How hard is it to build a home in Indiana?

If anyone would develop this, we'd want it to be Estridge because of the kind of the character that we put into the project. You're playing like 10 years in the future chess. I care about what the home looks like on the outside. Kind of a lost art. Where around central Indiana needs to be on our radar 10 years from now, 2035. From South Bend to Evansville and everywhere in between.

This is Get In, the show focused on the Hoosier State and the incredible stories happening here today. I'm Nate Spangle, founder of Get Indiana, and I will be your host for today's conversation. Mark your calendar. We're headed down to Brown County on July 26th for Hard Truth Bourbon and Barbecue Festival. Get ready for a smoky, savory, and spirited weekend at Hard Truth in Brown County. Join me at Hard Truth Distilling Co.

the weekend of July 25th and 26th for an unforgettable celebration of bourbon, barbecue, and good times. We've got live music rocking from 9 until noon with four different acts, bourbon and barbecue tastings and pairings, bourbon blending and cocktail crafting classes, as well as a VIP bourbon and cigar lounge. They also have interactive competitions and outdoor activities. bourbon barrel roll races, barbecue toss and cornhole tournaments, $10 entry for a $300 prize. If you're a good cornhole player, hit me up. Let's join up.

And they have axe throwing as well. Me and my team are going to be down there and I will be releasing a full weekend itinerary for Nashville/ Brown County. That is guaranteed to be a great time. Tickets for the Heartruth Bourbon and Barbecue Fest start at $10 for general admission. That gets you entry in the festival, the live music, and pay as you go food and drink. For $35, you can get the barbecue sampler pass, tastings from all the barbecue competitors.

Or for $75, you can get the VIP ticket where you get VIP lounge access, premium bourbon tastings, and a guided distillery tour by master distiller Brian Smith, previous guest of the show. I will see y'all in Brown County the weekend of July 25th and 26. Now, let's get into the episode. Today, I'm joined by Clint Mitchell, the CEO and co-owner of Estridge Homes, one of the largest home builders and residential real estate developers in Indiana. Clint is a graduate of Depal University, Go Tigers, and a lover of endurance sports, having competed in multiple iron man races, marathons, and trail races, which we're going to get into that later because I have done one and uh you're crazy for going back for more. Uh today, we're going to be talking about Clint's journey from uh actually employee one at Angie's List to CEO of Estridge Homes, the lasting legacy that Estridge is making in central Indiana and beyond, and the building boom in central Indiana.

Clint, welcome to Get In. Yeah, let's do it. Hey, thanks Nate. Love uh love what you're doing here. Glad to be here. I'm uh I'm pumped to have you, man.

This was uh this was super awesome. So, all a connection. We'll just like tee it up off the beginning. A connection through or fellowship. That's right. Uh shout out to Dawson for reaching out to me and making this all happen and then and then we connected the dots that you were kind of like an orfellow before or fellowship was or fellowship.

Yeah, I feel like it now that I've learned a lot about the or fellowship over the years. um definitely didn't call it that back um when I got started but um as you know being an or fellow Bill Austerly um Scott Britain and Angie Hicks started the or fellowship I don't know now 20 25 years ago but prior to that um Bill Austerly was kind of a mentor to all of us um he passed away a couple of years ago was a luminary in Indiana and he hired each of us at different times as interns at C when he was a venture capital guy doing young guy but you know doing big things in the state and he kind of placed us in some of his venture portfolio companies and wanted us to have a rotation learning different parts of the business for a year or two at a time. This was kind of in the mid '9s and then he had an idea to start um something eventually became Angie's List. Angie, you know, he hired right out of college, right out of dep um she was the first employee there getting it going.

Um he came to me I was um a DEPA management fellows. I know you know some about that program at DEPA and I was interning or I'm sorry I was interviewing to intern at Goldman Sachs and Lily and Deote drove over to Indie met Bill at the Columbia Club downtown he was living in Columbus Ohio as a venture capital guy and he is trying to sell me on this startup wasn't even called Angie's List at the time but he said this is this is going to be someday legendary he actually had some bigname investors that he had gone to Harvard Business School with that believed in the idea idea. It's small. It may not work. We're going to try all kinds of things. But he said, "I'm also going to make sure and commit to you that I'm going to introduce you to all kinds of people you should learn from."

Um, he he mentioned Mitch Daniels. Mitch Daniels wasn't a household name at the time. This was in the 90s. He was he worked at Lily. He was an executive there, but uh Bill had worked for Mitch. He a few venture capital guys that were kind of legends in Indianapolis.

And then um I went ahead and took that internship instead of going to Lily. And uh Bill made sure that every few weeks he was introducing me to some CEO or some mentor of his that he thought I could learn from. And you know I think I'm 20 or 21 years old um at the time. Spent six months as an intern working at Angie's List. Um Angie and I were in a room smaller than this. It was our office and we kind of were trying to pretend that we were bigger than we were.

I remember we like a phone call would come in. This is pre- internet or pre real big internet. We had an AOL work address, one one email address for the whole company and it was an AOL address. We didn't have a website to speak of. It was a mail mailin paper kind of magazine that we would send, but we had one phone line that would come in and we we'd answer it and we we try to act like we actually were bigger and we say I'll put you on hold and really I would just hand the phone to Angie, you know, across the room. How you direct your call?

Yeah. Exactly. So after I graduated, uh, Bill really wanted me to come back to Angie's List. And honestly, I I didn't see the vision. I I it later became, you know, a huge thing. But, um, you kick yourself for that.

Like, oh gosh, I could have been employee like one. Sure. Yeah, I did. Scott Brenton, who's, you know, another uh founder of of Or Fellowship. He later, he and I worked together in a different um startup company. So, Bill was an investor in lots of startup companies, mostly in Ohio.

And so, I instead went and worked at one of those. That's where Scott and I got to know each other. Flash flash forward a few years and and Scott went to Angie to be COO. They all started the OR fellowship. And so he I kind of followed along the cool thing they were doing. I was living in Ohio for several years working for actually in total three different companies that Bill had funded and started from Indiana originally, but moved back here um about 20 years ago.

We can kind of get into my Indiana roots at some point if you'd like, but I was hearing about all these great things that the OR fellowship was doing and it's grown to, you know, a huge organization with all kinds of great alumni like you around town. Um, so we had, you know, a few years ago opportunity at Estridge Homes to we thought we had some, you know, areas that we could bring in an orfellow and kind of create a bit of a rotation of um, exposure and responsibilities. And her name is Maline Mchugh. We we brought her in. She's now kind of, you know, graduated out of the program. We pro have promoted her.

She's taken over kind of a an inside sales role that we have and and just knocking it out of the park, doing better than we've ever had before. And and then now um Dawson Estus and Adam Cassid are we have two or fellows um now that uh are doing great work for us and we're giving uh giving them tons of responsibility and and uh it's it's really a great program for the state. Yeah. Well, how big is how big is your guys' company like headcount wise? Yeah. So, we have about 50 employees.

We've been around since 1967. So, long time almost we're getting close to 60 years. Um, as a developer and home builder, most of the real construction work is done by subcontractors, other companies that we work with. So, in total, if you go out to our neighborhoods, there are hundreds of people working on our homes. And we try to set it up, you know, in a efficient way. So, they all year never leave our neighborhoods.

Even though they're not employees, they're working on our homes. they're just going down the street building one home to the next. So, you know, we can do it fairly efficiently with 50 people. Um, but it's uh it's kind of been, you know, over the years we we've built close to 9,000 homes and totally most of those on the north side of Indie. Um, it's we're based in Caramel. Westfield's a very big market for us now.

Oh my gosh. Yeah. And I'm sure it's just gonna give it five years and you'll be like, "Yeah, Sheridan is the biggest market for us." And then 5 years at Cooko is the biggest the biggest indie suburb that we're working in now. Well, okay. So, so catch me up.

It does seem like you're in VC kind of tech background, that kind of space. And then to I don't say it's a pivot, but to jump into custom not custom home, but just home building and residential real estate. That seems uh like a big transition. So, how did that happen? Yeah, I did not have a construction background. Um what about you're in uh in Montgomery County?

have a construction background. Yeah, we were talking before from McGomery County. I grew up on a farm in a town of Waveland, about 450 people. Um, so my kind of place. Yeah. So, I definitely, you know, was was a little mechanical.

