Homeowner Wisdom: A Deep Dive with Craig and Kevin from The Homeowner Show Part I

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[00:00:05] Eric Goranson: house We have a very special show that we've been talking about doing for about four years and we finally did it I sat down with my friends at the homeowner show a texas based youtube channel and podcast That talks about the many things that homeowners are interested in not only home improvement many things that affect your lives This is so much fun We're going to do something completely different that we've ever done in the show and this is going to extend into our number two This is an amazing fun An informative round table discussion.

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[00:00:41] Eric Goranson: Now

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[00:00:41] Eric Goranson: started

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[00:00:52] Eric Goranson: house. Well now shows brought to you by pyramid heating and cooling serving in Oregon, the Portland metro area and Bend, Oregon.

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[00:01:25] Eric Goranson: com. This episode has been something we've been talking about for probably four years. And I have my good friends from the homeowner show, Craig Williams, Kevin, Mr. Hackett. Welcome to Around the House, my friends. Hey, good to be on. This is so fun, guys. We've always talked about doing something like this.

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[00:01:54] Craig and Kevin: We finally sent you enough Bitcoin to get on. Oh, I know. Thank you so

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[00:02:05] Eric Goranson: And man, you guys have been killing it out there. Our pleasure. It's that Texas money. There we go. Wow. Yeah, that's why it was a performance car, not electric. So I guess, wait a minute, I guess Elon's back down in Texas. So I can't say that anymore.

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[00:02:25] Craig and Kevin: Yeah,

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[00:02:40] Craig and Kevin: Awesome. Thanks. Yeah. We, we started this a little over right about six years ago.

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[00:03:08] Craig and Kevin: And so we just, we thought, you know what, we'll get some contractors on our, on our podcast. We'll talk to them. We'll find out more about what they're doing and we don't know anything. Craig and I are pretty dumb whenever it comes to this, but we talked to a lot of really smart people, so that's how that goes.

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[00:03:37] Craig and Kevin: And then the other side is, we want them to honestly talk about could the homeowner potentially do some of these things themselves. Or is it something, something they should stay away from? And a lot of times it is, it's, it's something they should absolutely stay away from either because of codes, because of safety or other reasons that they need a license to do some of these things properly.

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[00:04:05] Craig and Kevin: a lot of local contractors. So, and, and we've talked to, there's a couple of niches we haven't hit, but we've hit, we keep finding that we keep finding new ones, stuff that we'd never heard of, but anyway, yeah, we, we are continually looking for new people.

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[00:04:42] Craig and Kevin: Your home that you currently own, or if you're looking to buy and what does that look like?

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[00:04:59] Craig and Kevin: Yeah, it was a [00:05:00] national hissy fit is what it was, but at the end of the day, it was just, it was really what it was is, okay, now you have to sign a contract before you can go look at a listing with a, with a real estate agent or realtor.

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[00:05:30] Craig and Kevin: Right. Yeah.

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[00:05:36] Craig and Kevin: Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. The actual money is going to have to exchange hands rather than just like the, the, the, the ball shuffle that's been happening for years. Which, which I think is a good thing.

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[00:05:47] Eric Goranson: And that's the other problem that I see with this as well is that in the past it was like, okay, the seller is paying for everything and the new buyer doesn't really get to see what those costs are. It's just been [00:06:00] all, like you said, the ball shuffles.

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[00:06:19] Craig and Kevin: I think yesterday. Jerome Powell announced that we're guaranteed a quarter point drop in interest rates. And there's, there's a lot of people who are putting pressure on him to make it a half point. Yeah, no question. Before the election happens, which big surprise there.

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[00:06:38] Eric Goranson: What are you talking about?

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[00:06:40] Eric Goranson: not. No, I know.

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[00:06:50] Eric Goranson: Who would have thought? Not in Texas,

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[00:06:54] Eric Goranson: Oh, geez. I don't know. Go, go Mariners. So, I got to say that with your [00:07:00] Texas Rangers stuff over there.

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[00:07:09] Craig and Kevin: Oh, man, you got to, you got to turn around, don't you? Yeah, I do. I'm, I'm, I'm afraid we're going to end in the same spot, buddy. I know.

