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The SiteVisit
Leadership in construction with perspective from the job site. A podcast dedicated to the Construction industry. Construction professionals, General Contractors, Sub trade Contractors, and Specialty Contractors audiences will be engaged by the discussions between the hosts and their guests on topics and stories. Hosted James Faulkner ( CEO/Founder - SiteMax Systems ).
The SiteVisit
Rescuing Architecture: Saving Homes From Demolition with Glyn Lewis, Founder at Renewal Development
In this enlightening conversation, Glyn Lewis, Founder and CEO of Renewal Development, reveals the surprising economics behind home relocation: each rescued home contains 100 tons of raw materials and 23 tons of embodied carbon that would otherwise go to waste. His company operates as a comprehensive service provider—handling demolition contracts for developers, coordinating the complex logistics of moving structures, and renovating them to become energy-efficient, affordable homes in non-urban communities. The result? Housing that costs 40–60% less than new construction.
What makes this approach truly groundbreaking is how it transforms a wasteful process into a solution that addresses multiple crises simultaneously. While urban areas gain needed density, rural and First Nations communities receive quality, affordable housing. Historic craftsmanship and materials that couldn’t be replicated today are preserved rather than destroyed.
As Glyn puts it, "Renewal is a campaign disguised as a company"—a vision for reshaping how we build communities and value our existing resources. Listen now to discover how this innovative model could transform housing across North America, one rescued home at a time.
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Glenn, how are you doing today?
Speaker 2:Hey James. Yeah, I'm doing really great. Thanks for having me.
Speaker 1:No, you're very, very welcome, pretty interested in your topic here. Do you think we're at the end of the shh crappy weather here in Vancouver?
Speaker 2:Well, it's funny, I was just in North Carolina for the last few days, so what was it like? There it was beautiful.
Speaker 1:Is it? Yeah, north Carolina. What were you doing there? I was actually speaking at a conference of structural moving companies from around the world Structural moving companies.
Speaker 2:Okay, take me through that.
Speaker 1:What does that mean? I know it's what you do, but what is that category comprised of?
Speaker 2:Yeah, well, it's a pretty interesting group. So there's this thing called the International Association of Structural Movers, okay, and essentially what it is is all of these companies that lift and often move homes, right Homes and buildings that's why it's called the structural movers and basically what this industry is is folks who move industrial things like transformers and really submarines and really big stuff.
Speaker 2:And then there are folks who just lift homes and buildings. And then there are folks who lift homes and buildings but also move homes and buildings, and so there's kind of three categories industrial, lift, lift and move. And there's probably about 300 companies that are part of this association, mostly here in North America, there's a pretty good number of them down in New Zealand and Australia and there's some in Europe and some other places, and they've got an association and they get together once a year and they talk about innovation in the industry, they talk about trends in the industry, they talk about health and safety in the industry, and so I've been invited twice now to go down and speak at their conference about all of the innovative things that we're doing here in Vancouver.
Speaker 1:Cool. Wow, moving stuff. Yeah, I mean, I see these. I think sometimes we look at, you know, on the highway, and you see we see a lot of like mobile homes that were moved. We see a lot of like mobile homes that were moved, sometimes anything with the wide load bumper on the back. But, yeah, it's a very interesting thing that you know, especially in Vancouver, we've got some interesting incentives to be able to do those things, and also materials as well. So, yeah, there's lots to talk about here. Yeah, so I look forward to talking to you about renewal development. It's going to be exciting. Happy to share, jay. All right, welcome to the Site. Visit Podcast Leadership and perspective from construction With your host, james.
Speaker 2:Falkner.
Speaker 1:Business as usual, as it has been for so long now. Now that it goes back to what we were talking about before and hitting the reset button, you know you read all the books, you read the emails, you read Scaling Up, you read Good to Great. You know I could go on. We've got to a place where we found the secret serum.
Speaker 2:We found the secret potion. We can get the workers in. We know where to get them. Once I was on a job it took a while, actually, we had a semester concrete and I ordered a Korean-Finnish patio out front of the site show. I was down at Dallas and a guy just hit me up on LinkedIn out of the blue and said he was driving from Oklahoma to Dallas to meet with me because he heard the Favourite Connect platform on your guys' podcast Home. It crush it and love it, and we celebrate these values every single day.
Speaker 1:Let's get down to it, okay, glenn. So let's just. How did you get into this? I mean, what were you doing before this? What was the inspiration in getting involved in this level into?
Speaker 2:moving homes, moving materials. What was the impetus of this whole thing? Well, I kind of took a bit of a circuitous journey to get here. Everyone does I know, and it is very unconventional. So a little bit of background about myself. I went to Simon Fraser University and when I got to SFU I signed up as a chemistry major. Okay.
Speaker 2:And so I did that. For a few years I was in chemistry, biology, physics, calculus and all that kind of stuff like hardcore sciences, and about halfway through my degree I watched the Al Gore documentary Inconvenient Truth.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, I remember that one Scared everyone, scared everybody and everybody's like okay, that's something to really pay attention to and to consider, at least at the very least. And I remember when I watched Inconvenient Truth, it was kind of a huge awakening for me about the natural resources that sustain us and being responsible stewards of the land. And so I kind of shifted my. I decided to shift my chemistry degree to environmental chemistry. So I wanted to start studying atmospherics and groundwater contamination and I thought you know, if I'm going to have all this chemistry background, I might as well try to use it for some good, not just kind of coming up with more chemicals that are going to fill our oceans with plastics or whatever else. Yeah, and so I shifted to environmental chemistry. I kind of I didn't enjoy it, but you know there's only so much you can do as a researcher, especially when you're trying to understand a problem like that. And don't get me wrong, there's a lot of great research in science, going into photovoltaics and different types of energy and renewable energy and the important work. But I just didn't think that was going to be my journey. So I kind of got into a little bit of like the political space when I was at SFU, ran for student government, got elected, did that whole thing, and it was such an interesting eye opener in terms of a whole other world that I really didn't know much about, and so that was really interesting. And then I shifted my degree one more time. I finished my my major says environmental chemistry on my degree but I found this great program called Sustainable Community Development and it's a two-year program. So I did that within my degree and I did my undergrad thesis with this guy named Dr Mark Roseland. A wonderful professor wrote this book called Towards Sustainable Communities, and that was really where I started to hone my skills and understanding about what does sustainable development mean, both from an economic perspective, from an urban planning perspective, from a construction perspective, from a social perspective, like all of these things integrated. It was incredible. It was a great, great program. I finished that.
Speaker 2:I ended up working in politics for a few years. I worked in the United States. I came back and worked in Canada, kind of being like this agent for change, and then I came back to Canada. After I worked in the United States, I actually worked for President Obama's 2007-2008 campaign, came back to Canada, got involved in the nonprofit sector. What was that like being down there.
Speaker 2:Yeah, incredible, yeah, that was one of the best years of my life for sure. You know, you're at that age too and you're kind of young and idealistic and you have a bit more freedom to do a lot of things like that. And just meeting so many people and being part of something like that, that really felt like a rocket ship. You know, because he I don't know for those who remember like he wasn't supposed to win that thing right, it was hillary clinton. She was the established candidate, she had all the money, she had all the backing of everybody and it was so. It was really a david versus goliath kind of a campaign, but I threw myself at it just because I I really believed in what he had to say and yeah, or david versus oprah, but you know what?
Speaker 2:it's all. Oprah was on our side.
Speaker 1:That's what I'm saying. Oh, yeah, yeah, it was no Goliath. Yeah, so Goliath versus Oprah, but yeah, I remember that time. It was a crazy moment of possibility and of hope for a nation, feeling I thought that campaign, that Obama campaign, was. Hopefully they can feel that again.
Speaker 2:Yeah, hope is one of those great things to feel, isn't it?
Speaker 1:Yeah, it is.
Speaker 2:When you feel optimistic, when you feel hopeful, there's such a positive energy around it and it's contagious. When you're sharing that vision, there's something positive message talking about the better angels in us all. As Abraham Lincoln said, when politics gets so negative and divisive, I think it really brings down a lot of things. It brings down our mental state. It brings down our sense of social cohesion.
Speaker 1:Totally does, and the sense of unity.