My brother would say I'm not at all. He's he's he's on the farm working today. Yeah. Grew up in a small town. Um, went to Depal, been in Indiana, my my family actually for we're getting close to 200 years. My family moved to Indiana in 1832.

No way. So, it's I'm the eighth generation Hoosier. Um, so that I'm very proud of. And so when you left and you were in Ohio for a little bit, like grandpa was like, "What the heck? Get you got to get back here to Indiana." I I was the first one in those, you know, almost 200 years that moved away at all, let alone to another state, but even moved away from, you know, the farm.

But love being back in Indiana. Um, so I, as you said, I worked in kind of venture capital technology companies, but I was really in um kind of the commercial finance part of it. So we were specialty finance companies that were lending to technology companies, making investments, loans to technology companies. And so I learned how this kind of world that, you know, it's not just banking or, you know, having a rich uncle who can back a company. And it's also not, you know, Wall Street. It was kind of this in between of a lot of capital that's available for companies that are kind of nichy, but they um, you know, need tens or hundreds of millions and there's there's a lot of specialty capital out there.

I was actually doing that for a bunch of years. Well, come to the 2008 2009 financial crash and that was disaster for lots of industries including home building. I wasn't in home building at the time, but I was in a company that relied on kind of Wall Street money and get kind of wonky here, but you know, commercial paper they called it. Well, that market just shut off and so we no longer could fund ourselves. Um, this company actually ended up being I think the fourth or fifth largest bankruptcy ever in the country. um because it was just it reorganized and I ended up leaving that company and you for a split second I was kind of like this is you know really bad I'm out of a job I'm not sure what I'm going to do but there were four or five of us that knew there were lot there was lots of need out there for companies that needed to raise capital and this was you know major major recession and banks weren't lending money and so we formed a small investment bank we basically were consultants you know advisers and we were going out there around the country helping companies raise capital, maybe it was equity, go to kind of like non-bank lending like hedge funds or, you know, finance companies that would lend to you.

That was riskier type loans, but they but banks were totally shut off. Some of the banks were even failing. And so it turned into actually we were highly in need. And so we just started um getting hired by companies to help them raise capital, maybe help them do an acquisition, help them grow. And so I I pivoted and started raising capital for companies for several years. And one of those clients I had was a real estate developer.

And so I they needed um bank financing for every project they would do. And so I started raising money for them. I had to learn real estate pretty quickly. It was a commercial kind of more senior housing and healthcare um type development. And so I learned kind of the basics of what um real estate development was like. At about the same time, I got to know Paul Estridge, who is the founder of our company.

He wanted me to help raise capital for his company during the the financial crisis. And you know, home builders and developers were struggling the most during that time. And I told him, I don't think I, you know, I don't think there's anyone's going to touch this. Not because of the company. The company actually was was doing pretty well, but the industry was so tarnished that no one wanted to to get into it. But he respected me telling him that quickly.

We'd started developing a friendship for several years. I would attend a a men's Bible study at his house on Friday mornings and um this was, you know, went seven, eight years probably of just getting to know him personally. He was able to kind of get the company kind of on on the rebound after the financial crisis. How old was he when he started it in 1967? Yeah. So, um that was that I I'll go through the the history there.

So Paul Senior, so the I'm the one I'm talking about was Junior, but Paul Estridge Senior started it in 1967. Um for many years, he was a custom builder. Um probably the most well- reggarded custom builder in Indianapolis and became the largest custom builder through the 70s and 80s. Um built some of the finest homes um you could you could imagine. Like I was would there be any that people know like Sure. Um, so what Larry Bird's house when he was a coach of the Pacers, Reggie Miller's, um, and and frankly those weren't even, you know, some of the largest ones that we we would have built over the years.

Um, then Paul Esters Jr. um, he graduated college, started his own separate company in the early 80s and he wanted to be a production home builder, meaning kind of higher volume, um, lower price point. And so you had Yeah. and like go through that cuz I accidentally almost flubbed on it where it's like a custom home builder versus a production home builder. I think a lot of people just think home, oh, they're just putting, you know, shingles up or whatever, but there's a difference. There is um there's a difference in obviously cost is part of it, but um timeline, how it's done.

It's kind of a I mean I would equate it to today you've got some very large public companies. They're all in Indianapolis. Indianapolis is a great market. We'll talk about that later, but that are trying to produce like a assembly line as f as many as they can for as low as price. Think, you know, Toyota, Honda, they're they're great manufacturing companies. You're going to get a great car.

Um, then you have these kind of really high-end Rolls-Royce would be a custom home. You know, not they're not going to sell a lot of them. They're going to be a lot of detail to them. You know, I'd like to think of us kind of we're in the middle. We today we've kind of settled on the semi-custom. You know, maybe a a BMW or Audi type if you're comparing the cars.

The mass market is looking for, I would say, usually as much home, you as many bedrooms or as much square footage as they can get for the money. There's an old saying that you drive until you can afford it. So, you may have to go really far out to get a house that, you know, meets everything for the price point you can afford. Another way is to um kind of find ways to take cost out of the homes and get more efficient. And and so that's production home builders. That's what the big companies that you see around the the ones that are publicly traded, national companies, they're trying to and those are more of those like cookie cutter neighborhoods.

I feel like no offense to any there's a place for all of them in there. There's a need. I mean, we we need more affordable housing. We need more of kind of every type of housing and that's the way you get affordable. But I agree, I certainly agree that, you know, they they feel cookie cutter. We we would say that we we're never going to build a cookie cutter home and we're never going to build a subdivision either.

you know, the the what you think of as plain vanilla. Um what we do um today is we call them signature neighborhoods. So they're large 500 to a thousand homes. We're going to build all the homes in them, but it's we're going to have something for, you know, kind of every demographic and price point. You know, we have something for young singles, young couples, you know, families that, you know, are growing, empty nesters. Um, sometimes we will sell over multiple times to, you know, the same buyer.

They buy early on when they maybe are first married and then as they um they graduate uph home in the neighborhood because they're going to be, you know, maybe a thousand homes and we'll be in there for 10 plus years building in them. We also um we call them signature neighborhoods because we want them to really stand out. I know you had um Scott Willis on recently in Westfield. um he's actually called out our neighborhoods asa shining examples that um what can be done like we do higher density sometimes and that can look really great. We put in parks and amenities. When you say higher density like putting homes close to each other closer together um smaller lots you know there's it has affordability has gotten it to be an issue and so one of the ways um for the first time now we're actually seeing square footages shrink in size.

The the average square footage of new homes is getting a little bit smaller. builders and, you know, buyers are trying to find ways to afford it better. So, we're going to go in develop the whole neighborhood in kind of context and it's like a 10-year project. Yeah. We we just finished um probably our most well-known one in recent years is called Harmony. U we um actually Friday, this Friday we're having our last home closing out of 700 homes and it's been Where's it at?

It's um right on the border of Carmel Westfield. So, it's 146th in Ditch Road. Um so, it's in Westfield. It's kind of right where Westfield starts just west of 31. And it's kind of grown with Westfield really when you think about it because it's been 11 years now. Um and we have JC Hart.

I know they're you've had them on. They're they have apartments um in the in the neighborhood. We have coffee shops and retail. You know, a 15 acre park. One of the things that we really think through is the the streetscape and the landscaping of of what it feels like to drive in. You'll you'll find a lot of the neighborhoods around you'll have a developer that develops them and then a a separate home builder.

We feel like it's it needs to go together. So, we want it to be cohesive. When we think about what the neighborhood looks like, we're going to kind of develop the homes that we want to build there alongside what the neighborhood's going to look like. Yep. I know exactly where this is. Yep.

Okay. So, the was the first one that you filled up and that was a 10-year project to get all 700 of those. So, we have to get the land. Well, yeah. Take I guess we're going to keep diving into this one and then we're going to go back to the journey. Yeah.

So, we're going to go deeper to then come back to the beginning. But take me through the process, right? If if I wanted to go out and say, you know what, I want to be uh I want to build a neighborhood. Sure. How does that start? It's it's a long and expensive process.

It's it's one of the reasons that nationwide we have a big shortage of housing and, you know, it's a reason that home prices are so high and out of reach in some ways. Um, so we'll we have a team that's out there looking for land. We're trying to either go into what's the hottest area today and we're also trying to think three or four five years out. What's going to be the area that's ready in three or four or five years. Um, a lot of it is driven by, you know, streets and infrastructure. We have to have utilities, you know, sewer, water, gas, all infrastructure.