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[00:07:23] Eric Goranson: And guess what? We always end up in the same spot. Yeah. It's like the Dallas Cowboys and making it to the Super Bowl in the last 30 years. Wow. You're really, you're really

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[00:07:44] Craig and Kevin: Oh, here we go. I can take it. Yeah. Craig's still trying to grow a mustache. It's fine. Oh, that's awesome, man.

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[00:07:59] Craig and Kevin: Of

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[00:08:01] Craig and Kevin: he doesn't come back at me. Cause I don't care. Yeah, there we go.

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[00:08:05] Eric Goranson: My Seahawks are two at us and we, we become two in 10. Then I go, Hey, we had a good start. So, Hey, it's normal. This is normal for the Seahawks. They, they jump out pretty good. Yes. And now, so we've got a new coach. So that's that whole thing. And you're like, okay, who's this cat? He came from where? So, well,

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[00:08:27] Craig and Kevin: And so he did, he did all right for you guys.

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[00:08:43] Eric Goranson: The new coach thing is never super hot for any team out there.

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[00:08:49] Eric Goranson: I wanted to talk to you guys. You guys touch on so many different things out there. We're just talking real estate and that's, that's, that's a big one right there. And I think one thing that I wanted to go back to [00:09:00] on that, that we didn't touch is I think what we're going to see is in that entry level market, like the people in those.

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[00:09:21] Craig and Kevin: Yeah, I think they're going to have to. Because the problem with first time homebuyers is they don't have any equity. They don't have, unless they've really done a really good job of saving their money and putting it away to be able to put it down payment, they're in, they're in a pickle.

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[00:09:37] Intro: Violets are blue around the house with Eric G coming back to you right after the break. You thought it was going to rhyme, didn't you? We'll be right back.

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[00:10:09] Eric Goranson: next generation of home improvement. If you want to find out more about us, head over to around the house online. com and make sure you YouTube where we show a lot of these things on video now. So let's get back to my friends, Kevin Hackett and Craig Williams from the homeowner show and talk everything about your home.

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[00:10:26] Craig and Kevin: they've really done a really good job of Saving their money and putting it away to be able to put it down payment. They're they're in a pickle because the thing is the buyer used to pay all of the, all of all of the commissions. And so now they're having to not only come up with a down payment for a home.

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[00:11:03] Craig and Kevin: In my opinion, is going to make it harder and harder for 1st time home buyers to get into a home because what's going to happen is, I think. You, you put a first time home buyer up against someone who already owned a home and trying to negotiate that. I think the buyer's going to wind up going with the person that has, even if it's a little less money and mind up, wind up, wind up making them more money in the end, because they may not have to pony up like you're talking about.

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[00:11:32] Eric Goranson: And then this, I don't want to get too much into politics because we try to stay away from it, but let's talk about the honesty here. If they give a 25, 000 grant to a first time homebuyer, somebody comes in with a first homebuyer offer, and they go, wow, that house was 400, 000, are you a first time homebuyer?

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[00:11:55] Craig and Kevin: Yeah. It's not going to change anything. I think it, I think it. Just pushes the ball down the [00:12:00] road. And it's one of those incentives. I remember being a first time home buyer. The first time I bought a home, it was, it was a great deal. You know, it wound up, there were, there were a lot of incentives and here's that going back, you mentioned that we don't, we don't really talk a lot about politics on our show either, but the thing is, that's not true.

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[00:12:25] Eric Goranson: when I see it though. So that's the other thing. That's it.

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[00:12:35] Craig and Kevin: That's, that's, that's, I think that's the point Eric's making though, is I actually think Kamala made a really smart decision. Play at the debate. Yeah, because she laid out that was that was one of the only things that she laid out in the debate. There was no other plan besides that one. So yeah, and it was and look, we talked about it on our show is the number one issue amongst Gen Z voters.

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[00:13:12] Craig and Kevin: Right. With that down payment. But here's the problem though, is

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[00:13:28] Eric Goranson: Now you're putting people in and it just pushes the price up. That's the free market

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[00:13:44] Craig and Kevin: Guys don't

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[00:13:55] Craig and Kevin: That's that's not good. No, that's a really, really low number. It is.

