If you’ve ever thought the housing market is a circus, you’re absolutely right – and Eric G and John Dudley are here to be your ringmasters. In this lively discussion, they tackle the pressing issue of affordable housing with a blend of sarcasm and insight that keeps you wondering whether to laugh or cry. They kick things off by exploring how we’ve managed to turn the American Dream into a nightmare where buying a home feels about as likely as spotting Bigfoot. With the average starter home growing from a paltry 983 square feet in 1950 to a whopping 2,500 square feet today, it’s hard not to shake your head at our collective obsession with bigger is better. The hosts point out the nonsensical regulations that plague potential homeowners, from sky-high permit fees that feel like a fine for wanting to renovate your bathroom, to zoning laws that seem to have been written by someone who’s never stepped foot in a neighborhood. They capture the sheer frustration of home improvement enthusiasts who just want to make their living spaces better – but instead, end up feeling like they’re trying to navigate a minefield of bureaucratic nonsense. And let’s not even get started on the absurdity of needing to plant trees just to remodel your kitchen! But don’t worry, they haven’t lost all hope. Eric and John lay out some practical solutions, suggesting we look at vacant commercial spaces as a viable option for affordable housing. Imagine turning that empty office building into a thriving community of affordable apartments! It’s a win-win situation that could help address the housing crisis while utilizing existing structures. They challenge listeners to think critically about the real issues at play and inspire a grassroots movement to demand change. After all, if we don’t start prioritizing affordable housing now, we might end up with a future where everyone is living in tiny homes – and not the cute ones, but the ones made out of shipping containers!

Takeaways:

1. The absurd rise in average house sizes from 983 square feet in 1950 to nearly 2500 square feet today is a key factor in the affordable housing crisis.
2. Eric and John highlight the ridiculousness of needing a permit for a kitchen remodel to plant trees, exposing the absurdity of bureaucratic red tape.
3. They explore how local government policies and urban growth boundaries are artificially inflating land prices, making homes unaffordable for many.
4. The conversation points out that innovative housing solutions, such as converting empty office spaces into livable units, could greatly alleviate housing shortages.
5. A major concern is the lack of trades training in schools, which leaves a gap in skilled labor and exacerbates the housing construction problem.
6. The duo sarcastically critiques the excessive development fees and insane permit costs that contribute to skyrocketing housing prices, showcasing the need for reform.

Links referenced in this episode:

1. aroundthehouseonline.com
2. amazon.com
3. homedepot.com

Companies mentioned in this episode:

1. Home Depot
2. Amazon

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Information given on the Around the House Show should not be considered construction or design advice for your specific project, nor is it intended to replace consulting at your home or jobsite by a building professional. The views and opinions expressed by those interviewed on the podcast are those of the guests and do not necessarily reflect the views and opinions of the Around the House Show.

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Foreign.

Welcome to around the House with Eric G. Your trusted source for all things home improvement.

Whether you're tackling a DIY project, hiring it out, or just trying to keep your home running smoothly, you're in the right place.

With over 30 years of remodeling experience, certified kitchen designer Eric G. Takes you behind the scenes with expert advice, industry trends, and the latest innovations for your home.

Home.

It's everything you need to know without the fluff.

Now let's get this show started with our host, Eric G. And John Dudley.

Welcome to the around the House show, the next generation of home improvement.

Thanks for joining us today.

I'm Eric G. In the co pilot seat.

We got my buddy John Dudley.

Welcome back, brother.

What's happening, man?

I'm still reeling from the price talk.

We were just having people into this.

If you want to find out more about us and we'd love to hear from you.

All the new affiliates out there on the radio, you can find us@aroundthehouse online.com and we were talking in the previous hour of the show and I decided to do a dive and get some numbers.

And this is a perfect example.

So we'll be talking about affordable housing here in a second, guys.

But I want to continue this because this just shows the difference with a little bit of shopping around.

If I go to my local Home Depot store up the street here and take a look at what 50ft of 102 Romex would be.

$165 for 50ft now shows that they have three of those in stock up at my local store around the corner.

So 50ft is 165, but I can buy double of that for 79.

Less than half for more than double the product.

Yeah.

And just to iterate like we're talking about planning projects and how to source materials and being aware, not getting excited in Home Depot and actually doing some research.

And man, what a perfect point.

You got to buy four rolls of that stuff.

