Getting to Know Craig Evans-CEO, DBL Capital | Part 2 #858

Each one of us dreamed of becoming someone when we grow up. We made plans, walked paths toward that dream. Some of us made our dreams come true, some dreams changed along the way. Did you envision your current position, or is it different from what you originally planned? If it's not what you planned for, could you have imagined ending up where you are today?

Let's hear it from Craig Evans, CEO, DBL Family of Companies.

In this episode:
-Craig emphasizes the importance of evaluating land before investing in building and development
-Craig shares his passion for workforce housing, emphasizing the importance of homeownership for individuals and their families.
-The new owner of The Norris Group, Craig Evans


The Norris Group originates and services loans in California and Florida under California DRE License 01219911, Florida Mortgage Lender License 1577, and NMLS License 1623669.  For more information on hard money lending, go www.thenorrisgroup.com and click the Hard Money tab.


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Transcript

Narrator: 0:00

This is The Norris Group's real estate investor radio show the award-winning show dedicated to thought leaders shaping the real estate industry and local experts revealing their insider tips to succeed in an ever -changing real estate market hosted by author, investor, and hard money lender, Bruce Norris.

Joey Romero: 0:21

Happy New Year and welcome back to The Norris Group real estate radio show and podcast. Back again with part two of our interview with now new CEO of the Norris Group, Craig Evans, hope you enjoy.

Bruce Norris: 0:33

One of the things that your background, I think impacts the quality of what you do and the avoidance of mistakes, is you said in your bio, that you've gone through all those stages where you were the guy digging the hole, and you were doing all this stuff. Without that, on-the-job experience is really expensive. If you don't know you're doing something wrong, man.

Craig Evans: 1:09

Yeah, that's one of those things, you know. Let's face it in anything in business, sometimes there's experiences that happen that you don't want. I don't know how I would have ever seen that kind of right. I don't think any businessman or woman saw the last three years coming, you know, of what was coming through that. But that's exactly one of the reasons why I mentioned all of those things that I've done, is because for a lot of years, there were a lot of calluses on my hands, right? There was a lot of stuff, because the one thing that I do take pride in is there's not much of anything that we do that I know, say I'm an expert, but there's not much of anything we do that I don't know how to do it, and probably have done it myself. You know, I'll never say I'm a master electrician, I'm a master plumber. But I've done plumbing, you know, I've done a lot of electrician, I pulled a lot of electrical wire through conduit, I've hung a lot of conduit in the tops of buildings, you know, I've cut a lot of trees, I've pushed a lot of dirt, I've poured a lot of concrete, I've laid a lot of block, you know.

Bruce Norris: 2:24

What's really important in the beginning of this whole process is you have the ability to look at a piece of land and say no, this is not a smart piece of dirt. Because if you fail at that, there's no there's no recovery.

Craig Evans: 2:40

Most well, you know, everybody knows from an investment standpoint, you don't make your money at the sale, you make your money in the basis, it's at the beginning of the purchase of the job, you know, and it's the same thing in building and developing. If you buy the wrong piece of dirt, you're done before you start, you know, there was another builder that Trinity was working for at one time, they were national builder. One point, they were the seventh largest builder in the country. They built affordable housing. But like many large builders, they just thought that, you know, everything, that no matter what they did, they were always going to be bright. And, you know, they came in and they started buying land and we were working for them and they had several properties. And I told him I said listen, you need to sell these, you need to sell these, you don't even you don't need to close on these, because they were paying us for due diligence and to go in and help them and they had bought 150 scattered lots down here, you know like his what's common in this in this part of the country got a lot of scattered lots where entitlements already in and approved but just need to clear and go vertical. And I was trying to tell them, you know, out of this, whatever it was 130, 150 scattered lots I said you got about five or 10 of those you just don't even need to either didn't don't need to close on or you're taken as a part of your package, get rid of them. Give them to somebody, you know, give them as a bonus to somebody that's buying another house, let them think they're getting a win. At the end of the day, they thought they knew better than anybody else. They kept them. They ended up on one of the houses they put a 1200 square foot house on it was what they had slated to go on. And they started building that, we had $167,000 of dirt that went on to that lot, that they lost before we even started putting the concrete on it, you know, and we tried to tell them give this lot away. They said no, we only pay $2,000 for it in our package. We'll sell it and we'll make money off of it. So to your point, yes, absolutely. Being able to see those things and understanding it and the fact that I built in as many states as I built in. There's not much that I haven't seen in the ways of geology and what's happening with dirt and what to look for from an aspect of doing development.

