Growing Places
Growing Places
Dusten Hendrickson: Mailbox Money
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SMGA's Tyler Tordsen and Chris Fields sit down with Dusten Hendricksen, CEO of Mailbox Money, to talk about about small town real-estate and quality workforce housing.
Welcome back to Grote Place, the podcast for all things that come development in the Stu Metro region. I'm your host, Tyler Tortson, today with Chris Fields from our Two Metro team. And we got Dustin with Mailbox Money. Thanks for joining us today. Hey thanks a lot. Thanks for having me. I appreciate it. So we'd love to get into the background. I want to know, I've I've known you from the mailbox money side of stuff too, but what get us into your roots a little bit. Are you from South Dakota and give me your background?
SPEAKER_02Okay, well, I was born in Maryland, South Dakota, so ri right near D DC, Tacoma Park, Maryland. That's where I grew up for five years. My dad wanted to go to college, so he picked SDSU because it was very affordable and it had electrical engineering. And my mom's from the area, so we moved to Brookings when I was five.
SPEAKER_03Made sense.
SPEAKER_02Then I yeah, then we gra I he graduated and got a job with Excel Energy, or it used to be NSP. And then I basically graduated. I went through the school system in Sioux Falls, graduated from Roosevelt in '98. Then I moved back to Brookings to go to STSU and never left.
SPEAKER_01Right on.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, this is a great, great state. I'm uh I'm also a transplant, although I was a little older when I got to South Dakota, but loving it so far.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. There's a lot to there's a lot to like about this area.
unknownYeah.
SPEAKER_01Well, there's been a tremendous amount of growth. Obviously, we're in the growth business. Uh no, you are too, and it's been fun to see uh kind of your guys' model and the partnerships and uh like some of these apartments too that are like popping up. And we just did help the ribbon cutting crooks for crooks reserve. Uh the the buildings up in Brandon, they've been part of our kind of bus tour drive-bys for the last uh year or two. How did some of that model kind of come to be?
SPEAKER_02Tell us a little bit of the history on so I started in 2003 developing units, and we developed a twin home in in Brookings, and college students moved in right away. They were first tenants. When we kept building more and more, and we noticed a trend, it was always young professionals or college students. So we kept designing the model for them, and we kept going through a lot of different iterations, and I eventually learned that I liked higher density multifamily better than custom homes or starter homes or any of the other things that I was doing, and it was very affordable, market rate affordable. Most everyone could afford the rent, and there's a place for it, it's much needed, efficient uh construction or efficient apartments are needed everywhere, and they continue to be needed more and more. And we just kept scaling the model and making it bigger and bigger and bigger. And then I added some amenities on a few of our bigger projects, and those projects that we realized they didn't those amenities didn't go over that well, and people don't use them very much, and they don't really drive the price of the rent up to justify them. So we figured we'd strip out the amenities even further and reduce rents, and what we're finding is that people almost always will take a reduced rent over amenity. Sure.
SPEAKER_01Well, more disposable income for them to get the gym membership that they want or go somewhere with a pool or whatever they may whatever they may have or need to. I think that totally makes sense.
SPEAKER_03Wild water west.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, if you're a swimmer or you go to the gym, you tend to want to go to a place where there's other swimmers or there's other gym rats. So most people that do work out, they don't want to work out in the facility that the apartment provides, anyways.
SPEAKER_01And so your first projects um geez, about almost 20 years ago you said, were in Brookings.
SPEAKER_02Yep, 2003 was the first one we did.
SPEAKER_01And you guys are in a couple different states now too, are you? Yep. Okay. Like tell us about the footprint.
SPEAKER_02So the footprint is eastern South Dakota over to Rochester, Minnesota, and then south to Des Moines. We've got some land in Des Moines, a couple of parcels, one in Ancony, one in Norwalk. We really like the Rochester area because it's Mayo Clinic is there, and there's a lot of people are scared of developing in Minnesota because they're all over the news right now. Pretty negative news coverage. But we find it's a great state. It has a lot of income and it's kind of a lot of noise more than anything.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, Rock County, Minnesota, uh just recently, a couple years ago, added to the Sioux Falls MSA. So I think there are people in Rock County, Minnesota that wish they were South Dakota. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, probably the whole western side of the state. Yeah, I'm sure you could do some annexation or some move some of the boundaries a little bit. But yeah. So I'm curious on the name too, mailbox money. Like where did that when did that come to be? And what's it seems like everybody's got an origin for kind of the name and the logo, too, right?