Speaker 2:And ultimately, we're all on the same planet, sharing the same journey. At the end of the day, yeah, totally Okay.
Speaker 1:so you came back after that, and then I got involved in the nonprofit sector.
Speaker 2:I worked in education for a while and 2011, 2012, I started a tech company with another guy named Steve Anderson. What? Did that do. It built software for social movements and political campaigns and political parties. So, coming back to the United States, especially around that time there was so much talk about tech and there was so much talk about the social web and how it could be used to enable things and empower people.
Speaker 2:In retrospect now, looking back 20 years later, it feels very idealistic and you can see how some of those tools and platforms have been manipulated by so many different actors and stuff. But anyways, at that time we were like, right, this is the most empowering thing. Let's get the social web out there, let's network people, let's mobilize people and get them to take action to have their democratic voices heard. And so we started building some software and some tools around that, and the company's called New Mode. It's still around. It took off more than even I thought it was going to, and so I did that for a while and then I ended up selling my shares, and Seamus Reid and Steve Anderson led it, and it's been doing great work ever since.
Speaker 2:Seamus, seamus Reid, I know him, you know Seamus.
Speaker 1:I think so yeah.
Speaker 2:Really nice guy, really funny too and anyways. And so they kind of let it off and it's done great work and I'm super impressed by everything that that company's accomplished and how many people it's reached. And then about four or five years ago, james, where this all kind of came. So again, chemistry background, political background, like what am I doing in construction?
Speaker 2:right, I get asked that pretty often and um, so about five years ago, my sister, mandalena lewis, and her partner they were living in a house in victoria in souk actually, yeah, oh sorry, in a squamald, okay, and they had this about 1915, 1920 home and charming, you know, like the nice big bay windows, this beautiful little staircase going upstairs. They were renters and a developer bought the whole city block. Okay, all right To do a land assembly, yep. And I remember going and visiting my sister and her partner, you know, at Christmases and Thanksgiving and the dogs and they were taking such good care of the home and they were painting it and fixing it and they just poured so much life into this thing. And it really, really reminds me of the Pixar movie Up. Yeah, because if you follow that narrative and how that story started, it's this young couple. They find this home. It needed some love, they moved into it and they started to build their life in this home, right, and they took care of and they breathed life into this home and it was so similar to what my sister and her partner, dave, went through in that home as well.
Speaker 2:And so when the developer bought the block and they were informed that this home was going to be torn down, they were really upset and you know, because my sister know they cared for this home. They took care of this home and also it's kind of a bit of an environmentalist, like she was. Like this is wasteful, this is ridiculous. Like this is a character home. It looks great, it's been so well maintained.
Speaker 2:And so they started negotiating with the developer to take the home just like the Pixar movie Up up except a bit of a sadder story in the pixar movie.
Speaker 2:And I can tell you it wasn't an easy negotiation. Right, developer was really I can't, I can't say they were very supportive or cooperative at first. And then my sister, being a bit of a savvy person that she is, she went and talked to the mayor of esquimalt and she says look, there's this 1915 home, we've loved it, we've taken care of it and the developer just wants to tear it down and we're trying to save it. So she led this campaign, if you will, to save her house and what she wanted to do. She wanted to move it up to this property that her and her partner were looking to purchase up near souk. Okay, and they went, reached out to one of the moving companies on the island and eventually they were able to pull the deal together and they put the house on a truck and they moved it up to souk and then they repurposed it and they've been living in it ever since. So how big is this house?
Speaker 1:like what's the? 1200 square feet okay, so it's small 12 to 1300 square to 1,300 square feet yeah, like the footprint. Forget about the height, but just the footprint. Obviously, some stuff is going to work and some stuff is just too broad and you'd have to dissemble it.
Speaker 2:Well, the measurements on that home I don't have it off the top of my head, but let's say it was around 28 to 30 feet wide. So at 28 to 30 feet wide you can get through a good number of streets that's like a boat, a decent sized boat in length yeah like a bayliner pleasure cruiser, 30 feet yeah, okay, yeah, and width, though in length it might have been a bit longer for sure, yeah, yeah, but the length is easier with a.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So she picked it up, she moved it up to this property that she purchased near Souk James. When she did this, this was about five years ago I was like this is incredible, like this is an incredible solution. Like you know, the developer should be happy because this 1910 character home isn't going to landfill. The city of Esquimalt was happy because they they didn't want to see this home torn down. The neighborhood didn't want to see this torn, this home torn down.
Speaker 2:But all of this development has just been pushing and pushing and pushing for these land assemblies to happen. And I get it. We need housing and we can touch, touch on this, maybe a little bit later. Um, but everybody was happy at the end of the day that that she saved the home and she was happy and her partner were happy. But it fired something up in me and this is one of those true aha moments in life of just looking at that and being like that makes so much sense. The city's happy, the developer's happy, she's happy. We prevented a good home from going to landfill. She's got a house now up in Sooke. This is such a winwin-win-win. And then I started asking why don't we like how much of this happens like how many homes get rescued, how many homes get repurposed and what are the economics behind this?
Speaker 2:is it cost effective? And the more I started just investigating and asking those questions and trying to find answers to those questions, the more it seemed to me there's a viable business model here to rescue good homes slated for demolition, move them and repurpose them in non-urban communities. And that was really truly the genesis of renewal development.
Speaker 1:Cool. That sounds awesome. I like the word rescue.
Speaker 2:Yeah, because it feels like you're doing something hard and something that bad is about to happen and something that bad is about to happen.
Speaker 1:Yeah, what was the? I always have this archetype of often people who have rescue dogs do CrossFit as well, because it's like overachievers. So what was that joke? How do you know if somebody does CrossFit? Because they'll tell you Right, happy to share? Yeah, exactly, but yeah, that would be a triple does CrossFit? Because they'll tell you Right, happy to share. Yeah, exactly, but yeah, that would be a triple. Just imagine the rescue dog in the rescue home and CrossFit class.
Speaker 2:They actually had a bunch of dogs too. Yeah, checks out.
Speaker 1:So, with Renewal Development right now, what is the actual service? So I know, like what do you charge for? How do you make revenue? Yeah, what do you charge for?
Speaker 2:How do you make revenue? Yeah, so it's kind of an interesting business model. In fact, when I was just down there in North Carolina speaking at this conference and I met probably about 40 to 50 other companies, mostly in the US but also here in Canada and I love going to those conferences because you start to really understand that the journey that you're on someone else has been on before. A lot of the questions you're asking, a lot of the things that you're trying to solve. Someone somewhere has tried this and just talking to them and working that out with them a little bit and understanding what they've gone through. So we're unique.
Speaker 2:There's very few companies in North America that are structured the way that we're structured.
Speaker 2:We essentially have three different components, divisions of the company.
Speaker 2:The first division is I act as a sustainable demolition service provider to builders and to developers, and so if you've got a land assembly and we've done a few now if you've got a land assembly let's say it's 10 homes and you need to contract a demolition service provider, you open up the yellow pages or go on Google. You can find a bunch of companies that will do that for you the abatement, the demolition, the tree clearing, all that kind of stuff. Now the developer all they care about is that this is going to be done roughly, on a budget that they had projected, on the schedule that they had projected, and those are really the only two things that they care about. And then the site's clear by the time that they need to clear. By how the homes leave, they don't really care. I'd say 99% of the developers that I talk to it's mostly about what's the cost, can you do it on time? Because all they care about and that's very understandable is that they bought the land they want their dream built they want to build something higher density.
Speaker 2:And so I come along and I say, listen, I can do this. I'm going to quote you, like I'm a demolition company, cost, competitive on the cost. And I say, listen, I can do this, I'm going to quote you like I'm a demolition company, cost, competitive on the cost, and I will guarantee you that I will provide you a clear lot by the time that you need a clear lot by how I get rid of these homes. Whether they leave in a bin all crunched up, or if they leave on the back of a semi-trailer because they're going down the road, the developer doesn't really care.