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[00:14:08] Eric Goranson: People are going, wow, I can't afford to buy that next house because I got a two and a half or 3 percent interest rate right now. And if I want to go upgrade and add another bedroom to the house, they go, wow, that's way too much money to add that. I'm just going to wait until interest rates go back down again.

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[00:14:43] Craig and Kevin: But the, the point that Jerome Powell knocked down the other day was like, we're. We're getting into like really low six territory, which I think can make people feel really good. And if it goes half the point, we're going to dip. If you have good credit, it's going to dip down in the fives. Once that happens, [00:15:00] I think that, yeah, you're right.

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[00:15:19] Craig and Kevin: Oh, a lot. And, and so Jerome Powell came out and said, look, I'm not very comfortable with, with With the job market numbers after we have the revised actual numbers that came back plus or minus a million. It's okay. Yeah, right. And so he and that and so you could take that a couple different ways, right? It could be like, okay, the numbers aren't looking so good.

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[00:15:54] Craig and Kevin: And he's, and he made that statement. So it's, we don't know what he means when he says these. Get

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[00:16:14] Eric Goranson: Have you guys paid attention to what the development fees are for some of these houses that if you wanted to build on a, on a lot in a city, what they're charging for permits these days? No. Great example, city of Portland right here. If I wanted to build a 2, 400 square foot house on a lot that previously had a house on it, that was maybe burned down, torn down.

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[00:16:54] Craig and Kevin: That's what I was going to ask is, are we seeing this across cities? Are we, is this being targeted in like specific areas?

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[00:17:00] Craig and Kevin: the city of Portland here,

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[00:17:22] Eric Goranson: I look at it and say, Hey, if you want to get affordable housing out there, why don't you limit those permit fees to 5, 000 bucks and get people going? Cause all of a sudden, if you could take 000 off the price of a house, just in administration fees, that's better than 25, 000 grant.

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[00:17:56] Craig and Kevin: I default permits for everything in order to build a [00:18:00] house. But then there were no inspections on the back and they just wanted, they just wanted the money for the permitting zero inspections required. And so that's right. You guys are

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[00:18:16] Craig and Kevin: right?

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[00:18:39] Intro: house.

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[00:19:07] Eric Goranson: the next generation of home improvement. Thanks for dreaming today If you want to get a hold of me here at the show Head over to AroundTheHouseOnline. com and make sure you're following us on social media and our new YouTube channel where we'll see a lot of these things up on video in the future. Now let's get back

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[00:19:25] Craig and Kevin: Here's the other one that'll mess with your noodle, Eric, is there's no zoning in Houston.

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[00:19:43] Craig and Kevin: Oh my goodness. Yep. Yep. That's, that's exactly what it is in Houston. And so you have. Like here, you have historic communities like the Heights, which I mean, if you're from Houston, the Heights area, it's, it's pretty famous. There's, it's a historic residential area of downtown Houston and what you'll have are like [00:20:00] these homes that are like close to 100 years old and they will literally raise them to the ground and put a three story modern junk right here

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[00:20:10] Eric Goranson: And let's, let's stack on top of this. If I think it's 1940 or 41 is the kind of demarcation line of the house. If you are trying to tear down a house that is built before 40 or 41, I think it is. You have to hand it disses and recycle the products. You can't go in there with an excavator. You got to send guys in there with hammers and crowbars to tear it apart.

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[00:20:40] Eric Goranson: to all be abated. Lead paint abated beforehand. So you're tearing a house down. They got to go in and remove all the asbestos. They got to go in and remove all the lead paint and then tear that thing apart. And so much of that house. Doesn't have value because as much as those old 1920s two by fours are cool that are dimensional lumber, [00:21:00] nobody's building with those.

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[00:21:19] Eric Goranson: Okay. So what they do is there's this whole municipality that's tied in with the state and they go, okay, your Metro area, we don't want urban sprawl. So we're going to have this urban growth boundary and you can't build outside of that. So if you have a street out in the country that has farmland on both sides, and that street is the middle of the urban growth boundary.

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[00:22:13] Craig and Kevin: yeah, I guarantee that would never fly here.