Joey Romero: 5:13

Craig? Bruce can I ask the question?

Bruce Norris: 5:15

Yeah, sure.

Joey Romero: 5:16

So I know you played collegiate basketball. And some of the some of the things that I learned, you know, through sports are in the core of me, you know, the responsibility being there for your team, being a good teammate, things like that. So my question for you is, did you learn, or have what had a bigger impact playing collegiate sports and sports in general, or your experience in the workforce growing up?

Craig Evans: 5:46

That's a good question. I would say twofold in that. The workforce from, you know, the fact that my dad kept me in it, but first and foremost, I think the biggest aspect of that was my father. My father constantly impressed on me, the need for the team around you and you can never get anything anywhere in life. If you're all by yourself, you've got to have a team around you. And you never leave your team stranded you'd never bail on them. So, then that was kind of compounded. I never forget, I was hurt early on and this was my senior year, I was looking at signing with a college my senior year and was having a good year, there was a tournament that we went and played at the University of Georgia, and I was injured pretty bad during that tournament. And I don't know, for whatever reason, you know, I wanted to check out, you know, I wanted to take time off. And I'll never forget my dad. You know, because I was asking him, Hey, why don't you come and pick me up from the camp, from this tournament, and I'll come home and I never forget, it's probably one of the best things he ever did. You know, he told me, you know, son, you're there with your team and you're staying with your team. Now, at the time, I didn't like it, because I was in pain. I didn't want to go, I didn't want to go sit on the sidelines and cheer my team on. I didn't want to walk across the campus in crutches and eat and but you know that was one of those things again, that was the reminder of you work through the tough times, but you only get there because of your team and the people around you. And that was one of the things. So I said yes, absolutely, Joey. Sports taught me a lot of that. But so much of that goes back to my dad, you know, my, he, other than my wife, my dad is probably one of my best friends. I talked to him multiple times a day. But he's had that big influence on my life to never give up and to always remember the people that push through with you and push you to be better.

Bruce Norris: 8:03

Workforce Housing, I have my own feelings about owning a home because the first day I owned a home and mowed my grass like right. I actually felt like I now was a man. I didn't have a dime worth of equity. The windows were painted shuts, I couldn't open them. But my name and my wife's name was on a grant deed. And that made me a man. So I wondered if that was, you know, if somewhere in the, in your background that you saw that look in people's face or what or had it yourself about I just made it into a category of special people?