For people who are wondering about infrastructure, you have to listen to our episode with Will Schuler. Will is an impressive guy. He is uh I mean to do that at a young age I I've I uh we've been talking to Will. We haven't worked with him yet, but we will at some point I'm sure this is we're signing the deal right here. Will Power Estridge Homes coming to get and this is no offense to this episode or any other episode any other guest. Maybe the best guest the most impressive like 23 years old.

Impressive, engaging. I mean what he's doing things. Yeah. And it's like those are the things like you're you're sitting here as a CEO of a you know a large uh home building residential real estate company and you're like ah we need to have infrastructure and he's out there solving those problems. I love it. So we have to have that infrastructure nearby because it's very expensive to get it to to the site.

We have to go places then you know be able to strike a deal with a land owner. It could be so just like a blank slate like what was Harmony 10 years ago? Most of the neighborhoods we're doing used to be a corn field, you know, so it's that's the way Indiana is. Do you uh do you have any like family tension there where it's like ah Atlanta is taking up cornfield like and like buying the farmer's land and turning them into homes? My family likes the you know the work that I'm doing and and in fact it's kind of funny back in my first little taste of it. Um I didn't even think about this until now.

When I was in college, my family sold a piece of their farm ground to a developer and I actually in college was negotiating the deal with the developer. And so I I didn't know anything. You're on the opposite side of the table. Yeah. Yeah. So it that ends up being like one of um the old school Westfield like residents, their mentality is like they're ruining our small town or they're like there's some of that.

Sure. But then on the other side it's like uh affordability. like people want to live in the greater Indianapolis area, you know, and it's like it's like there's two sides to every coin, right? It's like it's do you build more homes because more people want to live there and come be part of this community or do you like like hunker off and say no way, no one's coming into our area. So, I mean, and especially those north side suburbs, I feel like Zansville, Caramel, Westfield, there is just this like push and pull of like, do we grow them more? Do we hunker it down?

I don't know. And we work we try to work with the neighbors on all those upfront. It's a long process to go. They It's called zoning. You have to go through, you know, city council and this group called area planning commission. They are determining what should get approved to go on a on a site.

Um we do hear I'm glad to say from neighbors a lot of time they're like they see kind of the the type of legacy. They know that we're a local private company and they can talk to me. They can talk to anyone in our company. They've said in in public meetings, if anyone would develop this, we'd want it to be Estridge because of the the attention to detail, the kind of the character that we put into the projects. But still, some people would rather not anything be developed. Yeah.

Some I mean, some people just are it's like uh I always say it's like Yellowstone when they're like, I'm the opposite of progress, right? Like no no new developments in my city. the nice restaurants, the entertainment that the shopping, the things that they enjoy are only there because people have moved to the area. You know, if you don't have enough rooftops or even if it's apartments or single family homes, if people aren't living there, you're not going to get those kind of amenities that people like. And so, it's kind of, you know, they I've been to a lot of Midwest small towns that are struggling. They would love to have people wanting to move there or to have some kind of growth.

developers actually are paying for a lot of the the buildout of a city like Westfield, for example. We we pay parks fees and road impact fees for every home. So, you know, the roads in Hamilton County don't have the potholes that Marian County does. That's because there's a lot of new construction. We pay fees every time that make sure the roads are good. We've in the last five or six years, we've built four roundabouts in Westfield as the developer and they're over a million dollars a pop.

So, we're we're the the city doesn't need to spend that because they have developers and homebuilders that are are able to do that. So, it's kind of like a nice thing for the the residents that are already there are not having to pay for that with their taxes. But and that's the things that um aren't like super publicized or whatever of like, oh yeah, by the way, like you have these nice amenities to thank like you have the development and the real estate and all that stuff to thank for all these new things that have come to town. I I I get it. developer. I I joke, you know, my co-owner, um, Rob McGra, we talk about going into some of these neighbor neighbor meetings, we we'll start off, um, by saying, "Aren't developers the worst?"

I mean, everyone's kind of, you know, they want to be anti-developer, but, you know, we'll we're going to try to listen to the neighbors and and compromise with them and deliver, you know, a great-look neighborhood at the end. Okay. So, so we're going through that. Yeah. We're getting off topic. I love it.

This is the best kind of podcast where you just like kind of go just dive into the things you're curious about. So, you have a team out there trying to find land. Y um you know, let's say 10 years ago, yeah, that north side of Indianapolis was probably a lot more fields. Um wherever you're going, you're probably looking for Yeah. those big plots of land. Once you know a spot, then what does it look like to get it to people live there?

Sure. It's still lots of steps to go. Say we're going to buy it, but then we have about a year's time of all kinds of work before we actually close on the property. We have to go through the the city council and propose the project we want to do, get that approved. It's an expensive process to get through all that. And you don't even sure that they'll even approve it?

We don't know. So, like how much like relative like general numbers, how much are you putting up to be like, "Okay, we're going to even propose this to the city council." Probably minimum of $200,000, maybe half a million dollars. That's a big bet. And they could just be like, "Nope." Yep.

Yeah. And we have to have finger on the pulse of what's going on. We have to have those relationships. And so we we along the way, you know, we aren't dropping 500,000 day one. You know, we're going along the way. And if we feel like something about it isn't going to work, we may need to pull out.

But there could be other things. We have to, you know, do all kinds of engineering things like soil testing and, you know, look at flood planes and we have to know how much retention ponds we're going to need to put in and also engineer it all. probably like customer demand studies like is this a place that people want to live at? And if we get homes here, will they put in the Chick-fil-A down the street or like all those Wow. So, we have we've stayed very concentrated in the the northern suburbs. So, we know that market very well.

As we go further out, we may need to do market studies and see is there enough demand because we're building a higher priced home. We kind of never really got to the where we set it sit today, but we are kind of in between. you know, you've got the the large public builders doing 75% of the market um out there. You got custom at the high end and um you know, but they're only building, you know, 10 to 20 homes a year, $2 million plus homes. Great builders in town. You know, we don't we don't do that anymore.

We used to. We've decided to kind of settle on this in between. It's we call semi-custom. For us, you know, that means $500,000 to probably a million7, million8. um that pri it's a wide price range, but our average price this year will be about $800,000, which like it's so funny. I saw like a uh maybe a real of like when you were growing up what you imagined a million-dollar home looks like and then you like see what a million dollar home looks like now and you're like, damn, I thought there'd be more like because it's just so the demand for housing in central Indiana is so berserk.

The costs have gotten crazy. The cost just to get to a a lot that you can build on is is extremely expensive. I mean, that might be you might be $200,000 easily into just the lot before you even start the house. Yeah. And it's like you guys have to put up half a million dollars before you even get approval to go get the financing to buy the property, you know? So those costs just get like segmented all throughout like, you know, each and every step along the way.

So when we're successful, we we get through all that engineering and we have city council say yes, this is a great project. We get it approved. We'll close on the property. Then we're out millions of dollars to buy the property. Um, from there we And is that like a a deal that would be like financed? So like you have to start like, okay, we have debt on a thousand acres or whatever.

And so like you're already starting to like take hits to pay off to service the debt. Yeah. There's interest costs. We we try on the the land itself. We don't put very much debt on. We're we're trying to be conservative.

We don't want to have too much debt. And frankly, the the banks aren't going to be will they aren't as aggressive on land. they they're more aggressive on what we call vertical financing, which is building um building the homes themselves, but land development's considered more risky. And so we we actually go to outside equity investors to do that. We've tried to, you know, we've learned a lesson from the great financial crisis that a lot of builders, frankly, went out of business u during and never came back. And so they were they had five years worth of land tied up in the company and if that land went down in value, they were toast.

And so we have set it up so that we have land as a separate kind of investment entity and then the home building is its own and they're separate and separate capital, separate risk appetites. I think people this is this is great and I wanted to get into that a little bit because I think people look at home build like oh this is a blue collar field right and it's like there is a lot of aspects of it that are blue collar but like you're talking about different capital structures and financing and whatnot and I'm like man you that'd be a very you're talking about coming from VC and that type of um it's a very normal or like that makes sense as a transition of careers right to come from working in finance yeah we'll go back to that I'm sure we still didn't get to that my Uh Rob, my partner, he he he's been with the company for 30 plus years, done everything in construction and operations of home building.

