Cornering the Energy Efficiency Market in New Construction

Nate Trunfio: Welcome back to another episode of The Real Estate of Things. Really excited for this episode just because it's with such a dear, dear friend of mine. Mr. Oren Segev is somebody who has the entrepreneurial spirit and gift in his blood, has been an entrepreneur in a number of realms, but specifically in a number of real estate sectors over the last decade and a half at least. Has bought, owned, managed, repositioned over a thousand single family properties, and then over the last number of years has transitioned fully into new construction and has an amazing company and Brite Homes family of companies. Doing at least 300 builds a year and lots of other things in the works. And a continued great leader, great operator, and again, a great friend, Oren, man welcome to the Real Estate of Things podcast.

Oren Segev: Hey Nate, thanks for having me. Excited to be here.

Nate Trunfio: All right, man. Well we're going to spend a lot of time focusing on new construction, but I don't want to overlook what I know is one of your starts in real estate on the single family side. So can you just walk us through how you went about buying a lot of assets and your business strategy and the evolution of getting up to portfolios of over 1000 homes?

Oren Segev: Yeah, around 2012, 13, I moved to Florida. I moved my family to Florida because I thought there was a huge opportunity here to really get properties because of the amount of distress Florida I had in 2012,'13, I had the fortune to really build a great team where we looked for creative ways to acquire properties from different distress situations. We participate in foreclosure auctions, short sales, HOA foreclosures, tax deeds, and whatever path we could to really get properties below market values. So in between 2013 to 2017 18, we acquired about 1000 single family homes where the main target was to purchase, renovate and keep them for rent.

Nate Trunfio: Sounds easy when you say it fast, but building up 1000 homes, there's a lot of things that evolve over that time. Was it truly a snowball effect that it just built up to that or were you really just coming out of the gates full steam ahead? Talk a little bit about the ramp curve.

Oren Segev: Yeah, that's a great question Nate. Cause actually was the first year that I moved to Florida, it was quite slow. I couldn't really find the right place where I felt that the opportunity is incredible. So I was really investing most of my time into finding the place where I feel most comfortable in terms of rent yield, area growth and where I felt like I know the streets and I can really feel where the headwinds are going. So after traveling a lot in the state, even though I lived in Miami, I traveled, I traveled to Tampa and in Tampa I found a area specifically called New Port Richey in Pasco County and I got excited. At that time, New Port Richey area had 98% more foreclosures than anywhere else in the country and property values were selling in foreclosure auctions between $30,000 to $50,000. So when I saw that, I was like, that cannot stay like this for much longer. So it's like we went from zero to full speed in less than one year. So technically in March of 2012 I was in zero properties in Florida and then in December 31st, by the end of that year we already had, we invested about$ 20 million. So we went from 0 to 20 million in less than than a year. And it was quite crazy because we technically, the infrastructure in terms of people renovating, rehabbing, it was not in place. So we were scrambling just we saw an opportunities we charged forward and then we were figuring out how we were going to handle the back office, the management, the property software and software was not readily available as it is today between AppFolio or property where it was all new companies that trying to figure out how to really get to the rental market. So it was quite an experience. But after we acquired doing all that, I built a great team that was built under distress, sort of a fear that hey what are we going to do? How are we going to do all that? So it was like true fight. We worked 14, 15 hours days. I personally to the point of right now, we wake me up in the middle of the night, you ask me about an address, I will remember the floor plan. It was very deep. We wrote all the work orders ourselves, worked with so many different subcontractors and contractors. We put ads on Craigslist. We picked people up from Home Depot. We negotiated pricing with Home Depot to the point that over time we were able to build a pretty good process, negotiating great prices with vendors and build it up. So it was quite exciting the entrepreneurial spirit and grit that we had to show up to really deal with the massive growth. But we were very confident that we are acquiring the properties really well.

Nate Trunfio: That always is a good basis for a real estate investment business plan is the ability to buy right. It's hard to get hurt and it buys you some wiggle room I guess you could say in a number of regards. But man that's certainly 0 to 100 or 0 to 20 million very quick. And I'm sure a lot of learning lessons along the way. But I know you always emphasize the importance of team, people, leadership, processes, discipline, but also needing to do what you got to do to get things done. So there was a point to then where you had to have gotten attracted to new construction and we'll get to what you've built in that realm, you and your team. But why then did you shift to new construction focus and eventual business versus the scattered site burr model that you're running at a big and fast speed?