You just paid for a kitchen sink again or a toilet or a. Yeah, whatever you're doing in your remodel.

Yeah.

At $79, you save 3, 400 bucks.

And you get it tomorrow and you don't have to leave your house.

Not that I like to tout Amazon, but damn, I don't either.

But this one here, I'm literally talking about it because 100ft of that on Amazon is 216.

Yeah.

Versus 79 on Home Depot, you mean?

Yeah, but yeah, yeah.

So Home Depot.com is 216 and Amazon is 79.

39.

That's just for the same product.

That's literally three times.

Yeah, almost.

Almost.

That's where you definitely got to do the math and save some money.

Talking about saving money, this is one of my.

We're going to get into my pet peeve in yours too.

Yeah, here we go.

And affordable housing is something that we've been talking about, the politicians have been talking about and there are so many different facets about it.

I thought Johnny would.

I just have a great conversation with you guys today about this because there isn't a one size fits all here.

But there's a lot of big pieces that are creating the problem that we have of getting people into homes or into their first home and maybe getting them out of an apartment or renting and get them into being a homeowner.

And I wanted to start out with one thing first because I started doing some research here and one of our biggest problems nationwide because there's a lot of things that are happening regionally that cause this mistake of getting expensive housing.

But let's talk about this.

So you had a two bedroom, one bath.

Look at Levittown developments out there on the east coast.

We have lots of stations that way.

Those were two bedroom, one bath, 750 to 800 square feet.

Yeah.

Stop supersizing people.

Yeah, yeah.

To a Big Gulp.

To a big gulp.

Exactly.

And then a super big Gulp.

Right.

That's what we do it.

But it's even.

Yeah, but it's even more complex than that.

So let's look at these numbers here.

Yeah.

But now in the US it's four hundred and ten to four hundred and thirty five is the median.

Man, oh man.

Dude.

Now we've got lots of different things in there.

You have energy codes.

You're not 50s homes rarely had air conditioners in them, right?

Yeah, they had baseboard heat, maybe had a furnace in there if they were lucky.

But really they were simple and you had just inexpensive products going into it.

And we didn't have the 400 pages of building permits that made a quote, healthier or safer home.

So another topic, another topic.

But you look at you can spend in an H VAC system almost what a.

Yeah.

That all in a new house.

Your example on a new water mainline for 60k.

Like yeah, that used to buy you three houses.

And I get it right.

It's adjusted.

But something to consider.

You mentioned that something that struck me and I'm just going to keep leaning on the super size thing because I got a bug in my side over that kind of stuff.

Any more, any bigger I need.

We're making less babies now, but we're buying more square feet.

Well why, why do you need a four bedroom house if you're just a couple that unless you're planning and you know that you're going to be there for 30 years and make three babies.

Cool, go at it.

Make one an office.

But you don't need that house just because your neighbors got that house.

And I could think of a dozen friends right now.

What do you need 3,500 square feet for?

And I'll tell you, living here in Colombia, I live comfortably in around 8, 900,000 square.

It's fine couple of balconies.

I spend most of my time working outside anyway on the balcony.

I was thinking that yesterday.

I don't even use my house hardly like.

Exactly.

And I think that's a really big important part because we see that super size mentality which has really got us on the wrong track.

Now we're gonna have to go out to break in a minute.

But one of the things too that's really got us going is in certain areas, whether it's a state or it's a city or a county, whatever municipality you have around there, they are artificially raising the prices of the raw land by how they're doing the governing of that.

And we'll talk about that then when we get back.

Because so many states have got it right.

So many states have it Wrong.

And what we're seeing is it's really changing the price of homes because what's the first thing you're getting that land price.

Right.

Great example.

Finally, the city of Portland by me this last year, pushed off their development fees.

So if you and I were gonna, let's say, Johnny, you and I were, as a business, we were gonna buy some old crack house that was half burned out.

We're going to knock it down.

It was done that.

Let's say nothing crazy.

You could have 80 to $90,000 in development fees, the permit.

That's insanity.

And that's real insanity when it comes to that.

You can't bring the excavator in.

A team of people go in there with pry bars, hard hats and gloves and claw hammers and tear the thing down stud by stud.

Ridiculous.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

So, guys, if you want to find out more about us, head over to aroundthehouse online dot com.

If you're new to the show, we'd love to hear from you.

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What's going on in your world?

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What's up?

