The Disappearing $400,000 House

$400,000 used to buy a forever house. Now it’s starting to get labeled a “starter home,” and that shift is messing with first-time buyers across North Carolina and beyond. We get into the real reasons the entry-level market feels like it’s vanishing: higher interest rates, tight inventory near jobs, and a cost per square foot that doesn’t care how badly you want to keep your commute short. We also challenge a quiet assumption that’s baked into a lot of frustration, the idea that a dream home has to be 2,400 square feet when past generations made 1,500 square feet work just fine. 

From there, we walk through the budget killers people don’t see coming until it’s too late. We talk surprise municipal costs like sewer tap fees and the “green light to break ground” money that hits before the slab is even poured. We also break down one of the biggest line items in a build: windows. Premium brands can push a package into the tens of thousands, so we compare vinyl, fiberglass, and aluminum-clad options, explain what energy code already requires, and why the right installer can protect performance and warranty. 

Then we shift to the choices that look great on paper but punish you in labor, materials, and leak risk, especially complex rooflines, dormers, and steep pitches. We wrap with the moves that actually help: tighter floor plans, fewer unused rooms, bigger pantries, and outdoor living spaces that expand how you live without ballooning interior square footage. If you’re trying to buy or build a practical home without feeling boxed in, this one’s for you. Subscribe, share it with a first-time buyer, and leave us a review with the one feature you refuse to give up.

Transcript

Welcome And Where To Find Us

SPEAKER_01 0:01

Welcome to the Carolina Contractor Show with your host, General Contractor Donnie Blanchard. And welcome to another edition of the Carolina Contractor Show. Me and Donnie are so good with each other. We talk to each other's family members during the recording of a show. My daughter walked in the background and Donnie hears her and says, Hey, Reagan. And Reagan goes, What was that? I said, Mr. Donnie said hi. So she said hey back. But that's how we roll here. And we'll treat you like family too. My name's Eric Smith, cross from me, a general contractor, Donnie Blanchard, also owner of uh Blanchard Building Company. And I want to direct you to the website, the Carolinacontractor.com. You can find a lot of details there at the show. It's a great starting point. It's like the launching pad. It's like a diving board into a nice, refreshing pool in the middle of summer. Probably not really, but you can still go there. Also listen to past shows. We've got literally hundreds of episodes that you can download in podcast for them. We've got the uh ATC button. Ask the contractor. You got a question about your house, building, construction in general. Donnie's probably seen it all. I see more of it, but I don't have his uh level of expertise in that. Also, the YouTube channel. You can uh see shows that we've uploaded there, take a peek at them. There's a bunch of stuff we got going on, Donnie, I'd say.

SPEAKER_00 1:18

For sure. We've been at it for a while, and you know, we got a lot of support, a lot of momentum with the show, and I couldn't be more grateful to all the people who listen every week. And it's nothing for me to walk through a store and somebody comment on what what I said last week, and I'm I'm sort of afraid of what's going to come out of their mouth when they they open with that. But no, a lot of people compliment us and and and tell us that they they learned things that they did on their mother's house, their children's house, and um I'm glad to be a part of that.

SPEAKER_01 1:42

So for people who aren't familiar, I did like uh 25, 30 years in radio, so it wasn't uncommon for people to go, I recognize your voice, but it's weird with this show because the content of what we talk about is what people now say to me. I was at work one time and I've told you this before, and a guy came up and I said, Can I help you? And he said, Yeah, I need some six by six posts or whatever he needed. And then I said anything else, and he says, Are you Eric Smith? And I said, Yes. And he said, I listen to Carolina contractor show all the time. I don't know. It was just different to be recognized for that than for doing radio for years and years.

SPEAKER_00 2:18

Yeah, it got real that day, man. You made that career change, and um, I'm glad to be part of that as well. I tell that story where you you pretty much ran all the stations at iHeart for years, and when you made the change, you got a lot of your family time back. You got that one hour commute, two-hour commute both ways back every day. And um, man, you had that going on for a lot of years. And if you learned enough about construction from doing the show to fall right in there in the building supply business, I'm um I'm happy for you.

