mike Collignon: Morning out west. Of course. Afternoon for the rest of us. Did you know that April is World Landscape Architecture Month? It's true. Why would I mention that? Well, because if you know Sam Raskin, you know, it makes that. That makes this one of Sam's favorite months. You know, landscaping is one aspect of a homeowners experience. But when it comes to purchasing homes, home buyers are demanding a better sales experience.

00:00:27:09 - 00:00:56:25
Mike Collignon: Their shifted expectations are placing new demands on the sales and marketing process of builders, developers and manufacturers alike. Transparency in the sales process and relationship building are paramount, and traditional retail sales concepts have now penetrated the housing market, and more than ever, digital marketing and virtual reality are taking over the role that model homes used to play, because now home buyers gather information and even purchase homes online.

00:00:56:28 - 00:01:19:24
Mike Collignon: Now here to explore the shifting paradigm for building professionals is Dennis Webb. He is the vice president of operations for Fulton Homes, where he oversees sales, marketing, operations and the Fulton Homes Design Center. In his 25 years there, he has led the charge of using technology combined with past retail experience to help transform the company into one of the most advanced home builders in the country.

00:01:19:25 - 00:01:49:02
Mike Collignon: When it comes to customer experience, operations and marketing, and he has served on the City of Tempe, Arizona Development Review Commission for 12 years and is president of the Board of directors for the Energy and Environmental Building Alliance, which we all commonly known as eBay. Prior to joining Fulton Homes, Dennis has held a variety of retail sales roles, working his way up from salesman to store manager, buyer, merchandise manager, general manager, store president and vice president of stores.

00:01:49:08 - 00:02:14:06
Mike Collignon: Now, I mentioned Sam Raskin earlier, and for those of you who don't know him, he is the former chief architect at Doe's Building Technologies office. Sam has earned a national reputation for his work leading housing programs that have partnered with thousands of home builders and resulted in over 1 million certified high performance homes. He retired from that agency a little over a year ago, and is now solely focused on creating and teaching the content for the housing 2.0 program.

00:02:14:10 - 00:02:39:02
Mike Collignon: That content is based largely on Sam's latest book, housing 2.0 A Disruption Survival Guide. Now, that program empowers building professionals to design and construct higher performance, healthier, more sustainable homes and a fraction of the cost. To learn more, please visit.

00:02:39:04 - 00:03:03:06
Mike Collignon: Now, I wanted to tell you about some of our favorite sponsors. The first is Mitsubishi Electric. Mitsubishi Electric promotes sustainable building through the electrification of residential and commercial heating and cooling products. Their mission is to advance technologies that reduced waste output, promote sustainable resource cycles while increasing energy efficiency, and eliminating dependance on fossil fuels. Next is Westlake Royal Building Products.

00:03:03:07 - 00:03:35:00
Mike Collignon: They are the North American leader in the innovation, design and production of a broad and diverse range of exterior and interior building products, including siting and accessories, trim and moldings, roofing, stone windows and outdoor living. For more than 50 years, Westlake Royal Building Products manufactured high quality, low maintenance products to meet the specifications and needs of building professionals, homeowners, architects, engineers and distributors while providing stunning curb appeal with an unmatched array of colors, styles and accessories.

00:03:35:00 - 00:04:02:27
Mike Collignon: For more information, please visit Westlake Royal Building Products. Com. Finally, Schneider Electric is driving the digital transformation of modern homes with smart and sustainable energy solutions for ultimate comfort and energy efficiency. Their connected home ecosystem of smart energy management solutions provides digital control of energy use throughout a home from the grid via their smart electrical panel to their connected wiring devices.

00:04:02:29 - 00:04:28:09
Mike Collignon: This grid to plug solution makes it significantly easier to create smart solar power and backup power ready homes, both now and in the future. Now, if you have any questions during the conversation with Dennis and Sam, please enter those into the questions box which is found in the Go to Webinar Control panel. I'll check out those questions and periodically interject them into the conversation.

00:04:28:12 - 00:04:32:25
Mike Collignon: All right, Sam, I now place the proceedings into your capable hands.

00:04:32:27 - 00:05:00:14
Sam Rashkin: That's my cue. Thank you, Mike, and welcome, Dennis. I have to tell everyone I'm really excited about today's session. I met Dennis years ago when he was giving a plenary talk at eBay on, of all things, a topic of home sales, and I listened to Dennis's presentation. I said, I got to know this, this person, he is so he's so wise and he has so much experience.

00:05:00:14 - 00:05:21:22
Sam Rashkin: And he had so much to say that I thought really spoke to a lot of concepts we talk about in housing 2.0. Now, what do you do with good friends, your views. So I asked Dennis to write a thought leader essay in the chapter on the sales experience and housing 2.0, and that wasn't enough of you. So I've asked him to come here and have a really good conversation today about the future of housing sales.

00:05:21:22 - 00:05:47:29
Sam Rashkin: So that's what friends are for. I couldn't be happier. Dennis's incredibly special, I know. I think the last time I took a trip to Phoenix, he gave me a great tour of the whole sales process. And again, it's so impressive what he does. So great lessons to be learned here. I'm going to start by asking Dennis to share with the audience your background, because it's so unusual how you got to home sales.

00:05:47:29 - 00:05:56:07
Sam Rashkin: You were not aimed to be a home sales professional. You were in the retail industry. So maybe share with us your background.

00:05:56:09 - 00:06:21:11
Dennis Webb: So I started with a company that primarily sold suits, and I started in high school, and then I went to the and I stayed with the same company and it was called Hart Schaffner Marx. And he had it was a manufacturer and retailer. So I put myself through college selling suits. It was a pretty good gig. And then I, I got out of college and they said, you want to be a store manager?

00:06:21:11 - 00:06:38:04
Dennis Webb: And I said, okay, that sounds like fun. So I did that and they said, well, do you want to be a buyer? And I said, okay, I'll be a buyer. And then, you know, just everything led to another thing. And every two years they gave me a promotion. And I was just lucky I was on the right place at the right time and always follow someone that's not very good.

00:06:38:04 - 00:07:02:05
Dennis Webb: And, you know, just be a star and be very humble and be be lucky, you know, and I was very lucky. So I'm a sudden, I'm 29 years old, I'm a store president. And I go, God, this couldn't get any better than this. Okay. Well, the problem with that is people stop wearing suits for some reason. I don't know why they just did, you know?

00:07:02:06 - 00:07:26:09
Dennis Webb: And so the company was in trouble and they kind of, you know, they're out of business now. And so I go, now what do I do? You know, so I had this great retail background. I had every job you could have in the retail business. And so I sought out IRA Fulton from Eagle since I owned this company called Eagle Sons, and it was men's clothing in Los Angeles.

00:07:26:09 - 00:07:47:07
Dennis Webb: And he had also owned this thing called Fulton that he started out of Eagle sense, you know. So I went to I interviewed with him and he said, you know, I don't think you could really help us. You're overqualified. And so I said to him, are you you looking for underqualified people? And he goes, no, not really. But, you know, so I said, just give me a shot.