Oren Segev: So yeah, first the shift from SFR to new construction was, to me it is relatively natural shift. It was we in 2018,'17,'18, we seen in the SFR, everybody in the SFR space sort of shift and everybody, all the big Wall Street firms, big real estate funds, Blackstone, American Home 4 Rent, American Residential Homes at the time everybody were extremely aggressive. So at the days where we could be the sharks of the foreclosure auction, whether it was live or online were over. So as a private, relatively mid- sized organization, we need to figure out where we can be nimble and find opportunities and growth and really build that infinite opportunity. And when you have all these big wigs coming into the foreclosure auction, completely dominating it, thinking about really long- term money and we needed to be very calculated with our capital. We looked for opportunities for infinite opportunity and at the time it was very obvious where you buy in the foreclosure auction properties that were well above at some point the replacement cost of the houses. So we looked into opportunities to build homes for... That we essentially can get a brand new home in less than what we buy, a pretty broken down shitty property in the foreclosure auction. So the shift to new construction wasn't easy. Definitely there was challenges. To me, I have the tendency to oversimplify kind of business, hey, no problem. We're just going to put this person here, this person here. And we thought it was going to be a easy shift to new construction. It wasn't. At the very beginning we hired other builders to try to build our homes. It's like property management. Nobody can do it better than you can do it yourself. So we decided to really shift, do it ourselves. Struggled building the organization for the first couple of years and that struggle really helped us really build fundamentally good business. So it started hard but really what made us a lot stronger and better and positioned us really well. And today, like you mentioned, we bid on build on scattered lots, which is a very complicated business model. It's really not easy to really shift into it and there is a lot of learning to build in scattered lots. Every lot is essentially... It's almost like its own subdivision. Every lot has its own story between environmental issues, between the fill dirt that can be a surprise and different orientation with that already the close neighborhoods and streets, it's not an easy shift but we felt that there is a lot of opportunities in scatter lots. First and foremost, time to market. We buy a lot, we close it within 30, 45, 60 days. And then the time to obtain a permit, whether it can be 60 days or at some markets where the lots have water and sewer, we can really actually obtain a permit between two weeks to a month. So first and foremost, well subdivisions or developing subdivisions, some people get the entitlement development order and all these processes take them from the moment they put a capital out, can take them two years just to really get into the vertical and in uncertain environment where we've seen a bull market for so long, you always really need to be questionable really what's going to happen. So putting a massive investment into subdivision, knowing that the timeframes are two years or more, we didn't really want to make that commitment. So scattered lot was really a good solution for a quick cycle, buying a lot, getting a permit and essentially in 2019,'20 where... Just before COVID, before the world got nuts... They were relatively short cycle times on the construction time as well. So at times you can really get a permit and build the homes in less than 6, 7, 8 months, which was really quick way to build your business, get the revenues in, allocate some funds into growth and really build fundamentally good infrastructure with people process, execution and et cetera. So that was a really good fundamentally to build a business. Good way to fundamentally build a good business.

Nate Trunfio: Well look, I think as you listen to this, you hear, you built up scatter site, single family acquisition, reposition and cash flowing portfolio very, very quickly. I know you've done that very much same with new construction, but none of this comes as quickly as we would all want. Nor would it ever be as easy and nor are you perfect at doing it. And so there's certainly some comparables between sort of the two there, but it's just really unique to hear the way that you look at scatter site and lot because a lot of builders and developers, they always think go big or go home, but you're looking at speed to returning capital, redeploying capital and executing on driving returns off of it. And it's pretty cool to hear that's a unique niche but that comes certainly plenty of challenges. So can you go into a little bit more of the detail on some of the specific challenges in building a scattered site model, again, what you're producing in 300 plus homes and products a year, that's 300 variables rather than having a chunk of 50, 100, 150 in a given subdivision that can be a little bit more systematic or predictable, maybe you will. So hit with a little bit more nuance on some of the challenges that you navigate through running this business model.