Speaker 2:Now the advantage of our service when I go and talk to them, when I go into their boardrooms in downtown Vancouver or wherever it is is there, is this sustainability to what we're trying to do. And of the 10 homes, let's say, maybe two of them are really nice homes and are good candidates to be moved. So I'll tell them and I can't guarantee that but I'll say listen, I'll make sure you have all 10 lots clear by the time that you need them cleared by. But I found two really nice homes within your assembly. I'm going to try to move those two homes to a non-urban community as affordable housing and so far we've been working with a lot of First Nation communities up and down the coast of British Columbia. So the benefit to the developer is they achieve their objective. But there's also this added bonus from a community perspective, from a local, municipal perspective, from a marketing perspective, that something good happened with the good homes. So that's our first division is a sustainable demolition service.
Speaker 1:So you're kind of like you're a sub, you're almost like a GC operating sub of that particular initiative.
Speaker 2:Yeah, In fact we've actually built in the internal capacity to do abatement, to do the demolition, to do all of that stuff. The only thing I don't do is tree clearing.
Speaker 1:Right, but you coordinate.
Speaker 2:I coordinate and we do it. Okay, yeah, except for the trees.
Speaker 2:But the abatement and the demolition we take care of. So that's the first division, just the liability of getting something up 40, 50 feet up in the air. So the second division and there's a reason why I learned that I needed to do that and the reason why I learned that I needed to become a demolition service provider is that's my pathway to finding homes, that's my pathway to securing homes, homes, that's my pathway to securing homes, homes that I want to ultimately move and repurpose somewhere else. And I also learned through experience, james, that it's not a great model just to take the homes that I'm interested in.
Speaker 2:So you've got a 10-home land assembly and I say there's two good homes that I want to move. What about the other eight? And what about the basement and the garage on those two lots that I do want to take? And so, from you, from a developer's perspective, then you're dealing with a demo company and then you're dealing with a moving company. Right, well, you've got two different sets of contracts, two different sets of schedules, coordination. It's not efficient. And I learned that really quickly after we did it a couple of times and I was like no, no, no, the developer doesn't want a headache, they want this to be easy and simple as possible. I need to take all of this in-house and coordinate all of these pieces the abatement, the permitting, the tree removal, all of that stuff.
Speaker 1:So how much more of a headache is it for you to move a home than knock it down and take the pieces?
Speaker 2:Well, the good thing, that's all on my side, so the developer doesn't even see any of that stuff Fair enough. Any of the work that needs to be done, or the permits and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:So to them, they would not know if they just went on holiday or left the planet for three months. They wouldn't know whether or not a house was moved or demoed.
Speaker 2:There's no material difference to them whether or not I demo it or I move it.
Speaker 1:Now I tell them no brain damage with the city. Does that change for them?
Speaker 2:no, because I deal with that. I deal with the permits, the move route permits and all that kind of stuff I see just like a sub would get an electrical permit. Yeah, okay, yeah okay, um, so I, but I do tell them that we're planning on doing this. As soon. Soon as I start knowing that I'm going to move out, that's good news. Yeah, I'm going to tell them, like listen, let's put a sign up on the fence and maybe let's bring the mayor out.
Speaker 1:Take a picture of it, put it on the plaque on the new building. This home used to be here. There you go, gotcha. Yeah, little story.
Speaker 2:So okay, our homes, and that's how we provide a clean, efficient service to these demolition um, so to these developers and to these so your revenue is the margin or a lot of stuff I make a little bit of margin, like the demolition industry is a pretty tight margin industry, so I'm I make a little bit of margin there, but I'm not really doing that because I want to be a demolition contractor like I didn't start this company to be a demo contractor.
Speaker 2:I started this company to save and and repurpose as many good as possible, just like my sister did.
Speaker 1:Okay, but the home itself that you, rather than demoing, let's say you move the home. There's X amount of costs to lift the home up, get it on the jacks, get the thing moving onto a truck, transporting it, then putting it on, getting it ready on a new pad I would think constructing that and then putting that down. Obviously, that's a significant amount of cost. To do all of that Do you sell the home on the other side? That's right.
Speaker 2:Okay, gotcha, so the developer pays me to clear their lots just like a demo company, right.
Speaker 2:And then once I find those two good homes, I will put them on my website and I'll say I've created a marketplace, gotcha, just like a lot of the other movers have that do this around the world. And then someone who wants a home in Alert Bay or Port McNeil or Sunshine Coast or wherever it might be, they come to my website and they say, hey, that's a nice home. Then I have a different client there. So that's the second service is the move service. So now we lift it, we put it on steel beams, we take it off the property, we do all of the, the um, the permits to actually move it and we find the route and we ensure that it's going to fit to where it needs to go and all that kind of stuff. So there's some logistical, there's a fair amount of logistical coordination to put these two pieces together. So that's the second service is the lift and the move. And then the third service is that, once the home gets to that final destination.
Speaker 2:So I'll just give you an example we just moved 10 homes out of Port Moody this past year in partnership with West Group. So West Group engaged us in that demolition service provision and I reached out to the Shishal First Nation on the Sunshine Coast who I knew was just about to build some new housing, and I said well, listen, I found 10 really nice Port Moody homes, well-maintained, well-renovated, mid-century ranchers and bungalows, and we can do this significantly cheaper than building new. I can talk a little bit about the finances, what that looks like. So they were our second client. So West Group paid me to clear those 10 lots. We did that and the She-Shell Nation paid us to provide them 10 homes, just like if I was a prefab or modular company. Yeah, gotcha, okay. And then, just to finish, that thought that third service is once the home gets there. Then Renewal acts as a general contractor of those 10 homes.
Speaker 1:Fix all the cracks.
Speaker 2:To fix anything that might've been broken. Yeah, to upgrade. Let's say there were some single pane windows. We upgraded those to double pane. Maybe we added some insulation into the attics, you know, converted the gas furnace to a heat pump, because sustainability is a big part of why I started this company, and so it's not enough just to save these mid-century homes, or whatever home it might be. It's also are they, are they going to be energy efficient, or as energy efficient as possible?
Speaker 1:Do you guys pour the pad too? We do everything On the other side.
Speaker 2:We general contract, all of that. Okay, cool, nice. And so we actually added. So those 10 homes out of Port Moody that we did with West Group and the Shishal Nation, we added 10, well, it's actually seven basement suites below the homes, so we made them into duplexes. Oh nice so we made them into duplexes just to maximize the land usage a bit better, and so they're going to end up with 17 that's going to be complicated to plop that on top of once.
Speaker 1:You've got a basement right, stairwells and openings and stuff that's right.
Speaker 2:So you know we had a really good designer and architect map it all out and say, okay, here's where I think the mechanical room should go and here's where the staircase is. It was great. The architect I've worked with her for a couple of years now, and so she's kind of gotten into this, which is one of the things that's really good about us doing everything is that you do this a few times and you start to streamline and understand everything a bit better, as opposed to just handing the home over to someone else.
Speaker 2:And now they have this thing, this snowflake, that they've got to figure out how to deal with.
Speaker 1:Is there always a yay it fits moment when it's all done?
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, when those pieces come together, right, when you go somewhere and you're like yeah, I can get that home there, yeah, and then everything just starts to align.
Speaker 1:Because on the plans it's like, okay, this is going to work, but actually seeing it you're like, wow, the tolerance is very, very accurate.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's a logistically challenging enterprise, right, and that's why I've tried to internalize all of those challenges to say everybody else don't worry about it, developer, don't worry about it, the person receiving the home. I'll take care of and streamline as much of this as possible, which ends up being a much better service for everybody.
Speaker 1:Okay, so those are the three business lines. That's right, okay, cool. So are you able to share any economics around? Not your profit, but basically what they ended up buying the house for. How expensive are they?
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I've got some of this information on our website, so I'm happy to share it. It's about 40 to 60% more affordable than building new, or compared to most modular options.
Speaker 1:So how much is a square foot?
Speaker 2:It depends on the destination, james, and so that's why I always like to use the percentages, because the further you go, it changes the cost, and then some communities just have a higher build cost, so like if you're on Bowen Island, for example.
Speaker 2:Bowen Island- from what I've heard it's got a $500 a square foot minimum for building new on Bowen Island right, whereas if you go to Chilliwack maybe you can do it for, I don't know, 200 square foot, so those numbers change so quickly. So I generally say that a renewal home, which is what we have listed on our website, is delivered as is about 40 to 60% more affordable than building new 60% more affordable.