And he jokes with me, you know, the times at times, you know, the building the house is the easy part. It it is getting the land and getting the capital to be able to be the size that we want to be. I mean, if you're successful, you're you're kind of you're selling out of neighborhoods every year and you need to replace it with another one and it just takes a lot of capital to do that. the poker table or whatever it's you get and you got to put it all back in to go in for the next one, right? You acquire the land, you you know start to like build homes then at that point and it's a 10-year time frame from there. Yeah.

So, it's probably taken us at least a year to get the zoning approved and acquire the land. So, now that we're a year in, then we have another 6 to9 months of what we call earth work, putting in the infrastructure, the sewer and water, the streets, u building ponds, all those things. This is still before we can start building a house. So, we have to get the streets in and get all the utilities live. They won't let us start building until there's water and power um on on a home site. Then the, you know, we're all excited because then we can start building.

We can hopefully soon start selling homes and and get some momentum. So, we'll start building and then from there, the build process from the time we can put a foundation in for a house, depending on the size, you know, that may be 5 to 9 months of a build for each individual house. Every week we're we're starting homes, we're selling homes, we're And so as soon as you start or like when do you sell where in the build process do you sell the house? Yeah. Because we're we allow customers to customize. One of the things that we really um are different than the big public builders is we let people personalize their homes.

We have great exteriors. Um the architecture, the design of them, they look like custom homes. So we we don't skimp on materials there. It's all real stone cedar four-sided architecture. So, it's it's not like cookie cutter at all. When you say foursided architecture, yeah, meaning if you drive through kind of these cookie cutter subdivisions and you look at the side or the back of the house, it's pretty rough.

You know, it's just plain, very few windows. Ours are not like that. We're going to have some character and and architectural detail on all four sides of the house. Okay. And then on the inside, we're letting customers um do anything they want pretty much. They they can customize it.

we have lots of options in the home that they can and is there like a set amount of like hey you can it's kind of like build your own Nike shoes like back in the day like that kind of thing or is it like they can say whatever they want? Yeah, it goes beyond that. So there is um what we we call them structural options. So if you want to add a bedroom or change this um this room to like a a guest suite with a with a bathroom or maybe uh bump out a garage wall to have an extra space. We'll we'll do all that. That's the the kind of the the Nike preset.

And then when it comes to the interior of the home, we have a we call it studio E. It's a design studio that's very extensive. And you can choose any kind of cabinet colors, you know, cabinet facing, um countertops, tile, flooring, um even a lot of the exterior. It could be any color, any material that you want. And so you can make it personalized, make it your own on the inside. Every one of our homes looks different on the inside.

Um so that's where the real creativity comes in. Of course, you know, there's cost to that. And so, people built multiple homes before. They may have even, we have some that are on their fourth or fifth estr home, believe it or not, over the years, but they've a lot of them have come from maybe a big custom home and they're downsizing, but they want something just as nice um with all the detail that they had in their custom home, but they want it, you know, half the size. Because of that, we have a lot of people that want to build from scratch and sort of customize their home. So, we'll start selling um very early in a neighborhood and let people choose everything they want and build their dream home.

What's the hardest house to sell in a neighborhood? Um it's usually u it's it's the first house sometimes. Yeah. Getting the first one to you know, we we we're going to build all these great amenities, but it's not there yet and they kind of have to be pioneering and hope that we're going to deliver just the good thing is they can go see our neighborhoods down the road and see the quality that we've done. But it's still you're you're a little bit of a risk taker in that first house. Um the other ones, you know, there there's always a few um home sites.

They're lots, we call them home sites. There's always got to be the worst the worst home site. It's backing up to a busy road or something like that. And so those are going to be harder. But And do you guys like price that in as you're thinking through like, oh, that would be hard, too, like knowing the value of each different home site? You know what?

You you can never we've never been able to price the best lots high enough. No, he's really never able to price them. But like, so we'll have some really nice lots that back up to trees or a big pond. And no matter how high high those are priced and how low we price the the one that backs up to a busy road, the the best lot always sells first, even though it's priced a lot higher. I was going to say, how if there's someone out there that's like considering buying like building a home? Yep.

And you know, you're in the early stages of it, how do they find the best lot or the best home site? A lot of it's going to be on their preference. It's it's interesting. Now, most people want privacy. Uh they like that. Um so they're they may choose, you know, the ones that back back up to nothing else or trees.

But it's funny, we'll have corner lots. Some people that's they think that's the best lot in the neighborhood and others don't want it at all um because they think their house is too exposed to everyone, you know, and so um it's a little bit in the eye of the beholder, but there are some obvious ones that people would like the best. You know, we will build we'll start selling pretty quickly in a neighborhood for people that want to build their own home. We'll also start building model homes. So, we have model homes that you can tour, see some of our floor plans, um get an idea of what what it is that we're building in this neighborhood. We want to start those right away so that they're done as soon as possible because and those are more like you just what you see is what you get and you buy this or you tour it.

So, the those are the model homes are are examples of what we can do. So, it's not for sale yet. At the end of the neighborhood, we'll sell it, but they're um kind of for you to walk through and imagine this might be your home. But will the model home end up being the cheapest home in the neighborhood? Not necessarily. We we we may do a few extra things on it to show the kind of, you know, craftsmanship that we can do.

So, it's it's not going to be the cheapest. It'll be middle to maybe a little above the middle, but you were getting two of homes that you could buy right away. We call them showcase homes. So, we build lots of those. You know, you may want a home in the next 60 days. You don't want to wait to build or it's it's a little bit daunting.

It's kind of overwhelming to all the decisions you have to make to build a home. And so, you may not have the time or the desire to wait. And so, you may want something right away. So, we're building homes every month that are finishing that you could move in. You could come and you might be looking at resale homes, existing homes, or a new home, and we have one that's going to be done in, you know, a month or two that you could move into. It's especially um that's been a big part of the market the last four or five years because the there's been this frenzy.

It's been hard to find houses. The inventory is really low. So if you've you know you have an existing home that you've sold and now you got to find a place to live, you don't have time to build a home. So we have those available and Yeah. And it's like they're you're kind of in a pickle there because it's like you either have to find the financing to build your home without selling your current home but then sell your current home after you have a place to live or you just have to sell your current home and get whatever you can get in the next 60 90 days. The one thing we do that helps some of that the financing part so you you do put down a a deposit with us to build it but we are actually going to carry the financing all the way through construction.

So you don't, you know, if it's a 9-month construction, you don't have to have your mortgage ready until you're ready to close on the home. So you could, you have time to sell your home, get your financing in order. If you were building a custom home, you know, the individual person's going to need to finance that during the construction. But with us, we carry it the whole way through. And then you don't need to have your mortgage ready until the home's ready. But uh and then the the the other piece with these um showcase homes is um relocating from out of state, people that are moving here, which is a a really I think a great thing, but a big a big thing that's happening.

You know, those out of state people migrating to Indiana, usually they don't have time to build either. They want a quick movein home. And so we have lots of those available. It's about half of our business. were like 50/50 between showcase quick moveins or people wanting to customize and build their home. Um, but it's the the out ofstate uh relocation.

Um, I know that this is something you you know are pay attention to. It's about 30% of our business of our buyers are coming from how do they find you? Internet presence, social media, you know, they're searching. There's all these, you know, realtor. com and Zillow and places like that that you'll find us. Also, a lot of them will hire um a local realtor, and we have great relationships with the the realtors.

You don't have to use a realtor to buy from us, but you can. We're we encourage it. Um and so they they're out there shopping. They may be shopping for existing homes. You know, they may have heard ought to look in Caramel or they'll look in Westfield. And so, um they're definitely going to find us um online.

And we try to make it easy for them. We've had people buy homes from us over FaceTime. They've never actually seen the home. um which is amazing to me, but it's happened a few times. This episode is brought to you by our friends at Roots Reality Co. the absolute best real estate team here in central Indiana.

Listen, if you're looking to buy, sell, or invest in real estate, you need people who actually care about our Indiana community. That's Tyler and Max over at Roots Reality. These guys aren't just slinging houses, they're building communities, helping people find homes that actually fit their lives and making the whole process way less stressful. They're not some big corporate machine. They're real people who know Indiana inside and out. Whether you're a first-time buyer, an investor looking for your next deal, or just trying to get top dollar for your home, these guys have the expertise and the hustle to make it happen.

