Episode Transcript
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Mike (00:12):
This is the Kestrel Country Podcast, where we
discuss the people, places andevents all around Kestrel
Country.
Oh, brian points, thanks forcoming by today.
(00:41):
Thank you you, mike.
Yeah, the fun conversation.
Yeah, glad to be here.
So first off, I always like tostart about.
You know just who is across thetable from me.
So where'd you grow up?
What brought you to Moscow?
That kind of thing, what's yourbackground?
Brian (00:56):
Yeah.
So I grew up in Boise, Idaho,and I moved to Moscow in the
early 2000s to go to theUniversity of Idaho and I didn't
, I'd say, for the first twoyears in Moscow I didn't
understand the city all thatwell, Because if you go to U of
I, you don't necessarily have toleave campus.
(01:18):
I mean, it's a university right.
Yeah.
But then in the latter coupleof years and then especially
after I graduated, I was likeokay, this town is actually
really cool.
I could like to kind of stickaround here.
Mike (01:30):
What was that like, coming from growing up in Boise?
Had you been to Moscow before?
Brian (01:35):
Was it just kind of like oh?
Mike (01:36):
this is where the university is.
It's up there in the northsomeplace.
Brian (01:39):
I knew it pretty well actually because my brother went
to college at U of I and he's10 years older than me.
It pretty well actually,because my brother went to
college at u of I and he's 10years older than me.
So I remember, um, we'd comeoff oftentimes for christmas
because he would work duringchristmas breaks.
Then we just spend the wholeyou know holiday up here and
like going to tri-state.
And what else did we do?
We where logos school is?
(02:01):
I remember my sister and Iplaying around on the playground
out there in like you know 1990or something, um, so yeah, all
of the, the stuff that that isMoscow I knew about long, long
ago before I ever moved here,gotcha.
Mike (02:16):
Was it kind of the?
Was that the choice to go tothe university of Idaho?
Was that particular, uh, forwhat you wanted to study?
Was it because your brotherwent there?
Was it kind of, at that time,like, that's where you go Most
people?
Brian (02:28):
at the time.
Uh, I graduated in oh one fromhigh school and at the time
there was, you know, boise statedid not have the best like
academic reputation.
I I don't know if that's fairor not, but that's that.
It was what it was.
And it didn't have any of thefootball reputation yet right,
it was developing that that kindof happened right about at that
(02:49):
time and it's an interestingkind of case study of how do you
build a university off of afootball program, because they
have now like ascended the U ofI in most metrics and the reason
that people know who they areis because they won the Fiesta
Bowl in 2009 or whatever it was.
So, yeah, it wasn't.
I didn't consider that reallyan option.
It I didn't think that hardabout it.
(03:10):
I don't know.
Mike (03:10):
It's like yeah, that's a place where people go.
I need some people who wentthere, yeah.
Brian (03:27):
And what did you study?
I studied history as anundergrad actually uh which is
weird cause I'm an economist nowbut um, that was what I was
interested in.
And um, I actually had aprofessor of history when I was
just kind of I was in the wholegeneral studies what am I doing
here?
You know, change my mind everythree months, kind of setting
for you know my first year ortwo.
And then I had a historyprofessor named Richard Spence,
who is the best historyprofessor that has ever existed.
He taught a class on Russianhistory two semesters and then a
(03:48):
class on Middle Eastern historyfor two semesters, and I was
like I will listen to this guytalk for as long as I can sit
here, because it's just thatgood.
So that's kind of why I went inthat direction.
I was just drawn to it.
So anyway, not the usual trackthat people take to become an
economist, but that for me.
I didn't really even haveinterest in economic sciences
(04:12):
and data and that kind of stuffuntil after I graduated and I
got a job working at Lightcast,which at the time was called
Emsi, and I really did findmyself drawn to it, but I didn't
have any of the you know kindof credentials to really do it.
So then I went to Californiaand I got my master's in
(04:32):
economics at UC Santa Barbara in2012,.
I guess it was.
Mike (04:38):
Yeah, so did you ever?
Did you?
Did you go pretty quickly fromundergrad into MZ?
No, I was.
We both worked there at thesame time.
Yeah, did you go pretty quicklyfrom undergrad into MZ?
No, we both worked there at thesame time.
Yeah, I think I was?
Brian (04:48):
I want to say it was three or four years or something
.
Mike (04:51):
Were you doing anything in history?
I was actually very interested.
Yes, I did.
Okay, there you go.
Brian (04:58):
Wow See, this is well.
Mike (05:00):
I love history too, yeah.
Brian (05:05):
Well, this will come back because, with the work that I
do at points consulting, I thinkboth of these things are really
relevant.
So, um, yeah, I I wasinterested in being a museum
curator actually, and I I had ainternship at the Basque museum
in Boise and then I had aninternship in Rhode Island at,
um, um, you know, giving likehouse tours of this house that
(05:25):
was built and you know thecolonial, colonial era, it was
awesome, like they're they had,um, the uh colonial kind of uh
tax collector lived at thathouse and they like tarred and
feathered him during the stampact and like it had an awesome
history.
Um, Georgia, Whitfield, you know, ate there one time and I was
just like, oh, this is soawesome because their history of
(05:48):
the East Coast is so much older.
Yeah, there's so much stuffthat happened there.
So anyway, it just wasn't.
I think I would have been happydoing it.
But you know, I'm glad Idiscovered what I did.
It was kind of became anopportunity through the what was
in front of me.
It wasn't really likeintentional necessarily, it was
just like oh.
I like doing this.
(06:09):
Well, I better go get a degreeso I could do it better, you
know.
Mike (06:12):
Yeah, so you got your, your master's in economics and
that allowed you to just do morewith you came back to no, did
you come back to MZ at thatpoint?
Brian (06:22):
I did so.
I bounced around a number oftimes because after grad school
I went to Virginia where I had ajob working for a consulting
company doing economic analysis.
Didn't work out great, justdidn't really like living there.
I was a long way away from mywife's family, moved back to
(06:42):
Moscow where I worked for MZ asecond time, did that for a
couple of years and then went toIndiana to work for a different
company, just because I kind offelt like for me to do what I
wanted to do, that was thebetter place for me to do it.
More consulting type yeah rightand the uh.
the offer that they gave me islike hey, come live here for a
(07:05):
couple of years and then you canwork remotely from wherever you
want.