Speaker 1:Okay, so okay.
Speaker 2:Delivered as is Right.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so it's either half or less, yeah, gotcha.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and then the question is what kind of modernizations, upgrades, do you want to do? There's a couple of things that will have to get fixed, so I'll give you an example Chimneys will often knock it out, they don't move well. And chimneys will often knock it out, they don't move well. And it's also a health and safety thing when you bring a house into a new community, so we'll patch it, but then you want to, you know, reboard it and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:So there's little things like that that we'll have to do once the home is delivered. Yeah, especially the mid-century modern stuff. It's always got that. Yeah, it's a lot of cool houses actually. So what is it? So what is the? Is that mid-century modern? Is that what that's like? I see, I saw a house in Burnaby that was for sale. You know the big, large beams in the living room, wood soffit ceiling. You know the metal spiral staircase going downstairs, shag carpet like the 70s. Is it 60s or 70s, is that?
Speaker 2:Shag carpet, I don't know. That feels a little bit more 70s, 80s to me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's kind of, but there's a lot of cool homes. I mean, they look like Vancouver specials but they're not quite as ugly.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, the bread and butter of the work that we do are mid-century rancher bungalow style single story, and single story is really important just so that you can get them underneath the power and the trolley lines.
Speaker 1:Oh yeah, so never a second story.
Speaker 2:Unless you're really close to water. A second story is just. It's usually cost prohibitive to move two stories, that's why, ranchers bungalows single story.
Speaker 1:I guess it wouldn't move very well, would they? Second story they move.
Speaker 2:So when I was at this International Structure Movers Conference and there was a gala event on the last night, the things that these I don't want to say guys, but it's mostly guys but the things that these companies move are absolutely incredible, like huge buildings, apartment buildings, historic buildings, and they love doing it and it's just incredible to see what's movable.
Speaker 1:Okay, so we see a lot of this land assembly going on Cambie Street Basically it was that for, but those houses like really some of them were just people that just been waiting and waiting and waiting for the market and they just get so dilapidated they're not worth anything to you guys. But let's just talk about this sustainability element and then, like the city of Vancouver, for instance, so to demo a home, there's this deposit of like $19,000 or something like that. If you is it 3.5 kilograms per square foot you have to take wood out of. Is that the deal? And then you get it back.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so that's Victoria's.
Speaker 1:Oh, it's Victoria's, excuse me, sorry. Okay, it's Victoria.
Speaker 2:Well, let's just talk about what's happening. Okay, right, so at a high level, if we want to start there, canada welcomed a record number of new Canadians. I think it was last year or the year before.
Speaker 2:A million new Canadians came to this country A million in one year and we're a population of 32, 33 million, something like that Huge numbers, right. Where are all of these people going to live? Right, and I understand the policy behind it. You know we've got an aging population, we're lacking skilled trades and skilled professionals in certain places, and so we you know, really the government really encouraged more people to come to the country, and I understand that part of it.
Speaker 2:The challenge is do we have the infrastructure to sustain all of these new people so quickly? Right, and, and not only that, but then you've also got this young generation of, you know, millennials and jed z coming along board now who want housing. Right, so you've got these two huge population pressures on our housing market right. People coming to this country and young people who want housing, and right, so you've got these two huge population pressures on our housing market, right, people coming to this country and young people who want housing, and there simply isn't enough housing, right. I think we've all kind of wrapped our heads around that concept. So the provincial government-.
Speaker 1:Is there enough, or is it just too expensive?
Speaker 2:And I would argue so, when you supply and demand, I mean when you've got Is it supply of stuff that people can't afford. So I think there's we can help you get a whole thing about affordable housing and supply of housing. But you know-.
Speaker 1:Or is it affordable?
Speaker 2:housing On a simple supply demand curve. I would think it's arguable and I think it's easy to understand that when this many people are looking for housing and you don't have enough housing, you're going to put inflationary pressure on housing costs, both rental and to buy, right, and I think that's. We've seen a lot of that over the last let's say, five years, especially during COVID, right, and then you're seeing in the United States, like all of these companies I was talking to down there, same situation, right. So inflationary pressure on housing. We don't have enough housing.
Speaker 2:The government, all the levels of government provincial, federal, local, municipality are all talking about the need to build more housing faster. Right, everybody's talking about this and so you know. The province just blanket rezoned um about a lot of these single-family lots for higher density, right, provincial, it came from the provincial government. A lot of the local municipalities adopted it and I understand the need for more housing, like, don't get me wrong and especially around transit, transit-oriented corridors. Right, like a single-family home across the street from a SkyTrain station. That doesn't make sense, right, that level of low density in what really should be a high-density neighborhood or corridor. Right, so you use the Canby Corridor as an example, you can see it in Coquitlam, you're going to see it out in the valley towards when that new SkyTrain line is being opened right now, yeah, right. So all of these corridors are going through this massive up zoning and densification Right, and again, I generally support the densification of our urban areas.
Speaker 2:The challenge, james, is that the process to achieve that density is unbelievably wasteful. It's unbelievably wasteful from a material perspective. There's about 100 tons of raw materials in the average 1500 square foot rancher or home. 100 tons of materials. There's 23 tons of embodied carbon. That's the carbon that goes into building something, all of the cutting down the trees and shipping it and the manufacturing, all that kind of stuff. And then there's, you know, we estimate there's 20 of the homes we tear down are actually perfectly good homes, right? So you actually you're losing housing stock when you tear down these perfectly good homes and you're losing character and heritage and the care and the love that someone might have put into that home over decades, right?
Speaker 2:So from all three of those perspectives, this is incredibly wasteful. And our argument to the provincial government, to the municipal government, is that we should be creating stronger incentives for these homes to be, for all of this material and for all of these homes to be diverted from the landfill. And because one third of Metro Vancouver's landfill is full of demolished homes One third On a per capita basis we are one of the demolition capitals of the world right now. When I went down there to New Bern, carolina, last week and I'm talking to these movers, I'm telling them about the sheer volume of demolition happening here, their eyes were popping out of their heads because it was just. They've never heard of anything like this. So what I think is really incumbent on local governments who are dealing. This is the irony of this whole thing.
Speaker 2:On the one hand, they're promoting all this density yeah but, on the other hand, they're the ones who are sitting there looking at our landfills filling up, yeah, and so they're trying to deal with all of this waste and mitigate all this waste what's toronto like?
Speaker 1:what are their numbers like?
Speaker 2:I'm not actually too sure I have.
Speaker 1:I've been mostly looking at bc okay, yeah, I mean it makes sense that vancouver is the way it is just due to how stunning it is and and it's like a jewel right West Coast jewel Well, it's like a jewel, but then also we can't keep sprawling out.
Speaker 2:Like you look at Calgary, you can just keep sprawling out right. Yeah, but at a certain point you've got the border to the south, you've got the ocean to the west, you've got mountains into the north and to the east. Where are we going to go? Yeah, but I mean we're still growing out in the valley abbotsford, chilliwack, all that, and then there's the alr and how much land is actually going?
Speaker 1:to be out there. Yeah, but yeah, that's interesting. Yeah, I mean it doesn't.
Speaker 2:It makes sense so much money comes here, that, uh, I mean it makes sense to knock things down for what people want yeah, and I just at like at a value level just because it's so expensive for sure, but it's like I've come across james homes that were fully mid-century, homes that were fully renovated in the last 10 years 150 000 renovations slated for demo. I've come across homes built in the last five years slated for demolition Like this mindset doesn't make a lot of sense to me.
Speaker 1:So what is that? So just just to, there's got to, is there? I want to get into just the weeds on this just for a second. Is that the? If you're going to spend, let's say, on a bungalow in Vancouver, burnaby, like single family home on its own, what would the lot be? 10 by 100? By what'd it be? What's a typical lot?
Speaker 2:40 feet wide. 40, 50 wide feet wide.
Speaker 1:Right, okay, and then depth wise.
Speaker 2:I'm not even too sure Okay.