SPEAKER_02I just started talking about what we do to one of my buddies, and I was talking about the monthly income you get for owning apartments, and he said, Oh, it's mailbox money. And I said, That's a cool name. I'm gonna steal it, I'm using it. So it came from just a conversation where the guy suggested we provide mailbox money. So I said, Yeah, that's what we do.
SPEAKER_03That's awesome.
SPEAKER_01And so with the model like that, that's an opportunity for I mean, I see some of the Facebook activity as well to uh obviously I know you guys are involved in like over in the Foss Fields area, you guys are kind of all over the map right now, yeah. Keeping busy uh on the side of the state. Uh but tell us about how I mean an opportunity for folks that come in at at different levels, qualified investors, to come be a part of a project. So maybe if they're not this isn't in their wheelhouse, they're successful in their own business, have other things, looking for investment opportunities, you guys are able to kind of help showcase them, kind of help walk them through it and and make it easy for them.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Um we can also provide a lot of education too, so we provide the reasoning for why we do things. Most people though that get into it with that invest with us, it's because they want tax advantages or they want to own real estate passively and they don't want to do anything. So we find that most people don't really care about the education and they're in it more for the taxes. And they they want to own real estate, but they don't want to do all the work. They don't want to have the responsibility of signing on the note or the liability of getting sued. So we remove all that. It's it's very passive.
SPEAKER_03So explain to me a little bit more in detail, in depth about the model. So you guys help fund it. There's a c contracting company that builds it. Who manages everything once it's all said and done?
SPEAKER_02So our group is the asset manager, so it's it's us mailbox money and Veldco. Veldco does the the general contracting, the construction, but they he's also a very key partner in the overall group that asset manages it. So we we asset manage it, we hire our PME to do the property management on the majority of our units. Um but the structure is quite simple. We come in and we buy the land, we put the land under contract, buy the land, we start looking for term sheets from banks, whatever bank wants to fund it, we sign the term sheet, that's the most competitive. And we're always looking out for the interests of our investors because we are also investors in the project as well. And then once everything's dialed, we start raising the capital, and then once the capital's raised, we can close on the construction note and we can start the construction process. Then that construction process takes anywhere from nine months to get our first building in the ground to 18 months to finish out the last building. And while that's happening, we're moving people into the project or into each building.
SPEAKER_03Oh wow.
SPEAKER_02And then when it's complete, it's most it's usually leased up. A large majority of the leasing is done, and then we just have to move the tenants into the last building. And then we stabilize it so we start moving rents up to market rate. We usually give a little discount when it the construction's going on, so those leases are a little lower. And then as the the rents move up, then income is starting to get produced, and that income, once we hit a certain debt service coverage ratio that the bank requires, that income goes back to the investor. And the investor gets paid before w us as GPs or owners get paid. So then those investors get paid back, and then are they out of it from there then or are they they're they're saying they're willing and so we there's something called a preferred return, and that's what prove protects the investors, and we pay a preferred return on all the capital that they have invested. And so say if you have a hundred K invested and the preferred return is seven percent. Every year, seven percent gets put into a bank. So it's b th that's banked up until we can start paying back. So that's accumulated preferred return that protects the investor, they get paid that and their principal first before the GPs participate in any of the upside. Then when it's when all that is paid back, then it's all the profits are split 80%, 20%. And then so the majority of the profits go back to the investor. So they the investor owns a majority of the project, and that's how they get the tax benefits, and they get uh you you know, we do cost segregation studies so that we can write down uh we can give them a lot of depreciation the first years that the buildings come into service.
SPEAKER_01Great. Fascinating. So obviously I you know, we're obviously in our studio downtown Sioux Falls in the Harvester Building. Uh I live over in the southeast part of Sioux Falls. I've seen uh some of those projects down there on like Southeastern 69th, and uh there's even more construction south of Veterans Parkway coming through. But uh tell us about your experience so far in um you know, we service kind of the everything outside of Sioux Falls in a four county footprint with our membered um SMGA territory, but like working in Brandon, working in Crooks, uh looking at Hartford, looking at some of these other communities. Uh tell us what's been going well and and why that's attractive for you guys to come in. And I'll I'll then I'll share with you a little bit of my perspective on that too.