Why Starter Homes Feel Out Of Reach

SPEAKER_01 2:45

Yeah, that's kudos to you because it it was an unintentional mentorship that led to that. I'm glad you like it. Yep. All right, uh, so uh it's we are like we said, me and Donnie, we we like to shoot the bowl and have fun on the show and talk about construction, which can sound like a dry or a boring subject, but it's not because we like to be topical of things. One of the big things is buying a house. It's it doesn't seem much harder. It is harder to buy. And do you remember the first house you ever got into, Donnie?

SPEAKER_00 3:13

Oh, yeah, for sure. I uh I was in way over my head. Uh quit my quit my job, started a business, built a house all in about the same year. And um, yeah, I I came real close to losing that thing. Don't recommend that in your mid-20s, but you know, you can't tell a 25-year-old anything. You gotta get in there, feel some pain, do it for yourself. And uh, but yeah, still good cool house, cool experience. And um, I I'm you know, the growing pains that came along with that, I wouldn't trade for anything, but it it wasn't easy then for different reasons that it's not easy now.

SPEAKER_01 3:46

Yeah, that's a good way to summarize that. It it is different for different reasons, and it it wasn't easy, and I'm all that boomer talk, though we're not boomers, um, all that boomer talk about, oh, they've got all the money and they screwed us. Shut up. They had it harder than you in many ways. So stop whining about it. It's different generations face different issues, and it goes back to starter homes because that kind of seemed like you grow up in your house, you go off to school, you uh work a part-time job with an apartment, maybe you find that girl or guy and you get married and you move into your starter home. And so the trend now is starter homes are kind of disappearing because of the home prices uh are really, really high in North Carolina, for example, um the average value of a house is like$325,000. Uh the price is closer to$400 if you're trying to sell it. That's a lot of money,$350,000,$400,000 to buy, quote, a starter home.

SPEAKER_00 4:46

Yeah, it is. And when you consider what a starter home was just what, six years ago before the pandemic, that's a hundred, hundred and fifty thousand dollar swing. And compared to me 20 years ago, it's um it's a quarter million dollar swing. So there's uh several factors that that go into this thing, and you know, the cost of building materials has gone up. You know, interest rates are still a lot higher than they were for years and years. And just uh basically in our our area, the demand uh for housing, it it just drives the availability part of that. So uh they just don't have the inventory to support in terms of that size house, uh, all the new folks that are moving into the area. So uh it's death by a thousand cuts. And I know I've I whine about affordability for first-time home buyers, and I've got two of those in my family right now that we're we're trying to offset the the external factors with. But yeah, it's it's a real thing. And the bad news is I don't see it getting better and and how that carries over to folks. Mine in your age is gosh, I mean, maybe you plan to retire in your house. Mine's a little bit big for retirement, and I have a second floor master bedroom. So uh I'd like to downsize, but I'm a little bit discouraged by just my builder cost if it when I build the thing of how much it's gonna be.

SPEAKER_01 5:58

To address your first part of that, I plan to be rolled out with a toe tag of this house. I'm not moving again. Um, I do have two stories, our bedrooms upstairs, but I'm more than willing to pay somebody to retrofit our big giant playroom and then maybe expand the half bath downstairs and put a a shower in it or something if it got to that point. But uh I I don't want to move, but for people trying to buy, I tell them geography is one big problem with house prices. People want to live close to the city or their job.

SPEAKER_00 6:28

I'm I'm building a house for my um soon-to-be stepdaughter, and uh you know, just to see what her payments are gonna be with the current interest rates and everything, she's over two grand, and I guess the the uh battle that they're fighting now is that versus renting. And renting is just about as expensive. The people who set the rental rates in our area, you know, they they know what a uh house payment would be, and sort of like modular folks come in just under a custom built house, so they pitch time savings and and money savings, but the rental folks come in, you know, a couple hundred dollars less than what your house payment would be, and that just leaves some of these young people with no choice.