Craig Evans: 8:49

Yeah, absolutely. I never forget the first, the first property that I bought. You know, my wife and I weren't married yet. We were just about to get married. And it was a little two bedroom townhome that we, duplex townhome that we bought. And and again, I remember that feeling of going in. And it being mine. Like you said, it didn't matter that it wasn't a million dollar home and that none of that mattered to me. It felt like a million dollars to me. And I never forgot that process. And I remember talking to my dad one time asking him because my dad built primarily custom homes. He was always building things that were the Parade of Homes and winning award for the best designs and the biggest. And I loved that right. That was great. It was fun. But I remember asking him, Did he enjoy that? You know? And is his statement to me. He says, you know, Craig, he said I enjoy providing for my family. And he said this is what I know because I came from big stuff, and he said, 'This is what I know. And this is what I do.' But he said, I've always thought it would be fun to build, and people actually really cherish what they're getting you know, there's a lot of times there's a difference. I mean, let's face it, when, when we're building custom homes, we're getting very nitpicky on every minut detail that we want everything perfect. Not that we don't want to build a good product and a workforce house. But it's quite the contrary, I mean, we're fighting, our purchasing department is constantly fighting to find better products for a better price so that we put more stuff into our houses. But I'll tell you, I never forgot that. And again, at that point, I had no desire to go into construction. And I was still running from the thought of the family business and figuring out who I was going to be in life and what I was going to do and but when I started our company back in 2012, when my wife and I started brainstorming about what do we want this to be? The aspect of workforce housing, I think at that time I, I said like blue collar housing, and my wife said, well, it feels like workforce, right? It's the people that work that we want to build houses for. And fast forward to 2017 when I opened Douglas Brooke, and we built our, our first house that we built under our Douglas Brooke brand, we sold that house, and I never forget, we sold it because I opened in like, February, March of 2017, we see owed and turn that house over, probably somewhere around August or September. That December, we got our first company Christmas card from that home, since showing us a picture of their Christmas tree in their first house. And that's one of those things that to this day, you know, there's, as we grown, there's a lot of finger pointing at what we do, and we're not perfect and when we made this mistake, or we didn't do this, but the things that make it worthwhile, and we keep driving for or when you sell that home, and it's that person that is the so excited about, as you said, having their name on a deed, it's their grass to cut. It's their plants to plant. It's their mulch to freshen up in their walls to paint whatever color they want to paint. It's theirs. It's not their landlords, it's not their moms, it's not their dads, it's theirs. And that means a lot to us than what we do.

Bruce Norris: 12:36

Absolutely. In 2006. We wrote the California Crash and it sold a lot of houses. And I had my residence left worth about 1.2 million at the time. And I knew is gonna go down by 500 grand, you know. And so I made a phone call to a guy that had a pretty cool rental. I said, you know, not your typical renter, I'll pay your in advance. He said that sounds great. He said, can I ask you a question? Do you have any pets? And there was a little pause. And I remembered why I owned a home? Because I don't want anyone ever get asked that question. So I sold that house for 700 grand, that decision cost me half a million dollars. And I wouldn't have made it every day after that. Because that's how important ownership was to me and is.

Craig Evans: 13:29

Right.

Bruce Norris: 13:30

So I think I think it's great that that's your, your, your business model is that you get somebody started. And you know where they go from there., you know, who knows, but that's getting your name on that first deed is life changing? It was to me, man, how many people cry when they mowed their lawn? I felt like a man, I felt well I interviewed looked at my net worth that was probably $10. But I was a homeowner. That's all that mattered to me.

Joey Romero: 14:02

To answer that question, Bruce, both of my kids, I make them mow tha lawn they cry.

Bruce Norris: 14:11

That's funny Joey. One more thing I wanted to, I just wanted to kind of cover because I don't I guess not too many people get this type of award you got CEO of the Year for the state of Florida. And I have a feeling that has to do with things that you did for the industry in the last 12 months. That wasn't usual. You know, you were chasing down trying to help the processes for your projects. But in the meantime, everybody that had to go through that same process benefited by what you did. So you think that you think that had something to do with that award being yours?

Craig Evans: 14:58

I do. You and I've talked about this. A few weeks ago, when I was sharing what I just learned. I didn't even know I was up for this award until somebody called me congratulating me. And that's an honor. But yeah, I believe a lot of that came from, you know, the last few years in 2021, we won the Investment Housing of the Year, again, the process of why we won that was because we focused on workforce housing, right? We were, we were trying to set standards of how do you build that in scale, right? Then 2022, we won Inc 5000, 270, fastest growing company, and 10th, fastest growing builder in the country. That didn't happen by happenstance, we worked hard as a company to get that. But then you're right, with all the things that kept kind of piling down the road, as far as things that were making it harder and harder to build and to function in the industry of construction. You know, I follow politics a lot. And I enjoy working in that world to try to create better provisions and better ways forward and better paths forward for our industry as a whole. There's probably a self serving desire to see some of the policies and things within our state change for our industry. I mean, I admit, that is a self serving process. But at the same time, I know that there's a lot of other builders that are mom and pop builders that physically don't have the time or the manpower, or the resources to fight some of those battles. And so in the back of my mind, yeah, there's a lot of that it's like, I'm not just fighting for our company, and what we do, we're fighting for our industry as a whole. So that the guy that's coming out of college and has built some stuff with his dad and wants to try to build two houses a year and start his company, so that he doesn't get swallowed up because of the regulations, not allowing him to be successful. You know, we're trying to work with our legislation to create avenues and to create policies that make it business friendly. And what we do in the state of Florida.