SPEAKER_02Okay. Um it I think the model works great in almost any community we bring it to because it's brand new units that are very desirable for the tenants. We've got floor to ceiling windows, we've got a Scandinavian interior, we've got washer and dryer, quartz cabinet, or quartz countertops, white cabinets, raw wood floors. So we're giving the tenants what they want. So the occupancies are very high. And the rents are very similar, regardless of where we go around Sioux Falls. It kind of it kind of evens out. So no matter what community you're in, the rents are pretty much the same. If you go farther away from Sioux Falls, they the rents tend to actually get a little higher. Sioux Falls is pretty competitive on building pricing, and you can get your building price down a little lower in Sioux Falls compared to the other markets just because the there's more contractors here. Sure. And so the rents, and there's more apartments built here in Sioux Falls because it's a pretty bustling metro. And so the because of that, the rents are a little lower. So the rents do get larger as you go away, but not very much. It's very, it's very small, very minuscule amount. But it's going great, and we what we find is that when we do projects in the smaller communities, the community actually cares about them more. In Sioux Falls, it's just another apartment. Who cares? Whereas in Crooks, you know, nothing's been built there for 20 years, so they're pretty happy. So everyone shows up for the ribbon cutting. Yeah, you got the mayor there speaking, helping cut the ribbon.
SPEAKER_01Oh yeah.
SPEAKER_02Yep. Yeah, but Brandon, extremely good community. It's a little harder to build in Brandon. They have a higher barrier to entry there. It's it's harder to just get permitting and zoning done in Brandon. So but we like Brandon, we like Crooks. We have a project coming up in Hartford.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_02That's great.
SPEAKER_03You were gonna say something on the Metro?
SPEAKER_01Similar. I mean, you kind of hit on it too. Like it's it's easier to get attention on it. I think what we've always liked about it too is uh in the model, I mean the quality of it, the color of it, the amenities, the glass, you know, how much um sunlight you're letting in. Don't need all these, you know, other kind of big amenity pieces, you know, um rental range is is kind of right on. And that most of the buildings are uh and you can do multiple of them on the site, but they're are they like sixteen units per fourteen units. Fourteen units. So that kind of size point for a community, again like in Crooks, where you're talking like fifteen hundred-ish, you know, population and and gradual growth. Uh or you're talking a Hartford that's in the threes, or you're talking about a brand that's in the eleven or twelves, they don't need and probably not a good fit to do uh, you know, a couple 80 unit kind of high density apartment complexes. So it's really been a a really good fit, I think, that that has married up really well.
SPEAKER_03In the metro, yeah. Yeah. Um I live in T.
SPEAKER_02Any any plans to develop in T or is this little We like T, but there just hasn't been an opportunity for any land that's come up for multifamily. So I think there was quite a bit of multifamily built in T a few years back, and so they kind of ran out of Ran out of space. Yeah, they ran out of R three or or high density zoning. So that land has to come up for sale for us to be able to do an apartment. But yeah, with T's on the radar, if we ever get a piece of ground and tea, we'll do something there.