SPEAKER_01 7:05

So well, even if the rental price is a couple hundred dollars more, your down payment is usually just you know uh a security fee, maybe a month's right rental in advance. It's easier for them to get into the apartment because it costs less than a house where you might have to have a larger down payment. I do want to stress we've talked on past shows. If you're trying to buy a house though and you're thinking, I can't do it, I can't come up with$20,000,$30,000,$50,000 down payment, talk to a realtor. There are lots of options and you might be surprised what can happen. But getting back to the thing about a starter home, uh the dream home is 2,400 square feet in the US. That's what everybody considers their dream home. In 1970, it was 1,500 square feet. So I think one problem we have when it comes to buying homes is we just have this idea that we need to have almost a thousand square feet than our parents had in a house. And my parents' house was 1750 and that was mom, dad, and six kids. So I think sometimes we have to maybe lower our expectations of what we think is a good size for a house if we're gonna get it. Not saying it makes it better, but if you see that big, beautiful house and say, I can't afford it, it's six hundred thousand. Look for a house a little farther out of town and look for a house that's a little bit smaller. Hey, a big house is a lot of maintenance cost too.

Surprise Fees That Hit New Builds

SPEAKER_00 8:34

Oh, yeah, they don't think about that part. You got to fill that thing up when you're a young family, and when you fill it up, all it just costs more every time you add a kid. But uh to your point, that you just mentioned the 1,500 square foot house, and you you multiply that by the price per square foot, which is about$200 on average, you know, you're$300,000 for a small house. And uh, as a matter of fact, I just finished a$1,500 square foot home for a uh first-time homebuyer couple, great people to work for, but they fell right in that$200 a square foot. And some of the surprises financially that we had were the municipality they built in had a sewer tap fee of seven grand, and that was because they had to dig under the road to tap into the sewer. So$7,000 of unexpected charges there, and the town itself is a smaller area of our county, and you know, some areas are nice and some areas aren't, but I think the areas that aren't don't contribute to the uh basically the tax base, and so they charge uh everybody who builds there with a new build a lot of money just just to live there. So I want to say they were out twelve, fourteen grand just to get a green light to break ground. So you couple that on top of the 200 a square foot, and all of a sudden you're up at 230, 250 a square foot, and um, that's a big deal to somebody buying or building their first house.

SPEAKER_01 9:53

Also, you being a builder, that can be the best friend of a home buyer because that's your opportunity to give them advice. The example I'd use for my uh end of the the chain is people come in and they're building their house, they've got their plans, and we point out okay, you need this many windows, and then they see Marvin. And I'm not knocking Marvin. Marvin makes a great window. Yeah, but they gave me their list of materials and gave me the list of windows and what they wanted, and they did not even pick the highest end Marvin windows, and I think they're in 18, maybe 20 windows, and they kind of gasp when I came back with about$40,000. And sometimes you got to say, hey, you know what? Silverline is fine, that's a budget window, or Atrium, or or there's contour, and I'm not throwing these names for any other reason, but to let someone know, talk to your builder because they know these things, talk to a window installer, door people, find out what is a good solid choice that won't bust your bank or break your dreams, and that's an advantage how a builder, I guess, can fight back with house prices and help buyers and owners.