00:07:47:07 - 00:08:15:01
Dennis Webb: I can really help you guys, you know? And he said, okay, well, that was 31 years ago. And in 1995 he sold the retail stores and I stayed with the company, and he sold it to for about a year. He had a non-compete in there, so he couldn't hire anyone. So a year was up and he and his son, Doug had me over to Phoenix one day and said, you want to join our our company and help us build houses?

00:08:15:03 - 00:08:31:29
Dennis Webb: I don't know anything about houses. He said, yeah, we can teach you that. You know about people, you know about marketing, you know about, you know, profit loss and things like that. And we can teach you the homebuilding business. And so so that was that. And so I've been here ever since. What I've really been lucky is, is they just okay.

00:08:31:29 - 00:08:53:00
Dennis Webb: You could do that. Okay. You could try that and you can you know, they've been very supportive of all the things we've done. And we've done tons of stuff in technology and we've got the by the largest and most successful design center in the country. Our sales offices are the envy of the industry. Just how we sell things is incredible.

00:08:53:02 - 00:09:09:24
Dennis Webb: Our our operations are far above anyone else in the country. And people come out and look at us, they go, well, I just want to study these guys and see how they do stuff. And so it's kind of flattering. So I'm the point now where it's been kind of it's been kind of fun.

00:09:09:26 - 00:09:41:14
Sam Rashkin: Yeah. I was always intrigued that the serendipity of bringing someone from outside the housing industry with great retail sales experience worked so well for Fulton Homes. And of course, you had a relationship with IRA in the form of business. And so everything set up so nicely for you. What I'm intrigued about when I take the tour of your sales operation is how much you do what we advocate in housing 2.0, which is about really optimizing the user experience.

00:09:41:14 - 00:09:53:03
Sam Rashkin: And one of those is sales. Maybe some might argue the most important, could you maybe explain the sales experience at Fulton Homes that you've developed and share with that, share that with the audience?

00:09:53:06 - 00:10:30:01
Dennis Webb: Well, there's a lot to it. The buyer primarily starts out in the sales experience on our website, and you better have a lot of great information on your website to be able to captivate that buyer and get him going and get them going to figure out what they want to do. So the buyer will go on the website, and your job is to give them tons of information, whether it be virtual tours or Matterport tours or lot premiums or whatever, you know, plus we give them this whole idea of transparency is extremely important.

00:10:30:02 - 00:10:54:06
Dennis Webb: So we tell the buyer how much the house is going to cost before they buy the house. We also use computers, and everyone has a password protected website that they can go on. And, you know, we we make sure that the buyers in tune to to all we're doing. So we have this program called envision and we have each buyer, each prospect set up to it.

00:10:54:07 - 00:11:07:14
Dennis Webb: And so they can look at all of our options. They can look at what we're selling and they can say, okay, I want to do this. And we tell them the price of everything we sell, not just the sales price of the base price of the house.

00:11:07:17 - 00:12:00:01
Sam Rashkin: So one of the things about that that I found so important to me in validating is how Paula homes in the prices for all the upgrades, unlike so many other builders, maybe the predominant share of other builders didn't use these ridiculous markups. These egregious markups at your price. Margins are fairly fair. And and essentially what that was so different not had a cousin buy a home and from the builder I won't name the upgrade cost for the hardwood entry was so much it costs half the cost for her to have them put in the basement floor covering moving day, rip it out and have a person put in the exact same floor covering they would

00:12:00:02 - 00:12:22:08
Sam Rashkin: have got, and the whole process was half the cost, and the landfill had all that carpeting that was put in in its place. And so, you know, I always think, what does that do? The homeowners mindset to know that they're being price gouging at such a high level. So during the program I do I keep advocating I'm not sure that's a good sales experience model to follow.

00:12:22:11 - 00:12:34:19
Sam Rashkin: And so and so tell me more about how you do the pricing and you follow that alternative model model. Just really fair markups for your upgrades.

00:12:34:20 - 00:12:52:20
Dennis Webb: So coming out of retail you make money in retail on one of two ways. You either do it on turn or you do it on markup. Okay. So a Walmart would tend to do everything on turn. They turn their merchandise very quickly while on streams would do it on markup. They'll take a larger markup on their clothing. Okay.

00:12:52:21 - 00:13:16:16
Dennis Webb: At Fulton Homes, we tend to look at the turn as more important. So our velocities are much higher than the average builder. We'll sell twice as many houses per month as everyone else in town, but with that, we we can get by with smaller margins, although our margins are pretty good on on our houses, they're not maybe as strong as some of them on our options.

00:13:16:16 - 00:13:43:17
Dennis Webb: We know that. But I think we want to make sure since we're being transparent with the buyer and we're telling the buyer how much these things are going to cost before they buy the house, you know, it's incredible how they go, wow, no one else does this. And so we actually sell more houses because of it okay. Because if you if you and some of the stuff in our, in our design center and our in our, in our models, they know exactly what it is.

00:13:43:22 - 00:14:04:10
Dennis Webb: They've got their iPhone and they'll they'll look up at GE refrigerator and they know it's, you know, 60 $1,800 at Best Buy. And we can't be at 2500 okay. So we've got to be competitive on all those things because they sit there at their desk and they've got their iPhone and they're looking up pricing on stuff. Okay. So we've got to be very competitive.

00:14:04:10 - 00:14:34:01
Dennis Webb: And then there's some things we can take higher margins on, just like in the retail business like electrical, because you've got to do that before you seal up the walls and everything. But on things like appliances and faucets and things like that and electrical, some of the electrical like lights and fans, you got to be careful and you got to take a markup that's realistic and the buyer is going to buy from you because they trust you and you're telling them these prices and you're being upfront with them and you're saying, this is how we do it.

00:14:34:02 - 00:14:43:29
Dennis Webb: And the buyers go, wow, the other guys don't do this, you know? And to me, it's so simple, you know, and why the other guys don't do it I don't understand.

00:14:44:02 - 00:15:03:22
Sam Rashkin: And then once they make those elections, you mentioned you have this whole retail center experience for the buyers can sit around and watch their choices in real time, appear in a virtual mock up of the home, along with the exact price that they have to pay. Maybe explain what system you're using and how that works.

00:15:03:22 - 00:15:26:26
Dennis Webb: Yeah. So we we've been using envision that's come out of the people are out of Austin. We've been we've been using this system for about 16 years. So we were kind of the pioneers in the system. They've been just awesome as far as the technology. So most of the national, in fact, they're owned by the their owned by the national builders, but the national builders don't quite use them as they should.

00:15:26:27 - 00:15:45:06
Dennis Webb: They don't take it to the level that we have. And so what we can do is hiring in and they have what we call a visualizer. And that's the part they can see what the product looks like and everything like that before they buy it. And they can see all the colors and styles and stuff like that. And people want to visualize stuff.

00:15:45:06 - 00:16:05:11
Dennis Webb: People want to see that stuff. They don't just want to hear about it, they want to see, and then they want to see how much stuff is and how it affects their budget and everything like that. And this stuff is is going to be in the future and people are going to figure it out. I guess I'm surprised why many of the builders just haven't graphs these things.

00:16:05:11 - 00:16:20:10
Dennis Webb: We've had people from all over the country come and visit us and they go, yeah, what you do is great. It's wonderful. I said, well, why don't you just do that? And they go, well we can't. I said, well why not? And they go, well, we don't have the people. We'll get the people, you know.