I was like, hey, that soundspretty pretty good deal,
especially in 2016.
Yeah, that was before before itwas cool, yeah, um.
So I took, took that option.
I lived there for two and ahalf years and then moved back
to Moscow again.
I worked for that company.
For another, I want to say itwas a year, year and a half
remotely, before I startedpoints consulting in 2019.
Mike (07:29):
Yeah, awesome, yeah.
And so what particular type ofeconomic, what, what type of
economic consulting are youdoing?
Brian (07:39):
It's the easiest way to describe it is.
We live at the intersection ofeconomic development, real
estate and land use, so anythingthat involves some convergence
of those factors is somethingwe're interested in doing.
It doesn't matter if it'sgovernment, nonprofit,
for-profit, what state you're in, that's something we care about
(08:01):
.
Mike (08:01):
Okay.
Brian (08:02):
Yeah.
Mike (08:04):
And is that the same type of thing you were doing before
with?
Brian (08:07):
a previous employer.
It's it's shifted over time.
We, um, the company that Ipreviously worked for, I'd say
that their real professionalstrength was in workforce and
economic development.
Um, so workforce development iskind of the.
The describes the process ofgetting people from the
(08:29):
educational system into jobsthat are meaningful.
So there's, you know, all theapprenticeship, job-based
training, educate, highereducation, secondary ed, all
that stuff you know.
So there, the consultingcompany I worked for was really
focused on helping make thosepipelines make sense and work
efficiently and that kind ofstuff.
And then they touched oneconomic development, which is
(08:51):
basically the process of sellingand building a regional economy
to have greater jobopportunities and greater
prosperity, job opportunitiesand greater prosperity.
So I was touching on those sametopics, but again I was.
I was really just kind ofgravitated towards things
related to real estate andhousing, cause I just it was
(09:12):
some of the more interestingthings that I did.
Mike (09:15):
Okay, yeah, so are you.
You mentioned lots of differenttypes of clients, right From,
maybe, municipalities,governments and others.
Is that most typical that you'dhave a government or a
paragovernment type organizationthat is looking at that?
That's saying basically, hey,we want, we want to, our job is
(09:38):
to grow our local economy and sowe've got whatever this land or
we're looking at when you sayland use, like zoning issues and
that kind of thing.
Brian (09:48):
Yeah, absolutely so.
The more often than not rightnow that's the norm is working
with a city, a county, a quasigovernmental organization which
might be like an economicdevelopment organization or
something like that, and they'rehiring us to understand their
local housing market.
(10:08):
And when we do that, we we deepdive on the data.
We talk to a ton of people, wedo a community survey so we can
get you know the full breadth ofpeople's perspectives on what's
working, what's what's notworking, what's missing that
they might want to see.
We look, look at thecomprehensive plan, the land use
plan, the zoning code I've readso much zoning code you
(10:31):
wouldn't believe it and then wepoint out where the gaps and
inefficiencies are.
That might be, you know,preventing supply and demand
from kind of meeting up, becauseultimately, as economists like
you, want to let the market dowhat it needs to do, but there's
a lot of ways in which it's notdoing that for various reasons.
So that's the what we try to doand I always tell the cities
(10:56):
that we're working with is, likeyou know, perhaps this entity,
you know the city of such andsuch, is the one that's paying
us, but we're really working forthe citizens, because the
citizens are going to be theones that are going to benefit
from better housing stock, more,you know, appropriately suited
to their needs.
It's going to be really qualitymarket research for anybody
who's in real estate or um, ordevelopment or anything like
(11:21):
that.
Mike (11:21):
Yeah, Okay.
So when you say thatintersection of real estate and
economic development mostly areyou talking about residential
really like housing, yeah,housing.
Brian (11:32):
Mostly what you do Right.
So let me first go the otherdirection to acknowledge some of
the other stuff that we do.
As an example, we're workingwith the city of La Grande
Oregon and it's a two-phasething.
The first phase was showingthat the city of La Grande
Oregon and what we.
It's a two phase thing.
The first phase was showingthat the city boundaries were
too small to fit the level ofeconomic growth that we
(11:53):
forecasted.
And the second step is actuallyhelping them expand that urban
growth boundary by looking atthe uh you know, the soils data,
the uh, the drainage stuff, thefloodplains, all that kind of
thing to tell them all right, ifyou need 150 more acres over
your next 20 years is what weforecasted, it can go here, here
(12:14):
and here.
So talk to those landownersabout annexation.
That one's a more commercial andindustrial kind of oriented
project.
Another example would be uh,we're working with the city of
Caldwell down in Southern Idahoto do a uh, business incubator
feasibility study.
So the the city is Caldwell isgrowing like crazy, as you might
(12:36):
imagine.
Um, and they're.
So their uh commercial realestate prices are skyrocketing.
Uh, they don't have any morespace and kind of downtown.
So the the city has this ideaof like can we just set aside a
place with some subsidized rentbasically and programs to kind
of help people get out the gateso then they can spend their
(12:58):
companies off and develop bigcorporate campuses and leases
and all that kind of stuff?
So we're helping them figurethat out.
And that one again is more kindof commercial, industrial
oriented.
Mike (13:11):
Wow, yeah, yeah, that's cool, that's, that's.
Those are always the thingsthat I enjoyed the most at.
Mz back when it was workingwith that kind of development.
Brian (13:20):
Yeah, yeah, like.
Well, why don't you come workfor those people?
Mike (13:23):
I'm busy, I got stuff going.
Yeah, Like those people is justkind of cool, right, they're,
they're looking at at being veryproactive.
How do we grow our town?
What do we do?
What's the right mix?
You know what companies can youattract, and then the wins are
always really cool.
You're like, yeah, they youknow attracted, you know X, Y,
you know manufacturer to theirtown, and then it grew and all
(13:46):
that stuff Like there's, it'scool, they're cool stories.
Brian (13:48):
Yeah, another way that to kind of describe what we do,
and I made a YouTube video aboutthis because I felt like I just
kept getting the answer.
Asked the same question over andlike what do you guys do is we
(14:08):
work in the background beforethe big news breaks.
So at some point in someregional newspaper it's going to
say new company arrives hiring3 000 people over the next 10
years.