Bruce Norris: 17:21

Well, you made a big impact, not just for your company, as the process have improved, but all your competitors got the same assistance.

Craig Evans: 17:31

That's it. I will say privately, I've had quite a few phone calls from guys, especially with the House Bill that passed in May, we've had quite a few phone calls of people calling me from people that are in industry. And that's humbling. But it was needed, you know, it was needed, and, and what allows us to continue to move forward. And so I'm grateful that the legislation and the representatives of our state made wise decisions. You know, I talked earlier about making wise decisions. I'm glad they in my eyes, what they made was a wise decision.

Joey Romero: 18:05

You know, I'm obviously way biased on this but I kind of like to think, too, that Aaron, Aaron rubbed off on him a little bit too.

Craig Evans: 18:16

I think Aaron,yeah, that I don't want to get choked up on your but yeah, that, you know, Aaron and I pushed back hard a lot of days on each other as to what we wanted to see out of stuff. And I am that is one man that I am eternally grateful that was a part of my life. And to this day is still a part of my life and just representation and what he stood for. I am grateful to have known Aaron in my life. So,

Bruce Norris: 18:52

We had a we had a project that Aaron saw with one absolutely. meeting, after we had spent two or three years trying to get an approval for something other than what it was on for. And Aaron, with his personality, got every decision maker into one room for one meeting. And I had, the problem was I was on a main street Arlington is like the big Main Street and the lots were coming into the street and therefore we had to do all kinds of roadwork to the tune of like a half a million dollars. So that was the end of the value of the lots. And so Aaron gets all these decision makers together in about three minutes. They one of the guy says, Well, why don't you just you know, change the direction of where you come out of the lots then you don't even need a sidewalk because that's considered rural. And literally, we were done inside of a very tight timeframe. And we're able to build those houses starting immediately. And we had taken In three years, to get to a point where I was about ready to donate the dirt really was.

Craig Evans: 20:06

Well, I'll tell you my side of that story. I know that story because Aaron told me that three or four times, because he would as we were fighting through the process of trying to get the approval to get private provider inspections for septic over two years ago, septics went from a next day inspection to 12 weeks, 14 weeks down the road, the health department and DEP were embroiled in a battle statewide that who was going to own it, who was just chaos. And so we were having meetings with with state representatives, and we've had a couple of meetings with the governor's office and the governor himself and a few of them and a lot of stuff going on. And there were several times and Aaron would call me and poke the bear to tell me that story. And to remind me that he got it done in about three minutes. What was taking me so long?

Joey Romero: 21:02

So, Bruce, we're getting close to the end, getting close to the hour that you buried the lead a little bit in the beginning, but you know, I'll let you, you know, make a formal announcement. But, you know, what's Craig's, you know, he also buried leads in adding another company, so.