SPEAKER_01Nice. Keep an eye on. So we work closely with a lot of these communities. There's you know, we're watching um, you know, some of the land prices, some of the utilities, where they're at, where some of the growth uh is happening or where some of the roads are getting put in, that kind of thing. Even on some of the planning ahead side, communities that are doing comprehensive plans, communities that have done housing studies before, maybe right around COVID time frame, so now they're getting updated, kind of more accurate pictures of their housing needs through some of these studies. Share with me from your perspective of being involved on the development side process, maybe even from ideation to, you know, uh the actual construction all the way to your property management partners. What what aspects of those things kind of play a factor into deciding where you're gonna go and when? Uh for maybe some of our communities that are listening. Having those housing studies in place, are they important or is it more kind of a gut check piece? Is it pricing? Is it the barriers to entry we talked about permitting, that kind of thing? Any of those kind of insights I think would be helpful.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, so when it comes to going into a smaller community, a housing study does help, especially an attractive housing study. Um housing studies are kind of hard to get done in the smaller communities because it's really hard to actually judge what the real housing needs are on a larger project until you build it. I mean that's the best housing study, build it and see how well it performs. And then we know if we can expand in that community or not. But land, available land that with utilities to it helps a lot. So if the county or the the community actually has a parcel of land that they want affordable or attainable housing built on, and it's ready to build on, that's very attractive to vo to us because we know the permitting process is is very um simple. It's usually not very complex. And we already have all the engineering and everything is done before we decide to go there. We just do the same, it's a copy and paste model, so all that stuff is done. So it's very simple for us to come in and give them all the the plans and the engineering and all that, and they can they can let us know if they want something like that in their community. Most of the time, if you need housing like this, people they do want it, and the community wants it. Because to grow you have to have housing for your workforce. And so the other thing is the if there's a TIFF available, that helps a lot because the one of the biggest expenses we have is property tax. So if we can take a piece of bare ground and it's paying six hundred dollars a year for taxes, and in twenty years we can pay a hundred thousand dollars a year in taxes, that's a huge advantage to the community. So we are it's a lot easier for us to go in if we do get that TIFF money for us to get paid back because it reduces the risk on our project. If we don't have that expense, if we can reduce the taxes, that's almost like a full month's worth of rent. And then that also allows us to reduce the rent as well. But it mainly just takes a lot of risk off the table. But then also community banks, if they're willing to you know provide financing, that helps a lot. And then if there's any other major players in the area, like employers that are willing to give some sort of lease on a certain amount of units, that helps as well.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, well one thing you'll notice there that I've noticed since working uh with SMGA is that most of our communities, and I'm sure you've seen it with the housing studies you've read, most of our communities are definitely in need of of housing and multifamily housing, to your point. And so I guess to that point it then it just boils down to those other factors that you mentioned, where where can I find good land and permitting and TIFS and all those other factors.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we find that the smaller communities actually need housing more because most developers aren't willing to take the bet and then most banks aren't willing to finance it. So Sioux Falls has plenty of housing because it's the growth is obvious.
SPEAKER_03Right.
SPEAKER_02Then you go to a place like Crooks and they haven't had a apartment built in twenty years. And why is that? Well, it's a smaller community. The growth is finally heading north, though. You know, Morel's going out there is gonna help with that. Or Smithfield, I should say. I always call it Morrell's, but Smithfield moves out there and that's gonna help with with growth as well.
SPEAKER_03For sure.
SPEAKER_02Even though the people aren't too happy about it, but it is growth. All that all that industrial part getting done to the north is just more and more jobs, and crooks is really close. Yeah. So I I don't know, I look at that, I look at all these smaller communities, even in Minnesota, too, and it's the same thing. The smaller communities are screaming for housing. But how do you put in you know, twenty-four units? It's really hard to manage only twenty-four units. Almost every developer is set up for scale. Scale makes everything easier, and so if there is no scale, you almost just have to have a local guy managing it and building it. And so you need some local investor that wants to do it. The problem is it's really hard to make money in real estate right now or to reduce the risk or make it to even cash flow to make it profitable. So most smaller guys are doing the numbers and it doesn't work, so they don't want to take the risk for a reward ten years from now. And so real estate has gotten extremely expensive and rents are not near as high as they should be to encourage more growth. So people say, why are rents so high? Well, it's just a correlation between land cost and construction cost, and and that's why you're seeing less and less housing development in general.
SPEAKER_03Supply and demand.
SPEAKER_01So if you can, uh as much as you're able to sh to share too kind of the plan for Hartford and Hartford Reserve Project, uh where that where's that gonna go? How many units are you guys looking at out there?
SPEAKER_02And so it's right across the street from the school. There's that little new development on that hill right by the cemetery there. So there would be seven buildings going in, 108 units.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, coming too. That thing we had the groundbreaking for that bad boy at I think first week of May or so. And it's gonna be I'll be buying coffee and donuts there here in two months.
SPEAKER_02So Yeah, that's a great addition for Hartford. But we like Hartford, the houses just keep go, you know, growing closer and closer to Sioux Falls, but it's still its own community. And so we like that aspect. We like when we can be in a community that is its own community and just uses Sioux Falls for shopping and jobs.