Or you know developers building750 new houses on the south
side of town, like we've beenworking with that client for
like two years before thathappens in the background and
that you know that's our job.
But we're helping themunderstand like, does it make
economic sense?
(14:29):
Or that, is the city going tobe a good partner on it?
Um, or is the developer goingto be a good partner?
Just like putting all thosepuzzle pieces together to to get
it to fit.
So it's.
You know, those things, thosetypes of things, take so much
background work, especiallyworld that we live in now, for
better or worse.
Cities have an incredibleamount of discretion over
(14:49):
virtually every step of theprocess.
So there's lots of discussionswith city council and planning
commission.
So we're involved in all thosekinds of things.
Mike (14:56):
Wow, and how long have you been doing this?
Brian (15:01):
So I've been in consulting for, I think, going
on years, and I've been uh ownedpoints consulting since 2019.
Mike (15:09):
Okay, yeah, yeah.
Five years, yeah, five, nice,that's a big milestone.
And how many people do you haveworking for you?
Brian (15:16):
We've got five uh, including one intern, but that
intern is becoming full-timestaff this summer.
So, we'll be looking for moreinterns and then, you know, we
kind of just take itstep-by-step, but I hope and
expect we'll continue to growand continue to hire more people
around here.
Mike (15:34):
And you're doing projects all over the country.
Brian (15:36):
Yeah, so uh, kind of take a random sample for right now,
um Colorado, oklahoma, now UmColorado Oklahoma, alaska,
oregon, idaho, georgia, uh,those are just the ones off top
of my head.
So we've got um 15 ongoingprojects right now and that's uh
(15:56):
some of the locations.
Mike (15:58):
Okay, but and you have done locally right, so close to
home yeah, Is the housing studythat you did for Moscow-Polman
area?
Is that the closest you'veworked?
I mean, it's in our backyard.
Brian (16:11):
Yeah, is that the?
Mike (16:12):
only work you've really done locally.
Brian (16:14):
No, I've done other stuff too for the city of Lewiston,
the Nez Perce tribe, someprivate developers.
I've occasionally done justkind of these mini market scan
studies.
If somebody is like, hey, doesthis idea make sense?
Can you help me figure it out?
Um, and those ones aren't.
We have some of those, asmattering of them, that they
don't go public because it'sbasically you know they paid for
(16:37):
that research somebody's doinglike a feasibility study.
yeah, okay, so a few of those,but yeah, but probably the most
well-known local one that we'vedone was the uh Ploos regional
housing study, which was in 2019.
It was one of the last projectsI did before I started my own
company.
Okay, so that was with yourprevious.
Mike (16:54):
It was yeah Okay.
Brian (16:56):
But you know it?
Um, and in fact it it's.
I stayed with that employer foran extra three months to finish
that project.
Nice, like, let me out of here.
Mike (17:04):
I stayed with that employer for an extra three
months to finish that project.
Brian (17:06):
Nice, Like let me out of here.
But I couldn't because I neededto get the job done and it
would have just kind of rockedthe boat too much if I left.
Mike (17:12):
Yeah, so tell us a little bit about that.
Yeah, so it was in 2019.
Who were you doing the studyfor and what were some of the
major things you guys found?
Brian (17:23):
Yeah, so we did the study for the Partnership for
Economic Prosperity, which hassince folded up, but it was at
the time our regional economicdevelopment organization for
Latah County and there was anumber of partners involved in
it City of Moscow, city ofPullman, wazoo, and so on.
The, I think, the localrealtors organization kicked in
(17:47):
some money at that time too.
Mike (17:49):
So and so it was.
Brian (17:50):
they were a Latah County accounting development
organization but they partneredwith the others to do a regional
so it was pretty unique in thatsense that most of the studies
I've done since then are for onejurisdiction, in a sense like
the city, montrose, colorado,city of broken arrow, oklahoma,
(18:11):
but this was like regional andit crossed two states, which, uh
, is tricky.
You know, legal, legalinfrastructure, uh, real estate
and development stuff is justvery different between
washington and idaho.
So, yeah, so, uh, so some ofthe biggest things, I mean we
projected that there was apretty dramatic shortage of
(18:33):
housing for the Palouse area.
Multifamily, which is a codeword for apartments, more or
less, is a kind of takes care ofitself.
You don't necessarily reallyneed to advertise it because
there are developers that knowhow to do it and they know what
metrics they're they're lookingfor and then they build when you
(18:54):
say know how to do it, know howto do the analysis themselves,
they know how to build that typeof housing.
Oh, okay, you know, because it'sa different skillset than, um,
you know the financing isdifferent, the building styles
are, you know it's, it'scommercial because it's
multi-story and all that kind ofstuff.
So, um, you know that what thething about multifamily is, that
you know, if you could chartthis out my brain thinks in
(19:15):
charts, so this will sometimesbe less interesting if I'm doing
things with my fingers butmultifamily goes at this low
boil and then it's like boom, ahundred units.
And then it goes back to likenothing for like five years and
it just does it.
most places it does that,including moscow, pullman, you
know, um, because you build ahuge apartment complex and then
those builders know that we aregoing to fill this gap for x
(19:38):
period of time and then we'regoing to wait for it to absorb
and then we'll go do it again,right and um, and we're actually
it's worth mentioning thatwe're blessed that we don't have
to really think that hard aboutthat, because there are so many
rural and semi-urban places inthe country that no multifamily
developers pay attention to atall, like they have no idea what
(20:00):
the market is or it's like well, I could build 500 in this city
, you know, in the next 10 years.
Why am I going to drive 70 milesaway to go do that?
But we actually, you know what?
Mike (20:09):
because the university, university market.
Brian (20:11):
It's a it's a captive market.
The builders know that they canmake money doing it.
It just takes care of itself.
Single family is kind of ourpinch point, um.
So we found there was ashortage and that to meet the
shortage, it was going to besomething like 270 new uh new
units, single family units peryear over the next, uh, 10 years
(20:34):
.
So that would be, you know,2017 to 2027, um, so at the time
, that would have beenessentially doubling the
production levels for LatahCounty, um, and I I just looked
today cause I was curious andwe're not close to that number
still, so the shortage stillexists.
Mike (20:56):
And the shortage in that case seems to have that gap is
getting bigger than right.
Yeah, if we're not, we're notkeeping up.