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Let's get back into it. That is, yeah, the biggest purchase of your life and you're like, "Yeah, it looks but that's just the world we live in today." Um, and so the build process, you're talking 9 months for Earth Works, 9 months to get like a home ready to go. So, from start to like home sold, looking at what is that 36 months or three years until we until we get um a home sold until we get any revenue. We don't we don't get any money until the home is finished and we close it. And so putting in all that and they usually build them in phases.

Is that how you guys kind of do those? A whole neighborhood will have like our our our newest one that we're opening or we we opened last year is called Medland. It's about 550 homes. And yeah, we'll have phases or sections. So we opened up an initial section. We're getting ready to build in section four of that.

Um and when is that set to be done the whole thing? We'll have we still have another four or five years to go. Yeah. How many and how many of those developments are you working on at any one time? Ideally building in um probably three of them at any one time. We've just closed out two extremely successful ones.

And so um we need to quickly replace them. So we're trying to do about one per year of starting a new one of these large um signature neighborhoods that are 500 plus homes. If we can start a new one every year and then, you know, every year be finishing one out, that's kind of a good pace because we're going to be in them for five to 10 years. And is the primary focus still on Hamilton County? Is it kind of getting saturated? Are you having to move further out?

Yep. We keep we keep moving further north. We've been very big over the years in Caramel and Westfield. You know, in total, we're getting close to 9,000 homes that we've built. um in that all in Hamilton County. Um all in the indie area, I'd say majority of them in Hamilton County, Caramel, Westfield, Fisers, a little bit of Zansville, but I mean in Westfield alone, we've built over 3,000 homes and and you know, a lot of that's in the last, you know, 15 years when Westfield's seen its growth.

Now, because of some acquisitions, we're actually the largest locallyowned builder. Um but in in relative terms to the space, you'd say small than smaller than like the public builders. Yeah, exactly. But we're so we're we're big big for locally owned in Indianapolis, but um the public builders are much much larger. But with all that said, because we're so hyperfocused in Carmel Westfield, we've built more homes than any any other builder over the years in those in Carmel Westfield, which are great places to be building in. Obviously, the public builders have gotten so huge and a lot of private builders didn't survive the the last crash.

I was looking up some stats the other day. 20 years ago, there were 14,000 builders in the country that built more than a hundred homes a year or sorry, more than 10 homes a year. Now, there's only 3,000. So, it went from 14,000 to there's just 3,000 builders. And the top 10 builders in the country make up over half of the market. We all talk about the housing shortage.

You know, part of it is I think there's just there's not enough builders out there that are trying to address it. Well, because it's not an easy thing to get into, right? It's like if I wanted to go out and start a production home company, it's like I don't even like you'd have to have friends with lots of money, be very very financially smart, also know how to build homes. It's like you can't just go out there and put up a subdivision, right? Like that's not the size is hard and and land is getting harder and harder. We're competing all the time with the public builders on buying land.

I don't feel like we don't compete very much on selling homes because their homes are quite a bit different than ours. We're certainly higher priced and we're not really going after the same market but when it comes to land we are often looking at the same land. Well, how do you win that? Like what's the differentiator? So the the biggest way and sometimes we don't obviously I mean we're not going to win all of them. Um if it comes down strictly to price the public builders have way more capital than we do and they can probably pay more.

But there are a lot of um owners it could be could have been a farmer who's you know owned it for hundred years or someone else in the community. They want something really nice to go on their property as a legacy. And they the ones that we end up doing, they look at our neighborhoods and they say, "I want Estridge to to develop something here because it'll be of the lasting quality that they want. They don't want it to be this cookie cutter subdivision." And is there times where you have to go work with the um city government and be like, "Hey, like do you want this type of quality or quantity homes versus quality homes or Yeah, that would be it. We we do all the time.

It's both the elected officials, the mayor and city council, but then also there's a lot of city staff and they're trying to do they have a planning staff of here's how we want the city to grow over the next 10 years. You know, not everyone wants these higherend semi-custom homes because they actually need affordable homes for for everyone in the workforce. So, you need kind of a a a mix of it. Um, so yeah, we upfront we're we're working with, you know, the city officials, the politicians all the time to kind of see what they want to see happen to a site. So you guys are thinking 10 years in the future. Yep.

So what what do we need what needs to be on our radar? Where around central Indiana needs to be on our radar 10 years from now, 2035. Yeah. I'd say for us, and I think this applies to kind of lots of things in Indiana, there's two corridors that we're really focused on. Um, one is continuing up 31 as you joked earlier all the way to Cooko, but um, at least to the northern border, Hamilton County. So, um, Westfield Westfield does have some areas it will still is going to grow.

Westfield's going to become even larger. They're they're Mayor Willis is doing some great things to bring in businesses. You know, the the housing is going to continue there. But if you look just past like Chattam Hills, if you know that, that's on the north end of Westfield. The county, Hamilton County, has made significant investments in putting that infrastructure in the water and sewer. They're actually building a sewage treatment plant and installing water now all the way up 31.

So, we actually have a uh a new project we just announced or just filed for zoning last week. It's uh in Cicero. It's just off of Oh, boy. 236th Street. There's a new interchange off of 31 and it's just like it's a mile or two off of 31. It takes 5 minutes to get to from that site to Chattam Hills.

It takes about 12 minutes to get to my office in Caramel. So, it's because of how um seamless 31 has become. It's it's it's really easy drive to get there. And I think you know whether it's Cicero, Sheridan, and further further on up into Hamilton County, there's going to be some massive growth. It is an area there called Baker's Corner. I was literally looking right there at Baker's Corner.

That is It's funny how it comes up all in conversations all the time. That's going to be the hot area. What is it like? Like like is it a It's nothing now. There was There was a gas station. There's a brand new interchange.

Like how why is Baker's Corner on the map? So it's uh because of this the new interchange and how kind of great 31 is to drive. You don't have to no stop lights. It's so easy to get to downtown Westfield or downtown Carmel for there. You're you're you're 10 minutes away for most things in Carmel. And then if you need to get to the airport, if you need to get to somewhere in Indianapolis, it's really pretty easy.

But then the other big driver is because the county has invested all this money to put sewer and water there. So you have those infrastructure connections ready to go. They're basically priming the pump wanting to see that that growth there. So do you think by 2035, I think the edge of Hamilton County is 296th Street. Y do you think that that there will be neighborhoods all the way up to 296th Street? I think by that time there will be some uh commercial growth for sure.

There'll be some industrial some bit there. Um Sunny Beck has uh been part of bringing that up to 296. There's a new armory being built and they're trying to focus on some a tech businesses like attract companies to to build their headquarters there. That's a really good idea. So they're going to I think there'll be commercial in the next few years being built eventually some apartments and you're going to start seeing residential. It may not be quite to 296 by then, but definitely in the, you know, 236th and and near that area, you'll see some residential.

Um, as I said, we're we're going to be doing our own um here next year, dude. 29 296th is uh 25 minutes from downtown Cooko. That's nuts. And there are there's some good jobs coming to Cooko, too. And those um workers and executives need a place to live. People are talking about that that Cicero wants to be the home for those Cooko workers.

Cooko doesn't have enough housing. So, so that's that's one corridor. The other that's probably actually bigger in in a sense is the 65 corridor. Lebanon, the Leap district has gotten a lot of press. Lily is already doing something there. Meta has announced they're doing um a big data center of some sort in Lebanon.

Um, and then if you go on up to West Lafayette, that whole corridor from downtown Indie to West Lafayette is going to be a massive boom. We're already seeing kind of a a frenzy in Lebanon, which is not much there yet. Um, in terms of housing, but some of the public builders are starting to build there. Um, this has been in the news quite a bit. There's there's a pretty major water issue uh that Lebanon has. They they have this the state put together this leap district that's going to attract these massive companies.

Well, they need housing for those employees. Um, but they don't have enough water to service all the businesses and housing that's already coming. So, the state's working on solutions and it'll happen. It's probably delaying it by two or three years. I was like, what what do you do about that? Like just route a river over there or Well, yeah, there's been some public fights about they're trying to bring it from Lafayette and the Wash River and of course residents there didn't like that and so they're finding alternatives.

There are water treatment plants to the south and even towards Westfield and they're bringing they're bringing water. It's just an expensive proposition. Yeah. I I was talking with a national housing economist. Um she visited Indie. I took her around our our properties.