This is Sticks it in ya and.

Satchel from Steel Panther and you are.

Listening to around the House with Eric.

G. Yeah, we love Eric G. And you should too.

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Johnny and I have been sitting here talking about affordable housing and some of the major issues we have out there.

Now certain areas of the country have bigger problems than others.

And I'm in Oregon, which we have a huge mess here with that.

We'll get to that in a little bit.

But we were talking when we went out to break about, you know, what these permit fees cost and stuff.

In the city of Portland, for instance, where I'm located, you have to pay a fee to the water department, to the urban forestry because they're going to tell you how many trees you have to plant.

You could have a $20,000 check you have to write to the transit department.

Yeah.

How does that get involved there?

Yeah.

I just can't believe you tell me these things.

And it's been a.

It's been a spell since I've been up there doing remodels, but I can't.

I pulled down the whole back half of that house with my Suburban.

Yeah.

There was no plucking it apart board by board.

It was just knocked that thing down, take it down.

Hand drawn permits that I delivered myself.

I didn't need an architect.

I didn't need permission from the Forest Service, for crying out loud.

You're talking about $90,000, $80,000 in development fees.

That's insane.

And so it gets crazy.

There's the stormwater fees, there's this, and that's the house.

That's a place that already had a house on it.

Yeah.

So that house, where there was a house there, you're just hooking up to the old utilities.

Yeah.

And that's double taxation.

Yeah.

Or triple.

Or triple, whatever it is.

Now the good news is the city of Portland said, hey, no one's building houses here anymore.

Maybe we should stop some of this.

We've got that slowed down.

But so many other cities have that now.

Oregon, Washington and Tennessee have an even bigger problem.

Man.

Now this is a big one.

We'll talk about some of the stuff you and I were talking about, Johnny, in a second.

But here's the biggest problem.

We have urban growth boundaries.

What is that?

That is in the city of Portland or in Oregon.

Here we have the state and the Counties go together and they have to create a plan for growth.

So the problem is, Johnny, you could go out there and go, man, I just found 10 acres in Hillsboro.

I'm going to build a house.

I'm going to build another house over here for this.

Maybe I'm going to put four or five houses on it.

You buy the property, then the city of the county goes.

You're outside of the urban growth boundary.

You could put one house on that.

So your hands are tied.

So shame on you if you didn't do the research.

But, yeah, it gets ridiculous.

It does.

But here's the problem.

Now, in many states, you'll go around and go, wow, there's a very cool $110,000 lot to put a house on.

Now you're like, wow, that's a $300,000 lot to put a house on.

Because of supply and demand.

And they've always controlled the supply and demand, which stops urban sprawl, supposedly, however common it makes things on the front end.

$200,000 overpriced.

Yeah.

All that money is going to a good cause.

So I get it.

But they've got to be able to figure that out.

And I think we've seen.

We're not.

We don't get into politics, but we've seen President Trump say, hey, on these states, he's going to go in and build some communities on federal lands.

So they don't have those controls.

Yeah, that's right.

Interesting to see how that works.

I'm curious, but like, states like Oregon, I think we've got like 60% of the land is state owned.

Oh, state, yeah.

So it's state or federal.

So most of it's.

It's for service or whatever land.

And so that also helps a lot of.

It hurts a lot of these small communities because they don't have any tax dollars coming out of that.

That's tax exempt.

Yeah, for sure.

So these little towns that have a sawmill in them, the sawmill closes.

There's no other room for industry there because it's all surrounded by Forest service land.

So they can't go build a building there.

They can't put a tech center there.

They can't do anything else.

So it gets interesting in those areas of what that does.

But that's part of the problem with this, is that we've got to come up with some innovative solutions.

There's some great ways to build homes out there, but many times it's our zoning and the building codes themselves that are getting in the way of that.

Do you think?

Yeah, like I said, I just.

I can't believe some of the stuff you're telling me now.

I'm just.

Wow.

And these days too, there's so many great options.

Manufactured housing, where it's built.

Factory built housing.

Yeah.

Those homes are being built way better than the major national spec home builders you're seeing out there.

For sure.

There's so many options for inexpensive home building now.

It's incredible.

Take a dive that in YouTube for a day.

Yeah, yeah.

Just.

It's mind blowing.

The different options, the different systems, techniques, etc.

A lot of them.

A lot of them very green.

