Innovative Real Estate with Three Squared, Inc.
As specialists in efficient residential and commercial prefabricated design, Leslie Horn, Breck Crandell, and Jill Ramirez of Three Squared, Inc. share their greatest insights, tips, and case studies from their years of experience in the industry. They'll be giving you their best advice through, trainings, guest features, and Q&A segments so you can turn your innovative vision to a reality.
Innovative Real Estate with Three Squared, Inc.
5 Questions to Stop Asking Your Architect (With Love)
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When wanting to build there is understandably a lot of questions you'll want to know. However buildings are complex structures... especially when using alternative methods of construction. That's why in this episode Breck breaks down 5 commonly asked questions, so you can be better prepared to begin your project.
Here's a glimpse of what you'll learn from us in this episode:
- How estimating works in the design process: general estimates vs. precise estimates
- How to get a pre-approval before investing in an architect.
- Everything that goes into an architectural stamp of approval.
- Why rushing a project is never a good idea.
- Breck's project highlight of the week: The Detroit Shipping Company!
For the full show notes for Episode 18 click here!
Check out these supplementary episodes of the Innovative Real Estate Podcast:
1) FAQ: How We Collaborate With Other Architects
2) Why You Need An Architect (...Especially If You Think You Don't)
Ready to move forward with your project? Contact us here and we will put you in contact with the right member of our team.
Make sure to follow us on Instagram, Facebook, and LinkedIn to stay up to date on new project releases, trainings, and more.
Welcome to the Innovative Real Estate Podcast with your hosts Leslie Horn, Brett Crandall, and Claire Olilla. We're here to make your life easier as a real estate developer and teach you everything we've learned about designing and building innovative homes, multifamily, and mixed use structures. On this podcast, we'll be giving you our best advice, trainings, and QA segments so you can learn from our years of experience and make your innovative vision a reality. What's up, everyone? Welcome back to another episode on Innovative Real Estate. And we are thrilled that you're here, and we are equally as thrilled to be kicking off some new projects lately, last week and this week, and we've got a couple more landing here soon this month. And on that note, if you are listening to these podcasts and you would like to get on our schedule for this year, I would highly recommend as you're tuning into this episode to dive on into the description below and just fill out a contact form so that you can connect with our team and we can get you on the books because there's a lot going on. We want to make sure that you can finish your project on time. And very relevant to this episode, we are diving into an episode that is lightheartedly recommending five questions not to ask your architect. I'm anticipating a very passionate episode here from Mr. Breck. But um we just wanna we want to give you all the inside scoop before even getting started, because there's so much that goes into just making a building happen. And based off of our experience, we know what works and what doesn't, and how you can best prepare for your project, how you can make things as easy as possible. That is our biggest wish for you. So without further ado, we're gonna kick things off with our project highlight of the week. Rhett Crandall, take it away.
unknownWoo!
SPEAKER_01An oldie but a goody. Actually, uh a fun fact: this was my first project that I was involved with at Three Squared Inc. was the shipping co, which remains one of our largest and um most widely known projects. It is a 10,000 square foot multi-use building. There are five restaurants. Each one basically serves as like a static food truck, um, you know, and half of a container. All five restaurants are outstanding, super good food. I go there all the time to eat lunch. And it includes a couple of bars, a coffee shop, a podcast studio, a screen printing shop, an art gallery, an outdoor performance venue. Um half the building is indoors, half the building is outdoors, so it gets year-round use. And every time I go to the Detroit Shipping Company, it is absolutely packed. The only downside of the Detroit Shipping Company is the amount of pedal pubs that show up at its doorsteps all day, every day. And it's crazy. So it's a really, really cool project right in the heart of Detroit. Um it's it's an incredible space to go and see. It uses 21 shipping containers, um, which 3Squared Inc. modified and installed. Uh, we collaborated with an architect on that one. The building was already designed by the time we came in. And um, we actually ended up after we put the containers in, we also did the entire steel package. So all of the stairways, walkways, the entire roof over the main structure was all three squared ink. Uh, we redesigned it to keep it on time and under budgets, and its doors have been open since 2019, and it's been successful ever since. It looks like they're probably adding on and building more of them as we speak. So exciting stuff. And one of our favorites, the Detroit Shipping Company in the heart of Detroit, Michigan.