Bruce Norris: 21:21

Yeah, well, Craig Evans is going to be the new owner of The Norris Group. And I'm proud, I was able to make that decision. And I'm proud that he looked at our company and thought it was worthy of the Group of Companies. I'm excited also for The Norris Group employees because of his ability to, first of all build houses, but also because of his position in an industry, I think The Norris Group within a reasonable period of time will be one of the main lenders for the construction of single family homes. And it's interesting, because that's the path that when I came to, when I ended up starting The Norris Group, what we ended up doing was, at the time, the lending world literally lent to people that owned a house, the hard money business lent in second position to solve their delinquencies. That was the entirety of the business, they made no loans to investors. I started buying so many houses, I sent out somebody that worked for my company to door knock lenders. And Craig Hill was the only one that called me back. And I said, this is what I do. He talked to the owner of that company. And they made me my first three loans. As I'm signing the loan docs. I said, 'Does it bother you that you're loaning me more than I paid for the houses?' So, like, I was signing documents that were 65% of the value. So that went up appraise for 85 grand, but I had bought it for 35. So, he was kind of in shock, actually, but, and what was important is that he recognized this was a new opportunity and a new toy. And he got his boss to say okay to that, and I know, they were like on pins and needles, and I recognized, this guy can fund everything I can dream up. And so what I did is I paid payments for six months in advance on each of those loans. And all of a sudden, they went, Oh, this is a new customer. This is not a problem. This is a business owner. So I think that that same journey is going to happen. I think that the money sources that The Norris Group has will acclimate themselves to the construction business, because of who you are, I would want you to look at my building lot. And I also would want you to deal with any other problem another builder would have. So let's say you make a loan to a builder, who better to look at something that's wrong and say, Okay, this is how you solve it. Or you should never build on that lat we can't do a loan because you shouldn't build, you shouldn't own a lot in the first place. You know how to do all of that, you know, and so that's why I'm excited because I can see the direction headed in the right direction and I don't know that that's going to cease at anytime soon at all because Florida is going to attract more and more people. Florida is headed toward what California was doing in the 70s, in the 80s. Lots of migration of wealth, lots of migration of people, affordable homes, your median price is half of California's it's the national average. People can still show up and you know with the benefit of some interest rate cuts. It'll be very interesting to see how well the new house business goes but I think the builder stocks actually took quite a big upside today because they're already doing a lot more houses than they thought they were going to they were freaked out percent and the percentage of sales for new builds went from 15%, to about 33% as a national number. So they're like, holy cow, what happened? Well, all those people with two and 3% mortgages are camped out. See you all later.

Joey Romero: 25:15

So, what you're saying, sorry, go ahead.

Craig Evans: 25:17

Go ahead, Joey.

Joey Romero: 25:19

I was just gonna say jokes, what you're saying is that I, I should have asked for a bigger raise?

Craig Evans: 25:24

Oh, no.

Joey Romero: 25:27

According to Bruce, we're gonna blow up.

Bruce Norris: 25:30

Well, you're gonna be, you're gonna be busy man.

Craig Evans: 25:32

You know, Bruce, it's been interesting, just in the last two weeks with the drops in rates of where we're at. And, you know, I've told you some of the things that we've got coming from a lending perspective, very, very excited about that. And I don't want to make an announcement yet we're not over the hurdle, but with some of the stuff that's coming. And even just from where rates are on the street in the last two or three weeks, you know, our showings are increasing. I think we have 11 showings today. You know, where three weeks ago, because there was still a fear of rate and a kind of a freeze from rate fear. If we were having five to six showings a week, that was a pretty decent week there for about a 60 day period. And now we've got like 11 or 12 showings just today. You know, we're, that pace of things is picked up, which is so much of what you and I've talked about over the last 120 to 150 days about, you know, as soon as we see rates start to tick a little bit, we're gonna see a big swing there. But, with all that, you know, Bruce, I'm very honored and excited from January 1 , being the CEO of your company, of The Norris Group, I'm very excited about that, you know, we own Douglas Brook Legacy capital DBL capital, the integration of where The Norris Group is going to fall inside our capital company, and our was not inside, but underneath our family accompanies working hand in hand with what our capital company is going to do for our private equity fund. I'm very excited about the future and the possibilities of the tools that we will have at our discretion, to again, Joey told me this yesterday, to the tools that we'll have our discretion to be able to not only help our business, to be able to help other operators be more successful, and if their desire is to scale, our goal is to try to help them scale. So I'm excited, we've it has been a it's a busy year, the 2023, 2024 is gonna be just as busy. But I'm really excited about taking The Norris Group under our wing and continue to carry. We talked about it a lot, but you know, the legacy of The Norris Group, and Stephanie was reminding me, she said, you know, you realize you talk about that so much. And the name of our company of our parent company is Douglas Brooke legacy, you know, so it's, it's funny that everything we're shooting for is to create legacies and the whole reason that I want to buy your company is because of the legacy of what The Norris Group is about and what it stood for, and what I believe it can be going forward. So I'm honored that you asked me to even take a look at your company. And I'm very excited for January 1. I know we got a lot of stuff still over the next, you know, weeks or so between us. But that's the fun stuff that we work through. And we finalize all that stuff. But while I'm really excited about the days ahead for The Norris Group, being a part of our family.