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[00:22:40] Craig and Kevin: They had a massive reservoir there and they didn't want anybody cutting off their supply

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[00:23:09] Eric Goranson: And again, you pay your taxes on the best. It's the best. And I was just watching on somebody's social media page where they had worked for them as a mechanic. This awesome chick had been working as a mechanic in the bus shop. I think it was. And she had to quit because she was so ill at the waist that they would take stuff that was perfectly good.

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[00:23:33] Craig and Kevin: but we have a similar situation with Metro here, except Metro is just the public transportation system.

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[00:23:38] Craig and Kevin: And which is pretty much non existent.

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[00:23:40] Craig and Kevin: it's basically buses. And then the light rail that nobody rides, except for rodeo season, right?

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[00:24:05] Craig and Kevin: Well, not when, not when you compare it to like Chicago and New York. And we have, we have

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[00:24:24] Craig and Kevin: that, that what do you mean dangerous?

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[00:24:30] Eric Goranson: They literally could lose your life inside of it by. Some hoodlum and it's really not been good for the communities that are adding the rail. So the new communities, people are, Hey, we're going to add rail down to your place or over to your place.

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[00:24:58] Eric Goranson: Every time you go on there, I just, [00:25:00] It used to be great to go downtown and I'd park in a parking ride and cruise down at that and now it's, I'm out. Yeah. And that, that just

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[00:25:12] Craig and Kevin: It's a whole lot easier just to let somebody else take you. Right? Absolutely. Absolutely. That's what they did. That's what they did at the rodeo is they made it. They made it illegal to park there to force people to get on their stupid trip. Yep. Yep. They absolutely did.

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[00:25:29] Eric Goranson: And here's another thing that's interesting. I think that manufactured or factory built housing to me is going to be one of those big things that is going to take over the world here as far as affordable housing, because a lot of these factory built house houses are built in, they're built inside and they're just built to a higher quality standard.

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[00:25:57] Craig and Kevin: they're, they're throwing them up, [00:26:00] literally throwing them up. And you have to be very careful whenever you are determining you're determined to buy a new home from a spec builder.

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[00:26:33] Craig and Kevin: All that stuff. Yeah, exactly. All of that winds up being one of those things that you, you and, and again. Let's say you even did know about it. There's sheet rock the next day. And so it's, you don't have a clue because it's just, it's unbelievable what they're doing. Yeah. You like, one of the things I talk to people when they say they want to build a home, I said, look, once you have identified your contractor.

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[00:27:13] Craig and Kevin: Exactly what Kevin's talking about, because once sheet rock and stuff goes up, there's stuff behind the walls. You can't see anything and you'll never know. And I had one, and I think I've told this story on our show before, but I had one. And it was, uh, this. Beautiful young couple. They built a beautiful home.

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[00:27:40] Eric Goranson: Oh, let's just load the carbon monoxide back into the house with all the greasy air. Yeah.

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[00:28:10] Craig and Kevin: And seal it and do all this kind of stuff. And so they just left it. And I said, so they didn't have this house inspected. And they said, she was like, no, there's no way an inspector missed that. No. And she's a good thing. You caught it because you probably saved their life. Oh, geez. House a week.

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[00:28:28] Eric Goranson: It does not

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[00:28:29] Eric Goranson: Yeah. Here's one that I heard going on and it was a, well, okay, listen to this one. And this isn't even a new home construction story, Joan. Change that, Tom. We'll be back with our friends from the Homeowners show just after these important messages.[00:29:00]

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[00:29:32] Eric Goranson: And do that. And so they put it under pressure, like what they do with fracking, basically pressurized and see if they could shake it up a little bit for more water to come in. But the problem is, is like anytime that you're fracking anything, like when an oil company goes into frack oil, you're now pulling whatever's in the ground back up even more.

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[00:29:59] Craig and Kevin: Oh, [00:30:00] did it just explode?

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[00:30:22] Eric Goranson: Wow. Where was the radiation coming from? The ground. Just from the ground? Yeah. Just from the ground? Yeah. That's crazy. Yeah, think of radiation. That can be radon. That could be natural uranium. It could be any one of the different elements that are down in the soil. So you gotta be careful with whatever you're doing.