SPEAKER_02I would like just to add, it was 10,000 square feet, and we were able to install and/or well erect the building in 1.5 days.
SPEAKER_01It happens fast. The material is right before your eyes, and it's all logistics of having those cranes ready and scheduling those trucks to arrive one after the other. So we just pick them right up off the truck, set them down, and on to the next one. Incredible project.
SPEAKER_02It was.
SPEAKER_00Thank you. Yay. The D Detroit Shipping Company. It's our one of our neighbors too from my model center. It is. And Breck did mention on that project we collaborated with an architect. So if that's something that you've got questions about or you're considering that for your project, then I recommend checking out the it's episode 16 that we did. It's an FAQ session on how we collaborate with other architects. So if you want to learn more about that, go check out that episode. We will have our marketing intern, Carly, link it in the bio or link it in the description. Thank you, Carly. And uh we'll we'll move on to the rest of this episode. So we've got five questions lovingly, lovingly not to ask the architect. And we're gonna set you up for success so that you do not have to ask these questions. And uh we'll get going here. So Breck and Leslie, very first question, not to ask your architect, drum roll. How much does it cost? How much is it gonna cost?
SPEAKER_01I don't know. I don't know how much it costs. Stop asking me. I have no clue. I stop asking.
SPEAKER_00But Breck, how many of these have you built? You must have some sort of idea, right?
SPEAKER_01Of course, of course. Um, one of an architect's superpower is the longer you exist, the better you are at cost estimating. I can look at a building on a street and be within five to 10% of an accurate cost estimate of how much that costs. A house, a bathroom renovation, a hundred-story building, like I could look at that and tell you how much that costs. When you ask me how much something costs out the gate before we have even drawn a single line, I have no idea. I don't know what your intentions are. I don't know what bells and whistles you have. I don't know what the site conditions are, or if you need a road or a driveway, if you need a basement, or if you need a slab on grade. I don't know if you have utilities to your site. Like all of these things cost exorbitant amounts of money. And there are so many moving parts to understanding the true costs that go into things. Like I can tell you what our existing projects cost, and I can give you pretty accurate estimates on all that went into those buildings. And there are two costs that you have to consider here. There's the cost of the building itself, and then there are soft costs. Leslie, can you quickly describe what the difference is between those two costs?
SPEAKER_02Yeah, the actual hard construction cost, hard cost is what it costs to build your building. Um, so you know, everything from foundation all the way up through the keys and the doors. So that's that's the hard cost. What most um developers and home builders uh don't really calculate and pencil out are the soft cost, cost of engineering, architecture, um, utilities to the site. Do you need to have like what Rex said, do you need a road, a long driveway? Do you need a septic and well system or is it already installed? So these are some of the things, site security, um, soft cost, project management, soft cost. I mean, there's a lot of things that are um soft costed that you know adds up to 20 to 30 percent of your construct hard construction cost, um, you know, permits, things like that. So they can they can um increase your budget by another up to 30 percent. Some most of the time in residential, 20%. If it's a little bit more complicated project, I'm gonna say close to 25 to 30 percent.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, and the cost its role is uh is really based on uh on a couple of items. I mean, it's like how fast is it being built is a huge thing, how big or how small is it? And then what's the quality of materials? I mean, we have seen, and you if you listen to this podcast, you've heard us talk about this before. We have seen two identical spaces finished out with different interior designs, and they have cost a difference between like $120 a square foot and like $450 a square foot between those two spaces. Uh, there's a vast difference there. Um, the other thing that I want to point out is that we we generally think of pricing as a cost per square foot. That's how everyone thinks about cost in this industry, which is really frustrating for me as an architect because not all spaces are equal. And it's kind of unfair to think about a cost per square foot of a building. I understand that that's a way to quantify it so that everybody understands. But what you got to think about is that there are expensive spaces in buildings and there are cheap spaces and buildings, and they're not built equally. A garage does not cost the same as a commercial kitchen. Obviously, we know that. So when people ask me, like, what's cost per square foot? It's like, of what? What are we building? How how many dishwashers do we have? How many dryers do we have? How many sinks? How many, you know, there's a lot that goes into this. So until we know what you're building, and until we know who you are and what your expectations of quality are, and what your expectations of timeline are, it's really hard for us to give you even an arm's length estimate of costs. But again, I can point at a building across the street and tell you that was, you know, it was probably a $450,000 house pretty accurately.