00:16:20:12 - 00:16:29:06
Sam Rashkin: Well, and it's not like you're a large national builder. You're a good sized regional builder. What are you up to now? 500 homes a year or so.

00:16:29:06 - 00:16:30:09
Dennis Webb: We do 800.

00:16:30:15 - 00:16:36:27
Sam Rashkin: Yeah. So. So you're you're a good size regional builder. But you were doing this when you were doing 3 or 400 homes a year.

00:16:37:00 - 00:16:37:28
Dennis Webb: Yes.

00:16:38:01 - 00:16:38:07
Sam Rashkin: Right.

00:16:38:08 - 00:17:02:10
Dennis Webb: Yeah. It doesn't take much. You know, once you have it, it's it's set, you know, even though you can build 308 hundred homes, a thousand homes doesn't really matter. As long as you have the setup, it isn't any easier or harder. One of the things is the the the other builders don't really. They're, they're so interested in, in, you know, their stock prices and things like that.

00:17:02:11 - 00:17:21:27
Dennis Webb: They don't pay attention to option sales and how much money you can make on that. We make a tremendous amount of money on option sales, even though we don't take a huge markup. But if you take our total markup, it's pretty good because we have structural options that we can get more for. And we got, you know, some electrical things and stuff like that that we can get more for.

00:17:22:04 - 00:17:46:01
Dennis Webb: But it's just a matter of, you know, harnessing that and then paying attention to it. The problem the other builders have is they don't have somebody that goes around and make sure that everything is right, and they have the right selection and things like that. Many of the builders don't even buy their own stuff. They let someone else by their flooring or their cabinets and things like that, or they have their purchasing department do it.

00:17:46:01 - 00:18:10:21
Dennis Webb: And that's a real danger when that happens, because purchasing, getting people are just they're really more interested in saving money and than selling product. And we're a sales organization. And it's not just me that has the retail background, but all of us, you know, came out of that retail business. And I'm kind of the old guy that knew it better, but the other guys have it just as well.

00:18:10:22 - 00:18:31:13
Dennis Webb: Doug Fulton, our CEO, was the president of Eagleson when I was over there. And Norm Nichols, our president, was a buyer over there. And so everyone just, you know, understands the retail thing. And then when I kind of came over, I said, well, let's try this and this and this. I kind of, you know, nudged them along and said, well, let's do this.

00:18:31:14 - 00:18:56:04
Dennis Webb: And they've been very supportive and very cooperative. And of course, IRA Fulton is 90 now is is incredible. You know, he just goes oh. Oh yeah. Yeah. And you know, you go, wow, he's 90 you know. And he's he's the largest full in Arizona. He's given more money away than anyone else.

00:18:56:06 - 00:19:13:05
Sam Rashkin: The other thing I was really impressed with Dennis, is how you stage people through the sales process. And maybe you can also speak to the various steps people take by the home and various experiences that they then go through as they go through that process.

00:19:13:06 - 00:19:37:29
Dennis Webb: So it's a it's a journey. We call it a journey. And it's been a real popular, worthy days. But basically they start off online and it's interesting to note that they, they, they go online and nine months later after they give us their email address, they buy a house, okay. And so they're spending a long time researching because they're looking at us and other builders and things like that.

00:19:38:00 - 00:20:02:29
Dennis Webb: We know that. So we want to get them in the. So we have a computer system that we can tell anyone that's been online and we can track them, we can see where they've been and everything like that. So it isn't uncommon for our salespeople who are great, by the way, we have the strongest sales staff in the country, and because we pay them the most and they stay around their our average guy has been here 19 years, so they're not going anywhere.

00:20:03:02 - 00:20:07:28
Sam Rashkin: Would you share what you share with me? Was the median income for these guys?

00:20:08:00 - 00:20:11:10
Dennis Webb: Anywhere from 200 to 500.

00:20:11:12 - 00:20:14:12
Sam Rashkin: Yeah, that's that was stunning for me to hear that.

00:20:14:13 - 00:20:37:00
Dennis Webb: Yeah. And it's worth it. Now national builders, they'll they'll cap them. They won't want someone to make 400,000 or 500,000. They'll put them in a trailer somewhere and forget about them. It's because they don't want the they don't want the salesmen to make more than the sales manager, you know, because that wouldn't be fair. You know, in the future there won't be any sales managers.

00:20:37:00 - 00:20:57:15
Dennis Webb: That'll be that'll be done. You know, that'll be gone. That'll be the dodo bird of the of the industry anyway. So we, we have the salespeople and they might, you know, email a buyer that's never been in the office before. We can tell. But they've been on our site and they've looked at these X floor plans and these price points and everything like that.

00:20:57:16 - 00:21:15:07
Dennis Webb: They don't buy them in. So they once you come into our office, I know you've been looking at us and stuff like that and they come in. It's amazing. And then we engage them and then we say, you know, and it depends on, you know, where, where we are. We have all their lot information and all this stuff online.

00:21:15:07 - 00:21:35:13
Dennis Webb: We have all their information. We know where they've been. We know what they like. We know everything about them, you know, and then we just get them, build on that and then we say, okay, let's let's get you a, you know, a log in so you can see how much everything is. And then let's go ahead and find a floor plan that's, you know, suitable for you and everything like that.

00:21:35:13 - 00:21:55:24
Dennis Webb: And then we'll take them and we'll, we'll bring, we'll bring them to browse site. So every, every other Thursday at our design center, we invite people that haven't bought a house or have bought a house and haven't had a design center appointment, and it's not uncommon for us to get 100, 150 people there at those events, and we cater it, and it's a fun time.

00:21:55:24 - 00:22:08:18
Dennis Webb: It's a it's an experience where we get people together. We don't ask them for anything. We don't ask them for any deposits or money or anything like that. We just want to show them what we do and then they talk to other buyers.

00:22:08:20 - 00:22:12:05
Sam Rashkin: How do you show them? Just by walking through the design center? Or how do you.

00:22:12:06 - 00:22:42:22
Dennis Webb: Yeah, we the salespeople, really kind of make sure it happens because they're there to. Yeah. So, you know, we're not only have designers at browse, we have salespeople that because they'll close houses at Browse Night, we sell an additional 150, 150 houses a year on salespeople, closing those buyers later after they have attended a browse site. So 150 homes that we know of that we can point to, you know, then we get them to you, no sign a contract.

00:22:42:23 - 00:23:06:26
Dennis Webb: And then we say, okay, you've got the contract. Now you're going to go to the design center. We prepare them for that and we work with them. We they might go to another browse night, and they don't meet their designer before their appointment. And the meantime, they're on their on our program and they're seeing all the options, how much they are and what they do and what the warranty is and what the installation instructions are and everything.

00:23:06:27 - 00:23:30:28
Dennis Webb: You know, not only do they see that, everyone sees that the manufacturers see it, the trade see it, our project managers see it, salespeople see it, the designers see it, everyone sees it. So everyone's reading off the same page of music. Okay. Really simple. Then we start their house, we do a pre-construction meeting, and we tell them what we're going to put in there, and we kind of keep communicating with them.

