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- Good morning everybody.
Rodrigo here with
Ashville Real Estate News.
This is another weekly episode.
Very excited to have Beach join us.
He's one of the premier
green builders here
in the Ashville area.
And I know for me personally,
there's always a lot of mystery
around what makes a builder green
or what building is a green building
versus a not green building.
So before we get into that,
Beach do you mind just
introducing yourself
and kind of explaining to us
how you ended up in Asheville
and how you got started in construction?
- Sure, yeah.
Thanks for having me today.
So I'm from Asheville originally.
Went to school in North
Carolina at Appalachian State
and decided to move back
here to start my career
and work for a number of
different general contractors,
sort of cutting my teeth in the business.
And in 2005 started my own company
doing carpentry and remodeling work
and that morphed into my
first spec house in 2011.
And, you know, fast forward to today
and we're still doing
specs and also custom work.
- So how long have been, kind of operating
under your own company.
Cuz Beach Homes right?
- Beach Hensley Homes.
- Beach Hensley Homes.
- Yes.
- How long has that been,
you know your company name
that you've been doin'
the construction or the work under that?
- Right, so we started
Beach Builders Incorporated,
the S-Corporation in 2005
and worked under that name
until mid last year
when we rebranded with a
local advertising company
who recommended that we change our name
to Beach Hensley Homes.
- Okay.
- So just a year under the new brand.
- Yeah, but you've been
working then for almost,
what is that 12 years now?
Am I doing my math right?
- Yep, self-employed for 12 now.
- Oh, it's a fun journey right?
- Yeah, yeah, yeah, it's good.
- Yeah I mean I'm sure
you get a lot questions,
kind of as I referenced as
we kinda kicked this off
as far as what makes, you
know, different things about
green building and custom homes
and I know you had a
couple of different things
that you've heard consistently,
people asking you about.
Do you wanna just kinda run down the list
and kind of answer those
questions for everybody then.
- Sure, yeah.
So number one, I get the question,
what makes it green?
What makes a home green?
And the simple short answer
is, the certification process,
where we work with a
local third-party rater
who gives us a rating,
based on a point system,
established by either Energy Star
or the Western North Carolina
Green Building Association
and sometimes both, depending
on what level of rating
we're looking for.
And they're looking at
everything from insulation value
to heating and air equipment efficiency,
fresh air ventilation, and
then locally sourced products
for everything from
landscaping and mulch to
the hardwoods and cabinets and such.
- So they go into every
detail of the build
and then each component,
say like the insulation
or the heating system has
a different rating scale
and then these rating
scales kind of stack up
onto each other to have
a total rating scale?
- It does, it does.
- Okay.
- And what's the range?
So is it a point system like one to 10?
Or it's like good, bad,
great, terrible or?
- It's pretty much good, best, and better.
Something like that, you know.
- Okay.
- So it's certified is the
lowest level of certification,
but it does pass and it
is technically better
than a code-compliant house.
- Okay.
- That's really what we're
comparing ourselves against
is a code-compliant house,
which that has improved
vastly over the past 10 years.
- Just the basic code?
- Yeah, yeah.
- A lot of what we're doing
in the green building industry
gets adopted by the
International Building Code
and then the state code as well.
- And when you're getting these ratings,
is that something that you
on your end has to do something specific
as far as training, or is
it just meeting, you know,
more stricter building
guidelines or you know?
- It is the strict building guidelines.
That's correct.
Yeah, they're coming in during
at three different times
during the project
and visually inspecting our work,
as well as measuring with a
duct blaster test and an air ceiling test
the whole building for air tightness.
- Okay, great well,
I think that's a good understanding
of what makes it green then.
- Right.
- What are a couple of
other common questions
that you hear then?
- So what sets me apart
from other green builders
and especially in a speculative sense.
- Okay.
- So on a spec house.
- And one of our standard
features now is an ERV,
energy recovery ventilator.
- Okay.
- And so that's bringing
fresh air directly into the
heating and air system where
it's dehumidifying by...
I probably should not go into explaining
how it works.(laughs)
- Fair enough.