SPEAKER_00So, Breck, at what point in the process do people have a general estimate versus a more accurate estimate of what their project is going to be?
SPEAKER_01Now that's a super good question and something that we can work with. So, I mean, because we are architects and designers and we do this a lot, we have a lot of references. We have a lot of projects that we can point to and say, this is how much this costs. Therefore, we have an idea for you. So we can we can generally estimate things as we design them until we have a design, it's tough. So I, you know, I've got clients that really nitpick me and they're like, Well, if I if I did this kind of countertop instead of this kind of countertop, how much money would I save? And I'm like, I mean, I don't know, man. Like, we gotta we gotta like talk about this and figure that out. Like, it's not that finite, but broad brush strokes, we can say, like, this fits your budget or this does not, by the time we have a design. Once we finish the construction drawings, we can bid it out to general contractors who actually get hard pricing for every single aspect of the building. And at that point, you have a real number that reflects not only material availability, but the labor market of actually installing these items because your electrician has given you a cost to set up your panel and pole wires for this specific house.
SPEAKER_02We have many clients who say, Hey, I've only been pre-approved for 400,000. That's all in. How what can I get? You know, what's my house going to cost me?
SPEAKER_01Yeah, no, that's that's a great point. And actually, we prefer for people to have a budget before they come to us because there's nothing worse than designing a house that is impossible for you to finance, like that's or a building, you know, multi-family, multi-unit, larger commercial structure that you can't finance or that the banks will not support because you didn't have a budget to start. Like it's really important to actually have a budget that we can back into because if you tell me what your cap is, I can pretty accurately describe to you what you can and cannot afford. Like that's that's where like we actually become very useful to you to meet your budget.
SPEAKER_00Yeah, I love that. Much more helpful to kind of tie up this question with a bow. Much more helpful to come in with a budget. That's why we always recommend, you know, if you're gonna have a construction loan, get a pre-approval first so you know realistically what you have to work with. And then we can back into that design from there.
SPEAKER_01If you ask me how much does it cost, I'm gonna ask you, how much money do you have? That's the logical response.
SPEAKER_00That's it. Amazing. Well, then from here, some people come in and they're like, hey, listen, here's question number two, not to ask your architect, can I buy floor plans off you?
SPEAKER_01No, stop asking me that.
SPEAKER_00This is supposed to be loving or lovingly, lovingly.
SPEAKER_01I'm just uh, you know, gloves are off today. I just gotta be honest. Like, that's like the number two comment on TikTok, on Instagram is where can I buy plans? Like, where do you live? What are your conditions? What what what climate are you building in? What country are you in? Like, there are so many questions. A building without context is not a building at all. So when people sell floor plans on the internet, they're selling you a problem that you need to solve. And you're not going to be able to solve that problem yourself because what happens underneath a building is just as important as the building itself. Actually, building a building is the easy part. It's setting up everything to make that building happen that is the difficulties. So, where does your water come from? Where do the toilets go after you use the bathroom? Where do you get your heating and cooling energy? Are you getting it from solar panels, from electricity, from gas lines? What are your foundations and how are those set into the ground? Like I have seen a lot of these buildings that are like turnkey solutions that are pushed hard on social media, and you can just like go to Amazon and buy a $100,000 accessory dwelling unit. Great. How do you get that unit off of the truck? Have you thought about that? Like when it shows up on your front door and you spend $100,000 on it, who picks it up off the truck and what are you setting it onto? And then how do your utilities come to and from that building? Like that is doubling the cost of that $100,000 unit. It is now a $200,000 accessory dwelling unit. And you needed to hire a professional in order to figure out all those middle steps. So I am I am flattered when people like our designs on the internet and want to buy them. We got to understand somebody else is paid for that. Somebody else is paid for us to work with them and to come up with a unique style and direction for what they do and for how they live or for how their particular development needs to fit into the context of their neighborhood. And that's specific to that client. So to ask me to just buy those, it's like, well, you want to pay for all this work that somebody else paid for? Like that seems a little, a little off base. So instead, we say, we can use that as a starting point. And that's great to have a point of reference when you're starting a new project. However, no matter how hard you try to make an identical building twice, it's going to change. It's going to change based on so many parameters because you're probably not building on the exact same lot twice.