She said Indianapolis is experiencing what the rest of the especially West Coast has been experiencing for years with you know water being difficult. Um things getting more expensive. You know, we Indianapolis is still one of the top probably three or four most affordable markets in the whole country when you look at incomes to the price of homes. It for us here it feels expensive but because it was crazy affordable 5 10 years ago, but it's still compared to the rest of the country, it's it's considered very affordable. Um that 65 corridor we were talking about though. So Lebanon is going to be a big area.

You know, Whitestown already has a lot of growth that's happening. We have been uh looking a lot in West Lafayette. So I don't know if you've been paying attention much there, but obviously Purdue is doing great things. There is the Purdue Research Park which is kind of just north of campus has a lot of tech companies that have some tie into Purdue. There's some big employers. Rolls-Royce, GE, Cook is there.

There was last year there was a major announcement that was made um company called SKH Heinix. It's an AI chip company. They're spending, yeah, almost $4 billion building a plant there in the Purdue Research Park. They're going to directly employ a thousand people, high-paying jobs. And then the related kind of um supply chain businesses to to that chip plant. They're expecting 3 to 4,000 total jobs from that announcement.

They're going to start built building that plant later this year. Definitely the uh first first time talking about this, so you're getting a little bit of a scoop here. But um we're about to announce a major project that we're doing there right next to the Purdue Research Park. It's going to be the largest project that the company's ever done. Um how many homes? So it'll be about 800 single family homes.

There'll be another 500 or so multif family apartments. Um and then we're going to have kind of mixeduse retail with, you know, coffee shop and restaurant and other retail that are amenities for the whole area. We're going to have a massive park in the middle of the the neighborhood. will have clubhouse, pools, gym, um you know, got to have pickle ball courts these days, all kinds of amenities. Um it'll probably be a $600 million project in total. Um and so it's going to be a 10 plus year project, but we by the time this comes out, we'll have uh filed for our zoning and it's going to be a big deal in the the West Lafayette community and it's really that it's a it's a great market.

um they need more uh housing that's for sale like we do. They need more apartments there. It's very under supplied and that's before all these jobs. Like it's it's under supplied now and they're adding three or 4 thousand more jobs. So big chip companies thinking about, you know, creating a thousand direct jobs with an extra two or three 4,000 total. Do they come to builders and say like, "Hey, if we go in here, will you come in and do housing?"

like how do you guys get that rolling or do you have to like read the news headline and they're like, "All right, now we got to go now. They're getting in the car. We're going to Lafayette." Great question. Um, and this is getting into kind of the politics of it a little bit. They they definitely are working with the county um officials, the city officials um to make sure that there's the desire to have enough housing there.

They need they need housing for sure. It's interesting in some of these like the chip plant or some of the leap district it's it gets kind of secretive like and you know they it's not supposed to be announced like it's someone there's a some company buying a thousand acres and it's no one knows who's it who it is. So some of that it kind of becomes a surprise in this case like with the chips itself there was a there's some federal legislation called the chips act. So, a lot of money that's being put to work to attract high-tech investment in in the US. They get a lot of um federal loans and grants to do that, but in exchange, there has to be a certain number of um workforce housing available. And I know Lebanon doesn't have enough of it.

And so, to for them to be able to get that chips money from DC, they have to have enough houses built. So there's kind of like these all these conditions on it that is just like you're you're playing like 10 years in the future chess of like that's just crazy. Well, but we've uh I haven't had a chance to really talk about our founder um but this is again Paul Esters Jr. who founded the production company, bought his dad's custom home building company and later merged them together and really grew it. Paul just wanted everyone to know kind of what kind of the legacy that he he built here. He was he was a leading figure for many years in Indie.

Um really was pioneering um in terms of this concept of what we do today with these neighborhoods. He brought that to Indianapolis starting in the 80s and 90s. Um he went around the country looking at um you know what go to Texas and California and Florida and how these um builders and developers were doing these large whole neighborhoods for one builder. That didn't happen here before he started doing it. Um, so he he thought it could really work in Indianapolis. Brought it here.

Um, started doing it. The first one was a home run and then just kept What was the first one? Well, he had some smaller ones. The first one that was the I'd say the the trademark is a one called Centennial. This did this was came later, but it's all I just want to mention it because of the impact that it made. It's uh it's also in Westfield.

This was 25 years ago when Westfield was much smaller. Over a thousand homes was a huge success. the the what made me think of him as far as planking 10 years ahead. He he used to say, you know, you're going to go through one or two recessions during a a neighborhood. You know, if it's a 10-year neighborhood, it's hard to really forecast and say we're going to have a down period in the middle of it, but it's going to happen. You know, you can't be in something that long and, you know, have just smooth sailing the whole time.

Paul came to uh Rob McGra and I yeah it started about six years ago but um really five years ago is when we came to our agreement on buying the company from Paul. He started thinking about succession planning. Um he had actually been diagnosed early with a incurable lung fibrosis scarring of the lungs. When we first started talking about this he was in still in good health and wasn't seeing any effects from it yet. Um, but he knew eventually, you know, that that would come and he wanted to make sure that the company survived him, that the day-to-day leadership was in place and that, you know, the the the brand, the name um survived it. And so, um, he wanted to hand over, um, the day-to-day leadership to to Rob and I back, this is about five years ago, and we also agreed to buy a majority of the company from him.

We we actually signed it January of 2020. And so what a great time to own. Oh my gosh. And so then, you know, March and April coming and the world's coming to an end. I thought I was I thought the company was going to have to wind down. I didn't see I was just We were all scared.

We didn't know what, you know, was going to happen. I I thought we'd have, you know, 25% unemployment. And we went into the start of the pandemic with we had sold a ton of homes in that winter and spring. And we had more homes under construction than we'd ever had. And I was then afraid and they were most of those homes were already sold. We just had to finish building them and and get the customer to close.

But I was afraid most of those customers were going to lose their jobs, not be able to afford to buy the home and we'd be stuck with and look like it would be a disaster. Well, the opposite happened as as you know. Few months passed by and then all of a sudden people are like, I I got to get a bigger house or I I you know, the the value of the home became much stronger. And then for Indiana was a huge beneficiary. all these people from, you know, the West Coast or other more expensive markets found out they could work from home or they, you know, their local government was on lockdown and like, why am I living here and paying high taxes? I want to move somewhere else.

And so all these people started moving to places like Indiana. And so we started seeing an influx of demand. It was the first time ever in the history of our company that we couldn't build enough homes. You know, it's it's like we didn't for a short time we didn't have to worry about sales. it was we couldn't get um supply chain you know supplies labor was tough costs kept going um skyhigh um but you know selling the homes was uh was really not a problem for a couple years there and so it went from thinking that you know we may be out of business here soon to things really took off Yeah it's like when everyone's sitting in their house or they're like a little apartment they're like gosh dude if I have to do this for another year I'm going to need I'm going to need some elbow room um okay so that was that's 2020 and then you and Rob Yep. have been the co- majority owners since then.

And what can we expect in the future for Estridge Homes? You know, we're intending to do more of these signature neighborhoods. We're looking a little further out. Um so either we're going to be in the, you know, hottest area, call it say Westfield, you know, the area that's really booming at the moment. um or we're now realizing that we can do this because I I I do a lot of um I kind of took a page from what Paul used to do. Um I I tour the country three or four times a year on kind of business trips.

I tour large master plan communities in Texas or Colorado, Utah, California. The scale there is way different. I mean, those are 5,000 or 10,000 homes. We're doing 500, but I can get ideas for how they're doing it. What I one of the things I've seen is sometimes they're going much farther out than we would ever think you could, but they're if they're large enough, they can build the amenities that people It's a lifestyle of living. You basically build like a small to mediumsiz town.

Yeah. Yeah. You have the the retail comes with it, all the parks and amenities and people want to live there because it's a great lifestyle even though it's maybe a little bit further away. Is there a neighborhood that you could just copy and paste and like move to Indiana? Like where would it be from? So, yeah, there is there's a few that come to mind, but the the one that definitely stands out, there's one called Harvest.

It's in the Dallas area. Um, it's gotten a lot of national press. Um, and I've been there twice now. I know the developers pretty well, and so they've given me a tour of it, and I actually took part of my team there last fall to go see it, and we have I'll say borrowed some ideas from some of their uh amenity buildings, and the way they've laid everything out. Um, it's a great Texas developer that that did that project. Um, and so that's that's a great example.