Right.

Just isn't always better, by the way.

No, I'm not saying that.

I'm just saying reusing banana peels and coconut husks for siding.

It's not a bad idea if you.

Can make it work.

Now here's my.

Okay, we're going to jump off onto a little pet peeve of mine here with this.

But again, there's multiple pet peeves here.

But some of these green products out there are dumb.

Green, just dumb.

Don't get me wrong, there's plenty of.

I won't say any names.

No, but.

And my biggest pet peeve of them all is this quote unquote 3D printed house out of concrete.

Right?

Dude, that is a concrete pumper and a nozzle.

Yeah.

That is coming out.

That is moving the arm around and like you're trying to use cake frosting, you're gonna stack a line on top of another line on top of another line and expect that to hold up, bro.

Yeah, that's.

I don't.

I'm not a fan of that particular model.

To me, yeah.

As you were about to mention, your biggest pet peeve.

And for me, whether it's organic products or green housing, for me, my biggest pet peeve is the lie.

Don't sell me a goat and tell me it's a horse, dude, I don't like that.

Do you remember those cabinets that were coming out right before you left there?

There was a company down here in Portland that was building stuff out of.

They were using like wheat and corn husk to build particle board.

And it was green.

It was sustainable for cabinetry.

That stuff was like building cabinet boxes out of rice cakes.

If you looked at it wrong, you.

Broke the corner, crumbled.

Yeah.

And I rescued two projects that were up in.

That were up, up in the mountains up by a golf course outside of Seattle.

Up there.

We'll just leave it at that because I don't want to get too in.

In the weeds on that.

But green cabinets.

They ordered the cabinets, they got them installed.

They wouldn't even hold the doors on the cabinets where they were pulling out of the hinges, sides of the boxes.

Builder called me up and said, hey, man, how fast can you get cabinets?

I need to throw these away.

How green is it when it's going to last in a house for five years and you have to throw in the dumpster?

Not green.

Yeah, there's a full deep dive on all that stuff.

So, yeah, we're using coconut husks and banana peels, but, you know, we're dumping gallons of toxic resin into them to make them stay together, you know, super green, dude.

Way to go.

Way to go.

Let's throw some more toxins on top of it.

Don't buy the hype.

That's all I got to say in the green area.

Don't buy the hype.

Do your research.

Not a fan.

Not a fan.

Hey, Johnny, we got to go out to break.

When we come back, we're going to talk more about this.

I got another one here that we should talk about.

That's.

It's a big part of it, I think that we need to figure out too.

And we'll do that just as soon as around the House returns.

Make sure you check us out on our website at around the house online.com around the house.

Be right back.

Don't change that time.

Welcome back to the around the House show, your trusted source for everything home improvement.

I'm Eric G. John Dudley.

Man, this is a great rant for you and I, brother.

It's a little dangerous, but it's fun.

And the thing is here is it's great example again, here in Portland.

I'm just going to say my city.

I don't live in the city of Portland for obvious reasons.

I live outside of it.

Because if you spent back then over $25,000 for the budget of the project, then you brought in urban forestry and they came over to your house before you had to sign off on the final and would tell you how many additional Trees you had to plant in your front yard as part of that.

To remodel my kitchen.

To remodel your kitchen.

What a sham.

Yeah.

I just got to say it out loud.

Like, all of a sudden, we're having to pay for a architect to come out and draw out the entire footprint of the house so they could tell us where the trees go in.

So it's.

Not only did you have to do that and the trees were a certain size, they were seven, 800 bucks a tree.

Then you had to pay someone to draw out the whole footprint and where the existing trees are so then they could put it on the plans and tell you where to put them.

So there goes ten grand out of your budget.

When did this become a thing?

And how, like I.

You're talking about the interior of the house and I gotta.

And I have to plant trees.

Literally.

I can't.

I'm dumbfounded.

Again, out of the game for a spell.

But some of the things you tell me, I just cannot, absolutely cannot believe, to be frank, that they're getting away with it.

People are allowing it, and that's the problem.

And great example here in.

In.

In the Seattle area, city of Seattle, if you pull a building permit for a remodel up there, for a kitchen remodel, there is a point that when you get high enough on there, they require you to redo your H VAC system.

So you include basically a.

You have to bring fresh air into the house.

So whether it's an ERV energy recovery ventilator, whatever you need for that house, you now have to add that in as part of the remodel.