Window Decisions That Change The Budget

Roof Lines That Cost More And Leak

SPEAKER_00 11:08

I love Marvin. Uh they are pricey, but in the big spectrum, they're not as pricey as Pella. And um, usually uh not to get off topic, but the three big options you have are vinyl, aluminum clad, and fiberglass. And the the Marvin fiberglass window is a fairly new product. And when people don't want vinyl, then Marvin is the next best option, I feel like. And I'm a fiberglass man all the way when it comes to doors, uh windows. I just believe in the product. Aluminum clad's nice, it does fade, and you know, it'll it'll take a ding or whatever, and fiberglass just seems easier to work with. The R value from an insulation standpoint is better than the vinyl and the and the aluminum clad. And I just kind of like how they sit right in the middle. And I'm I'm perplexed that nobody else has come up with a fiberglass window frame. And I don't know why that is or if they have a patent on the product, but uh the one thing I do recommend with Marvin is have their installers put the windows in because the warranty, the warranty can swing either way. If you just let your framer slap those babies in a hole, you know, everything from the way you're able to insulate around the window to uh the warranty is affected by that. I I will agree with you when you said that the the silver line or some of the vinyl window lines uh are a lot less expensive. Uh I recommend people explore the options within the vinyl. So they have you know good, better, best in the vinyl windows, and everybody wants black windows these days, so uh they have to spray that black coat of paint on there. And the window rep on the last house I got from him made me feel a lot better. He made a good point and said that when you spray the black paint on the uh on the vinyl surface, it doesn't let go like wood. If you paint a wood product, you know, wood is is from the earth, it's gonna shrink and swell, move, it's gonna be susceptible to heat and and um and water or any kind of moisture uh that that may come in contact with it. So of course that paint is more susceptible to turn loose from that wood, but he said vinyl doesn't move, shrink, swell. So your vinyl being the substrate actually holds the paint a lot better than than what a wood product would. So I'm uh you know, I'm I'm all for it. It's fairly new. People tried to steer me away from them when they started to paint vinyl in the beginning, but I've had a lot of success with that. What do you think about the stainable doors? People don't realize you can stain them now and paint them. I have two on the front of my house as we speak. So uh, and I actually she wanted to replace the doors. I had two solid doors when I built the house. I thought, well, for security purposes, but I live in an area of the country where we don't have to lock our doors. And so um I do for good measure. We got big doors with glass in them now, and um, the first version was a stainable fiberglass, and it looked beautiful. And I want to say I maintained it about every five years. I had to do a new coat of stain, and I face almost due south, so sun exposure is a real thing in my house, but uh the new doors have come a little bit further in terms of quality. So uh we stained the new doors and the stains holding up great and a lot better than the uh older version. So I'm not a wood door person, especially if your doors aren't undercover under a porch and protected from the elements, or especially if it's south facing, man, that door is gonna move all around. So it'll take you at least two years of hot and cold cycling with the seasons to get that door adjusted so that you don't have to keep tinkering with it because it's gonna move. So not a fan.

SPEAKER_01 14:25

Now, Donnie, you doing roofing a lot of your life too. Um, this is an opportunity when building a house. If someone says, Oh, I want the dormers and I want those houses, uh, our roof to have the all those cutting angles and stuff and the cool geometric design, and you're probably going, money, money, money, and leaks and money and money and money.

Layout Choices That Cut Square Footage

SPEAKER_00 14:48

Yeah, absolutely. Um, the other factor you did mention is the roof pitch. So everybody wants a steep roof pitch because when you look at the house from the street, then that that looks much more grand and it makes the house look bigger. To your point, it's probably a$10,000 to$15,000 swing on an average size house. If you're thinking that uh your modest roof's gonna be about 30 squares, then all those hipped-out roofs that have a 12-pitch or a 10-pitch, you know, you're you're gonna go 50 squares real quick. So everything from the roof labor to uh the amount of materials is affected in that equation. And uh when you mentioned dormers and chimneys, and you know, I was an architecture major and I drew all my own plans and they look great on the plan. I mean, they break up the roof and you know, it just looks like an accent piece, and people marvel over that. But when you build a house and you actually frame a dormer and you see how many cuts are involved and how it slows the process down, and then you've got this big leak prone doghouse coming out of your roof that really doesn't serve a purpose other than natural light, maybe even in an attic, then you know, yeah, the popularity of dormers seems to go the other way because I I'm just not a fan of any kind of roof protrusion that's unnecessary. I think the way that I'm seeing the home design trend is that cleaner roof lines, you know, people aren't uh people aren't going for that. That was about a two-decade trend where big cut-up roofs that you know have six thousand square feet of roof area on a 3,000 square foot house were a thing. And from a function standpoint, you what you if you know what you're looking for, you can just about see where those roofs shed the water. And a lot of times in the front, you know, you'll have 10, 12 feet of gutter supporting third, 3,000 square foot of uh roof runoff. So, you know, just from a function standpoint, they're they don't make sense, and you know, those gutters are going to get overloaded and uh cause problems in the boxing and maybe you know cause problems around the house because you're not shedding enough water away. But yeah, uh roof design is a big thing from a budget standpoint and a function.