SPEAKER_01Yeah. Well, excellent. So the timeline on that one is gonna be I mean, you're kind of in the investor kind of stage right now, kind of recruitment stage.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, we're just recruiting qualified investors for that. And yeah, we there's just a process we take you through to see if you're qualified. And yeah, that's what we're doing right now, and we do own that portion piece of land and it's ready to go. All utilities are in and we're gonna be groundbreaking within the next two, three months.
SPEAKER_01So how how if somebody was interested in in looking at investing, like what are what is kind of that I don't want to say barrier to entry, but what what are some of the eligibility pieces and then also how do they get in touch with you guys?
SPEAKER_02So you need to be an accredited investor, which means you make two hundred and two hundred K a year if you're married two hundred and fifty K a year for three years. So you have to have a track record of making a high income. Or you need to have a million dollar net worth, not including your personal residence. So that qualifies you to be an accredited investor. So you gotta meet that criteria and that has to be provided from a third party. So your CPA or attorney or Edward Jones or whoever supplies us with that letter, that makes you accredited, then we can talk to you about the opportunities. Um and so that's the biggest hurdle to jump over is to get accreditation status. And then once that's and then once that's in place, then the minimums on these investments are fifty thousand dollars. So then they go from fifty thousand dollars and up and then you can own a chunk of the property.
SPEAKER_01Excellent. And and how would somebody if they get the accredited letter piece if they're interested and they want to see what kind of projects are coming up, which ones you're still recruiting investors for right now before kind of that that one gets filled and kind of closed and you're going to the next one? How do they what's the easiest way for them to get in touch with you? What's the other thing?
SPEAKER_02Just go to our website and on the website there's a portal and in the portal you can submit your information to get qualified. Then you can once you're qualified you can see all the investment opportunities. And then the best way though is just to have a conversation with me and then I can tell you everything that's going on and how the old projects are are doing and what we see in the future. Can answer any questions related to multifamily. Excellent.
SPEAKER_01So where this has been and kind of where you're going, where do you see mailbox five years from now? Ten years from now.
SPEAKER_02Well we hope that we can supply apartments all over the nation is kind of the goal, is to make it more of a franchisable type product. Where if someone someone there's a developer that wants to build our model in Kansas, he can just call us up and say we have land and we can ship actual modular units down. And this way we can also be in smaller locations. So we're targeting more of your guys' uh niche, I should say. So you guys are dealing with these small communities. Yeah. We feel like most of the need is in the small communities for housing. The bigger communities, the yeah, they always say we need more affordable. Everyone needs more affordable. It's always been that way since I've been building, but the smaller communities have actually used up all their housing stock. And so it they need more new housing. And most tenants, most people want to live in brand new housing. So I don't know if you've noticed this, but every single town that you're you guys are dealing with, 20 years ago, they used to have abandoned houses or they used to have available houses, and now none of the communities have available housing anywhere. I've seen that happen in my lifetime where you could go and buy an old house, but now it's non-existent. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Rural America is very attractive right now. Especially rural South Dakota.
SPEAKER_01We we've been talking about it that uh jumping into this field and or being adjacent to it before in years prior, uh, you know, community development, economic development were kind of two different buckets, if you will, but uh I mean housing is such a critical piece for these rural communities of any size. Uh and all the above above housing, new single family homes, people uh you know, zero entry homes for people to age in place that opens up that existing stock, apartments to be able to keep people uh until they're ready to get into a home or till one opens up. And yeah, there's almost no real estate market. There's hardly any dilapidated housing, there's really no vacant lots or infill lots. Um if there is a house that goes on the market, most of the time it sells from a friend, you know, before there's you know, I s I sold my house in Harrisburg five years ago, but and it never hit the market officially. Yeah, but I mean you think of like uh again a Salem or uh yeah, a crooks or uh anywhere. I mean if something does come up on the market for the most part, somebody's swooping up right away.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Yeah, and there's not much new housing getting built either because it's so expensive to build. If you go to sell it after you're done building it, most of the communities can't even justify paying that much and it doesn't appraise because there's no comps.