Brian (21:03):
Yeah, so that yeah, I mean it is, but also in a sense
like they're um.
Tracing out what the demandcurve looks like is always kind
of a mystical exercise, causeyou only see the people who show
up and what and who actuallytransact right.
So, what does that whole otherdimension on to the up and to
the right look like?
Like?
How steep is it?
How far does it go?
(21:23):
It's, it's a bit of a mystery,so, um, but that's that's our
guess.
That mystery is that if we do,you know, 270 a year, that will
pretty efficiently meet themarket and, um, you know, we'll
also kind of help keep costs ina re, probably bring them down
and keep them, at least keepthem from increasing at a really
(21:44):
radical pace, like housingprices.
Mike (21:46):
You mean Housing prices.
Brian (21:47):
Yeah, so, um, but we've never accomplished that, so we
haven't really yet to experiencethat.
And again, this this was astudy that was done in 2019.
Um, I'd love to yeah, a lot haschanged Turns out, um, you know,
for a minute, there in 2021, wewere, you know, latah County.
I don't remember the numbers,but I was looking at the
(22:08):
in-migration statistics and theIRS statistics and it was like
you know, we were one of thehigher growth counties in the
state in terms of in-migrationwhich was one of the highest
growth states which is yeah,right, so we're probably in the
top 10th percentile.
You know that would have been2020, 2021.
It really tapered off afterthat.
Um, I was, you know, I Iexpected at that time and I told
(22:32):
people that I think this isthere's an idiosyncrasy to this,
like it's not going to go away,but it's also not going to
sustain at this level, and Ithink I've turned out to be
right about that.
Um, at least until the nextinsane thing happens, and then
we'll see.
Mike (22:47):
Yeah, yeah, so did that when you were looking at a
shortage.
Was that similar to thenational trends of kind of post
2008,.
You know the post the housingcrash, I know that nationally
that's the case that you know.
Basically building fell off andhas never recovered.
Brian (23:06):
Like we're.
Mike (23:08):
Moscow.
Pullman is not alone right,basically the rest of the
country where we are shorthousing units at a national
level.
Brian (23:15):
Yes, at a national level.
That's still the case.
Now, I do see markets, causethis is, you know, housing
permits is something that wetrack in every region we work in
.
I see places where in 2017,2018, even 2020, that it
exceeded where they were at in2006.
So it has happened in someplaces.
(23:36):
It tends to be in the southpretty often, sometimes in the
west in certain types of markets, but, as all real estate is
hyperlocal, so it's you know,when you read articles and stuff
about the national market, it'slike, oftentimes, I think
that's true, but also that meansnothing for this particular
(23:57):
market, right, um, so, but whatyou're saying is yeah, that's
that's true.
Mike (24:01):
We haven't we haven't gotten back to that level, um,
and it's, it's tough to get backto that level.
Brian (24:11):
Did you guys identify some of the main roadblocks to
that?
Yeah, we did Um.
So you know I'll say that.
And again, so it was two, twocounties, two cities, a lot of
kind of smaller towns outside ofthe big towns.
Um, the city of Moscow has donea lot of really proactive
policy stuff on housing andbecause of that you see a market
for the size of town that we'reat.
(24:34):
The articulation of housingoptions that we have is really
pretty advanced.
So the fact that you can, youknow you've got a large lot
single family like, like youknow, up on the other side of
mountain view, you've got kindof your historic district that's
kind of more urban density, andfor russell you've got a couple
(24:55):
of kind of pockets withmulti-family and then you have
all the other stuff out on theeast side of town, like white
avenue, where they did someexperimental, um, what you call
planned unit development orpudUD type of stuff at, like
Tiempo Commons and some of thoseplaces that you don't just go
build that stuff.
A builder is effectively walkinghand in hand with the city to
(25:15):
say I'd like to do this toachieve more density so I can
bring costs down and things likethis, and a lot of cities are
really hard to work with on thatstuff.
But the city of Moscow ispretty good.
City of Moscow has been greatabout figuring out what, what we
should do about accessorydwelling units.
That can oftentimes be a pointof contention in a lot of
(25:36):
communities too.
So so the city of Moscow, I'dsay there was less to less like
low hanging fruit, to just belike do these things?
you know cause they're.
They do a lot of a lot of thethings, um, so I think more of
the, the barriers for, uh, forMoscow and Latah County is just,
uh, it's hard.
We have a um.
(25:58):
One of the one of theintentional kind of barriers
that are put in place is theprohibition.
It's kind of an anti-sprawltechnique in a sense, that you
can't subdivide lots beyond acertain number of times, over a
certain number of years andstuff.
So yeah, we experience abenefit from that that's.
You know, honestly, like we allkind of like driving in rural
areas too, right, we don't wantto see just constant sprawl
(26:20):
spreading out in every direction.
But it does mean that it kindof limits your options for
building outside of the citylimits.
And we don't have enoughbuilders.
Yeah, I mean that I shouldn'tjust say builders, because what
I mean is we don't have enoughgeneral contractors, we don't
have enough subcontractors, wedon't have enough tradesmen and
(26:41):
we don't have enough developers,developers.
So now I, since the study wasfinished, I had a lot of
conversations with people who inthat whole world that want to
get into the weeds on.
You know our numbers and, likeyou know if I built 500, in one
year would I be okay, right.
(27:02):
Well, nobody's ever done itbefore.
Yeah exactly Like we.
We have kind of a chronicshortage.
So there would certainly, youknow, absorption would not be as
fast.
But maybe you know, like 270 ayear or 501 year, when you're
already like consistently superlow, Maybe that would work.
Just you know it's you need,which again comes down to the
(27:24):
kind of unique geography of ourarea.
We're not going to havebuilders come down from Spokane
or Coeur d'Alene, we're notgoing to have them come up from
Boise, we're not going to havethem come east from Tri-Cities.
We're too far away.
So we're a build your own.
Mike (27:36):
Well, yeah, that's always been the way I've thought about
it is.
I'd be interested to get yourtake on this.
We're in this weird catch-22 isthe wrong term but kind of this
weird in-between state, right,where we're growing.
So we have that demand thatyou're talking about, but we're
not large enough and we'regrowing at a pretty good rate,
right, but our size we're stillstarting from a place that's
(28:00):
small and so you know you're notgoing to have a KB Homes or
Pulte, come in and build 500housing units for example no,
you're not Because they one.
that's a low end for them, right, like that's probably minimum
what they would want to do.