Speaker 1:Yeah. So if you, let's just say you've got a, this is a bungalow, it's not very big, you're talking maybe 1,200 square feet, okay, and you and its land value is, let's say, it's $1.9 million, mm-hmm, $1.8 million. Well, I'm not gonna spend that kind of dough living in a 1,200 square foot bungalow. For sure. Just not doing it, I'll just go somewhere else. Yeah. So the issue that you have is you have that the land is worth so much money that the structure has to have enough cachet for what you spent.
Speaker 2:Yeah, like I said, I'm not advocating for these homes to stay where they are.
Speaker 1:You want to move.
Speaker 2:I just think that my argument is that the process to achieve this density is so wasteful that we should come up with better alternatives to just demoing and putting all of these homes in the landfill.
Speaker 1:Yeah, and there are responsible and moving them is the way to do that.
Speaker 2:So there's a couple of them. So I would argue and I think this is what municipalities are looking at, because you brought up the policy from Victoria relocation, which is what we do, and I estimate we could probably be doing this about two to 300 times a year we could be moving two to 300 homes a year. We only currently move the industry. There's about five companies that do this right now in bc. They move about 100 year homes a year. Right, so we could be doubling and tripling the volume of homes that we can save. Number one, right. The second solution, which is not actually what I focus on, so I focus on home relocation, repurposing. The second solution, which is complementary in my view, is deconstruction, yeah, deconstructions where you pull the whole home apart and there's all materials you take all the materials.
Speaker 2:But there's a really key definition of deconstruction is where you pull the whole home apart, take all the materials. You take all the materials. But there's a really key definition of deconstruction which I think is getting greenwashed a lot. Deconstruction in its true, defined form is preserving the material in its original form, not breaking it, not crunching it. Recycling isn't deconstruction. Deconstruction is when you pull it apart and then you have the ability to take the nails out, replane it and then put it back into the supply chain. Gotcha Right, because there's a bunch of companies out there and I see it because I look at this there's some demolition companies that say they do deconstruction and what they're really doing is recycling.
Speaker 1:They crunch everything, they put all the wood into one bin and it gets recycled, that's great.
Speaker 2:I'm not saying it's better than just putting it all into the same bin, but it's not deconstruction, so let's not get those two things confused.
Speaker 1:Gotcha okay.
Speaker 2:And I think that you're seeing policy also move in the direction of deconstruction. So I think municipalities and Metro Vancouver and all these different agencies are looking at all of this waste and saying, no, this doesn't make any sense.
Speaker 1:Let's find more responsible alternatives, and I think this is where relocation and deconstruction are starting to really emerge as better solutions to just doing all this demo. Okay, so I mean, is there a development cost advantage to having deconstruction from the city? Do they give you a break?
Speaker 2:So there are different tools that governments are now using to encourage developers to do this. Okay, so Victoria you brought up Victoria they enacted a $19,500 deposit. That applies to any pre-1950 home, to any pre-1950 home, and if you can prove that you've salvaged X amount of the board feet, you get your deposit back on the removal of that pre-1950 home. If you go back to the city and you don't have the receipts to show that you salvaged X amount of the board feet, they keep your $19,500 deposit.
Speaker 1:So what is this deposit? For?
Speaker 2:The deposit is kind of an incentive for you to either look at relocation or deconstruction. Okay. So it's kind of like you know you buy a case of beer and it's got all that recycling. You know the 10 cents for the cans.
Speaker 1:Yeah, no, I get it, but I have to buy that.
Speaker 2:If you want, you choose to buy. It's got that fee.
Speaker 1:I can't have the beer otherwise.
Speaker 2:Well, you can return the can after and you get your 10 cents back.
Speaker 1:I know, but I can't walk out with the fluid. Only that's my point point. So I guess what I'm saying is is that if you buy a home and you want to, demo it.
Speaker 2:Do you lose that 19 grand? You get it back if you relocate or deconstruct it. If you don't relocate it and if you don't deconstruct, the municipality keeps that 19.5. So you lose it in that scenario.
Speaker 1:But are you subscribing to a program?
Speaker 2:Nope, it's just part of the demo. It's part of the demolition application fee.
Speaker 1:That's all I'm trying to say.
Speaker 2:Oh, yeah, okay.
Speaker 1:So the demolition fee is $19,000.
Speaker 2:It's a deposit. Yeah, gotcha, yeah. For every for every Pre 1950 home in the city of Victoria.
Speaker 1:Gotcha. Okay. So it's basically yeah. So you're basically if you can prove that you're using 3.5, was it kilograms per square foot of timber, then you basically don't pay your demolition fee you get it back because they do take it from you up front. For sure, but they're going to take it anyway for any demo of a pre-1950s home.
Speaker 2:That's right in Victoria. Yeah, yeah, so there you go.
Speaker 1:So perfect, okay, this makes perfect sense. Do you think Vancouver would do something similar?
Speaker 2:I think more and more municipalities are looking at different tools to move the industry in this direction. Okay, and it's because our landfills are filling up and all of these perfectly good materials are ending up in our landfills, and it shouldn't, right.
Speaker 1:So what about the homes that are two-story? You can't get near those because they're hard to move. Probably Would you. So let's say you got a 10 parcel land assembly project that you're looking at and like, hey, there's a bungalow there. I can probably figure out where that can go. I can mark it on you. Mark it on your website before you take it down. Right?
Speaker 2:Before we look at demo we try to move it If it's a good home. When I say take it down, I mean move it yeah.
Speaker 1:Or even start to move it. What's that time for the developers obviously going okay, I need this thing clear. And then you have to have this you have to market this eligible home in a certain period of time. So you guys like are on the pressure clock as soon as that opportunity is there.
Speaker 2:That's a really good stream of thought, james. So when I make the commitment to the developer, let's say I work with West Group and they got 10 homes out in Port Moody and West Group's like okay, glenn, you can, we'll engage you to do this service, but we need the site clear by october 1st. Yeah, and because we need to get going on our development, our schedules start in october 2nd it's like okay, so I now have a deadline to work against the commitment that I make to west group and this is really important the commitment that I make to West Group and this is really important the commitment that I make to the developer is, one way or another, I will provide you a clear lot by October 1st. If it gets down to the wire and I haven't been able to find a way to move the home or find a place to take the home, I'll demo it.
Speaker 2:And I'll recycle the materials and all that kind of stuff, but that's how I get out of that pressure cooker situation. Now there's another thing that I'm working on right now, which is basically working on some properties outside of Metro Vancouver where I can basically have a place to take them, not in terms of storage, but actually to set them up, Because if I don't have to put those two pieces together every time and let's say, there's 30 lots that I've secured somewhere outside of Metro Vancouver and every time I come across a nice home I know exactly where it's going- so you can leave it on the steel girders and.
Speaker 2:Well, would it actually remove?
Speaker 1:And move it again if you were to find the buyer for it.
Speaker 2:Well, no, let's say, I own 30 lots or 50 lots somewhere in a non-urban community, right?
Speaker 2:I see, and they're all ready to go, they're serviced, it's bare land, all that kind of stuff, and I know I can get homes there. This is what I'm working towards. So if I've got 50 lots somewhere in a non-urban community, I find a really nice home. I don't have to do the marketplace thing. I don't have to wait to see if all of the pieces align, the stars align, I know exactly where it's going. The second I see it right and Right, and that's what I'm kind of working towards to try to remove that pressure, that time constraint.
Speaker 2:So you're trying to put some neighborhoods together Eventually, yeah, and we're getting closer and closer to doing it.
Speaker 1:That's cool. So you get to the civil park. Do some roads.
Speaker 2:We're going to do it likely with a couple of nations first, I see, and then we'll see what goes after that Cool. Um so can we just so so far, um what? You're saying is that you have moved 17? Yeah, plus a, plus a schoolhouse, plus, let's say, about 20 homes at this point, 20 buildings at this point, mostly homes.
Speaker 1:Okay. And then they came from where? Um, mostly Vancouver, port Mo, moody, coquitlam. Okay, and then what are the local like? What's the biggest headache for you when you're going? Okay, is it the, the transport you're like? I hope it goes smoothly. Is it the the fitting on the other side? Is it the you know raising the home? I mean, how did they do that? First of all, is it hydraulics?
Speaker 2:Yeah, steel beams and a unified jacking system with hydraulics.