SPEAKER_02Mostly Bracken, um, just I'm going to add on to that just Ted, because I've learned a lot through this process. Um, and why? Because I was one of those people who thought, oh, we can just sell or, but it's um when you stamp a drawing or when you file for the permit, you, the architect is actually guaranteeing that that set of drawings is number one, met all the codes to that municipality, to that single lot, which has codes attached to it. So, you know, some clients will come to us and they want, well, we want four houses of the same design. Can you do that? Oh my gosh, absolutely. So the first house is going to be our regular rate, but this houses number two, three, and four um are site adaptation fees, which means we're gonna give you like it's typically 50, 60 percent of what the original house was. We still have to know where the lines are coming from. We still have to stamp that drawing, and and we can actually get rid of um a lot of the duplicate work that, you know, we don't have to charge you for the duplicate work that's already been done. So we will come down in price um for our for our fees and such, but we're still legally obligated with that stamp and we're liable with that stamp. So there's a site adaptation fee. It'll bring the cost down significant for the second and third and fourth and fifth. And we have one client, I think, who has six houses. So we've been able to really uh work with them side by side.
SPEAKER_00All right. Nice. Yeah, thanks for adding that in there. And uh one thing that's come up for me as you guys are sharing this stuff is the reason we even have to make this episode today is because of how many people are sharing just good like garbage information on the internet. And unfortunately, like when you don't know how to build a house or you you're on your first development, where else are you gonna turn? You're doing your research and there's all this conflicting information. So I just can't express enough how happy I am that you are tuning into this episode and you can hear from us and learn from this and uh really be leagues ahead of the rest in how to properly plan. So, with that in mind, uh actually, Leslie, where you left off on stamping drawings, this leads perfectly into question number three, which is Breck, my architect. I already have this design that I bought online. Actually, my brother designed it for me on a program. Can you stamp this? And we can just skip step one design. You can just stamp it, and then we can, it'll be really fast, right? Really easy.
SPEAKER_01No. No, I will not stamp your drawings. I will not stamp your friends, brother's, boyfriend's, cousins' drawings either. Uh, I will not stamp drawings that someone who does cheap or free work because they're really excited to have their first design come into the real world because they're a college student and uh you knew them and they designed this crazy thing. I will not stamp their drawings either. I will not stamp another architect's drawings either, unless I have been a part of the process, unless they have been thoroughly reviewed. And here's why. Because a stamp is a legally binding contract. When our stamp goes on a project, we are legally responsible for whatever happens to that project from that point forward. If a brick falls out of a wall and hits little Timmy on the head, guess who's getting a phone call? It's the person whose stamp is on that drawing, is probably the first place to look. When lawyers need someone to target to make money off of a lawsuit, guess who the first person is that they call? The person whose stamp is on the drawings. There's a reason why I don't stamp structural drawings. A structural engineer stamps those drawings. If I draw drawings and give them to a structural engineer, they won't stamp them either. They will review them thoroughly, likely redraw that with a little bit more emphasis and clarity on the things that are really pertinent to that design, and then they will stamp it. So bringing drawings to us just to get a stamp is not a practice that should exist. I know that people do that, and that scares me to death, honestly. Like they are not abiding by what makes us architects, which is protecting the health, safety, and welfare of the general public. If you are just stamping anybody's drawings, you really don't care about the health, safety, and wherefell of the general public because you haven't you haven't been a part of that process. Do you really truly understand what is in those drawings and how it got to that point? If we're involved from the very start to the very end, which is how our team works, like I don't draw every single thing that our that our team puts out. I'm with them every step of the way. And so I know that the information is there, and then I thoroughly review that at the end of the process and then I stamp. But we will not stamp things that just come to us out of nowhere. It would require us to be involved throughout the process or to review these things. So if you come to us with a design, we're happy to use that as a starting point. It will likely change quite a bit from the point that we get it to the point that we actually sign and seal it. But if we're going to be responsible for the outcome of that building, then we need to make sure that we are overseeing the quality and consistency of details and information throughout that document set.