Oren Segev: Oh for sure. So the challenges really starts with really understanding the lot. So basically it's the height and amount of fill dirt, fill dirt. For us it's been a huge challenge of really navigating through cost. So underwriting the acquisition part of the lot, knowing how many fill dirts and what kind of utilities you have on every lot. You can have one street that have water and sewer and the street next to it can have a septic and well, so really understanding on the acquisition of the property side, what are you buying. The element of really the orientation, the street. If you're going to have a rinky dinky broken house of your neighbor and you are going to put a beautiful brand new house next to it, you need to take in consideration the comp values and the impact that your neighbor are going to have. Additionally, we always try to manage it as close proximity for our construction management to have a pretty manageable distance between building one home to another. If right now we are working in areas that are technically a 40 square miles. So if we are just going to scatter the construction process over so many different zip codes, it's going to be very hard to manage. Each CM for our business is responsible to building 15 homes. So we are trying to cluster an acquisition process as many is homes as nearby as possible and essentially actually make the streets look much better so we can positively impact the local community where we can have 10, 15, 16, 17, whatever the number would be in one street, one area. So we can positively impact and more importantly we create owns comps.

Nate Trunfio: Yep. So I know also even managing all those zip codes and municipalities, I mean that's got to be sort of a racket in and of itself, although I can imagine you get pretty intimate with all of them given that you still try to be as concentrated as you can.

Oren Segev: So yeah that the working with the local municipalities over the last couple years was a nightmare. Obviously, you know, and especially in the scattered lot market because of the other side of the scattered lot is really the ease of really entering the market is anyone that has$ 50,000 in the bank account and build a relationship with Lima One and they can become a home builder relatively quickly. And over the last few years that's what we've seen happening. A lot of mom and pop, a lot of people that have a general contractor license that went ahead and obtained a general contractor license went ahead and really starting building in scattered lots which created... In today's environment where affordable housing is such an massive need, we've seen such a significant influx and the local municipalities didn't really have the capacity to manage the such a influx. So the time with working with the municipalities, code changes, weather changes, those are the things that we needed to adapt, build a team to really understand things intimately with the local municipalities that we can adjust and be nimble enough to really work with them pretty closely.

Nate Trunfio: No, that's interesting man. I can only imagine how things have gotten more challenging through COVID and probably not even gotten much back to the previous state. What I'd love for you to explain here to the audience is the product that you build because it's unique and I won't steal your thunder. So talk a little bit about specifically your niche and what you're building.

Oren Segev: Thanks Nate. That's one of the things that I can say here in the organization we're most proud of and at this point we can actually pat ourself on the back and really say that our product really made a difference. Especially in today's environment where absorption in sale is a lot harder. We can see that the differentiating aspects of our product really make a difference. So we build net- zero, zero energy ready homes. Where technically every home that we are selling comes with a standard of energy efficient elements in the house. Where the house with solar panels consumes produce more energy than what it consumes. And the home buyer that buying the house from us really going to have zero to very, very minimal electric bill on a monthly basis. And for us from a business proposition standpoint, it gives us the option to upgrade every home with solar panels where we have the ability to really make some sort of markup on selling solar panels or every single home. And more importantly it's actually a win- win with our buyers because they want to get the immediate return on investment by getting a lower monthly cost in their mortgage on the homeownership costs by really having no utility bill on the power. And the same time they get 75 up to about 6, $7, 000 in immediate tax credit when they acquire their home from us. And the house is designed, beautifully designed where we're completely pop in any one of these scattered lots kind of neighborhoods. So you see the people are simply willing to pay more for a differentiating beautiful product, modern looking. And even in today's environment where interest rates are higher and the customers still have the option to choose between a very basic offering of the DR or the century complete style homes where we can get homes with 40, $ 50, 000 cheaper than ours. They are willing to pay the extra dollar for a unique, beautifully differentiating product that is good for the environment as well.

Nate Trunfio: No, it's unique. I know you've been committed to it. Another thing I just want to have you enlighten us on is you and your team have been very disciplined on building set models and I forget if it's around three or four and so you can elaborate but what does that do benefit to you and why did you make that decision? And tell us a little bit about that.