And then there's the questionof, well, yeah, what would that
do?
Could you sell them all?
Yeah, you know, based on ourrate of sales, right, granted,
(28:24):
that's dealing with theinventory we've had.
It's like, yeah, you wouldn't,I mean not, certainly not right
away.
Yep, you know, um.
And then there's the issue of,I don't know if the study got
into this at all, but, um, price, right.
How does that work when, if you, let's say, we need 270 more
housing units every year, well,if those 270 housing units are
(28:46):
$700,000 plus, that's probablynot actually what we need, right
, like, that's not going to dealwith it.
Brian (28:52):
But now If you build 500 units at $700,000,.
You might have problemsgetting-.
Mike (28:57):
Yeah, you just might, you might, yeah, especially at 7%
interest rate, that kind ofthing, and yeah, so I'm curious
where that fits in, because itseems like that's one of the
challenges again nationally, notjust here is that new
construction costs are so highthat it's like that's not
necessarily where the greatestneed is or the greatest demand
(29:21):
is for housing, and when yourreplacement costs are that high,
then obviously that's justgoing to continue to drive up.
You know existing home pricestoo.
Brian (29:31):
Yes, exactly, so the um, I agree with everything that you
said.
I I think that Moscow is inwhat I would call an awkward
adolescent stage growth, wherewe have some characteristics of
being young and I have, you know, a little kid, and we have some
characteristics of being youngand we have, you know, a little
kid and we have somecharacteristics of being more
mature.
So you see these awkward kind ofthings where it's like we at
(29:54):
the same time get on the list toget a target and to get a
chick-fil-a and stuff like this,but we also have, you know, no
uh, you know hr hortons of theworld are going to look at us
Right.
So you were not big enough andwe're far enough.
You know it would be one thingif we were where, say, cheney is
(30:15):
located Right, like whereyou're.
What is that?
30 miles from Spokane, we'dhave a lot fewer problems
because those builders could doprojects there and get their
subs to show up Right.
But where we're at, that it'stoo far away for them so again
the, the build your own kind ofthing and there's some, some
blessings to that, you know.
You see, builders that kind ofget the community Um.
(30:38):
They have a pattern of of howto do things.
They we, we do have some more.
Usually those big buildersdon't do innovative very well.
They, they cut cookies superwell, whereas you know, some of
those developments we talkedabout on the east side, some of
the, you know, I know you hadthe wins company folks on, like
the stuff that they're doing.
It's companies like that thatare like let's do this
(31:00):
differently, cause it'll be goodfor the community.
You know that's um, those typesof things often get crowded out
when you're in bigger cities.
Mike (31:08):
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
So have you.
You're obviously you were justgoing back looking at some data.
Housing starts we're still notthere.
Have you revisited anythingelse from that study or kind of
have any ideas of you know whereare we at now and what's the
forecast?
Brian (31:26):
It's.
You know it, it'd be hard tolike.
I'm a very data driven guy andmy hands are in numbers all the
time for different areas.
I'm not day to day living inthe Moscow, you know, pullman
real estate market to be able toto say like there's little
anecdotesotes that I found onoccasions where somebody asked
(31:48):
me or because I was interested.
But you know, I would love todo an update on it.
You know, and I think even ifit was just like pulling 10
metrics and doing a white paperit's like five pages that would
be useful.
But I haven't had time to dothat so is there?
Mike (32:03):
so you said partnership for economic prosperity is no
longer folded since then.
Right, what's the state ofeconomic development for Moscow?
Latah County, I guess.
Brian (32:14):
Yeah.
Mike (32:15):
Did anybody take up that mantle Right Like who would hire
you to do the study?
Brian (32:19):
Yeah, If it was now, it would probably be one of the
cities or, you know, Avista hasalways been a big player in
these types of things becausethey care about economic
development too.
Yeah, economic development inLatah County I mean this gets to
the other side of the story isthat people don't follow houses,
(32:40):
they follow jobs and thenhouses follow jobs, so that's
almost always the pattern.
Follow jobs, so that's almostalways the pattern.
And statistically, you know themodels and the papers that have
been written on the topic.
That's that's how it goes Right.
Um, but it's very much like a.
Oftentimes the things work verymuch in parallel.
Mike (32:59):
Yeah, I was going to say that's where maybe my earlier
term of catch 22 could fitbetter, where, yes, that's the
case case.
But I know I've talked topeople who are like, well, I
couldn't move my business therebecause there's not enough
housing, yeah, so, yeah, itseems like that's a, so it's a
it's a huge speculative thingfor a developer to be like you
know, 300 new homes, here we go,when there's been no
(33:21):
announcements about.
Brian (33:22):
You know new company expansions, like you get the
hesitancy.
Hesitancy when nobody's everdone something to that scale
before, um, but that so usuallywhat had happened.
So Boardman, oregon would be agood example of a place that's
gone this, this route which umis.
You know, if you go West fromhere towards Portland, it's kind
of in the middle of everythingand historically it's always
(33:44):
just been kind of a.
You know a small town with aport and a bunch of cows, but
next time you're driving through, get off because it's like
there are factories everywhere,like the place is booming.
It went from um, maybe.
You know, I think uh, 10, 12years ago was like maybe a
(34:04):
population of a thousand.
Now it's's like 12,000, youknow, like, and that's that's
all.
Economic development driven jobgrowth by the Port of Morrow
County local economicdevelopment organization.
Port of.
Mike (34:15):
Morrow.
That's see, that's a flashbackCause I was like 10 years ago
that's about when I was tryingto sell packaging in Boardman,
Oregon, Like that's why I knowBoardman.
But it was like it was a longtime.
It was 10 years ago or more.
So yeah, we used to.
I used to go sell stretch filmthere and bags because it was
like agricultural processing inthe Port of Morrow.
Right, there was about it.
Brian (34:36):
Yeah, well they're, they're banging now they need
some stretch packaging.
So, um, and when that'shappening simultaneously,
anybody who's in the developmentcommunity is like, hey, let's
put you know, 200 departmentsright there.
So it happens like at the sametime because people are paying
attention to it and there's, youknow.