SPEAKER_01Well that's that's why we were a couple years ago, it was pretty hot and heavy with uh I mean the state program with the infrastructure grants to be able to just try to help these communities uh cover some of those pieces to get a development started. Um but the timeline it took and if you use federal funds and some of that too, we've we ran into a couple barriers that way. But we tried to we've tried to assist a couple of our communities in getting some of these housing developments going so that they had the opportunity to put some apartment complexes on there and to put single family homes on there. And we've had some success. There's been some dirt moving in some of the communities, but again, that's why it's been great to see you guys with your model and Veldco, who's another partner of ours too, that was able to make the impact that you guys are making in Brandon and in Crooks and in all these communities. We're we're really excited to see it and support it.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Well, do you remember the pipe farm? So when after 08, when all these developments had these land developments were just empty, they call them pipe farms because there's the green pipes sticking up everywhere. So they call those pipe farms, those are almost all gone through the whole nation. So yeah, you could get lots after 08, you could get lots anywhere you wanted for almost nothing. Now all those lots are gone, and to build new lots costs almost a hundred thousand dollars a lot. Some people say a lot used to be 40k, now it's a hundred K. Why is it so expensive? Well, you've got the infrastructure which continues to go up, you've got to put in the road, the storm sewer, and you've got all that cost, and how can you justify a hundred thousand dollar lot, but there's no stock anywhere. So then it's very hard. The only people that are willing to really do those lots in a small community are someone that wants to see the community grow. They're taking a huge risk, and there's not really a profit, a profitable exit on it. It's more just I want to provide this to the community. So now these smaller communities end up having to do the land development themselves. But that's where you guys come in to play that role.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we've been trying.
SPEAKER_03So intermediary. I want to go back to something real quick before we move on, uh, that you mentioned a little while ago um about mod f shipping modular.
SPEAKER_04Yeah.
SPEAKER_03So all of your buildings are prefab, modular, ready to ship and go up immediately. Is is Velcco do that? Do they have a modular? Yeah, no, so black tie.
SPEAKER_02So if you guys know black tie is located in Hartford, yeah, okay. And so we bought into Black Tie. Nice. Us and Velco. We bought into Black Tie, and so we're getting all of our stuff supplied from them, and then we get wholesale lumber as well. So we're starting we're just trying to reduce the cost of the apartment any way we can.
SPEAKER_03Yeah. Modular's modular's been the way to go uh recently. It's it got pretty popular a few years, a couple years ago.
SPEAKER_01Well Black Tad's been so impressive too. Again, we've had a couple bus tours stops through there to showcase, I mean, some of the I think Robbie and the whole team over there with the the robotics and the high quality of the lumber and their staff and being able to do it like it's some of the straightest boards I've ever seen. So nice.
SPEAKER_02Well that's I'm glad I'm glad you noticed. But yeah, they they want to be known for the highest quality product and the most technologically advanced plant. And that's when they built it, that's what it was. I'm not sure if anyone's put in new robotics anywhere else and and gotten ahead of us, but the thing is very automated and they do a lot. They do a lot there for the staff for sure.
SPEAKER_01That's excellent. We're all as I'm sure as you as you know and can tell, like we're all about the region, we're all about collaboration, and so it's awesome to hear the different partner pieces that you guys have that are building the puzzle and making it happen. Yeah. That's really cool.
SPEAKER_02Yeah, at Black Tie, we started a second shift as well. So that's very exciting. And the goal would be eventually to have four shifts running so the plant runs constantly.
SPEAKER_03That'd be cool.
SPEAKER_02But yeah, that would be you know, move going from thirty jobs to a hundred jobs. But we keep hiring more people there all the time, and there's there's some production jobs and there's also some administrative jobs, so there's a wide variety of jobs out there that we keep adding to the Hartford. That's crazy. That's awesome. Yeah.
SPEAKER_01So I know we started off kind of asking a little bit about your your personal kind of background and getting into the space and stuff too, but yeah, outside of all the development stuff and investments, like what what do you do for fun? Like what's uh what are some of the other things that you're involved with that fill your cup?
SPEAKER_02Uh a lot of Jesus. So I do a lot of research, you know, read a read the Bible, do a lot of research on that and go to church. And uh I like those kind of concerts as well. Gospel concerts. We just went to Brandon Lake concert, it was like the best worship ever. Where was that at? That was in St. Paul, and so 15,000 people were singing hallelujah, or singing that line. Yeah. It was it was amazing. And they cut all the music off too, so it's just the crowd. It was really cool.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that's neat.