You know, I I do try drive through. There's another one called Daybreak that's in uh you Salt Lake City, Utah. At Build Out, it's going to be like 30,000 homes, a high school, like three elementary schools all in the neighborhood in the in this one neighborhood. Um, that's nuts. My family gets a little bit tired on family vacations that uh I I have to go off track a little bit and go through, you know, some development that Yeah. They're like, "Yep, hold on."

It's like everyone gets like one day to like pick what they want to do. I want to just go drive and look at some neighborhoods. There we go. Dad, come on. Yeah. Uh that's This reminds me, the one in Texas kind of reminds me u one of my good friends and his wife, her parents live in Dripping Springs, which is like just outside of Austin and it's like these neighborhoods go on forever and just like their own amenities just end up around them, which is is super cool.

So, I didn't I didn't get to maybe you were asking about the you know, what's next. The punchline of West Lafayette was this project that we're doing and we're going to be um I expect us to be building homes in it next year. We're going through the zoning process here soon. We're excited about it. It's uh it'll be the biggest one we've done and so we're looking for those and then like I said, just looking a little further out and we'll be, you know, hopefully about one every year you'll see us announcing and and starting. So, if I wanted to go acquire central Indiana real estate to be like near where where where somewhere's up and coming, where where should I be placing my bet in 2025 to maybe reap some rewards in 2035?

Sure. You you'd probably have to go, you know, further Hamilton County. I'm going to be I'm going to be the king of Arcadia here soon. Yeah. The the only problem with that is you're competing against Sunny Beck and he's got more money than you do. I know that that's fair.

I don't know that that direct area is very hard because of him, but and he's he's is a great businessman and kind of luminary in for the state. Oh yeah. Um I will say the for us the land prices it's hard to find what I would consider as a good investment. You know, people think that homes are overpriced. Well, land is is very high price, too. And we're kind of are, you know, just holding our nose every time we're trying to buy land.

It's it's uh but it's kind of the the cost of doing business. But it's no matter where you go, um because we're so under supplied as a kind of a community and housing that the builders are still, you know, wanting to buy more of it and paying up. So further up north in Hamilton County, but it's it's like people already know, right? They know that it's going that way. So it's already priced in there. You can't get a good deal there.

Man, Clint, thank you so much for coming on the show. We've kind of come down to the end where I ask some um some of our fun lightning round questions. Uh, first question is our younger year segment. It's brought to you by all of our friends at OR Fellowship. They're a great organization here in Indiana helping develop young business leaders across the state. So now not only do they have a chapter here in Indianapolis, but they also have their chapter in Evansville.

So that's pretty cool. So maybe maybe who knows some of those multif family apartments in Lafayette will end up being the Lafayette chapter for Or Fellowship. Who knows? If uh Stephen listens to this episode, he's going to love that. Uh Clint, what advice would you give to your 22-year-old self? Don't worry or don't think so much about when in terms of the job you're going to take, the uh you know, the pay or the status or how it's going to look because I probably did think about those things.

I would really advise trying to find either a company or an industry that's really growing and doing big things. ideally both both company and that industry because if they're growing then you're there's going to be new opportunities for you pretty quickly if you if you show that you can be productive and really stand out um there's going to be you know new roles in the company I experienced this part of it where you know my boss um and these kind of startup companies that I worked at got promoted and so um I I ended up you know took his role and so I got promoted because of it and so if you're in in a an industry or company that's really doing big things. Um, it's better to me than having, you know, a higher paying job at kind of a a boring company that's not going anywhere, if if that makes sense. I think it's just it's, you know, better to you're going to learn so much from from those people in that that growing company as opposed to being kind of in a boring industry.

Yeah. I thought your advice was going to be work at Angie's List and get all of my compensation and equity. Like that would have been a good idea. I could have turned it back. That right? No, that's a really good I do think finding those because a lot of people want if you go and you know work at a lily or a ro it's like you know your path because a thousand other people have gone on that path before you.

So it's like pretty laid out there. But when you do find an industry that's high growth you take a little bit more of a risk but yeah like the job that you might have in a year doesn't even exists currently cuz they just you know make the space for for good people. So uh I love that. All right now we're going to get into our lightning round. What's your favorite home feature in any of the homes you guys have built? I am very much sticking to the curb appeal, the architecture.

Um, we go around the country hire the best architects um in the in the business. So, I I care about what the home looks like on the outside. It's it's a kind of a lost art, I think. And so, we put a lot of emphasis in that. And so, that we have different architectural styles, but they're all authentic architecture. You um have lots of different things to choose from in terms of styles, but we try to keep it fresh.

So, I care a lot about that. The other thing is um outdoor living. It's very, it's become very important. That's where you can really customize things and create whether it's um kind of your backyard or patio space, do some really cool things and and create privacy. Even though the homes we talked about earlier that might be closer together, we can build a lot of privacy. That's really what people want.

They not everyone needs a big yard. They just want to be able to have a private space. Living outdoors has become a lot more um appealing. We try to put those into our public amenities, but then every home has some dedicated space that, you know, you can have um you can actually spend quite a bit of money customizing those and making it really nice. So, I bought my house back in like 2019 and it was like it's four walls and a place to live and I love I love my house, but like now I'm thinking through like yeah, what kind of architecture curb appeal like so if you had advice for anyone that wanted to uh up their curb appeal this spring, what would you what would you say? most impactful thing you can do for the money is paint and landscaping.

You know, get get that top-notch. My my own house, I I I don't live um I haven't built a newer home. I someday probably will build one um somewhere. I may even do a tear down in downtown Caramel and and do something. Who knows? But um when we bought we bought an older home that was built in 1983, we totally changed the exterior look of it.

We kind of ripped the front off of the house and and brought it in a little more of a contemporary feel. Um, so you can do some dramatic things, but but you don't have to. I mean, a little um, one thing that's really stylish now, and it could look dated at some point, but right now popular is uh, painted brick. So, you see a lot of old houses that were red brick or, you know, brownish brick, and they're painting it, and it it just brings it up to makes it feel really uh, contemporary and a totally different look. I mean, I drive through some older neighborhoods with with um painted brick houses and it makes a a huge impact and doesn't cost a lot of money. That's a good uh way to yeah up your curb appeal a little bit there.

Landscaping. That's my next venture is I have to learn how to keep stuff alive. Holy smokes. Okay. So, you've been the CEO now for four years. This is going on five years.

When you think about leadership, is there some good leadership advice or a book that you've gotten recommended that uh that you would recommend for others listening? Couple things. I mean, I I think I've tried to make in the last year or two intentional removing myself from a lot of the day-to-day and and really focusing on the growth of the company kind of that five years out, making sure we have the land and capital. Um, spending a lot of time just on our people and our culture, making sure that they have the resources they need. We have uh we talk all the time at our company the right people in the right seat. Um the right people meaning um do they meet our core values?

We're a missiondriven company and we have you know core values that we care a lot about. Doesn't matter how talented someone is. If they don't meet those core values, you know, they're not a good fit. And then when we have the right people that we want to be with, they believe in um doing the right thing like like we want to do, are they in the right seat? And sometimes it's not. And so we we will try to find a new role for them because they're really good um smart people that we want to have, but we need to find a new role for them or or promote them into a new role, give them more opportunity.

So I've tried to um step away and my partner Rob has actually been great about taking on a lot of the functional areas that I used to be responsible for. And so I'm in there kind of just meeting with people every day. I sometimes I go in and I don't even open my computer and but I feel like I'm like I had a busy day of meetings all day and you know getting a lot of decisions done and and helping people um maybe think through a a problem that we have and and solving it. And so those things are fun but uh really just getting smart people to know the functional areas. The as far as a book we have taken um some of the business owners may get something out of this. We have taken a big leap into something um called EOS, the entrepreneurial operating system.

There's a book traction was kind of the the popular. What's your rock for the quarter? We so we just met on them and we set our rocks um our company rocks is which which I'm most focused on and and they are they're big big rocks this time. I'm I'm got to tell you. So we have a couple of them related to getting these projects approved um that I alluded to. So that's a hard one too because it's so reliant on other people to like so you got to keep going because it's not just like when when any goal is like that when when it relies on other people's approval or other people's you know input it's like those are hard to like uh make your your thing because there would be times where it's I can't put any more effort into this right so you know something about yeah uh I was at Powder Keg which was a tech startup and we were implementing EOS kind of like as I was on the uh on the way out to go do that it's me and some I actually just made my first full-time hire.