00:23:30:28 - 00:23:53:28
Dennis Webb: And then we build a house, and then we we close and we give them a nice gift and we stay in touch with them and we say, okay, now we we email them, you know, we we have a lot of people that have bought five and six Fulton homes from us. And they'll sometimes we'll we'll buy big pieces.

00:23:53:28 - 00:24:12:28
Dennis Webb: So we'll have 3 or 4 different size homes in the same community. And they like the community. Their kids are in school. So when they when they first moved in, their kids were real little. They bought a 1600 square foot house. Now they're older, they want a 20 200 square foot house. We can sell them a brand new house in the same community for more money.

00:24:12:28 - 00:24:30:06
Dennis Webb: And they already like us. So. And that's important, okay? If they don't like you, they're not going to buy from you. Okay? So if they like us, they're going to buy from us. So and then that process continues and it's and then all of a sudden, okay, now the kids are gone. Now we're going to go down to a smaller house.

00:24:30:06 - 00:24:44:08
Dennis Webb: We're going to do a 2000 square foot, you know, single level and things like that. So we stay in contact with our buyers all the time. We just they're part of the team and we just they're there. That's the journey. It doesn't stop.

00:24:44:10 - 00:25:07:00
Sam Rashkin: So for housing 2.0 followers, what you're hearing is a master at creating experiences, owning customers for life. All these principles that we talk about are just being executed at the highest levels. One of the things I'm curious about during the transaction is signed a contract or have you guys moved to paperless contracts? Are you still.

00:25:07:02 - 00:25:15:13
Dennis Webb: We we moved we moved to paperless 15 years ago. 16 years ago. Wow. We do not have a piece of paper in our company.

00:25:15:15 - 00:25:22:22
Sam Rashkin: Okay. I want to share that with everyone. And when you say you stay in touch, maybe share with them the frequency and how you stay in touch.

00:25:22:25 - 00:25:48:03
Dennis Webb: We'll email them once a month on anything. Well, if we want to, you know, an indoor Air Plus leader award from the Department of Energy or the EPA, we'll tell them that if we have a new community opening, we'll tell them that if we've given away, you know, some things for charity, we'll tell them that. We'll just tell them what we're up to.

00:25:48:06 - 00:25:55:03
Sam Rashkin: Do. You also tell them maybe things about a home ownership, like maybe it's time to change a filter or drain the water heater. Yeah.

00:25:55:06 - 00:26:20:24
Dennis Webb: Or we'll give them tips on how to do this or how to do that. Sure, because people like that stuff. I think we've looked at the idea of, you know, this, this, this whole idea of, you know, how to do a home ownership and do insurance and do you know what you're talking about with the filters and having it come out from Home Depot every three weeks or whatever?

00:26:20:26 - 00:26:33:05
Dennis Webb: And I think that that's valid. We just have to figure out, you know, now is not the time for that. There's too much going on in our business. And so we'll probably do that later when things, you know, settle down if they ever do.

00:26:33:07 - 00:26:56:22
Sam Rashkin: Yeah. As you know, you've been to a lot of what I to my workshops. And you know, I advocate for the service agreement tied to the warranty concept. And because you're doing this stuff anyway, you're helping you're there. Yeah. Just and people just can do a lot of awful things to the good work that you do in the process of owning the home.

00:26:56:22 - 00:27:21:05
Sam Rashkin: And it's good to make sure they don't get too far along that path. So I always find that's a good thing. It's great. It's so good. Glad to hear you're considering that in the future. And while we're talking about the future, I wonder if you could maybe share at a high level as you keep looking at where technology is going and, and innovations that are happening in the sales space, do you see any future changes ahead that you.

00:27:21:07 - 00:27:49:02
Dennis Webb: I think the artist, I think the largest single change that we're going to see in our business is going to be, and it's kind of an offshoot of healthy homes. You know, healthy homes became very popular when Covid hit, and we were just fortunate to be in a great position where we were. We had been building healthy homes for many years, and we really touted it, and we were kind of one of the leaders in the country on it and those kind of things.

00:27:49:03 - 00:27:50:13
Dennis Webb: Okay. But what.

00:27:50:13 - 00:28:02:15
Sam Rashkin: Was fortunate that was that was good leadership, that was sensing the value and and acting on it. So I was just planning.

00:28:02:17 - 00:28:17:27
Dennis Webb: Yeah. Okay. So that was that was lucky. That was all those lucky things. Right. Okay. We'll do this. This is 2014 okay. We'll do this indoor air plus thing. And you know, and we kind of been really a proponent of it.

00:28:17:29 - 00:28:30:03
Sam Rashkin: Well I don't think anyone's been recognized as much as much in the indoor air plus program homes. Right. I think that far the most homes are the most.

00:28:30:07 - 00:28:53:24
Dennis Webb: Yeah. And we're quite proud of that actually. It's it's been really good and it's opened up a lot of doors and things like that. So to jump on that, I don't know if you've heard what he is doing. So is a Japanese company, a homebuilding company. They actually own Woodside Homes here in the United States. But they've developed they're doing this in Japan right now is fascinating.

00:28:53:28 - 00:29:24:28
Dennis Webb: So they have these sensors in their homes. Japan has an aging population very similar to the US. Unlike a lot of the other countries, they don't have multi-generational. They all kind of live alone. So you might have an elderly couple living alone. They'll have sensors that will sense strokes. The thing with strokes is the quicker you can detect a stroke, the much better the results are going to be.

00:29:24:29 - 00:29:47:06
Dennis Webb: If you wait too long after a stroke, 4 or 5 hours, that person is going to have irreparable damage or death. Okay, Japan has 300,000 strokes a year, so they have these sensors in there. And so since sense the stroke inside the house, they'll call the the person in the house. If they don't get an answer, they'll send an ambulance.

00:29:47:07 - 00:29:58:13
Dennis Webb: They'll automatically unlock the front door and they'll come in and they'll take them to the hospital. That that is that is the future of housing.

00:29:58:15 - 00:30:21:20
Sam Rashkin: Yeah. It's again, it's this concept of service that's missing that will be added. And that's kind of for me, the future of housing is moving to a service oriented business. You know, it's interesting mention them because the second city home at IBS right before Covid, the new American home they built was one it was made in Japan, shipped here.

00:30:21:20 - 00:30:44:08
Sam Rashkin: And it was a post and being assembled home that was built in a week that was insane, complex, but amazing. But it was loaded up with these sensors beyond stroke. And I think when you went to the bathroom, it would sense if the urine was right and the mirror at the sink would send certain skin tones and things.

00:30:44:08 - 00:30:48:21
Sam Rashkin: So there's a lot of sensors that they're looking at just to monitor health.

00:30:48:23 - 00:31:03:20
Dennis Webb: And I think that that is a tremendous benefit, particularly right now with our aging population and everything like that. It's it's at the fourth thought of a lot of people right now. It's fascinating.

00:31:03:23 - 00:31:22:04
Sam Rashkin: Is there anything also in terms of where you see things going, like what percent of your buyers are virtual buyers? In other words, they don't even go to the model homes. They buy it virtually online. How is that progressing for you in the future? Is that just a blip and it will go down again? Or do you see that as a no?