Bruce Norris: 28:43

You know, the day that all that was cemented, I already knew you. I knew you understood the building business and I I could see The Norris Group would have a bright future. hurricane hits, and we got 100 houses you got to look at and within two days, it's they're all looked at, we know exactly where everything stands. And then you tell me says, Bruce, I gotta pull the plug out for about a week. Okay, what do you got to do? You got a boat, you're gonna make a couple dozen trips a day and save people's lives. Also islands they can eat and they can't drink anything. And I was like, Okay, I like this man. And I remember Sandy and I load up the of the van and drive stuff to the church and you realize, wow, these people, this is a community. This is pretty cool. I mean, because you've been through a fair amount of those people know what to do. There was a guy out like on the in the parking lot cooking people lunch. And, you know, you could just tell us heartwarming for people that had nothing left. They came to a hot meal because somebody cared enough. And they remembered they were thinking well, how much is it? It's nothing. You know, it's just like wow.

Craig Evans: 29:58

So just past Sunday, I'll tell you I was at church. And I had a couple of walk up to me didn't know didn't recognize them. And they, you know, introduced themselves and said, Hello. And we were talking and I can tell that it felt like they knew me.

Bruce Norris: 30:14

Yeah.

Craig Evans: 30:15

And I'm struggling, I'm thinking, you know, oh, goodness, where's my wife at? Why isn't she telling me who this person is? And finally, the gentleman realized that after, you know, 15, 20 seconds, and he says, You don't remember me. And you don't remember us? I said, I apologize. I don't. He said, You're the one that got us in your boat took us off the island. And he said, that's why we're here today. He said, You got us off. And he said, I remember you telling me where you went to church. And he said, So today is our first day at your church, and we want to see it. And he said, I, I was asking one of your pastors, were you here, I wanted to meet you. And at least they'll say thank you, because we had not eaten in four days when you found us. And so that was...

Joey Romero: 30:59

Good thing you went to church that day.

Craig Evans: 31:01

Right? That's yeah. That was a humbling moment to now a little over a year later, actually meet somebody that in those moments, I mean, you know, there was, there would be 15 20 people on my boat, and we're just cramming them all there to get them off, you know, and there's no way I would have remembered this, but to meet him and his wife was very, very humbling to see that person again. So, yeah, those builds community in you.

Bruce Norris: 31:28

Absolutely. Craig, thank you for spending this last hour with us. And I look forward to watching the future of The Norris Group grow and head into a new direction and the proud participant in whatever you need me to do.

Craig Evans: 31:47

As long as you keep coming and speaking with me, we'll be good.

Bruce Norris: 31:50

I love it. All right, Craig. Thanks a lot.

Craig Evans: 31:54

Thank you.

Bruce Norris: 31:54

All right.

Narrator: 31:56

For more information on hard money, loans and upcoming events with The Norris Group, check out thenorrisgroup.com. For information on passive investing with trust deeds, visit tngtrustdeeds.com.

Craig Evans: 32:11

The Norris Group originates and services loans in California and Florida under California DRE License 01219911, Florida Mortgage Lender License 1577, and NMLS License 1623669. For more information on hard money lending, go www.thenorrisgroup.com and click the Hard Money tab.