SPEAKER_02Correct, it kind of makes me giggle. Um, one of the last drawing sets that somebody asked you to use, um, do you remember the garage?
SPEAKER_01The garage where none of the cars could have opened their doors at all anywhere. Yeah. I do remember that.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. So, you know, and I think that was um, I know the person bought that those plans off the internet, and the internet said that it's, you know, use these plans for your house.
SPEAKER_01And oh anyway. Whatever bad you think it gets, I have seen worse. That's all I can say. So can I stamp your drawings? No, I will stamp my drawings. How about that? That sounds great.
SPEAKER_00Love that. And also on the topic of the well. being of the people living in this house. How about question number four, which is, can I build it myself?
SPEAKER_01Maybe, most likely not, but stop asking me that. It is that is honestly um that is something that we get all of the time here at Three Squared. I don't understand why. It's because we do something that's unique and different. And a lot of general contractors don't want to learn something different. So it's hard to find a builder for unique projects sometimes. And everybody's built, you know, everybody's busy and you want to save money. And I, you know, every time I talk to you know clients who have this position, it's like, what's your experience? Have you built multiple houses? Have you built multifamily buildings before? And every time they're like, well, I know how to hang drywall and how to paint. And I'm like, yeah, so does everyone else that has access to YouTube. That does not make you special. It also does not make you a specialist in what you do. And if you watch people who really know what they're doing work, it's incredible the discrepancy between DIY labor and professional labor. And then again, I mean like professional labor and union labor, like I'm considering that all in one, but it's like people who are trained to do what they do and are paid a specific wage because they do it well. That's one, that's one way to think about this. Now when we build, we build strange houses out in the middle of nowhere and there are very few to no building regulations and you have built a couple of houses, fine, maybe, but why don't you ask your bank if they will let you build your own house because oftentimes you're not even allowed to be your own builder. That actually scares banks to death because we have seen I have seen glowing electrical panels because it was so it was wired so incorrectly that it was like actually like heating the steel up to be like red hot. Like that's the DIY labor that's in the back of our minds. And when your bank's like yeah I'm going to lend you money so that you can build a garbage product yourself like that's horrifying to them and they're likely not going to lend you that money. Very few entities will lend you that money. That's that's like market number two. And market number three is if you have a general contractor, everybody wants to be like, well, can I do all the finishes and do all the outlets and pull the wires and hang the light fixtures and the plumbing fixtures and all that stuff. Fine, even if you are skilled, even if you can do all of that work, even if you're qualified to do that work, well your general contractor is going to have something to say about that because what is he making money on? How is he getting paid? Because he gets paid you got to think of a general contractor as a buyer and a scheduler. That's what they do. General contractors aren't the ones swinging hammers. General contractors are the ones hiring X, Y, and Z to do these things and they take a percentage of that labor as like payment to them. So every time you're like, well I want to do this or I want to do that it's like well you're taking money directly out of the general contractors. You're probably frustrating him and he's probably less likely to work with you on this project knowing that he's only doing half of a project.
SPEAKER_02Well and it's true and especially if it's one house the GC, he or she, I want to add, um, is is really going to be very mindful of of what their scope of work is a little bit different when you're dealing with four or five houses uh as a developer small developer or uh but it you know there is a breaking point and there is a line in the sand.
SPEAKER_01So thanks Brad Absolutely and I mean when I get asked can I build it myself my first question and response is are you insured, licensed and bonded? No, then no you can't build it yourself.
SPEAKER_00Stop asking me that I love it. And I love how you touched on too like you might be skilled. You might be totally capable of doing it but there are legalities involved and also just considerations because it's it's a team it's a team effort. And so again all of this information is in your best interest to take with it what you will and uh and you'll go far. So question number five we're gonna leave off here with this last question which is three squared I hear it takes about a year generally speaking for most projects you know start to finish good timeline. But could you do it faster?