Oren Segev: I think that's the one of the main elements of really overcoming some of the challenges in building in scattered lots. We are building only three models primarily. We have four models but the fourth one we hardly building. So basically I would say 80% of our builds are two models. We don't offer any upgrades, any changes. We have the same set plans, same set finishes and for us we call it the fully upgraded model. We build a great product and we cannot have the time investment into customize the elements in the house for every one of our buyers. So if you come to us and say, " Hey I want you to take the wall out. I want to upgrade the floor." We not your builder, we are simply going to build the same exact thing all the time so we can really have even flow construction and build as effectively as possible. And it's helping our builders essentially our CMS in the field, they know intimately every element of the house, every element of the floor plan, design, finishes, features and it's helped us avoid a lot of mistakes and it's very scalable. Customizable home would make it virtually impossible on scattered lots. So I have so many moving parts, it's going to open a flood of opportunities for mistakes.

Nate Trunfio: Yeah, no I think it's just really unique and commend you and your team for just being so disciplined in it but where one may say, " Oh. Well you're not giving me the ability to make this my home and customized to me." You're also compensating for that by differentiating the product with net- zero and the solar upgrades. And so the combination of the two, to me that allows you that extra marketability to where someone may want, " I want to make it my custom home" and I'm sure that's why you still continue to drive a lot of demands. I think it's just important as we listen to this, it's like you're looking and just knowing you, your strategy and vision is all about building for scale and you can only do that when you can really control and predict a lot of the elements of it. What would you say in your business or some of the other really disciplined processes that enable you to scale to this size of building on scattered lots?

Oren Segev: So yeah, that's a great question. So it's really, I'm going to be a little corny here, but it's really about building the dream team. It's starting with the fundamental infrastructure here in the office, with hiring the right people in the right seats. Between the purchasing department, permitting department. Having the best players that basically have the experience, have the knowledge. Hiring people that help us learn new things. Technically I didn't come from the home building business and I'm competing with companies that have been over a decade in this industry. You know, have some of the dinosaurs of the inaudible and the inaudible and DR, the publicly traded ones in every market that we are in, that he's been in the business for over 100 years. So we needed to hire really great talent and it starts with the talent and with good people we can overcome some of the challenges and to stay scalable, it's like you said earlier Nate, it's all about staying true to the business model. I get opportunities all day every day, " Hey come here and build this multi- million dollar home for me on the beach of Naples and you can make 2, $ 3 million on one home. Why would you really build 50 or 60 of them instead of just building one beautiful custom home?" So it's really all about just staying true to where you are. We are spec builder, we're going to stay who we are, with our model, knowing that we are comfortable with our product, keep differentiating with our product, feeling good with what we provide to our buyers and not really vary out of it.

Nate Trunfio: So again, I just always love to hear it and it's just all too often overlooked in all realms of real estate investing, how important it's to be disciplined because man, there's a lot of shiny objects out there and a lot of distractions and there's a lot of ways to make money. And so it's not to say that just because you stay discipline in one, that is the one and best way to do it. Clearly you believe that for your team but you also need to stay consistently disciplined and committed to it so that you can gain these economies of scales, refine your processes and deliver good returns. So with that, I know historically you're been built to sale model but I'm sure you've been asked of probably only about a million times, Oren why aren't you doing build to rent and I know there's been some of that too. So I got to have you break down a little bit of Oren's analysis over the last number of years and even looking forward on build to rent or build for sale.

Oren Segev: That's a great question Nate. Obviously I come from the SFR space, so basically the SFR got me into the building business. So it's a great question but really nobody has a crystal ball on the market and essentially I think that our business was designed day one to create some sort of edge. So the disciplines that we developed here is saying hey, we want to build a business that's going to grow infinitely, but the market, obviously the noise in the market, interest rates, bad CPI or whatever report shouldn't really impact us much. The things that we should really stay true to is really our own discipline and really we going to make the best out of each market. So we felt that over the last couple years the game of real estate is buying low sell high. So we felt that the market was giving us great opportunities, margins that would never, we felt like we should be as hard as it was to build in the last couple of years. And cycle times were a lot longer and managing supply chain was a lot longer but property appreciation was pretty significant in the last couple of years and we felt all right we have such a great margin, we don't know if the property values will keep rising in such pace. We want to make some money. And that was the choice in the last couple of years. But we are very comfortable having a edge that if the market starts slowing down and absorption is slower, we have a product that will give us the option to really build for rent. Obviously from my standpoint it's a win from both worlds. Having the shifting into rental is great opportunity to really mitigate some of the tax consequences and really keep building the wealth when the market is slowing down. So in today's environment we are leasing more properties than what in the past but absorption has been very strong and margins are relatively high still. So we kind of playing right now build for rent, build for sale and we are doing both.