Speaker 1:yeah, Okay, interesting, and there's certain companies that do that or you guys do that. We're getting into it. You sub that out.
Speaker 2:Up until the last few months we had been subbing it and we're starting to get into more of it in-house.
Speaker 1:Right, Okay, Wow, that's pretty crazy, so do you. So I would assume that most of these houses are on a. Are they on a? They're on a foundation, right?
Speaker 2:When we find them. Yeah, yep, crawl space or whatever it might be, basement suite.
Speaker 1:So where's the separation then? Where do you lift from?
Speaker 2:So essentially what happens you can think of Jenga or something like that you take these steel beams and you get them under the floor joists. Okay, and there's different strategies about how you actually get the steel beam under the floor joists. But you need some space under the floor joists minimum about four feet right and that creates enough space.
Speaker 2:What they do is that they then set up. So under the steel beams. You have to do at the house you have to cut the belly band, obviously, the wires and the HVAC and all that kind of stuff. So you prep the home and then you come and you put the beams underneath, basically create the punch holes into the basement suite or the crawl space, put the beam through, and then you usually create cribbing and then you put the jack on the cribbing and the jack pushes on the beam and that happens at like four or six or whatever points. It is around and they're all synchronized and then they go, they get lifted and then you put the beams on, you lower it down onto dollies usually dollies and then the dollies, uh, get connected to a bunk and the bunk gets connected to the truck and then truck moves it out crazy.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's wild um you know what's interesting, james, and just as an aside, is when I was down there at this international conference, a lot of these move, these movers are doing so much work right now in the united states because of flooding and hurricanes oh yeah, people wanting to save their homes and they just want to get out of the perilous areas.
Speaker 2:The first morning I was there, there was a whole presentation by NOAA, the American agency, and they've run the analysis about what the American government's going to have to pay out in insurance claims over the next, let's say, 20 years. And they've, you know, based on that analysis, they said it'd be cheaper and more cost effective if we pay these owners to lift their homes. So these moving companies, who also all do lifting yeah, there's hundreds of thousands of homes that are going to get need to get lifted. Um, you can argue because of climate change. You can argue because of changing climate. Uh, that we're you know. Now we got flood-plwn areas, we got more intense hurricanes. All of these different natural phenomena are putting all of these homes at risk, and so there's so much work, especially down in the United States, to do this, and I would be interested to take a look at what that looks like in Canada too.
Speaker 1:Yeah, well, I mean it makes sense that the—so here the land is worth too much, there the land is too dangerous. Yeah, both good reasons to move homes. Yeah, yeah, that's pretty cool. So what do you see? What sort of innovations are when you went to this conference, to that association? Are there new tools? Are there new things, new technologies that you're seeing that excite you?
Speaker 2:I think you know. So I don't come from construction Lawyer. You are now. I don't come from a construction background and a lot of these, especially in the moving industry, it's so family-based right. My dad did this, my grandpa did this and literally there's no school to learn what they do.
Speaker 2:It's a highly specialized trade. There's no online program. There's no school to learn what they do. It's a highly specialized trade. There's no online program, there's no school. Your dad taught you, some foreman taught you. It's like the old masonry, and so that kind of keeps it as a closed loop in a lot of ways because it makes it really, especially because the equipment's expensive and the trade's so specialized.
Speaker 2:So it's a really hard barrier to entry or a high barrier to entry for people trying to get into this. But so it's really hard barrier to entry or high barrier to entry for people trying to get into this. But what I also think that does is it stops innovation and creativity.
Speaker 2:Because, when you've grown up in something your whole life, maybe you're not looking at it from an outsider's perspective. Maybe you're not looking at the industry and challenging the established norms and the established practices. Right, my dad did it this way, my grandpa did it this way.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you want your own boat, though, I guess, right.
Speaker 2:You want to protect your practices right.
Speaker 1:My dad did it this way, my grandpa did it this way.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you want your own boat, though I guess, right, I'm gonna protect her on turf. Well, it's not just that, it's just also the mindset yeah, right, when you've just been doing it for so long, we've been doing it for this long. And then I come along glenn and renewal, and this is why they keep inviting me to come to these things I don't have, I don't come from this industry, but I look at it and I'm like wait a second, if you did these 10 things differently, I think you go from 100 homes a year to 300 homes a year.
Speaker 2:I think you provide a better service to the developer. Not just take the homes you want, but take the whole site and provide that one-stop solution. Minimize the headache and the coordination, Internalize that and I think we're going to find way more homes through just that one adaptation. The other thing that we just did is we built some software to help us identify where all these homes are.
Speaker 1:Yeah, I was gonna say like how do you find those?
Speaker 2:You do marketing, you do media, do interviews like this, right, but we've built some proprietary software coming back to my background in building software as a company 10, 12 years ago, that is, scanning all of the permit applications and then analyzing them for the contact data where the homes are, what do the homes look like and then we can reach out to those folks with our demolition service. So that's number two. Number three is, even when the home gets that final destination, not just delivering it but GCing that thing all the way to occupancy. Because you're right, this is, you know the complexity of where the staircase is and where the electrical panel is and just all of those things there's.
Speaker 2:You know you want this to be as simplified as possible and the analysis or the analogy that I use, james, is when you looked at Steve Jobs and Wozniak when they were starting Apple, they were looking at a whole bunch of people who were hobbyists, right, and it was tinkering, and you kind of had to expect people to do a lot with you and all that kind of stuff. And Steve said no, no, no. For this to be truly a consumer product, this needs to be as simple as possible and as intuitive as possible, and I think that's kind of the lens that I'm bringing to this industry right now is how do we make this as simple and intuitive and simplified and streamlined as possible? And I think if we do some of these things, this industry grows big time, and I think that's why they keep inviting me to go share some of these things with these other moving companies.
Speaker 1:So it's kind of like the heart transplant business. You gotta figure who needs the hearts and then you gotta figure out who are the donors, and then maybe it's the reverse marketplace. It's like what communities are interested in having more affordable housing.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I mean, that's one way of looking at it. Yeah, interesting. The analogy that I use a lot of times when I speak is what Steve did with the iPhone.
Speaker 1:Okay, he took all the buttons off.
Speaker 2:Yeah, you know the Palm Pilot yeah.
Speaker 1:I remember that.
Speaker 3:Have you ever watched that first video where he announced the phone? Yeah, I talk about it all the time.
Speaker 2:Oh, I love that when video when he announced and I talk about all. I love that when he talks about the launch of the iphone. You know he's got all this great enthusiasm about this is this is a product that should be used by the millions, not just by lawyers and doctors and all these specialized people and he says you know the stylus, you remember.
Speaker 2:I don't remember that part in the video. He's like he pulls out the stylus, you lose it. And then he you know, he harps on the blackberry, the keyboard that was taking up half the screen the fixed buttons yeah, the fixed buttons, these seemingly small things, sometimes, if you just think through an adaptation, it's like no, it could be in its own way, kind of revolutionary, and I think that's kind of the things that we're looking at in terms of the work we're doing right now.
Speaker 1:So what are the fixed buttons of your business right now that you'd like to remove?
Speaker 2:Most of these movers aren't demolition providers. They don't do anything once the home is delivered. So there's two buttons right there that are cumbersome and sticky. They don't have a lot of good intel about how to find these homes, which is the software that we're building right now. Those are three. I could probably take you through another seven. They're not doing the policy advocacy that we're doing right now, right to try to move the needle and try to encourage municipalities to move the entire industry in this direction, you know. So there's four, there's six more that I could probably outline that if, collectively we do this, I'm pretty confident we're gonna be moving two to three hundred homes the next five years is there a concentration of the IHP ideal home profile?
Speaker 1:Is that what, oh? Yeah, like you know ideal customer profile, ideal home profile Is there within more expensive areas, are there less of those?
Speaker 2:In terms of homes that we're trying to find.
Speaker 1:Yeah, like when you do the analysis with your software, you're probably going to find hot pockets from development years in history there was more single level bungalows than there were in other areas from other like you're probably going to see some once you do the analysis you're going to see some very telling historical trends of building in general. Yeah, totally.