But if there's no signals thathousing could feasibly even be
(35:00):
developed, then that is a redflag to the people who work on
this flag, to the people whowork on this, whether that's,
you know, uh, department ofcommerce for the state, the
local economic developmentdistricts have a hard time
selling it.
Uh, the, uh, that siteselectors who are kind of the,
you know, the real estate agentsof the economic development
world, they, they're like thisisn't going to work, where are
you going to get all thesepeople?
Uh, so you gotta have both kindof moving at the same time.
(35:24):
But it's more likely.
I have more often than not seena job announcement followed by
a housing announcement than ahousing announcement followed by
a job announcement.
Just put it in those terms.
Mike (35:36):
That makes sense yeah.
Yeah, the jobs, job, yeah, andthe jobs is what that's.
That's all the data thateverybody's watching right now,
anyway, too, right on thenational level.
It's the jobs, data and dataand it's yeah, we're not going
to see a bunch of foreclosuresas long as unemployment's low
like you need jobs to pay thosemortgages and that kind of thing
.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, interesting.
Yeah, it'll be interesting tosee where where it goes.
(35:59):
I was, I feel like it.
We're in this funny town whereit's.
It is kind of small and yetit's the universities.
So it feels a little bit biggerand yet you know it's, it's
growing, it's pushing, but yetit's, you know, hard to really
maybe break through some ofthose barriers.
Yeah, but I mean, since yourstudy there are two, you know
you mentioned Wynn's company,their development North of town,
(36:21):
Eddington, south of town, likethere's some stuff, there's some
lots right now.
So at least there is a littlebit more of a runway anyway for
development which you know,preceding that there was hardly
anything for quite a while.
Brian (36:34):
Yeah, right, and you know the the.
You mentioned the cost persquare foot, right, like that.
That's all that's partiallydriven by these labor shortages,
but it's also driven by thosedistances to move the materials
and the quantities at whichpeople can buy them, and the
difference in that is reallystunning.
(36:56):
I don't have a current numberfor Moscow.
Do you know, like, what's thecost per square foot for a
single family?
Mike (37:03):
I don't.
I mean I know if you're goingto go hire a builder.
From what I I've heard, they'rekind of in that 225, 250 a
square foot.
Brian (37:11):
So 250 a square foot the project we're doing outside of
Tulsa.
Their cost per square foot thisis per their building permit
data for 2022, 125.
Wow yeah that's a bit of a.
Mike (37:23):
It's been a long time since it's been that bit of a
difference.
Brian (37:26):
Yeah so again, if you're anybody who's in that national
landscape, you're like Ooh thatdoesn't look so good.
Mike (37:32):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You just don't get theeconomies of scale here at all.
You like Boise area, rightCalled.
Well, we're at.
You know, we were visitingfamily and it's like, yeah, you
just see basement after basementafter basement or foundation
going in.
All that.
You know that economy of scaleof just cranking on those houses
.
Brian (37:52):
It's incredible.
Mike (37:53):
Yeah, Plus it's flat and.
I mean there's a lot of otherthings that help.
There are hindrances here, butyeah, yeah, I think one of the
things that I don't know ifyou've looked at it but would be
interesting is looking at someof the commercial real estate
too, because I know from beingin the real estate business this
is mostly anecdotal which Iknow talking to an economist is
(38:16):
probably anathema, but in amarket like this size, it is
anecdotal.
Mostly anecdotal, but I mean,for a long time when I was
selling real estate commercialreal estate was kind of at this
a little bit of an equilibriumas well, where there really
wasn't a whole lot of supply butthere also wasn't hardly any
demand and so there were a fewvacancies around, there's a
(38:38):
little bit on the market.
But you know, it was just kindof sitting there and then I feel
like in the last two years allthat vacancy got taken up and
all of a sudden it's like yeah,there's just nothing available.
But we're kind of still itfeels to me anyway like we're
still a little bit bumping upagainst that lack of demand.
It's not like there's a ton ofdemand where, similar to what
(38:58):
you're saying, a developer couldcome in and build a bunch of
commercial right Right, but it's, the thing that's changed is
essentially all the suppliesgone and so vacancies are
practically zero.
Um, I know, obviouslyresidential rents have gone up,
but so have commercial rents.
Like it's just really changedthat landscape a lot and it
seems like that's another placewhere if we're going to attract,
(39:21):
if we're going to get thosejobs that are going to help you
know, fill some of that housing.
We're going to need more space.
Brian (39:27):
Yeah, so my read on the commercial market in Moscow is
that it's still pretty immaturebut it has matured a lot just in
the past five years, justbecause you've actually had like
real companies taking realsizable leases and, um, so those
(39:48):
, those places that were kind ofsitting around for a while
didn't, you know, weren't reallybeing taken up or taken up.
And then it's like, oh, now wehave nothing, or next to nothing
, and I think it just comes backto the.
You think about the.
You know commercial is going tobe driven by, uh, small
businesses in a town like this.
(40:09):
We'll look at the smallbusinesses that we have in
Moscow right now.
They're, they're in mostly inthe kind of card table, in the
garage, you know second bedroomkind of stage of development.
Um, like, like my business was,you know, four years ago I
didn't need an office, but I, Itook a commercial lease, just,
you know, a couple months agoit's, you know, maybe, only a
(40:31):
you know 1600 foot, um, littleplace that can fit five people
in.
But where am I going to be fiveyears from now, 10 years from
now?
We'll extrapolate that out bythe number of businesses that
are in the same phase that I amand that you're in and you know
all these people that we know.
So it it goes in.
(40:51):
The market's always trying tofind equilibrium, but when
supply and demand are bothpretty small, it tends to come
in these like punctuated pointswhere it's like you know, all of
a sudden supplies way up andthen all sudden demands way up
and it's just like boom, boom.
They're kind of battling witheach other and, as that happens,
you start to see people seemore of an opportunity to be
like okay, maybe we can actuallybuild a you know, 20,000 square
(41:14):
feet of flex space, because youknow we're consistently seeing
prices go up in low vacancy.
Mike (41:20):
Right, yeah, yeah, that's interesting, yeah, um, so what's
next for points consulting?
Brian (41:29):
Um, so we are.
Um, one of the things that we'retrying to work on is just get
really good at the analytics on,uh, housing in the U?
S and uh, these markets thatwe're working in are, uh, all
very different and veryinteresting, so it gives us kind
of a lab to experiment with.