SPEAKER_01Yes if you want to pay us double that's that's kind of joking. I mean it's stop asking me if I could do it faster. And I I stopped asking people what's your timeline of the project because everyone says yesterday yeah okay that's not a realistic uh question and honestly I have never seen a project start and finish in less than 12 months. I've never seen it happen. Projects move as fast as money moves. That's hands down that's that's the quick answer. Like if you have all of this in cash sitting in piles in your garage then maybe we could do it faster. But it's not me that's going to make it happen faster. Like I can get your drawings done as fast as you want, sometimes at your expense like when you rush things mistakes are made. That's a given. So like if you are just pushing or firing on all cylinders and you don't have time to stop or think about detail oriented questions, then you're gonna pay for that later because every second that we spend planning things out will save us an hour in actually drawing these things will save you 10 hours in building things that make mistakes or that didn't make sense because we were rushing through it to begin with. So there's one consideration is like the faster you push, the sloppier things get, the more mistakes are going to get made. You know, general contractors oftentimes are incentivized to finish things faster because if they finish um ahead of schedule, then they get to pocket that extra cash. And so they will cut corners like crazy to make sure that the project's done so that they can be completely out of the picture and then take home that money but you see the issue there. Like they are incentivized to make mistakes because they're moving so much faster. It's the same thing when we talk about drawings like we can get those drawings done but like at what expense the other consideration here is um you know as as fast as things can move in a drawing state like we're our team's pretty quick like I mean most of the time we are ahead of the game and we are waiting on outside information. So whether it's the clients making a decision whether it's their pro forma penciling out whether we're waiting on financing to close on projects which is like half of our large projects right now it's because people didn't understand cost when they came to us at the first point. But as as fast as we can move there are points in the process where we're waiting on someone else where you cannot control the timeline of other people and there are so many points in a project that that people don't understand until they actually go through it. Like can you tell the building inspectors when they're going to show up and approve your building can you tell your environmental department when you're in wetlands can you tell your building department to hurry on up and finish reviewing my drawings when they have 50 other projects on a stack on their desk like no you're gonna play the hurry up and wait game. And so just be patient work with us it's gonna happen when it happens and you know and it's gonna be quality if we spend the time up front to actually like work through these projects if you just if you just expect that it's gonna happen and oh man I mean we get calls where they're like uh I want to start in June and I want to be done in August and you're like you're insane. You're an insane human like that's not possible. There's no way we could do that. And I stopped taking on projects we stopped taking on projects that have ridiculous timelines because we already know out the gate you are not a realistic human being and you're not going to be a good partnership in taking on these projects because you came out the gate with unrealistic expectations and you're just demanding things that are impossible. And until reality starts to like actually weigh in on you and coach you on how things are actually going to happen, um, you know, you're gonna be confused. People think that they are free in the United States of America try to build a building go ahead be my guest you will learn very quickly that there are powers that surpass you at every step of the way and it's going to take longer than you think it will.
SPEAKER_02I was one of those people um honestly even building this model center you know there was um this was not the first choice of land for the model center um the first choice was over on K-line um and I thought oh good we'll just get the plans together we'll stamp them we'll move them over here and actually had a building plan for somewhere else but um my big aha moment was when my when architect this was pre-breck Crandall but when when Steve said sure Leslie we can we'll get this done as fast as we can I'm like oh that's great so good in my mind I'm thinking we'll have our plans in like you know three months and start building in four well my naivety um and ignorance and I say that with great love and kindness because this is how we all think we don't realize that there's a zoning or code review or there's a you know we weren't even zoned correct for K-line, which is why I'm like, oh well shoey what land do we have that we can that is zoned correctly that we can skip off two to three months because actually that's what at the time it was going to cost two to three months just to change one of the the first zoning and then there was a second zoning that we had to go through which would have added another like 45 days and um you know my architect at the time he was like we're gonna do it as fast as we can and he was not lying he was all he knew what I was saying but he his response was perfect. So that's kind of like our canned response we're gonna get it done as fast as we can but there's other parties and there's other you know you want to get a side setback variance or parking variance I mean that's just gonna take additional time.