00:31:22:04 - 00:31:44:18
Dennis Webb: I think that that's it's valid. One of the one of the big talks is okay, well, I got to sell houses on the internet. Okay. Well, I think we're the only builder that can possibly sell a house on the internet because of how our system is interconnected. One of the major builders came out with this idea of, oh, yeah, we can sell stuff on the internet.

00:31:44:18 - 00:32:03:21
Dennis Webb: Well, the problem is they're there a lot. Inventory wasn't Saint, so if they could sell lot 3216 times and they wouldn't know, okay. Because I wasn't saying it wasn't saying that what their sales saying. So if they have all these different databases they don't talk to each other. They're screwed. You know, they're not going to be able to do anything.

00:32:03:22 - 00:32:27:23
Dennis Webb: Okay. Well all of our things are saint. So everything is live. Our virtual tours are lie. Our interactive floor plans are live are lots of live. Everything's live. It's all computerized. There's no paper. And so it's very possible for us to, And we sell it. We sell things on the internet quite often because we use DocuSign and our contracts.

00:32:27:23 - 00:32:44:13
Dennis Webb: Very simple. You know, it's a five page contract and we just we try to make it easier for the buyer. We had a buyer that came in a few weeks ago and he said, how long? How big is your contract? We said, well, it's five pages. He goes, good, I think I might, I can, I'll consider buying a house for you.

00:32:44:13 - 00:32:57:10
Dennis Webb: I just went to a national builder and they had 100 pages on their contract. And I'm kind of worried about their quality building. If they have to have 100 pages to to protect themselves. I said, okay, that makes sense. You know.

00:32:57:12 - 00:33:01:28
Sam Rashkin: That's amazing. Five verses, 100 page. Yeah.

00:33:02:00 - 00:33:20:23
Dennis Webb: It's because they have lawyers on staff and the lawyers on staff have to get paid. So we don't have any lawyers on staff. We're not quite big enough. Right. But they have. Oh, I'm going to do something today. I better make it harder for the buyer to buy a house. And they don't really realize that they're killing themselves by having these general counsels.

00:33:20:23 - 00:33:25:05
Dennis Webb: But that's okay. We'll just let them keep doing that. That's fine.

00:33:25:08 - 00:33:51:00
Sam Rashkin: You mentioned by the buyers is just so much more informed, which is something we also talk about a lot and housing 2.0. And I think that was really informative. You know, that actually as you're going through their sales preview, they have their phones, their checking prices and so forth. Are there other ways that you think buyers are more informed coming in the door when they go to online?

00:33:51:00 - 00:34:04:03
Sam Rashkin: But do you think they know about, like for instance, some of the national labeling programs coming in or not? What do you think they know about certain products and preferences? I mean, what kind of information do you think buyers are coming in with?

00:34:04:07 - 00:34:24:14
Dennis Webb: So it's a it's a wide spread. You know, you have some buyers that are really been they've been studying this thing and they know as much as you do. Okay. They walk into your your sales office. They know about your plans better than you do. They've been looking at it online. They've been researching and things like that. Other people they know, they don't know, okay.

00:34:24:18 - 00:34:51:14
Dennis Webb: It's like the guy that wants an energy efficient house. They either do or they don't. Okay. There's nothing in between. Right? Or the guy that wants a healthy home. Okay. Well, if you want if you have a kid with asthma, a healthy home is way more important than that bonus room or granite countertops or something like that. So it depends on where people are coming from and they're all different.

00:34:51:15 - 00:35:15:06
Dennis Webb: What I will say is the buyer is way more informed today, and the internet has helped them with that. They can they can find anything on the internet and if they really want to do their homework and a lot of people do, they'll use that and they'll say, okay. And then reviews have come in and, you know, all of a sudden, oh gosh, you've got two stars or three stars or something like that, and people are looking at that kind of stuff.

00:35:15:06 - 00:35:37:06
Dennis Webb: And it's just it's an era that people have access that they never had before. And the role of the sales person is going to change tremendously. The sales person used to be the guy to give the information to the buyer. Now the buyer has the information already. The sales person, really their role is going to change in that they're going to be the matchmaker.

00:35:37:07 - 00:35:57:15
Dennis Webb: They're going to put this with this house and this technology and things like that. They're not going to be, you know, worried about, well, what's the, you know, curse rating for this home or something like that. They're just not going to that's not going to be their strength. Their strength is going to be a matchmaker and working with the buyer and being their advocate.

00:35:57:18 - 00:36:15:20
Dennis Webb: And and that's what's going to happen. And so that role the salesperson is going to change and the skills are going to be different. And maybe you might have to have salespeople that have more than six weeks of real estate school as a total education. I'm not sure.

00:36:15:23 - 00:36:39:28
Sam Rashkin: So so one of the questions we posed to builder is when we go through the sales module is what is what is the why for your business? Because usually a strong why is the anchor for most of the other messaging supports and builds on that? Is there a why for Fulton Homes? Maybe you could share?

00:36:40:01 - 00:36:43:13
Dennis Webb: Yeah, there's a whole bunch of them. That's a good.

00:36:43:15 - 00:36:45:02
Sam Rashkin: It should be just one.

00:36:45:03 - 00:37:13:02
Dennis Webb: And well I think the one the one would be it's the right thing to do. You know, you're going to be happy here. We're doing this for you. We're we're we're local. We're we're very community oriented. And we're going to build a house for you. That is going to be it's going to be perfect, and you're going to have a great experience.

00:37:13:02 - 00:37:21:19
Dennis Webb: And the great experience is all the stuff we've been talking about. And they're not going to get that anywhere else.

00:37:21:21 - 00:37:33:15
Sam Rashkin: So I remember during the crazy boom time 2000 and 506 or at least 2007, in that.

00:37:33:17 - 00:37:34:24
Dennis Webb: I remember that.

00:37:34:27 - 00:38:08:15
Sam Rashkin: Yeah, it was a frenzy. It was build it and they will come. And basically the salespeople just took orders. It was just an insane, just demand for housing. And so the challenge was for me. How do you build discipline in sales professionals when things are so good to be ready, when things are tighter? And so I think we're in another frenzy now under different, completely different set of factors because there's a lot of constraints.

00:38:08:17 - 00:38:31:03
Sam Rashkin: But almost if you build it, they will come as kind of in play. If you can build it and get the materials and get the supplies. So how do you how do you manage the, the, the discipline and the skill sets of the salespeople? When we're in that kind of it's not very difficult to sell a house right now.

00:38:31:06 - 00:38:53:29
Dennis Webb: I think. I think we can't keep continuing the way we're going. So think something's got to give. You know, prices just can't increase $10,000 every week. Yeah. Just can't you know. Yeah. And interest rates can't, you know when interest rates get about 5% which are really close to now, we're going to have a lot of people who just can't qualify.

00:38:53:29 - 00:39:19:26
Dennis Webb: They simply can't qualify for the House. And we're going to have some people that have bought a house and they can't qualify. And for the first time, this is interesting. For the first time ever in our market, new homes sold for less than used homes in the last year. Wow. We know why. Build time. So they bought these houses a year ago and a much lower rate.