(41:52):
You know, we're in somecommunities where the median
home price is, maybe, you know,700 and one's 500 and one's 250.
And it's like, oh man, you likewe're trying to build models to
be able to forecast populationgrowth, housing unit growth,
split that out betweenmultifamily, single family, the
(42:14):
stuff in the middle, the middledensity stuff, and be able to
say, like, how do the metricsactually affect affordability in
this area?
Like, you know this as arealtor that every customer you
have has a slightly differentsituation, right, well, we're
not dealing with individuals,we're dealing with thousands of
people in statistical kind ofdatabases at a time.
(42:35):
But I want to be able to tellthat story accurately and say
you know what percentage ofhouseholds in this location can
afford a median priced singlefamily home?
No idea how hard that questionactually is to answer.
Like we're doing that right nowand I feel like we're doing it
at.
Like we're doing it better thananybody else I've seen, but I
(42:57):
still give ourselves a C becausewe're not able to.
There's so many other databasesthat we need to kind of bring
into to be able to do that.
So we're going to keep doingcool stuff like that.
Um, we're going to, uh, youknow, keep, uh, building on our
good reputation to get more ofthe type of work that we want to
do.
Uh and uh, you know, in 10years, who knows where we'll be?
Mike (43:20):
Yeah, yeah, well, that's, that's exciting.
I mean, that's fun stuff.
I said those are the thingsthat I think are I find
interesting and really do affectso many people.
Yeah, it's weird to think abouttoo, though.
How do do you guys look at,like, how do national politics,
how do national trends affectthat stuff then?
(43:41):
Because it's like the Fed andinterest rates affect that a ton
, right, I mean talking aboutwhen you talk about
affordability, really in Americatoday you're mostly talking
about mortgages, right, likebecause that's what most
people's metric is, for what canI afford?
Is that monthly payment?
And when you have nothing elsereally changed that much in a
(44:03):
market but interest rates morethan double in the last year,
it's like, yeah, man, that thatchanges everything.
Brian (44:09):
That's the single biggest thing.
And you know I'm not a I'm nota macro forecaster and I'm also,
like you know, for for a lot offolks that are in real estate
or mortgage or development, likethe interest rates are the
single biggest metrics.
I feel like there's actually alot of people who know, who have
a more informed opinion aboutwhere interest rates are going
to go than me, because kind ofmore of their livelihood depends
(44:32):
upon it.
Um, but you know we, yeah, wedo track that.
Um, you know I have my my owntheories about where that kind
of stuff is going to go, but Ialso, um, you know, um, you know
we've seen enough kind of blackSwan events for a lifetime in
the past.
You know, three years that I'malso hesitant to, you know, to
(45:00):
say like I have 90% confidencethat I know what's going to
happen.
Like you know, the, with theelection coming up.
I also heard somebody sayrecently that it was like
greater than 50% of the freeworld's leaders are up for
election in 2024.
Because this also involvesMexico and a few other places
and it's like, well, that's anelement we don't think about
(45:20):
very often.
No, yeah, so there's crazystuff that could happen.
I don't know if you saw whathappened down in Argentina,
where they uh from out of yearsof socialism they elected a
libertarian economist and it'slike whoa, that's crazy, like
what's going to happen in thatplace?
Um so uh, and then you know,potential for international
(45:41):
conflict like that alwaysdrastically affects what happens
domestically with our economy.
Mike (45:49):
I don't know who's going to get elected.
Brian (45:52):
In terms of the interest rates, the outcome is probably
pretty similar depending on whoit is.
But those are all some of thetypes of things.
Mike (46:03):
So that stuff is in your mind but at the end of the day
you're really mostly focused ona particular area, a particular
place, what their local dynamicsare.
Yeah, and that's probably less.
I mean it's always impacted bythose national things, yeah, but
I mean, at the end of the day,somebody's got to make a plan
and move forward.
Brian (46:29):
Speaking of that, though, one of the most fun projects
that we ever did was the uh, theeconomic impact of the greater
Idaho concept.
So that was one we did.
Two and a half three years ago.
Mike (46:33):
I didn't know you guys were involved in that.
Brian (46:34):
We did.
That's awesome, yeah.
So, and my goal with that wasto write a report that it
doesn't matter how red or howblue you are, you can read it
and be like.
They tried to be as fair asthey possibly could and I think
we accomplished that.
But the problem withaccomplishing that is that both
sides are also mad at you fordoing it.
So, um, so it was a reallyin-depth type of thing.
(46:59):
You know, we looked at, like,how does this affect, uh, uh,
you know, income tax?
Uh, between you know the peoplewho are in that in between
place, how does it affecteconomic growth?
What sectors are going tobenefit?
What about transient tax?
What about sales tax?
What about marijuana tax?
Like we, we looked at all thatkind of stuff and it was that
(47:19):
was an extremely politicalsituation and in fact, we've
still.
That report has been publishedfor two years and there was a
moment for about a week wherethe Idaho State House was
discussing it and that's it.
The Oregon State House hasn'treally paid much attention to it
and it's just it's notseriously on their radar yet,
(47:42):
but it's always in thebackground and you know, I
continue to see like big newspublications writing about it
all the time.
Mike (47:48):
Yeah Well, it's interesting because I just
listened to a podcast with theguy, a guy who runs the greater
Idaho something or other.
Brian (47:56):
I can't remember the guy's name, but probably Mike uh
MacArthur, I think maybe, yeah,guy from Eastern Oregon.
Mike (48:02):
Yeah, and it was interesting, and I don't know,
maybe he was talking about yourstudy, but he certainly made it
sound like, yeah, we've done thehomework to find out that this
is actually an economic benefitfor both states at the end of
the day, there is a, you know,political filters.
I'm sure you could spin it ineither direction.
Brian (48:20):
Yeah, yeah yeah, but from and this has been a while, but
from what I remember, the stateof Oregon would save a billion
dollars in annual cost.
It's a lot of money.
Yeah, it's amazing.
Mike (48:33):
Yeah, because he was saying yeah, they're really
statistically more of aneconomic drain.
The eastern part of the stateis.
Brian (48:41):
So that's the politically difficult thing, though, is
that how do you simultaneouslysell Oregon that this is a dead
weight and you don't want it,but then turn around, you know
180 degrees and be like theseare great counties, you need
these counties, uh.