SPEAKER_00So there's a lot of things out of our hands indeed indeed thank you for sharing that personal story Leslie always good to time travel back before we know what we know now.
SPEAKER_01All the lessons all the tuition are you kidding yeah I mean I'm in the same boat Leslie I mean I'm I am planning uh I have designed and I'm preparing to build my own house and boy I I am getting a taste of my own medicine and like it is it is costing me more it's taking longer it's every step of the process has been you know delayed or you know a different challenge and it's just it's really humbling to have to go through this process myself. And I know that you've done this Leslie because you've developed multiple projects um and so you know these are the realities these are coming from the very people who do this for a living um trying to trying to coach you uh I know I was a little spicy today but it it all comes from a point of love because we're just trying to arm you with all the information possible because you listen to these podcasts before you call us to start a project you are so far ahead of all of the other clients who come to us because you've been armed with the knowledge that has been embedded in our heads year after year after year of working in this industry because it can be frustrating it can take a lot of time and a lot of energy and the better you are prepared with knowledge and information going into this, the more successful, the faster, the cheaper your project is going to be lastly stop asking me why I don't wear round spectacles and a black turtleneck sweater because I will never wear that and I'm gonna show up in a berserk t-shirt and paint stained pants when I show up to your meeting and that's okay because all architects are different.
SPEAKER_00Amen truly truly here that's amazing hey man you are going to take that painted you know jeans off and put on some other meeting today I'm gonna have to dress up a little bit and the Detroit planning department is stopping by today for some um veteran housing um conversations so um yeah and even if not I'd still be proud of you love it all right well closing thoughts here question number one how much does it cost you will be much better prepared if you come into this with how much money do you have to work with and we can back into your design from there. Question number two can I buy floor plans well you can not really from us because we value integrity and we value uh creating buildings that are fitting within the context of the neighborhood and that makes sense and that's really the only way your project is probably going to get the built anyways even if you do buy floor plans online it's probably going to cost you more than you think it's gonna be because there's a ton of hidden costs that people are hiding from you straight up they're just hiding it from you and tricking you. That one cuts deep we take that one personally. All right question number three can you stamp my drawings or can you stamp my brother's sister's friends' drawings no with love we will not and there's many reasons why but it's in your own best interest number four can I build it myself maybe if you're licensed bonded insured go for it absolutely otherwise probably not and we just we want to be realistic with you probably not for all the reasons that we mentioned before. And finally question number five can you do it faster project's gonna move as fast as money moves and as fast as you're able to make decisions and as fast as the external forces that be can also move. So a lot of moving parts we're gonna do our best and we will always get it done as fast as we can anything final notes Leslie or Breck you want to wrap up this episode with I'm good. Breck has set his peace yeah I think we're good. This was a good one breck had some things to get off his chest today. All of this is with love all of this is to set you up for success and help you create the best project possible and have as much fun as possible along the way we always say we want to stay best friends with all of our clients throughout the entire process and uh without further ado I'll just reiterate if you want to get going on your project this year, please, please fill out the contact form in the description below we we want to value your time and we want to help you out as much as we can but we can only do that if you're not waiting to the last minute on things and we've got enough time to properly plan. So go ahead you'll have a one-on-one conversation with our team once you fill that out we'll connect you with the right member of our team based off of your project type and the description that you give us and we can't wait to hear from you. And uh final thing we'll also link some other episodes below that you can check out that are relevant to what we talked about on today's episode in case you want a taste of some other trainings and case study examples and tips from our Three Squared team. So thank you so much for tuning in and we will catch you on the next episode.
SPEAKER_02Thanks guys. Thank you.
SPEAKER_00We hope you enjoyed this episode and if you found it so valuable you want to connect with us one-on-one, click the link in the description to tell us all about your project so we can help you get started. And to get notified on the next episode here on Innovative Real Estate, go ahead and subscribe to the podcast on iTunes so you never miss a beat. Get out there, put today's advice into action and we will see you in the next episode