Speaker 2:Right. And then, like my sister's home, that 1910, 1920 home, it kind of looked a little bit more like the homes that you see built today a little bit tighter, not as wide, taller right, and then at some point in the 40s, 50s and 60s we went to these low ranch or bungalow style and then we've come back up. So that's a really good question and it's not only the question of what's the ideal profile of the home, but what's the ideal profile of the neighborhood in terms of accessing roads to get them out from.
Speaker 1:Like traditional streets are easier, or with alleys, without alleys.
Speaker 2:You know there's a couple of things to look for. You want to be close to wide streets. Okay, you know there's a couple of things to look for. You want to be close to wide streets. Coquitlam has a lot. Surrey has a lot. Carisdale is like really hard to move anything out of Carisdale. For example, you got all those really tight, windy roads. You got all of those big, beautiful oak trees overlying the streets. Yeah, to get anything tight through one of those streets is really challenging.
Speaker 1:Yeah, some of the oak trees are like right on the curb.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah. So not only is it the ideal house profile, but it's also the ideal moving neighborhood profile that we have to look at.
Speaker 1:So with the city of Vancouver and what they're trying to do with the densification of, let's say, between 12th Broadway, arbutus, that area, you got your lasers hot on those areas.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So there's going to be a ton of really good homes torn down, character homes, well-renovated homes, people that had a bit of money and they took really good care of their homes. In that whole area I think there's going to be some potential for relocation, especially if we cut the roof off and we get the single-story part that we want and we can get it through roads.
Speaker 2:So Vancouver is a little bit unique and this is getting into the weeds of this a bit. Vancouver is unique from North Vancouver, richmond, surrey, all those other neighborhoods because of the trolley lines, okay, and the trolley lines present a pretty unique challenge. Now the trolley lines start. They're not right on the water, so if you go to Kitts, there's a couple blocks between the trolley lines and Kitts. If you go down Marine Drive there's a couple blocks between marine drive and the fraser river. So there's a couple of areas of vancouver that are outside of the trolley lines, but most of vancouver's within the trolley line boundaries, trolley lines, I think they're sitting around 16 feet and so you and you can't come within two feet of the trolley lines. Right, if you come within two feet.
Speaker 2:I can't remember exactly what happens, but if you start touching them, for sure it triggers the whole, like removing, temporarily removing the trolley line, which people do it all the time, but it's really expensive and you do it at night and they have to take it. I've talked to a Coast Mountain bus about this a couple of years ago and they don't like doing it because they have to shift or change a lot of their trolley routes to electric buses or just normal diesel buses that night. So it's this whole costly thing. So when we want to move a ranch or a bungalow specifically out of the city of Vancouver and this is actually one of the things I was talking to some folks down in the US about was about cutting the top part of the roof, hinging it, tarping it and then reestablishing that so that will give you your clearance to get under the trolley lines, and then reestablishing that on the other side once you get there and then reinforcing it and all that kind of stuff.
Speaker 1:So when you say hinging, Just like a Simpson.
Speaker 2:There's like these. You know the modular companies use these interesting little hinges just for the trusses on the roof. Oh, I see Okay.
Speaker 1:Wow, crazy. That sounds pretty, pretty amazing. So is this something that is a trend that's getting more popular throughout the world? Or I mean, are you on the upswing of the no buttons industry here?
Speaker 2:yeah, that's it's a good. It's a good way, it's a good thought exercise. I actually think the industry is moving away from this okay. So when I was down in newbern talking to these other moving companies from around the world the complexity of what we do and the money that they can make just lifting homes they're like Glenn it's so much easier for us just to lift a home, a failing foundation. Someone wants to add a basement suite under their home. Maybe NOAA or FEMA or someone paid them to lift and shore up their home. There's so much more money and easier for us to just do that. We focus on that and the industry has actually been moving in that direction, away from moving homes on roads. There's a couple of movers that just focus on it entirely, but I think generally the direction has been away from it.
Speaker 1:Like in order to achieve density? You mean Just adding another floor in between by lifting the home?
Speaker 2:Yeah, I know but, isn't most of this the land assembly issue? Well, I'm talking about these other moving companies that I'm talking to in Minnesota and South. Dakota and Florida and all these other places or in the prairies.
Speaker 1:Where the land's not worth much.
Speaker 2:Where the land's not as worth as much. So I guess I'm trying to answer your question that I actually think the industry as a whole has been moving away from what we're doing. I think renewal is in this very interesting position right now. We doing, I think renewal is in this very interesting position right now. We're acting as a catalyst to swing this back a little bit at least, starting here in BC. Because you look at the housing shortage crisis, you look at the costs of new construction especially now if you look at some of what the tariffs might end up doing you look at how much land we have and you look at this need for I would argue for more sustainable development. You put all those things together. I think that there's this great opportunity to move 200 or 300 homes a year to non-urban communities and repurpose them as good, low-carbon, affordable housing. So I actually think the more we do this, the more we're going to inspire other people to get back into this, at least in some areas.
Speaker 1:So do you know, as you go from moving 17 homes, how many? How many do you plan on doing in the next 12 months?
Speaker 2:Uh about 40.
Speaker 1:40. Okay, and then okay, so that's yeah, so it's a hundred percent growth over a hundred percent growth. So you would do that again, a hundred percent in the year after.
Speaker 2:I see that as the that, that I see that as the trajectory in this industry, when you look at the sheer volume of homes being demolished and this is only going to get worse, and actually that's something that we haven't even touched on is that we put a report together with this other company called, or this organization called, lighthouse, and basically what we did is we looked at the last 10 years of demolition residential single-family home demolitions across Metro Vancouver.
Speaker 2:We looked at it per municipality as well. We did it for Greater Victoria, we did it for Nanaimo, we did it for Kelowna and we showed that over the last 10 years across Metro Vancouver we've torn down 30,000 single-family homes, 30,000. Last 10 years just in Metro Vancouver. And what the report shows is, because of all of this blanket upzoning of single family lots for density, that there's going to be a 35 increase over the next 10 years. And all of that demolition right. So from an environmental, social perspective, you can say that's going to cause a lot more of a problem. From a business perspective, I'm going to say that's a lot more homes, and good homes, that we're going to be able to relocate and repurpose. So do I see our trajectory as doubling for the next few years? I certainly do.
Speaker 1:Wow. So what do you think?
Speaker 1:Because you're a service provider and the there's um, the widget will be your process correct the widget will be our process explain well any business sort of has a moat of how they how they're competitive and you know, with the software you built before, well, maybe someone else hadn't built that software like that and the moat is that someone else has got to pay developers go through that brain damage and try and achieve what you already made, yeah, whereas with your company, after you've done your 17 homes, you do 40 homes, then you do 80 the next year.
Speaker 1:You have your widget. Your thing of value is how you do it and the barrier of entry of people just coming in and saying you have your widget, your thing of value is how you do it and the barrier of entry of people just coming in and saying, well, I want to do what Glenn does. It's like, yeah, good luck, just because if you've got the 40, 80, you know you've got yourself 150 homes of experience of being able to do that. So what do you think if you were to look forward 36 months from now? What do you think you're going to be looking back at going? I did not see that coming. Or you think your spidey senses were correct?
Speaker 2:It's such a great question. I feel like I'm sitting down with a business mentor, because that's the kind of question like walk me through this, like vision this out for me.
Speaker 1:Yeah, it's not a grilling session. What I'm trying to figure out is often we do this, you know, we just about to put our head down in a pillow and kind of wake up thinking, and we get these sort of epiphanies and we think of hey, you know, in a certain amount of time I could see this. You get like this clear vision of the way things go. Do you have any of those thoughts that you come across day-to-day basis?
Speaker 2:Yeah, and when I say businessmen driving, it's just such a thought-provoking question, I just think it's intuitive and it's visionary and it's questioning. So that was what I was kind of highlighting there. Yeah no problem.