So all these things start to get catching up to you where it's.

I'm just trying to do this.

And no wonder why people don't pull building permits on some of these projects.

Yeah, I certainly wouldn't.

I know.

But here's the problem, and this is a problem that we run into out there as well.

And this is one of the things that I think is important to talk about when people are messing around with their houses.

And I've told this story a few times, and I'll keep it brief, but I had somebody that was in one of our.

One of the groups that I'm in said, hey, somebody built a house that didn't pull permits out in Oregon here, and they didn't pull any permits for it on their property.

How do I appraise that?

And I said, you might want to check.

But in most places in the country, the building department states what your square Footage is.

And if you didn't pull a permit, then you just have a beautiful storage space.

It's not a house.

And that was a thousand square foot single story house.

And they did a attic renovation and a basement renovation.

You buy the house and the building department says it's a thousand square foot house, but you've got 2,600 square feet of real estate there.

It's still a thousand square foot house.

So they didn't pull a permit.

Now the irs, now the IRS estimates what you made.

You're not going to tell us.

We think you probably made a law.

Yeah, absolutely.

So that's where these problems come in.

And especially with older homes.

I love saving older homes, but the problem we're getting into now is because of asbestos and lead.

Oh wait, if you're tearing down that house in Portland, you got to have the asbestos and lead removed out of it before you can tear it down by hand.

Yeah.

So you've got to abate that all first.

And so that is just a troublesome.

I saw somebody again get fined for that.

They came in with an excavator, knocked it down.

The city got them.

Yeah.

And again things you got to be careful with out there.

And nobody wants to build out of these two by fours that they're saving because they're, they're non dimensional lumber.

They're 2 inches by 4 inches.

Yep.

And nothing sized.

Door jambs aren't sized that way anymore.

And who wants to go through and cut that old hardwood?

It's cheaper to go use the studs.

Yeah.

And that's not helping our affordable housing.

And then of course the big one, Johnny, is we got rid of all the trade schools out there and we did CTE classes where we're teaching kids computer programming and healthcare and things like that.

But that wood shop, metal shop, auto shop, whatever.

Yeah.

Has been removed out of so many schools out there and they call it cte but they didn't put it back in.

Yeah, we've talked about that a couple of times and, and to be fair, it seems, or it would seem at least because the topic's been talked about so much recently that there's some of that's coming back, right?

Yeah, it's exactly.

And a lot, I think a lot of it is due to the younger generation having interest and realizing, wait, I could go be a social media marketer for those pay grades have gone way down.

That used to be 110k, now it's 40 because anybody can post to Instagram or so they think I'm a marketer, so I can't really badmouth that end of things.

But they're looking at that going, okay, 40k and I slave away at a startup or I can go make 110 as an H vac guy.

Yeah, it's so much smarter.

And we do have trade schools out there, you know, that trade.

That do a great job of training people.

But we're not building up the farm team in the middle schools and high schools with wood shop or welding or any of that other stuff.

And that's where the problems arise because we just have people not being handy.

And that when you're now having to pay an electrician $120,000 instead of $80,000.

Yeah.

And you have a hard time keeping them because everybody wants to hire him from you.

It's great for the people in the trades.

I love it.

I love that they're out there making more money than the school teachers that told them, you're not going to be anybody.

You know what I mean?

Yeah.

Yes, as a matter of fact, I do.

I know you do because you and I both ran into that.

And so to me, it's where we've failed.

And a lot of these school districts have just absolutely bought into.

Everyone goes to college and we're not doing another thing about it.

And there's 20% of their kids in there or more that are going to go to college or they're going to go to college and really get a degree that does them nothing.

They'll be working at Starbucks for the rest of their lives.

Yeah, I think that lesson's getting learned as well.

I think.

I think.

I would dare to bet that it's far more than 20% that aren't going to college anymore.

Now, let's blame half of that on those cats thinking they're going to become famous YouTubers and they don't need college or they'll build a Shopify store.

But yeah, I think the college myth has consistently been debunked over the last generation because enough kids went through it and went, I can't be a marine biologist or whatever the case may be, even an mba.

They're so common.

They say they're required and everybody thinks they need one.

You don't need one.

You honestly don't need one because people want good help.

And if you're good help, you're gonna get hired whether you have an MBA or whatever.

Yeah, absolutely.