SPEAKER_01 16:49

What are a couple other things you might try to steer them toward for the purpose of getting the house they want but saving money?

SPEAKER_00 16:57

Well, you can't hide square footage, and that's probably the most important thing I could say to somebody if they were getting started in it from a design standpoint. So if you get to start from scratch and you hire an architect, then uh you want to make sure that you keep him in a target square footage. And so that that's the most important thing. And you don't want to give up certain things. I think big kitchen great room concept is something that has stood the test of time. Uh people seem to like the blended area where you can be cooking in the kitchen and look over your shoulder and keep an eye on the kids. Things like dining rooms and breakfast nooks and just extra rooms for offices that aren't necessary are kind of going away. Uh, what I've seen people do is shift towards a larger pantry. Uh the pantry combos and some people call them sculleries, which is too fancy for me to throw out there. But basically uh uh a larger pantry that has um uh your coffee maker, maybe an ice maker built into there, your microwave, things that people don't want to sit on their countertops, that seems to be the new trend. So, but definitely getting rid of that hundred and fifty square foot dining room that nobody sits in, and um doing away with those unnecessary rooms that take up square footage is is a big help. Do you have a dining room?

SPEAKER_01 18:10

I do. And I do too. How when was the last time you had four or more people or even used it for dining? Maybe once a year. Maybe once a year. So I'm in the same boat. Usually Thanksgiving or Christmas, somewhere around there. It's a thing of the past, I guess.

SPEAKER_00 18:30

And that's a shame, isn't it? I mean, I think the new theme, and when we did the TV show, we we really pumped us out there that we we pushed for eat-in kitchens because that was a fancy way to say that we're taking away this room and making it a bedroom, and you can stand around the kitchen and and eat there. But in all reality, that's what happens because I'm around cooking dinner, we're we're laying the food out, and everybody's just kind of standing there getting going while you're finishing everything up, and of course, kids have you know no holdback because they're starving uh every minute of the day and and they're grabbing the food, and um, it just kind of seems to happen that way. So uh larger islands are what we've done to compensate for that. I want to say out of the last ten houses I built, maybe eight of them had big islands and people wanted storage under the island, number one, but number two, they wanted bar stools on at least two sides of that rectangular shape. And you know, if you get six people at the at the bar, I mean I guess it doesn't matter as long as the family's spending time together. And um, maybe that's just uh something with the great room concept. You got the TV in the background, and I hate to even admit that because I would like for things to be different where you sit around and look each other in the eye and have good conversation, but gosh, maybe it's just my kids. But if I had to guess, I'd I'd say most of them are like that.

SPEAKER_01 19:40

Yeah, I think that's true. I mean, we tend to eat at the kitchen table for our meals even when everybody's there. Well, this is the crazy thing. We'll literally slide a chair over in that last little corner of the kitchen to sit all five of us there when we have a dining room table that can sit eight people comfortably. Another thing is uh maybe you have hidden space and don't realize it because a lot of people have their office and maybe they work from home for a while and don't anymore, or they thought, I need my own room that's my office where I'll pay bills and do budgeting and do and you end up doing it on a laptop on the couch while watching Netflix. Maybe the home office is kind of somewhere to I don't know, go maybe it's gonna go away.

Exterior Color Trends And Real Examples

SPEAKER_00 20:22

If you got a closet in there, you got a bedroom. When we talked about the notes before the show, you made a good point that I think a lot of people are going back to in person. And um, I mean, there was a nice grace period, probably too much of a grace period there where uh people were realizing that, hey, I don't have to have these big office buildings that a lot of people can work remotely, and all of a sudden half the people I knew were at home every day, and uh when everything kind of cleared up and it was okay to go back to work, they stayed. But I am seeing that trend in the other direction now, and I think that's wise. I think some people are disciplined enough to handle the stay-at-home work gig, probably not as many as we're allowed to do it. Color schemes.