SPEAKER_02Um, otherwise, basketball, I love playing basketball. I do a lot of golf, so if anyone wants to go to Mapleton, we got a membership there. Take someone out.
SPEAKER_03Don't tempt us with a good time.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. That's a that's another thing. Like Sioux Falls actually has quite a bit of culture for the size of the city. Like our amenities we have are phenomenal. The food choices we have are super good for the the size of our population. We've got a lot of options.
SPEAKER_03That's true. I would agree.
SPEAKER_02Yeah.
SPEAKER_01And then uh you travel a little bit too, right? You try to go out and kind of see the R you can.
SPEAKER_02I love RVing. Do you really? Okay. My wife not so much, so we we fly places too, but yeah, I like to travel. I like international travel. We went to Saudi R I went to Saudi Arabia this year, did the Moses walk where Moses came across the Red Sea.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02And then we did the Mount Sinai and a bunch of the different sites. It was pretty cool.
SPEAKER_03Where's your favorite international country that you've traveled in? Probably Italy. Italy.
SPEAKER_02Yeah. Lake Como might be the coolest spot I've ever been to.
SPEAKER_03Wow. That's great.
SPEAKER_02Put that on the bucket list. Yeah. It's amazing. You can rent scooters there and just rip around the entire lake. Oh, wow. Very cool. And then if you don't have enough time to get around the lake, you just take a ferry. Just cut it. Yeah, it'll just cut you to the other side, and it's one of the it's one of the neatest experiences.
SPEAKER_03That's cool. We just we were just in Galveston and took the ferry across uh the Galveston Bay there from Galveston Island to Um Bolivar Peninsula. That was that was a cool experience. Got to drive the car on the ferry, drive the car off the ferry, drove around the island a little bit, and then drove it back on the ferry. It's pretty cool.
SPEAKER_02Nice. How big is that island?
SPEAKER_03Uh Galveston Island's pretty long as far as how wide it is. It it it's not even a whole mile, I don't think. So it's it's pretty narrow, but it it's probably twenty miles long at least. That's the spot I've never been. Yeah, Galveston, I highly recommend it. A lot of fun.
SPEAKER_01So my wife and I were just reminiscent on uh our kind of Italy trip too. We went there to went to Venice. We did like uh planes, trains, uh boats, and a little bit of everything. So we started off in Venice, a little more touristy than we thought. Like she found a Sephora right away. I'm like, what the heck? This isn't America. You know, if we're kind of the tourist industry stuff, but we took a ferry over to I think Burano is the name of a little island out there and uh really colorful. We're looking at pictures. But we get a bad time now because we did all those big trips before we had kids. And I got a six-year-old who's my oldest, and he's uh he gets mad at us that we didn't bring him with. He wasn't even born yet. But yeah, he's he's gonna be a world traveler, he's gonna cost me a lot in the future, I think.
SPEAKER_02But where's his favorite place to go?
SPEAKER_01Well, his he's all over. Uh he knows like the country flags and he knows all the states, knows all the different continents and countries. He's he's pretty smart and good memory on that kind of thing. So his birthday, he's in kindergarten now, and his birthday's in March. Uh the day after our annual meeting and awards banquet, I'd asked him, Well, hey, you know, we for your birthday, do you want to get your kindergarten class together? We can bring your old daycare buddies too that went to different schools. Do you want to go to like Union Social or Champlain Park? Or he said, No, I want to go on a trip. Like, okay, where do you want to go? He's like, uh, like Tokyo or Dubai. I'm like, buddy, man, really, I don't know, you know.
SPEAKER_02Tokyo or Dubai, those are two awesome places. You should bring it from a six-year-old.
SPEAKER_01Yeah, we're gonna save up. So he's saving up. Uh we ended up going to DC though instead. Oh, he loved that, didn't he? Yeah, he was good. He's uh Lincoln's his favorite. He watched the night at the muse uh night at the museum, those movies. So he was able to we took him to all the Smithsonian stuff and got to go visit, uh, go sit and send it around his desk and go say hi to got a tour of the Capitol and got to see things and it was cool. Did the little not the big scooters, we did the little mopeds. He's just tall enough that we were able to ride around and tear around. So that worked out for now, but he hasn't forgot about his other wish list stuff. So it's coming.