He starts in June. So, like I'm not quite I got to get more traction before I start to implement traction. Um it's it's actually locally owned now. There's a local private equity group, Firefly Loop, who owns EOS and that whole um you know, their their conferences, their system. It's great. There's a no way a great team in town that you should meet.

No, I need to get them on the show. We need to talk about Yeah. getting this implemented in businesses. Um amazing. Well, these are the same three questions that I ask everyone who sits in that chair. Uh, first is, what's something the world needs to know about Indiana?

When I travel on the country, people are talking about Indiana. It's a it's just a a great place to live. It's it's it's an easy place to live. We have a lot of good things going for us in terms of what the state's doing to attract businesses, which means jobs. We talked earlier, still one of the most affordable markets in the whole country. It's kind of like a shining star in the Midwest.

Um it's it's Indianapolis is considered the top market um at least for housing um in all the Midwest. It really compares more to a lot of the kind of booming um cities in the Southeast like what would be at Charlotte or Raleigh or it's not quite on the level of you know like a Nashville boom but not yet but we're coming. Jacksonville, you know, some of those cities that um compare very favorably. We kind of stand out more compared to those than the rest of the Midwest. I I I kind of see is I think the Midwest with all everything going on in the world is going to have a renaissance. I think um climate change is making people move out of some of the coastal areas.

Insurance rates are so high. Tropy taxes or income taxes are high there. We've got it, you know, pretty good and you can live a good life. We don't have a lot of traffic now. There's a lot of great restaurant entertainment options. I mean, I think talked a little bit about Caramel.

I mean, we we're based in Caramel. I live in Caramel. When I moved back here 20 years ago, not many young people would have thought it was cool to live in Carmel. There there weren't that many options really. But um there wasn't there weren't that many great restaurant options. There was no nightife.

But now there's plenty of young people living there. It's brought a lot more nightife activity, great restaurants. I mean, there's a there's a ton to do. Midtown Caramel, like again, all my friends make fun of me because it's like every time I have someone from Caramel, I'm like, I hate how much I love Midtown Caramel. It's so like Three Up Rooftop Bar. You're just hanging out there.

Uh that brings us to our next question is what is a hidden gem in Indiana. There's a place that opened a little over a year ago called Oswell. It's and Gemi Osmir started it up. He has built a great community there. He took he put a lot of money invested into it and took a risk. But it's basically uh he remodeled an old building that was on the Monan.

He built this glass dome that's retractable and it's a you know it's a high-end gym but it's more it's way more than that. They have personal training and you know a lot of workout classes but they've he's brought in all the recovery you know you got the the stuff you hear about all the time on podcast now but cold plunge and sauna and red light. He has a hyperaric chamber that people are all geeked out about doing. He actually just This is so crazy. You said that he emailed me earlier this week. I'm going to go and check it out next week.

Oh it's it's phenomenal. I I became friends with him. uh he bought the building about f four or five years ago and I we were trying to buy it at the same time. We were going to move our offices there and we weren't quite ready or just didn't have our act together. He bought it and then I started seeing um some news about what he has planned for it and um turns out I I kind of I'd seen him at some workout stuff before but I really didn't know him but I just reached out to him and I said, "Hey, I'm interested in what you're doing. Our office is right around the corner from yours.

Let's get together for lunch." So, I started hearing about it and then I was like one of his first members when he first opened last December, like a year and a half ago. I'm there almost every day. There's a kind of a a lounge area that, you know, after workout people are, you know, staying there for a while working, you know, and it's just a great community that's built. You'll, you know, depend on when you go, you might see, you know, a couple professional athletes or business owners just kind of I'm going to find my next guest uh when I go up there and visit it up. Yeah, I'll probably probably see you.

There we go. I love it. That's a good hidden gem. Do we a bonus one? Do we want to give a a Montgomery County one? Yeah.

So, hidden gem. I'm actually um I was thinking about the McGomery County Wavelin specifically, this tiny little town I'm from. Do you know uh I mean being the Indiana guy, you got to know it, but TC Steel, you know the the history of of I don't know the history. Well, okay. So, he's probably the most famous um Indiana artist from the late 1800s, impressionist um artist. There were actually a lot of um kind of a group there.

I think they call them the Hoosier group, but these artists that um were nationally known, if not worldwide. So he he grew up in this town of 400 people of Wavelin where I'm from. Um when he was um like a teenager, he got kind of noticed as a great artist and had um these Indianapolis businessmen as kind of patrons that would pay to have him do artwork. They actually paid to have him to send him to Munich, Germany. This is in like, you know, late 1800s to go to art school to learn from the greats of the time. He comes back to Indiana and he's he's known for all these landscape paintings that he's done.

A lot of them, if you go to the Columbia Club downtown, they're all over the place. A lot of the U museums have many of his pieces. They're very expensive now. So, he was born in Wavelin, but in Brown County is his his home, and it's kind of like a it's called the House of the Singing Winds. Um it's it's worth going to. It's right in between Nashville and Bloomington if you drive right through Brown County.

And it's he has a gallery there. Of course, he's long since he passed away in the early 1900s, but these the the place is now a couple hundred acres that he that's been acquired is just beautiful. Has his artwork. There's actually a painting. It's it's way up on top of the hills in Brown County. And now there's huge trees um that you can't see, you know, way into the distance, but there's a painting of his that he painted when he first bought it and you can see for miles and miles because the trees hadn't grown.

And so now it looks like totally different. But there's that the Wavelin connection with TC Steel. But um the Brown County I think it's the TC Steel historic site or something like that um is the place to go. The other McGomery County um piece I'll throw out there is probably been to Turkey Run State Park. Do you know it? Yeah.

So most people know that and it's one of the great state parks but it's kind of next door neighbor which is actually a couple miles from where I grew up is Shades State Park. U it's smaller, very rustic but less crowded, right? Yeah, there's still crowds. Great trails, waterfalls, ravines, canoeing. Um, you can camp there, but there's no like I don't think there's electricity. It's just, you know, primitive camping.

It's just as good or better for hiking and all the nature as Turkey Run, but with less crowds. There you go. It's a hidden gem. That is a true hidden gem. I think if you go on the Indiana State or like Reddit like R Indiana that people say like Turkey Run gets all the love and is really wellnown but like if you want the nature experience like you need to go to Shades because there's less people. I'm like deep down a rabbit hole of like how much does a TC steel painting cost?

Yeah. It's not cheap anymore. Not at all. I think I saw one like 15 to 30 grand like your entry point. Yeah, there's some The House of the Singing Winds looks amazing like that. That's like a painting.

Yeah. Wow. I need to go on a deep dive. We're gonna go look into the man, the myth, the legend that it was, TC Steel. That's right. Uh Clint, thank you so much for coming on.

We have one final question for you. This is where you get to share the love a little bit. It helps us find who our next guest might be. Who is a Hooer we need to keep on our radar, someone who's doing big things. The person I thought of was the the founder of of Oswell, the place that I was mentioning in Carmel. Jimi Osmir is his name.

Like I said earlier, he's he's brought in lots of great people. Um created just a fun great community there. I think he he is beyond the caramel side. He's going to be doing big things. I know he's been approached by lots of people about expanding that concept. Um people have wanted to franchise it.

I don't think that's in his plans, but you know, I I think he's going to end up doing more of these and and he's got some kind of some secret sauce that really is making it work. So keep keep an eye on them. I love it. Great stuff. Well, hey, appreciate you coming on talking to us all about uh the building boom in central Indiana and all the great stuff for since 1967. You guys have been making building homes in the greater central Indiana area.

Uh I think it's awesome. I'm excited to see the projects in Lafayette and in Lebanon come to life and um and see what uh how far north we're going to have to do like a 10-year reunion of this episode and see like man now we're at like we're in Cooko now. that could be where we're at. So, um, appreciate you and keep up the good work. Thank you. Great.

Great on here. Thank you. Thank you for listening to this episode of Get In. If you like what you heard, make sure you leave us a review wherever you listen to podcast. This show is made possible by our friends up at Sweetwater. Whether you're looking to start a podcast or take your content to the next level, click the link in the description to see all of my gear recommendations at sweetwater.

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