SPEAKER_01 21:00

I'm not gonna spoil it. I have my opinion. What do you you what do you see the color scheme trending toward? What colors for the outside of a house?

SPEAKER_00 21:06

Um the black and white still seems to hold uh in popularity. So everybody wants the the white siding, and of course, board and batten, the vertical siding, has been the most popular thing. And and I do preach white siding all day long because if you go vinyl, it doesn't fade. It's the only color that won't lose uh its true color over time, and and so that's a safe bet. And of course the shingles we put on now are 50 years, and they don't really fade much in a fifth and well, they've been on for 20, 30 years out of a 50-year lifespan, and I've they seem to hold pretty true, but that with the black gutters and the black window frames, I think is just enough. Uh people are starting to get funky and they're doing the boxing out of the same color as um as the the roof, so it's just black, black, black everywhere. And and that's fine. Some houses pull it off just fine, but I think it depends on the house and the design. Um, the structural engineer that I use for all my blueprints, he's great, and uh he's uh I'm actually building. His personal house now. And um the side note there, we talked about clean roof lines and everything, and he draws these very complicated plans for people. So when it came time to design his own house, everything is clean lines, lots of straight runs, uh, no wasted space. I mean, it's about six thousand square feet, but uh, you know, that's yeah, yeah, just under that. But that's a it part of that's a basement, part of that's the upper floor. I want to say under roof, he's right around seven or eight thousand square feet. So Monster House, I'll uh I'll put some some drone shots up here shortly. We just actually finished the roof and the brick veneer, so as soon as the boxing is complete, it's gonna be something to see. But his uh his color scheme is basically a white brick with white mortar, and he did a uh it's called Burnish Slate, but it's really a medium bronze if you wanted to get a mental picture of that uh on the on the roof. And the standing seam roof was about three times more than the shingle option. But if you see this house and how the clean lines and everything being straight, it was a perfect candidate for a metal roof. Now we're in the process of uh wrapping the boxing, and because he's got all the white with the brick, he's got you know massive square footage with all the light, then he's gonna go dark on the boxing. And in that with that house, when I mentioned the design matters, the fascia, soffit, and the freeze board are all gonna be made out of the same metal that the roof is. So it's gonna be sharp. And uh what that does is he maintains that texture, that metal texture all the way around the boxing until he gets to the brick. So I think it's gonna be a looker. Good for him.

SPEAKER_01 23:31

And and I'm not jealous anybody has a 6,000 square foot home because they're again, as we said in the beginning of the show, that's a lot of maintenance. Um, that's energy use you have to consider. But uh, hey, great. But that does bring me back to a point I hinted at the beginning, and we'll wrap up the show with the American dream house is 24, 2,500 square feet, but in 1970 it was 1,500 square feet. That is one reason when you add a thousand square feet to the house that your price is so expensive. I think we're gonna start seeing it go back to 1,500, maybe a sweeter middle spot, like 1,800 square feet house, where it's a practical house, not an overtly expensive house because you have rooms that you never use, because you have all this space, maybe that's the new trend, also is less square footage.