Nate Trunfio: I mean look, you put yourself in an opportunistic position to be able to do that. And I could imagine that with a build to sale model historically to get you up into this point to be able to be opportunistic, I mean you sort of had to keep driving heavy sets of revenue to then build up a big team, big infrastructure that enables you to move at this pace and then again now have the ability to opportunistically, hey we're building at the right price. One thing I've always loved about your model is being truly in that affordable realm and what was technically the affordable price point a couple years ago is a lot higher now but still in the affordable realm. And that just allows you, as the market changes, there should always be demand. Whereas maybe a couple years ago you were in the entry buyer market and as rates have gone up it's maybe the middle and upper levels have come back down. And so as you build affordable, there's always sort of either end of a buyer spectrum to create some demands and then we all know that we've become somewhat of a rentership nation that there's always rental opportunities as long as you have the sticky capital to be able to do that and then also to continue to reinvest some of that gasoline in the engine and continue to go and grow. So what-

Oren Segev: Sorry to interrupt.

Nate Trunfio: Yeah chime in.

Oren Segev: I just wanted to add on that point for a second. Cause that's one of the advantages that we have in the scatter lot market. So while building subdivisions, you set the stage on what type of models are you going to build all the time. So if you already obtain permits and did horizontal and engineering and you pick the product, it's very hard to really make changes. And in 2021, 2022, the market was so hot and our goal was to build the biggest models that we can build. So the highest we were building two models, which were the 1983 square foot and 2306. In 2021, 2022, those were great models because they were the highest margin for us and the most profit that we can really make in every home. But now when the market starts shifting and slowing down, we start really... Because of the scattered last market and the ability to go ahead, reapply for permit, the short cycle, we started really building smaller model and looking for places where we can disconnect the homes so we can be a perfect edge for either going to lease the properties with a decent cap rate and sell the homes with really good product and just smaller homes.

Nate Trunfio: It creates that flexibility and again gives you that ability to be opportunistic. So on the for sale side, things have certainly changed in the market. The pandemic threw everything for a loop. But what what's changed in your business model when there was really no product on the market through the pandemic and HPA was a super strong win behind you. Where arguably the longer you waited actually, you could probably sell for more. Whereas today's market shifted, HPA isn't really a thing and in certain markets certainly, certainly there's still home price growth, but how are you selling properties different then verse now?

Oren Segev: So Nate, I asked awesome question. In the last couple years we got spoiled. The market really helped us to avoid some of the challenges that in a normal market environment we should deal with. In the last two, three years we didn't think about market, you know? You place a home on the MLS and you get multiple offers, bidding war on every home that you build. And that make you to some extent fat and happy with the focuses of that you need to place on this position. So with the market slowing down, you need to really go and grow back the skills of really this position and building a great exit strategy. So in 2021, 2022, we minimized our marketing department. Very minimal content creation, very minimal ad spend or marketing or social media spend, SEO very minimal. We didn't really put a lot of emphasis into it because homes were selling too easy. So since I would say June, July last year when we sense that the market is slowing down a bit, we rebuild these processes and enhance our marketing presence and doing some more ad campaigns and going back and really present our product. So it's going to be more people would be able to be exposed to our model. I can tell you that over the last few months 50% of our sales were really came from our own internal marketing campaigns, which is great. It's actually great to see that we now were able to rebuild that skill and I actually think that from a nimble, relatively smaller builder mentality versus the big dinosaurs in the industry, the big huge publicly traded companies, I think this is where we have our advantage. Cause they did not change their method, the same methodologies of really how to sell homes. So social media, marketing campaigns, a ad spend, creative messages, start being creative again on the marketing side is really the advantage that we, the smaller operator, have over the big publicly traded builders in the industry. They are very, very slow to adapt in terms of marketing. The only way that they know to really increase absorption is adjusting the sales prices to a lot lower sales price because they have the capacity to do that.