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[00:31:16] Craig and Kevin: It's a catch 22 and it winds up creating a ton of problems.

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[00:31:36] Eric Goranson: These guys, the construction contractor board, every contractor has to be licensed. If you're a handyman, you have to be licensed. License bonded, insured, and they have agents out in the field following people around and they'll pull up, they'll scope out a lumber yard and see somebody that doesn't look like a licensed contractor and follow them and see if they're going back to a house that's under remodel.

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[00:32:15] Craig and Kevin: kept a lot of

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[00:32:17] Craig and Kevin: getting ripped off.

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[00:32:38] Craig and Kevin: My biggest issue is the unlicensed landscaping company. Offers offers like the shadow services. Of what I offer,

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[00:32:53] Craig and Kevin: stuff. I can. That's true.

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[00:33:15] Craig and Kevin: And so like you can, you can inspect pest control companies all day long and I'm happy that they do that when they do that, which is not often, but that's not the problem. The problem is the guys who are unlicensed outside of our field doing that kind of stuff. And I don't, I don't know how you wrangle that in.

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[00:33:34] Eric Goranson: just got to expand their scope. So they go out and go after that. Just go after the unlicensed people doing it. And. Here's what I see. And this is how these guys get it. They'll be sitting on, they have a rule here that you have to put your CCB number in Oregon on an ad, a business card. If you post up your services on social media, you have to put it up there.

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[00:34:17] Eric Goranson: Hey, you want to come over and take a look at my

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[00:34:47] Craig and Kevin: And I think it would be an absolute nightmare to try to figure that out, especially when people can build whatever, wherever they want to without anything. So I'm, I'm just,

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[00:35:06] Eric Goranson: That don't have a statewide adopted building code and you guys are one of them down there But when you have a statewide code now this in my area here The cities can add a little bit here and there if they have something they want to add to it But there's that minimum code around there so they can roll around And anywhere in the state you have to be a licensed and bonded and insured contractor And so for them, it's pretty easy to go out and check it out They can just scope it out and say hey these people aren't doing it, but you're right You You guys would have to adopt a statewide building code that would be adopted for everybody.

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[00:35:59] Eric Goranson: And [00:36:00] maybe do a quick repair. That guy gets paralyzed. She's now paying his medical bills for life and she's paying hundreds of thousands of dollars because he was her employee.

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[00:36:29] Craig and Kevin: In fact, I had a tree at my house that. Man, this tree had been dead for a long time, but it had to be topped. It was not going to be able to be just, you couldn't fell this, this tree. And so I'm sitting there going, look, are you going to bring a cherry picker out here to do this? And he was like, no, man, my, my guy is going to just shimmy up there and cut it down.

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[00:37:09] Craig and Kevin: And within 30 minutes, he had his people fax or email me fax. Has it had an email me over the grandpa? Yeah, exactly. Wow. Bloomberg. Geesh. Yeah, no, get off my porch. They emailed me over the information and I was like, all right, sweet. Get it done. And there was absolutely no issue, which is great. But I just, I wanted to make sure that I wasn't doing exactly what you're talking about, because here in Texas, you could get stuck with that.

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[00:37:36] Eric Goranson: I've even seen contractors get stuck with that. I saw one, a buddy of mine. Was working on a project for a homeowner doing a basement remodel. The homeowner decided to hire somebody off of a worker, off of either off the home Depot parking lot, off for Craigslist or whatever he was working for the homeowner, walking around doing some.

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[00:38:15] Eric Goranson: And since he had told him that he could put it in there, he was now covered under his insurance. And it cost him like 20, 000 bucks because the kid got her. Oh,

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[00:38:26] Eric Goranson: Just being a nice guy.

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[00:38:30] Eric Goranson: You know that now I don't

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[00:38:57] Eric Goranson: Now, if you're listening on the radio and you don't have the second hour [00:39:00] being played in your market, don't worry. You can grab all of that. Just jump over to around the house, online. com, or just look on your favorite podcast player, podcast. com. And you're going to find the second hour of the show. Find out more about us here on around the house.

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