Speaker 2:I think that what we do is challenging. I know it's challenging because I've lived it for five years and I've got a lot of other business mentors other than you, james um, who I explain to them what we do and how we do it, and the stress of trying to solve this problem, or the challenge of trying to solve that problem, and, and you know, the one comment I keep getting back from them is you know, glenn, this is what they say to me. It's like, you know, glenn, there are easier ways to make money, and I was like, yep, I'm sure there are, but I believe in this and I believe in what we're doing and why we're doing it, and I'm trying to solve something bigger than just building a company. Like I often say, that renewal is a campaign disguised as a company Interesting, okay, and if you know about my background and know about who I am, you can put that together pretty quickly. This isn't just about moving houses or saving some homes from the landfill. This is something about something way bigger for me, and that's about reshaping how we think, what we value, how we act, how we behave and the communities and how we build our communities. That, to me, is the bigger objective here, and renewal is just kind of this tool to try to achieve that.
Speaker 2:And when you look at the scale of environmental degradation, when you look at the scale of social problems in this world, do I have the belief that I'm going to change those things?
Speaker 2:No, but you try to send forth a tiny ripple of hope Coming back to our story of no, but you try to send forth a tiny ripple of hope Coming back to our story of hope, and you try to send forth a tiny ripple of hope that inspires people to think and do things a little bit differently. And Ted Kennedy, at Robert Kennedy's, during his eulogy, he said that many tiny ripples of hope come together and create the biggest change. And I kind of feel like that's where we actually sit. So do I think we're going to have competition? I know we will In a few years, when people really see something more happening, and there's already a couple of moving companies out there that do similar work. They're going to maybe adapt and maybe they're going to look at a couple of the innovative things that we're going to do and they're going to try to copy those things. I just think that this is such a huge, the scale of this is so big and it's challenging what we do and you have to really want to be in this. Yeah.
Speaker 2:That I think there's enough barriers that will protect us, but there's also enough work in front of us that we'll be okay.
Speaker 1:There's going to be some interesting robotic plays, I think, in this, in the robotics Just in the tooling of tooling and equipment for the process. I think that's going to change a lot. And that because I think that there's a company that I've I have interviewed a few times called Super Droids and they make robots for construction and yeah, there could be some interesting things within your industry of pre-work. Maybe. I'm sure that the heavy moving is probably not gonna change all that much, just because I mean, it might be less humans involved but the equipment's gonna look the same probably.
Speaker 1:But yeah, it's a pretty exciting industry you're in and I think that, just to add on to what you were saying, is when you do have a profitable altruism in terms of the paradigm of a company, it kind of brings a lot of positive energy towards the motion of things. Because when people are just trying to do things just for the sake of money which is typically just business, because it's survival and it's how we sustain ourselves, which is fair enough but when you add that altruism piece here, it suddenly like grease to the process, because you know, being capitalist is a pretty cold, cold world, right, if you add a bit of warmth to it with some altruism. It's a good thing.
Speaker 2:Well, and it's full circle of what we started this conversation on, which was hope, is contagious. Yeah, and I do think that when you show up and you say I'm trying to save these homes, and not just because I want to make a buck, but I'm genuinely care about trying to shape this industry and shape our communities differently I think it comes across when I talk to developers and when I talk to people on the other side, and so it is contagious when you try to. There's an expression in political campaigns that I worked on is that wear your heart on your sleeve, and I believe that in the work that we did on campaigns, but I also believe that in the work that we're doing as a company.
Speaker 1:You know it's crazy when you think of the. There's a parallel here and it's not quite the same, but I think there's the same romance is there and that is the resto mod of old cars. You know, when you see what they, what Singer, did with the 911, they take you have to bring them an old 911, a 90s 911, okay, early 90s, before the 99,. I don't know how much you know about 911s, but there was like a certain pocket there of the old original 911 shape, the last years of that. You bring them the car. You gotta pay about a rough one of those. It's gonna be about 80 grand. You drop it off to them and this is how they get around the trademark of using Porsche, because as long as they have a car they can do whatever they want with it. But they can't make a Porsche from scratch because they'd be in violation of Porsche's design right.
Speaker 1:So, but those cars end up being six $700,000 after they're done with them. So you see some of these homes. Maybe there is a how things were built back then. Let's say a home is say it's a 70s home home. There's a quality of timber and a quality of materials in those homes that you don't get anymore. Right, you get a lot of composite stuff now, when then it was solid wood, even soffits and ceilings. It's like, you know, solid fur.
Speaker 1:You're like wow okay, that would have been something else. So there's lots of cool things, I think, in terms of what kind of homes. It's not just about rescuing them. It's like what can you do with them, what can you convert them to, and what kind of virtue goes along with those, because I think there's a couple of pieces there. Because I think there's a couple of pieces there and it is that you know, some people are going to want to not impact the planet from how they live. So it's like, hey, this home used to be over in who knows where. Now it's here and we were able to modify this in a way that it is the optimal, most beautiful version this house was ever going to be. So maybe there's something there. I don't know.
Speaker 2:Well, yeah, it's that story of breathing life back into something and it's truly the story of renewal, which is really why I came up with it. I named it what I named it it's the story of breathing life into something that exists. Because, you're right, you know, in pre-1970 in British Columbia, all these wood-framed homes, they were built with first growth timber. After the early 1970s we started getting into the fast growth stuff, but before that, and the craftsmanship that went into those homes and the care and the love that a lot of people have put into their homes over the years. So there's a spiritual value and there's an emotional value and there's a craftsmanship value and there's a heritage value and there's a material value. Yeah, and I, just when I look at my sister's home, when I look at a lot of these homes that we come across almost on a daily basis, I'm like, wow, this shouldn't be demolished.
Speaker 2:And that's why we're trying to find these better solutions.
Speaker 1:Yeah, that's cool. It's kind of like if you were to go buy a I don't know a new Hyundai now, and then you would spend the same amount of money on a home that you could move.
Speaker 2:The quality. It's like moving a Mercedes or buying a Hyundai. Well, yeah, and we moved a 112-year-old schoolhouse from Kitsilano to the Squamish Nation, where was that?
Speaker 1:Where was the schoolhouse from? It was in Kitsilano. Where was it?
Speaker 2:Cornwall and Maple Little yellow schoolhouse around the corner.
Speaker 1:Like near Seagulls Bagels there.
Speaker 2:Seagulls Bagels Right by the white spot.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, yeah. Across the street this is the little school there. Oh, that's sweet Nice.
Speaker 2:Henry Hudson Elementary was growing. They're building a new school there and right on the corner of Cornwall and Maple there was a 2,000 square foot, 112 year old schoolhouse.
Speaker 1:So where's that?
Speaker 2:now. We moved it, we rescued it. Surprise, surprise, yeah. And if you ever drive over the Lionsgate Bridge, james, on the right-hand side. It's no longer yellow, it's maroon. The nation took the color and took the story back. There's a whole thing about that building, because it was part of the expansion of the city of Vancouver and it pushed up against the old village of Sanag. Okay, because it's right there in that same area.
Speaker 2:It is yeah, and so arguably it was part of the colonial history of that neighborhood in the city of Vancouver at the time. The people of the Squamish peoples get pushed off their land at Sanok they end up on the North Shore, and so the schoolhouse took the exact same journey by barge and 112 years later it went on a barge at Kitts Beach, went around English Bay under the Lionsgate Bridge and we delivered it to the nation. So when you drive right over the Lionsgate Bridge, on the right-hand side it's now a maroon building.
Speaker 2:You can't miss it, and that's one of the schoolhouses that we worked on with the nation.
Speaker 1:That's a great story. Yeah, nice, all right, glenn. Well, this has been awesome.
Speaker 2:How do people get hold of you? Yeah, so our website is renewaldevelopmentca. It's probably the easiest way for people to find us, and I think we're pretty active on Instagram too, which I think is renewal underscore development.
Speaker 1:Cool, yeah, all right. Well, this has been awesome. Thanks very much for spending time with me.
Speaker 2:We appreciate you having me, james, it was a good conversation.
Speaker 1:Right on, Thanks. Well, that does it for another episode of the Site Visit. Thank you for listening. Be sure to stay connected with us by following our social accounts on Instagram and YouTube. You can also sign up for our monthly newsletter at sitemaxsystemscom slash the site visit, where you'll get industry insights, pro tips and everything you need to know about the Site Visit podcast and Sitemax, the job site and construction management tool of choice for thousands of contractors in North America and beyond. Sitemax is also the engine that powers this podcast. All right, let's get back to building.