Now, when we come back, I want to dive a little deeper on that one because there's a little bit more of a rant on there for me on that one that I think that we need to fix out there.

And I think we're getting close to that.

Hey, if there's a subject we haven't talked on this show about, if you're brand new to the show and you're just trying to figure us out either way, head over to around the House online dot com.

All of you new listeners out there, welcome to the around the House family.

We appreciate you tuning in and we're just kicking off this new year with some fun episodes.

We'll be right back after these important messages.

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Today, Johnny and I have been talking about affordable housing.

What we need to do to kind of get that dialed back in.

And I'm not even going to get started on the other issues like homelessness and that kind of stuff in this, but that's a whole other episode, a whole other day.

But really one of the things that I think that we could do to fix getting kids into the trades and really getting these built up because we're still losing people faster than we're bringing them in.

Those baby boomers and a lot of people retiring right now that we don't have enough people to go back into that.

Here's how we fix our college education problem.

Boy, here's my take.

When we do student loans, you need to do a report on how you're going to pay it back.

What career are you going to find?

What's that going to do that you need that degree for?

So if you've got that sociology degree or human studies degree, how are you going to use that?

How are you going to pay back that $250,000 student loan?

Man, you just took all the fun out of student loans as well as all the burritos and free beer.

Right.

Think about it.

If we.

I have to do that for a house loan, I got to do that to get a car loan, I got to put down, hey, what am I going to make?

What's.

How am I going to pay this back?

Yeah.

And don't do that now.

You just AI and go write me a letter that justifies my student loans that I'm going to take out and spend on nothing but ridiculous things.

Right.

It's.

You think about it though, if we sat there and just said, okay, kids, you're going to go down this road, this path, this is what you're going to do.

Awesome.

You want to be a doctor.

Beautiful.

Here's the path to med school.

But how many people do I know that went to college that are working at Starbucks are doing nothing related to that degree?

Yeah.

And now they're making 20, 22 bucks an hour and still have to pay a six figure college loan back.

That does not help them become homeowners either.

No.

It's brutal.

It's it.

Yeah.

That again, that.

The whole college thing and the expense of it, that's right up there with permits.

For me at this point.

It's a, that's a deep dive on.

Again, don't buy the hype.

I guess I, Yeah, I get so aggravated with just lying, scamming.

There's a lot of it out there.

There's a lot of it now.

I think there's some things we can be doing too.

And especially for younger homeowners, we could be taking a lot of these in cities, these empty high rises and making them into nice condos that are 900 square feet.

Yep.

In the parking garage down below.

Have them a little garage area that they can park in or something like that to do.

I think there's a lot of that stuff we can do to get people into housing first.

And there's so much stuff going on out there.

I think that we need to have more of a national plan that is going to maybe even override some of the local missteps that we're making to really come up with something that, that, that's going to work.

I think it almost has to be forced from a federal level.

But because of the ridiculous we're seeing in some states, like you mentioned, this has got to be a mandate that says, look, man, people need a place to live.

Look at all this vacant space.

Let's use it.

Let's fix this.

As, as a country, as a community, that's what we're supposed to be doing, not dogging people out.

Like, it makes no sense.

Again, back to super size and waste.

It's harder than ever when you've got everybody so divided.

There's a team A, team B, we'll call it.

Yeah, nobody wants to be C. And it's tough out there.

And I think that's how we fix some of that stuff.

Again, we don't talk politics, but I hope that some of this stuff actually doesn't fall on deaf ears.

You know what I mean?

Absolutely.

I have a hard time not going into the full tirade, but.

And that's why I stay checked out of it, because it's so frustrating as I've gotten older to watch so many things that are so wrong that I can't fix.

They're broke to a point where I don't.

I'm out of answers like, how.

How do you fix.

And here's the other problem we got too, is building codes, Especially with the exterior part of structures in some parts of the country, depending on climate zones are getting even more concentive.

So what you're seeing is they're having to put, let's say R30 in the wall cavity, or they've got to do continuous insulation on outside of the stud wall.

So you've got your sheeting up, and then you got to put 2 inch rockwool out there by the 4 by 8 sheet, then the siding, then the trim, then the other stuff out there.

And I get that, but dang, that stuff's expensive.

Huh?

Rockwell's insane.

Yeah, go build a music studio.

You'd be like, yeah, wow.

Okay.

Yeah.