- An energy recovery ventilator
coolant.
- What does it do then?
- What's it do then?
- It brings fresh air into the home.
The houses are so tight
that we do need to introduce fresh air.
- And so it's just a
special way how you introduce
fresh air into the house
without losing any of
the energy compliance?
- Right exactly.
- Quick and dirty summary?
- Yeah, we're not.
- Let's not get
into the details.
- Yeah, yeah.
- Don't wanna bore anyone with that.
But anyway, yeah, you could Google it.
- Okay.
- And then, obviously, you know,
first question I get
when somebody calls me
is how much are you
charging per square foot?
It's a tough question for us to answer,
but it's a fair one.
Same thing I would wanna
know, talking to a builder.
- Of course.
- So we have two stock plans.
The 1,500 square foot
version on a crawl space
sells for about $230,000.
- Okay.
At $153 a square foot.
- And that's after somebody's
provided the land, right?
- Exactly.
- Okay.
- So this is just the build.
Doesn't include land.
- Yep, that's on your lot.
- Okay.
- But it's on driveway,
water tap, sewer tap.
Everything you need but the land.
And then we have our
most popular stock plan
is a 1,700 square foot
house with the master
on the main level.
- Okay.
- And it sells for about 265.
- Okay, so and the from
there it just goes up
depending on how many customizations
or things like that, you know,
the homeowner would want?
- Yeah, exactly.
- You all can do any
customization, basically right?
- Yes, yeah.
If you can dream it, we can build it.
If it can be engineered, we can build it.
- Okay, great.
- Yeah, so.
- And I know we did kind of
talk about this off camera,
so I'm throwing you a curve
ball on this question,
but what would be maybe one
to three questions anybody
should ask any builder that
they're about to work with?
Like what would be a good...
When you're calling
and your tryin' to find
a builder to work with,
what are like one or three
good vetting questions
so that they have confidence
moving forward with them?
- I would definitely ask for references.
- Okay, references.
- I would wanna see a
house under construction,
prior to drywall.
- Okay, so look at the
house before it has drywall.
And that's just because
you can see the actual
like quote, unquote bones of the house?
- Yes, exactly.
- Okay.
- Yeah you can see what their
work looks like sort of--
- Before it gets covered up. (laughs)
- Yeah, before everything gets hidden.
Let's see.
- And maybe it's just those two.
- That might be enough.
Yeah.
- Okay.
- Well okay, no another,
a good third one,
you know, how is our contract gonna work?
Is it gonna be cost plus,
where we have an idea
of what it's gonna cost,
but ultimately what ever they spend
is marked up and passed along to you?
Or, are you gonna quote me a price
that you're gonna hold to,
no matter what happens?
- So let me just recap that last point.
So it's either a fixed cost,
that they know exactly
what it's gonna cost
and then at that point,
there's no more variables
introduced to the equation.
Or it's here's a base cost
and then any variables have
acts like change of price at that point.
So I wanna change this color.
It's like okay, well we're
gonna change the color
it's gonna cost you X much
plus the cost of change.
- Yeah.
- Is that an accurate summary
of what you just said?
- Cost plus is more like
they're not nescessarily
quoting each stick and brick
that's gonna be incorporated
into the building.
They're probably quoting on an average
building cost.
- Gotcha, okay.
- And so your house will fall
somewhere in that average.
- So it's a range?
- Hopefully.
- In theory.
- Yeah, yeah, hopefully
is the idea.
But we like to quote fixed price
and we get either quotes
from vendors and subs
or use historical value from another house
that we're currently building.
- Gotcha, okay, great.
Well everybody, you know, again,
tune in next week for another episode.
Beach thanks so much for joining us today.
And we'll put all this
contact information,
if you have any questions
for Beach specifically,
just look, if you're
watching this on YouTube,
just check below in the video description
or on Facebook, just check
out the little write-up.
And look forward to
hearing you guys next time.
As always, please connect with us
on Instagram, Facebook.
Let us know what sort of
topics and conversations
you'd like to hear from us.
And until next week, thanks
everybody for tuning in.
- Thanks Rodrigo.
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