Nate Trunfio: And I think we saw that in Q4 2022 when everybody needed to pump up revenues and so what did many publicly traded builders do that many people didn't actually see or talk a lot about? They just pulled pricing down just to dispose of it, to pump the revenue into the quarter of the year. And it's sort of like the Titanic. You may see an iceberg, but to move the Titanic takes a lot more time in preparation. Whereas when you're able to be a little bit more nimble, you have that flexibility and always pros and cons with each. So I guess on the disposition side-

Oren Segev: I just-

Nate Trunfio: Oh. Go ahead, please.

Oren Segev: I just want to add on that point. I want to tell you that I'm extremely proud of my team here that when the marketing in towards the end of 2022, big builders were lowering the prices pretty dramatically. We didn't really look to compete on price, we shifted their mind and said the fact that they are going to cut$40, 000 because they can, doesn't mean that we should. We still need to stay very stiff to our disciplines for our product, believe in what we do and just give the value that we want to give. If it's great service, if it's a great product, if it's really just simply engage, if we used to engage with five people a week, now we need to engage with 50 people a week. But we're going to make some close... We are going to close homes and frankly our absorption in the lo local market was just as good as the big ones that really lowered their price by$ 50,000 because they had to make the quarterly quotas.

Nate Trunfio: It's impressive. And again, I think process, discipline and commitment has allowed you to do that. So I think one of the last questions I want to ask you here, it's a little bit of crystal ball, but I want to sort of specifically ask it in this way. So in Q2 of 2023, as we look forward, is it going to be easier and we'll say for you, is it easier for you to build homes or was it easier... Build and sell, I'll say... Or was it easier in the past? What's the prediction there?

Oren Segev: Prediction moving forward?

Nate Trunfio: Yes.

Oren Segev: It's like in the home building business, there wasn't anything easy in the last couple years. And so in almost every angle you look forward it's not going to be easy because on one hand, interest rates come down, demands are going to increase, people would be able to buy. Obviously we all know that there is a lot of buyers sitting in the sidelines right now waiting to get into a home that simply cannot afford with current interest rates. So if fed pivots and interest rates goes down, obviously sales demands will increase. Sales demand will increase, will hurt us again on the supply chain side and the cycle time. So it's not going to be easy. On the other side of it, the exit strategy, obviously we're going to go back to increasing margins and taking longer cycle time. So we just need to focus on the same. All the things that me and you talked about in these podcasts is just stick to our principles, stay disciplined, keep working on our ourselves, what can we do better? How we can hedge the risk, minimize our exposure, stay more liquid, manage ourself into a market that have a lot of uncertainties and just stick to what we do best and keep improving our staff, people, processes, transparency, technology and all the things that we can do from a business management standpoint, the market is uncertain. So we are not going to go in attacking the market aggressively, we're just going to stay true to the absorption. We're still going to list the home in the same position where we're are not going to really look for pre- sales. I mean we're going reduce the amount of pre- sales and reduce the amount of exposure over all that the business is in until we're going to have some more certain environment where we feel that we can push forward.

Nate Trunfio: Yeah, I think what a great way to summarize a lot of the principles that you talked about and it just shows why you've been able to successfully scale in single family scattered acquisition and portfolios all the way into and through new construction, man. And so I just to appreciate you imparting your knowledge and insights here. And it's interesting to re- listen back to the answer you just gave, it's never really easy. So if anybody thinks it's easy, you're probably going to be in for a surprise here, but you hit all the principles that you need to stay focused on. So man, Oren just blessed to have you here. We got a lot more to pick your brain on so I'll be bringing it back. I know I got to bring a number of other people from your team because I'm just always impressed with the people you surround yourself with. And man, thank you for being on The Real Estate of Things podcast here and sharing why you've been successful and your team as well.

Oren Segev: Nate, thank you for having me. You are true an example for me and what you do and the way that the knowledge and the experience that you share with all of us in the industry. So I want to show again my respect to you. I learned a lot from you, so we appreciate it, we appreciate the relationship and I look forward to see you soon.

Nate Trunfio: You know it my friend, my dear friend. Thank you Oren. Appreciate it.

Oren Segev: Thank you buddy. Bye-bye.