But there's where the stuff adds up.

That's where you look at it and go, okay, we need to come up with a better way to do that.

And I.

It was interesting.

And this is another one of those things that, again, I appreciate that we're going for energy efficiency, but when Greg Holiday from Bradford White was on here saying that in just a handful of years, electric water heaters are going to be banned in the US they're going to go to heat pumps.

I get it, I love it.

But again, that water heater is two to three times the price.

And yes, it pays for itself quickly, but again, it doesn't help that first number.

And to me, the 50 year mortgage as we talked about when they first came about it, isn't the answer.

No, that's student loans.

Again, we're back to that.

It just doesn't make sense.

Again, to just be frank.

I just think they're running out of things to rip us off for.

I remember the 90s when it was windows had to be X and everything had to be airtight and wrapped in Tyvek.

And now they're wrapping Rockwool on top of Tyvek and like, where does it end?

They're running out of things.

And you can't really justify tripling the cost of a permit in 10 to 12 years without coming up with some new stupid stuff to do.

It's like the 50 year mortgage.

You're paying twice the mortgage, twice the money to the mortgage company.

I would rather see them out there say, okay, hey, if you need to upgrade your home, we're going to lock you in at your old interest rate.

Yeah.

So if you had a four and a half percent loan and you want to go buy another house and it's at seven and a half percent, I'd much rather see something like that where they're like, hey, we're going to lock it in here or we're going to do a fixed low interest rate for first time home buyers going to be at 2.99%, period.

Yeah, okay, that helps.

Without going through the 10 year FHA process and 50,000 pages of nonsense.

And I think we need to.

Those are things that we need to figure out.

And home insurance as well is another one.

Look what people.

My brother's trying to get his house in Yakima insured.

And because it's a historical house, it's tough because of the.

Built in the teens and twenties.

Yeah.

And it's got this special block that was made by Sears back in the day with this special Sears machine.

There's one company that makes that block that's in.

I think.

Where are they at?

I think they're out of Massachusetts.

They'd have to haul it to eastern Washington.

Okay.

And so all of a sudden they're like, wow, you need to have two and a half million dollars to rebuild your house because all the specialty stuff that's in it.

Yeah.

And when you're, when your insurance is More than your mortgage.

That should tell you something.

Yeah.

Oh, man, so many rants.

Right?

I know it.

So you just spill right from.

Spill right from homeowners insurance to mortgage insurance to property taxes, too.

Yeah, it's endless.

It just keeps going.

Again, it frustrates me because I do get emotional.

That's why I had to stop paying attention to a lot of that stuff because I just get so angry.

Yeah.

I'm so worked up.

I'm like, man, I'm gonna have a heart attack over this stuff and there's nothing I can do about it.

Absolutely.

Absolutely.

And it's one thing, I think, that to our audience out there, pay attention to what's going on when they come up with a levy.

I love supporting schools.

I love supporting our fire department.

But are these people using your money correctly from what you can see?

Have they been audited?

Do you know what they're doing with it?

Yeah.

Sometimes saying no gets people to realize that they've got to do something a little bit differently.

For you, there has to be accountability.

And you're exactly right.

It's by paying attention and being informed.

Because so much of that passes by.

We're so busy supersizing and being busy that we let it just keep rolling.

And rolling and we've got to stop it.

Otherwise it's going to be even worse for the next generation if we don't get this dialed, man.

Yeah.

And I suppose every generation says that, but now that I'm an old guy, I'm like, oh, man, I can't imagine.

We'Ve got Gen Zers or whoever out there going, oh, those two boomers talking on the radio and the podcast right now.

I'm sure my.

My grandpa said the same thing in the 50s, right?

Exactly.

But that's the thing, man.

So, Johnny, thanks for coming on today, man.

We blasted through this hour.

We could have ranted for another two hours.

This could have been like a. Oh yeah, four hour Joe Rogan going on this.

But wanted to keep it tight for you guys to make sure that give you some food for thought, see what you can do in your area.

Maybe we can start this as a grassroots to get things dialed back in out there.

Gotta start there.

Absolutely.

Johnny, great to see you today, brother.

All right, everybody, if you want to find out more from us here, head over to our website aroundthehouse online.com and you can find our social media channels.

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I'm Eric G for John Dudley.

You've been listening to around the House.

We'll see you next time.

That's a wrap for the around the House show.

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