00:39:19:26 - 00:39:50:01
Dennis Webb: But they didn't close until now, a year later, at a much lower rate. But in the meantime, their comparing it to resale homes there sold last week and there was no build time. So that's why for the first time ever, used homes sold for more than new homes. So people are moving into homes today, are getting a tremendous value, you know, so what happened is in our thing kind of hit in 2006 to 2005 was our our best year.

00:39:50:01 - 00:40:24:01
Dennis Webb: We we closed 2200 homes okay. Wow. Yeah. That was that was that was. Yeah, that was busy. Okay. Well, all of a sudden music stopped and we go now. And we had 36 salespeople, you know. So I'm trying to figure out, you know, what we do with 36 salespeople when the music stopped and all of a sudden one's buying houses and I well, you know, it was very, very difficult, you know, and it's very it's very tough.

00:40:24:02 - 00:40:36:19
Dennis Webb: We've never we've never really gotten back to that. We've never gone back to those numbers in the whole market. The market is doing half of what it did back then. And we're really.

00:40:36:21 - 00:40:54:09
Sam Rashkin: Yeah, it speaks to lie. We have such a supply shortage right now because we're building less than a number of households being created every year. We're creating a less, less number of homes than that. So we're always creating a shortfall. So, you know, it's just a problem.

00:40:54:11 - 00:41:24:21
Dennis Webb: Going back to 2007, when everything started, you know, collapsing, there were many of our salespeople that had really strong closing skills in selling skills, and those are the ones that we needed. The guys that were nice people and taking orders, we just we didn't need them, you know? And so those are the ones that left. And we got down to, oh gosh, half, you know, we went from 36 to 18 salespeople, you know, and we we got to, you know, get this going.

00:41:24:21 - 00:41:49:09
Dennis Webb: And then the other thing we did, which is kind of we bonus our salespeople, the good ones, so that stay give me another $20,000 a year or whatever, that they were running really low so they wouldn't go to work for someone else because we couldn't control the, the incomes because the, the volume wasn't there. The other thing we did is we kept we kept producing houses.

00:41:49:12 - 00:42:11:21
Dennis Webb: Well, the national guys stopped. We kept producing because we said the housing business hasn't started to slow down. Unbelievably, it's just to 90%. So there's still houses that people are going to buy. So let's let's get that. So our market share you know increased tremendously. So fast forward to you know 2022 2023 that same things are going to happen.

00:42:11:27 - 00:42:34:20
Dennis Webb: It won't be as bad as it was. But you're going to see a little bit of a, you know, an era where salespeople are going to need to be able to sell houses again, because there's going to be more competition and it's just going to be harder for them. So we're going to go through that same cycle again, and it'll be quite a bit different.

00:42:34:22 - 00:42:57:23
Sam Rashkin: One last point before I let my way in some questions is this is also a real peeve of yours I want you to speak to. It is you're really you can't believe how there are these sales meetings every week and maybe speak to the fact you know, how you you just want people to be productive and bypass that.

00:42:57:29 - 00:43:21:16
Dennis Webb: So I think the funniest thing in the world is all these national builders, they close their stores. I call them stores, but they're really sales offices or model home parks or whatever their stores. They close their stores one day a week so that they can have sales meetings. And so they close their stores. So because of their operational deficiencies, okay, that's the craziest thing in the world.

00:43:21:16 - 00:43:46:00
Dennis Webb: What other industry even consider that you wouldn't go to a Nordstrom store and go, well, you know, they're close on Fridays because they have their sales meetings, you know, and of course, the sales meetings, they have a sales manager whose sole job is to have sales meetings. He doesn't do anything else. And they take time away from the salespeople when we would much rather have our salespeople taking care of their customers during that time.

00:43:46:02 - 00:44:11:03
Dennis Webb: Now, I've asked salespeople because I talked to hundreds of them working for us and other builders who really likes these sales meetings. I have not yet not. I've never found because I like sales meetings. I really enjoy them. I wish we had more of them. You know, no one says that. Okay. In fact, one of the reasons we can retain salespeople is we don't bug them, we don't cap them, we don't bug them, and we don't say, hey, you got to come in and close.

00:44:11:09 - 00:44:32:01
Dennis Webb: Close your office on Friday morning till 3:00 and come on down, and we can kind of go over your backs or something like that. We hire really good people that we trust and can do the job, and we don't babysit them and we don't bring them in for sales meetings. And the sales manager is just a giant waste of time.

00:44:32:03 - 00:44:33:03
Dennis Webb: I'm not sure.

00:44:33:06 - 00:44:36:16
Sam Rashkin: A sales manager position eliminated.

00:44:36:19 - 00:44:41:15
Dennis Webb: Yeah. You know, we've never had one. You know, we we wouldn't know what to do.

00:44:41:17 - 00:44:44:25
Sam Rashkin: Hey, Mike, do we have any questions? I sure.

00:44:44:27 - 00:45:07:03
Mike Collignon: Yeah, I got a couple and certainly encourage our audience to send them in via the questions box. Dennis, we've been talking a lot about production builders, and you're obviously a sizable regional builder. But one question we had was what advice would you give to builders who only build 20 homes or less per year?

00:45:07:06 - 00:45:11:15
Dennis Webb: Get it to 30.

00:45:11:18 - 00:45:37:19
Dennis Webb: It sounds it sounds simple. Okay. When I first joined eBay, I was I was amazed at the quality of people and their passion. And they were building great houses, but they were so intense on building the house better that they didn't think about increasing the sales. And they guy goes, and this is serious. So the guy goes, well, I'm building ten houses a year.

00:45:37:19 - 00:46:01:22
Dennis Webb: How do I what do I do? I said, Bill 15, you know, just build 15, you know, and you'll be better off. And I asked someone, would you rather increase your sales or have another thing that that saves money on your electric bill? You know, an energy saving thing? I'd rather have the energy saving thing, I said, wrong answer.

00:46:01:23 - 00:46:08:16
Dennis Webb: You're already building a great house. You're building the net zero. You're you're doing great. You need to increase your sales.

00:46:08:18 - 00:46:34:07
Sam Rashkin: So it's interesting, Dennis, I'll speak to one experience with a builder who just found his lane and stayed in it. And it's amoeba builder from playback who no longer is with us. A bill like an IRA was one of the first builders to just embrace. In the mid late 90s, he embraced the whole eBay building science approach to home building.

00:46:34:07 - 00:47:06:25
Sam Rashkin: And so what he did in his case was he just built in Lake Western Iowa resort community, about 20 homes a year. But he did so well just getting ahead of the pack and creating such a superior home and then selling it so well. I won't go into his story, which is in the book, but essentially Bill, like just loved staying with those 20 homes, making a really substantial margin, each of the 20 homes, owning the community as the best builder and just enjoying.

00:47:06:25 - 00:47:28:17
Sam Rashkin: That's what he did. And so he made a really good living. And he camped out of right about 20. And in some cases, if you if you can get ahead of the pack and deliver a in your as a small builder, a special, unique experience that you own, in this case it was high performance. Sometimes you can't settle in and just enjoy that lane.

00:47:28:17 - 00:47:35:24
Sam Rashkin: But but I like the idea of just most voters want to increase profit. Probably more sales is a good way to go.