Outdoor Living Space As The Pressure Valve

SPEAKER_00 24:22

Yeah, I think that that's that's definitely a good approach because like I mentioned earlier, you can't hide square footage. When I do flooring or painting, they charge me by the square foot. So there's there's no way around that unless you do the work yourself. And uh I'll I'll dial it back to what you said earlier. The outdoor living space, the reason I like expanded outdoor living spaces is because they're expandable. Like that's one area of your home where you've got a you've got a two-acre lot or even a half acre lot, you know, you can have um all the outside space that you really need. And we live in an area of the country where you can enjoy that outspace, outside space, what, eight months out of twelve? It's pretty easy. Maybe more. Maybe more. And if you put it on the right side of the house, maybe the north side in the summer, you know, you get that much more use out of it because you're not getting the sun uh glaring down, heating that space up. But there's so many things you can do from screen porches to fans to um a four seasons room with a mini-split HVAC system. And I just think that the best way to get the most out of your house is the interior square footage, keep it modest, uh, the exterior, plan it out. If you're gonna build a house and you may add or expand the deck to a porch, you know, position the house on the lot where you can do that in the future. And to summarize what we said earlier, you know, choose your windows carefully, do clean roof lines, don't do a bunch of dormers and chimneys and things that are unnecessary roof protrusions. And um, you know, it it's choose the veneer wisely. If you're not opposed to vinyl, then there's so many more options than there used to be. And uh vinyl's low maintenance, but cost a fraction of what brick or or hardy siding does. So a lot of things you can do to attain that that price per square foot that you're you're shooting for, especially if you're a first-time buyer. And how did we word the uh when we titled the show today? It was the disappearing$400,000 house.

SPEAKER_01 26:06

Yeah. Things to consider. I think the number one thing a person can do to improve their chances of getting the house they want at the price they want is to find a reputable, trustable builder because they're gonna know things like you talked about, cleaner roof lines, don't overbuild, don't waste square footage. And I think taking advantage of your property, even if you only have a quarter acre, if you've got a backyard, you can expand living space, whether it's buying a Leonard type shed and customizing it. Other people are taking their garages and boxing in the front and putting double doors on it, not to be a room necessarily, but just to be an entertaining space where on nice day they open up and they look sharp. So you have a lot of ideas that you have, Donnie, that you can give a prospective home builder or buyer and say, this is what you want if you want to get your house and not spend you know a gazillion dollars doing it.

SPEAKER_00 26:59

There's a way to do this, a really right way to do this, where you kind of get what you want. You might sacrifice on a few things, and and but it's not really a sacrifice. When you consider going vinyl windows instead of fiberglass or aluminum clad, the the energy code dictates the minimum uh energy requirement, the minimum requirement for windows that meet code. So uh a vinyl window has all the same attributes as those more expensive windows when it comes to R-value, argon gas between the panes, a low E coating on the glass. And of course, you can get bulkier frames with the vinyl and still come out tens of thousands less than what you would, but that window package is a biggie.

Practical Wrap Up And Final Advice

SPEAKER_01 27:34

Windows is a very important thing. We could do a whole show. Heck, we've done a whole show on Windows. We'll we'll revisit that sometime. But uh I want to thank everybody for tuning in to the Carolina contractor show. And again, we hear a lot of doom and gloom. You can't buy a starter home, it's too expensive, it's too much money, interest rates. Get a realtor, get a builder you trust, look around, be willing to make some uh not necessarily sacrifices, but uh make your eyes smaller than your stomach and kind of think, hey, we need to get a practical house, and you could get a great house, custom built even for the same price or less that some people are complaining because they want to build right next to the big city and and be four minutes from work and everything else. Hey, your house is where you spend most of your time, so move away from the city a little bit. Find a piece of land and find a builder like Donnie and Blanchard Building Company and get the house that you want.

SPEAKER_00 28:24

Yeah, hey, thanks for that. But you're you're a hundred percent right on on that. And I don't know, these kids got big dreams these days, and you know, uh, I'm not opposed to a commute. I think it's a time to gather yourself on the way in and unwind on the way home and um uh you know, 15-minute drive, it isn't bad. You kind of get used to it and and start to like it.

SPEAKER_01 28:43

Yeah, that's true. And and the people complaining they can't afford a house uh couldn't finish uh listening to the end of the show because their DoorDash order came. And they, you know, and they gotta well, I'm not gonna get into that. Anyways, uh do want to thank everybody for tuning in again. Visit the website if you want more details or you want to share your thoughts on the show and give us ideas for future shows. That address is the Carolinacontractor.com, and we hope to see you again next week. Take care, everybody.