SPEAKER_02Dubai Tokyo's really cool. I think it'd be really hard to travel to Dubai now. I don't know if you can even get in, but yeah, uh, Tokyo is incredible. I recommend everybody go to Japan.
SPEAKER_03Are you a sushi guy?
SPEAKER_02No, I mean sort of.
SPEAKER_03Yeah.
SPEAKER_02I love I like it. I don't care though. I'd rather eat beef, but I do love sushi. It's good, but I don't beef guy. I'm not a I wouldn't say I'm a sushi guy, but if anyone brings me to a sushi restaurant, I'm really gonna appreciate it because I just love food in general. Yeah.
SPEAKER_03Amen.
SPEAKER_01Part of that you gotta just trust the chef too, right? In some of these spots. Awesome. Well, bringing it back home a little bit, a little bit more local, uh, we like to ask all of our guests too, kind of are a hidden gem in the Sumetro. Now, it doesn't necessarily have to be like totally hidden where people haven't heard about it, but what is one thing in our either 17 cities or Fort County or this kind of corner of the state person, place, location, thing, park, whatever that you'd recommend people need to check out.
SPEAKER_02Well, the easiest thing that comes to my mind is the Source Coffee Shop. That's in Sioux Falls. I wish I had something that wasn't in Sioux Falls for you guys, but the Source Coffee Shop I travel street. Yeah, I travel everywhere, and their craft lattes, I think that's what they are, craft lattes. It's like a mock tail slash latte. They're the best that I've ever had, and we go everywhere. The only one that I found that's even comparable is when we were just in California. They had a craft like a chocolate cherry latte. That's the only one I found that's comparable to the quality of their lattes. And they were ranked 45th best coffee shop in the world or in the nation. And so the source, every time I order one of those anywhere else, it's never as good as the source. So I highly recommend getting one of those seasonal craft lattes from the source.
SPEAKER_01So do you have to like add like pick flavors out or anything like that?
SPEAKER_02They know they they do it, so it's they have peach and salt with a little cracked pepper, and they have all these it's like a cocktail, but it's like a latte, and they have a seasonal menu, and they have th usually three or four to choose from. One of them is usually a matcha. I'm not a matcha person, so there are usually three lattes to choose from, and there's always one on there that's mind-blowing, and the milk is very velvety. The way that they can fluff the milk up is it's crazy. I just don't know how they do such they just they're and it's right there. It's like right in front of you.
SPEAKER_01Like it's not like a not in some like back room or anything. It's like I've been to the source a million times, and I've been there a few a couple times too, and I didn't even I just do black coffee or ice coffee every now and then. I'm gonna look at this craft coffee. Yeah, that was perfect. That's why we asked this question.
SPEAKER_03Yeah, that was great.
SPEAKER_01Well, anything that we didn't cover, anything that that uh our people should know or think about or anything else too?
SPEAKER_02I don't think so. I mean, if you want to talk about real estate, I love chopping it up. So if anyone wants to learn about real estate or just talk about what I'm seeing in the market, I'd love to talk about it. I could talk about real estate all day.
SPEAKER_01So that's why we again we appreciate your partnership and stuff too, and getting you to some of our events. It's it's helpful for us as we're seeing things from different angles, but again, our organization bringing together cities and counties and state folks and other resource partners, you know, builders and engineer architects, utilities, just that kind of collaborative mindset. It's nice to have the different perspectives, so to have you guys in it and kind of where you're at, we appreciate too.
SPEAKER_02So yeah, I'd say if there are a community that wants some attainable modern workforce housing, some apartments built, call me up and I'd love I'd love to entertain it and see what you get what your guys' plan is and maybe critique it, maybe see how to make it better, or even to entertain coming to your community. All right.
SPEAKER_01So Dustin, mailbox money, open to have some meetings and some coffees over at the source here, uh Stu Metros across the street. Let us know how we can help you too. Uh, but appreciate you coming in and visiting with us.
SPEAKER_02Thank you. Thanks, Dustin. Yeah, thanks for having me.