00:47:35:27 - 00:47:55:21
Dennis Webb: If you take care of your customers, they're going to tell their friends you're going to be able to. If you have a great image, which we happen to have because of all the stuff we do, you have such an advantage. And the thing is, if you if you're going up against the national guys, you have a tremendous advantage.

00:47:55:22 - 00:48:16:04
Dennis Webb: They can't do they can't move quickly at all. They don't advertise. They don't they don't take they don't they don't cater to the local market. They some of them even they tell them what to buy. You know, they have national national accounts or national contracts with accounts. I know what is that. How's that work? You know, it's just crazy.

00:48:16:04 - 00:48:27:19
Dennis Webb: So if you could be close to your customer and give your customer stuff, even if you're building 20 houses, you'll soon bill 25 and 30 and, you know, build more houses.

00:48:27:21 - 00:48:31:01
Sam Rashkin: Mike, any other question?

00:48:31:03 - 00:48:52:08
Mike Collignon: Oh, yeah. Yeah, they're coming in pretty well now. And so we'll get to we'll get to all of these here. You're talking about buyers. And there was a question that was asked what are the top two home characteristics that your customers are looking for right now. And how has that changed since the pandemic?

00:48:52:10 - 00:48:56:05
Dennis Webb: Well, the first thing is availability.

00:48:56:07 - 00:49:22:10
Dennis Webb: By far that's the most important thing. And then they're going to settle for stuff. And so, you know we're like everyone else. We're limiting sales and everything like that. It's just very disheartening. So availability would be the big thing. And then have houses that people want, you know, have your houses that people want, build them in nice neighborhoods, build them safe, build them, you know, just build great houses.

00:49:22:10 - 00:49:41:10
Dennis Webb: And if you could build a better house and the next guy, you're going to be better off. And people see that, okay. And it's just it's not that hard. But availability right now, it's the big thing. When the pandemic first hit, there was plenty of houses available. We didn't know any better. We just kept building everything, you know.

00:49:41:14 - 00:50:03:20
Dennis Webb: And at that point people were going, well, I just I need a home office and I need this and everything like that. You know, one of the things that the pandemic did was, was really changed the way we build houses and we buy houses because all these people were living in their house and they're going, well, I don't I used to just kind of visit my house.

00:50:03:20 - 00:50:17:17
Dennis Webb: Now I have to live in it. You know, I visit the house and I just go, okay, I'm going to I'm going to come home at 6:00 and I'm going to have dinner and watch TV and maybe play with the kids for an hour, and I'm going to go to bed and I'm going to do the same thing the next day.

00:50:17:17 - 00:50:33:05
Dennis Webb: Well, now I'm here every day, and my wife's her every day, and the kids are here every day, and the dogs are every day, and they're all driving me nuts. Okay, I'm just going crazy. So this house is not going to work. You need to get a new house. I need to get a bigger house. I need a house that has an office.

00:50:33:05 - 00:50:52:26
Dennis Webb: I need a house, too. You know, our big thing is we do a big loft business now because you can put the kids upstairs and they can do their schoolwork and their, you know, things up there, but a couple of computers up there, and they're set. So the houses are way different than they used to be. And people are just they need a bigger house and they also want a better house.

00:50:53:00 - 00:51:09:07
Dennis Webb: They also want stuff that I'm going to be in this house every day. So I want nice cabinets and I want nice flooring and things like this. I got to walk on this stuff every day, not just at night. It's all day. I'm here, you know? So things have changed tremendously. And one.

00:51:09:07 - 00:51:36:22
Sam Rashkin: Of those things, you know, we show in the presentations, research pre-pandemic was just about 70% of your day was spent in the House pre-pandemic. And so now I'm estimating it's got to be over 80%, 85% post-pandemic. So that's why we use the our trademark slogan is home is where life happens, because that's where that's where your time is.

00:51:36:23 - 00:51:57:12
Sam Rashkin: So and to your point also, I love the way to speak to the experiences that we try to lay out a consistent framework for optimization, community design, performance, and then quality and sales come to the back end to make sure that it's done right. Right. Community design and performance of done right. And so.

00:51:57:14 - 00:51:58:28
Dennis Webb: It all has to come together.

00:51:59:02 - 00:52:07:15
Sam Rashkin: Right. And so sales is so important. It's really where it all comes together. Mike next question.

00:52:07:17 - 00:52:31:18
Mike Collignon: Yeah. So we've got two questions that are very similar ones from our friend Howard in Hawaii and the other ones from happen new Jersey. But they're both thinking kind of along the same lines. So Howard's asking, how important is energy efficiency in promoting sales. And again, it's kind of connected. Half is wondering are your buyers asking for net zero homes?

00:52:31:20 - 00:52:41:11
Dennis Webb: Good question. We started doing energy Stars just as Sam was leaving Energy Star. So that's a long time ago, right?

00:52:41:14 - 00:52:45:01
Sam Rashkin: That was intentional. They were waiting till I left before.

00:52:45:03 - 00:53:15:14
Dennis Webb: Well, we wanted to make sure that, you know, the thing, we can get sabotaged or something like that. So I think we started Energy Star in 2008 or something like that. I think you left about that time, right? 2010. Okay, so maybe we just caught you there. Anyway, we thought that was a good idea to kind of be ahead of the thing and say, in fact, we were the first, the first builder in Phoenix to do Energy Star 3.0.

00:53:15:16 - 00:53:32:09
Dennis Webb: And we it was kind of funny because we were advertising it as that. We were the only builder in Phoenix doing 3.0. So I got a call from the EPA. You can't say that. You can't say that. You can't say you're the only you're the first builder because we have a starter yet. I said, well, we started this.

00:53:32:10 - 00:53:50:08
Dennis Webb: You know, we're building all our houses that way. We just need to get a head start. We're helping you and we work with our air conditioning company. They're developing products, so you guys will be fine and everything like that. But you've got to have product to be able to do this thing. We we launched it in a year and a half before it went live.

00:53:50:09 - 00:54:12:27
Dennis Webb: They said, well, you can't use that okay. So they said, I said, what can I do? Well, you can say it's a it's a version that hasn't been put into place yet. I said, okay, I'll do that. So we started advertising that. So Energy Star became very important. And Phoenix is a real strong Energy star market and probably the strongest one.

00:54:13:03 - 00:54:37:19
Dennis Webb: And as far as just everyone, Energy Star was an anti to get in the poker game. And that's why we say well we need to do something else. We need to go to indoor air. Plus you know and then next we're doing net zero. And so we're we're in the process of doing that right now. When you're building 800 homes a year, it's real hard to just flip the switch and do net zero.

00:54:37:25 - 00:54:57:16
Dennis Webb: There's just a lot of things that we're working on. We'll get there. But the buyers, the buyers big thing is they're not really asking for indoor Air plus, or they want an energy efficient home. But it just depends a lot of people. Yeah I got to have a net zero. I got up an indoor air plus. But that's that's not the majority.

00:54:57:18 - 00:55:21:20
Sam Rashkin: You know Dennis, my assessment is to yours and so forever with both energy star is zero ready. I said to the builders we engage. Please don't expect the buyer to walk in the door and say, let me see the energy star or the zero ready. I always positioned it as if you can identify a need during the sales process.

00:55:21:20 - 00:55:56:24
Sam Rashkin: So once you cares about energy or health or comfort, you are certified one of the best homes in the country for what they care about. And so it was there to validate that you were, in fact certified in what they cared about. And that's basically always how we we position the program because we knew the reality. And but we knew that it was also that energy efficiency was not even from the beginning, not the thing consumers cared about saving the additional 30, $40 a month.

00:55:57:01 - 00:56:19:18
Sam Rashkin: Because when prices are going up, there are other. Early on, a lot of the builders were thinking quality was a much more quality that came with the third party. Verification was a stronger play. And then health now seems to be the sweet spot in terms of RIP. People's heads are particularly post-Covid. Now health is a surge in interest.

00:56:19:18 - 00:56:22:26
Sam Rashkin: So all of that aligns with everything that you're saying.

00:56:22:29 - 00:56:31:21
Dennis Webb: So I've always said that given the two things, health is more important than energy efficiency.

00:56:31:23 - 00:56:32:17
Sam Rashkin: Yes.

00:56:32:19 - 00:56:38:10
Dennis Webb: And a lot of people like, oh, you can't that's that's blasphemy. You can't say that.

00:56:38:13 - 00:56:41:13
Sam Rashkin: I think that's understood now. I think that's understood.

00:56:41:14 - 00:56:46:22
Dennis Webb: Yeah. I think Covid kind of reinforced that.

00:56:46:24 - 00:57:11:18
Sam Rashkin: Yeah. And I think the market has so much compelling evidence about the willingness to pay for health that I think people are understanding, you know, whether it's organic food or bottled water have any basis for making a claim that you have a healthier choice is a huge market for for paying the extra cost. Anything else? Mike.

00:57:11:20 - 00:57:24:19
Mike Collignon: Yeah. Was curious talking about being able to flip that switch and it's not the easiest. He was curious. Do you use modular or penalize construction for your homes or.

00:57:24:21 - 00:57:28:28
Dennis Webb: No, we we we love to. You know the problem.

00:57:28:29 - 00:57:30:15
Sam Rashkin: You will, you will.

00:57:30:17 - 00:57:48:29
Dennis Webb: I know we will. But we've got to get somebody to make it first. And we looked at all these things and that's great. We went out and looked at this, this company that was just huge. And they were going to revolutionize the world. And their their factory was right, you know, ten miles away went out there, the whole group went out there.

00:57:48:29 - 00:58:03:25
Dennis Webb: We spent a whole day with them and we go, wow, this is incredible. And three weeks later, they're gone. We're a lot like, we're not gonna use them, you know? So it'll get there. But but not now.

00:58:03:27 - 00:58:14:00
Sam Rashkin: We're gonna have to I'm going to have to reach out to you just to show you something new I've been doing with sips later, but we'll talk about that some other time, okay?

00:58:14:03 - 00:58:24:19
Dennis Webb: We're up to it. You know, it's just like now it's hard to turn on a dime and say, okay, let's build these 800 houses this way.

00:58:24:22 - 00:58:37:02
Mike Collignon: You were talking before about the sales process and how that has obviously changed. So kind of a pointed question from David. Our parade of homes still relevant?

00:58:37:04 - 00:58:42:09
Dennis Webb: I don't even know what that is. I don't know what the rate of homes is.

00:58:42:14 - 00:59:10:06
Sam Rashkin: Credit homes is a sales event where a or cadre builders and a local market will offer up one home to show and have people walk through. Or sometimes it's done for existing home sales, where existing homes in various locations and region are opened up so people can walk through them and see what the homes that are being lived in actually looked like.

00:59:10:06 - 00:59:28:28
Sam Rashkin: But there's kind of a quasi thing that can be done for new construction as well, but mostly it's for existing homes. And just to see what some of the most special homes in a market look like by taking a tour of them throughout the community. And so tour that you take one home to the next.

00:59:28:29 - 00:59:34:22
Dennis Webb: I don't know why anyone would want to do that.

00:59:34:24 - 00:59:37:13
Dennis Webb: That's the dumbest thing in the world.

00:59:37:16 - 00:59:41:18
Sam Rashkin: That can be very successful, actually, because people are interested to see other homes in the market.

00:59:41:20 - 00:59:43:23
Dennis Webb: So just.

00:59:43:23 - 00:59:53:00
Sam Rashkin: To people go to homes for sale on open day, just to walk through them, just get a sense of how people are living, decorating. Yeah.

00:59:53:02 - 01:00:06:27
Dennis Webb: I'm getting decorating ideas. Okay. That's fine. You know, I don't want to sign in because I'm getting decorating ideas. Well, what difference does that have to do with it? Yeah.

01:00:06:29 - 01:00:19:16
Mike Collignon: Well, I don't have any other questions. I just put out the final call for questions to our audience. So we'll see if they've got any, any final questions. But Sam, did you have any other questions for Dennis?

01:00:19:18 - 01:00:27:27
Sam Rashkin: No. I'm good to go. I can go with Dennis all day, but I'm going to stop here because.

01:00:28:00 - 01:00:54:03
Sam Rashkin: One is, you know, I always love chatting with Dennis. He's just, you know, proven that these basic principles work. He's done such an amazing job at executing them for the company. And I love Juices Insights. So I like just to thank him now, just for a great one hour session in our Thought Leader series. I think amazing, useful advice for everyone out there.

01:00:54:03 - 01:01:08:25
Sam Rashkin: And God, this is just, you know, they're going to go through the trouble of building a high performance home. This is a part you got to get right. So thank you so much Dennis for for joining this particular thought with us series for us.

01:01:09:01 - 01:01:26:04
Dennis Webb: Sam, you know I think the world of you, you're just a you're just a character, you know. And I just I really thank the I thank my lucky stars for your friendship. It's been it's been good.

01:01:26:07 - 01:01:48:15
Mike Collignon: Well, thank you both for letting us sit in and listen to your conversation. It was it was really cool to pull some insights out of this. And thank you on behalf of our audience, but also thank you to our audience for attending and asking those great questions. Thank you also to BC electric, Westlake, Royal Building Products and Schneider Electric for their gender sponsorship of the housing 2.0 program.

01:01:48:17 - 01:02:09:18
Mike Collignon: And if you enjoyed today's webinar and would like to learn more about the housing 2.0 strategies, you can register now for the quarter two Workshop series or the series two Workshop series. That six part series is going to begin on Thursday, May the 12th, and it starts at 12 p.m. eastern time. Again, the website to go to is builder.

01:02:09:23 - 01:02:14:24
Mike Collignon: Builder. Mediacom.

01:02:14:27 - 01:02:17:18
Mike Collignon: Two.

01:02:17:21 - 01:02:36:24
Mike Collignon: Now, before that series starts up, we're going to be right back here on May the 4th at 2 p.m. eastern for another webinar. In our Thought Leader series, we're going to be joined by Eric Whirling from Doe to talk more about healthy homes. So I hope you'll be able to join us for that. Speaking of health, tomorrow is World Health Day.

01:02:36:25 - 01:02:41:23
Mike Collignon: So to all of you out there, from all of us here, we wish you the best of health and take care.