But so really, what we found isthat it would save, uh uh, the
(49:01):
Willamette Valley a billiondollars a year, and it would
cost the state of Idaho 300million a year, but you can
start to find some unique taxtools for covering $300 million.
So one of them would be this isgetting super nerdy, but it
would be like a weight mileagetax for that particular district
, which the state of Idaho it'scurrently unconstitutional, but
(49:23):
it's constitutional state ofOregon.
So what they said is like well,what if we had an MOU for a
period of years where these anysemis driving on these roads
have to pay tax according to theexisting Oregon laws, and then
that gets fed back to the stateof Idaho and then, over time,
the it kind of equilibrates,because you know those counties
(49:44):
become more like Idaho and startto appreciate the uh, a lower
minimum wage and less regulation, all that kind of stuff that
actually helps economies grow.
So it's true that we found itcould kind of be a benefit to
both.
But you have to kind of squintand turn your head and say this
(50:05):
is going to happen, and this isgoing to happen.
Mike (50:07):
Yeah, that's fascinating squint and turn your head and
say you know this is going tohappen and this is going to
happen.
Yeah, that's fascinating.
It's one of those things thatit seems like that's just so far
out and ridiculous, yeah, andthen you hear a couple of people
tell you maybe that's, maybeit's possible, it'd be pretty
cool, yeah, but anyway, well,thanks, brian.
Yeah, appreciate the time.
Super interesting and yeah,hopefully somebody pays you to
update that study.
Brian (50:28):
Yeah, we'll see, we'll have you on again.
Yeah, we'll see.
Mike (50:29):
if somebody on this listening to this, that's right,
make it happen, make a pitch,all right, thanks.
Thanks for joining us.
Like, share, subscribe.
We'll see you next week.
This is the Kestrel Country Podcast, where we
discuss the people, places andevents all around Kestrel
Country.
Oh, brian points, thanks forcoming by today.
(00:41):
Thank you you, mike.
Yeah, the fun conversation.
Yeah, glad to be here.
So first off, I always like tostart about.
You know just who is across thetable from me.
So where'd you grow up?
What brought you to Moscow?
That kind of thing, what's yourbackground?
Brian (00:56):
Yeah.
So I grew up in Boise, Idaho,and I moved to Moscow in the
early 2000s to go to theUniversity of Idaho and I didn't
, I'd say, for the first twoyears in Moscow I didn't
understand the city all thatwell, Because if you go to U of
I, you don't necessarily have toleave campus.
(01:18):
I mean, it's a university right.
Yeah.
But then in the latter coupleof years and then especially
after I graduated, I was likeokay, this town is actually
really cool.
I could like to kind of stickaround here.
Mike (01:30):
What was that like, coming from growing up in Boise?
Had you been to Moscow before?
Brian (01:35):
Was it just kind of like oh?
Mike (01:36):
this is where the university is.
It's up there in the northsomeplace.
Brian (01:39):
I knew it pretty well actually because my brother went
to college at U of I and he's10 years older than me.
It pretty well actually,because my brother went to
college at u of I and he's 10years older than me.
So I remember, um, we'd comeoff oftentimes for christmas
because he would work duringchristmas breaks.
Then we just spend the wholeyou know holiday up here and
like going to tri-state.
And what else did we do?
We where logos school is?
(02:01):
I remember my sister and Iplaying around on the playground
out there in like you know 1990or something, um, so yeah, all
of the, the stuff that that isMoscow I knew about long, long
ago before I ever moved here,gotcha.
Mike (02:16):
Was it kind of the?
Was that the choice to go tothe university of Idaho?
Was that particular, uh, forwhat you wanted to study?
Was it because your brotherwent there?
Was it kind of, at that time,like, that's where you go Most
people?
Brian (02:28):
at the time.
Uh, I graduated in oh one fromhigh school and at the time
there was, you know, boise statedid not have the best like
academic reputation.
I I don't know if that's fairor not, but that's that.
It was what it was.
And it didn't have any of thefootball reputation yet right,
it was developing that that kindof happened right about at that
(02:49):
time and it's an interestingkind of case study of how do you
build a university off of afootball program, because they
have now like ascended the U ofI in most metrics and the reason
that people know who they areis because they won the Fiesta
Bowl in 2009 or whatever it was.
So, yeah, it wasn't.
I didn't consider that reallyan option.
It I didn't think that hardabout it.
(03:10):
I don't know.
Mike (03:10):
It's like yeah, that's a place where people go.
I need some people who wentthere, yeah.
Brian (03:27):
And what did you study?
I studied history as anundergrad actually uh which is
weird cause I'm an economist nowbut um, that was what I was
interested in.
And um, I actually had aprofessor of history when I was
just kind of I was in the wholegeneral studies what am I doing
here?
You know, change my mind everythree months, kind of setting
for you know my first year ortwo.
And then I had a historyprofessor named Richard Spence,
who is the best historyprofessor that has ever existed.
He taught a class on Russianhistory two semesters and then a
(03:48):
class on Middle Eastern historyfor two semesters, and I was
like I will listen to this guytalk for as long as I can sit
here, because it's just thatgood.
So that's kind of why I went inthat direction.
I was just drawn to it.
So anyway, not the usual trackthat people take to become an
economist, but that for me.
I didn't really even haveinterest in economic sciences
(04:12):
and data and that kind of stuffuntil after I graduated and I
got a job working at Lightcast,which at the time was called
Emsi, and I really did findmyself drawn to it, but I didn't
have any of the you know kindof credentials to really do it.
So then I went to Californiaand I got my master's in
(04:32):
economics at UC Santa Barbara in2012,.
I guess it was.
Mike (04:38):
Yeah, so did you ever?
Did you?
Did you go pretty quickly fromundergrad into MZ?
No, I was.
We both worked there at thesame time.
Yeah, did you go pretty quicklyfrom undergrad into MZ?
No, we both worked there at thesame time.
Yeah, I think I was?
Brian (04:48):
I want to say it was three or four years or something
.
Mike (04:51):
Were you doing anything in history?
I was actually very interested.
Yes, I did.
Okay, there you go.
Brian (04:58):
Wow See, this is well.
Mike (05:00):
I love history too, yeah.
Brian (05:05):
Well, this will come back because, with the work that I
do at points consulting, I thinkboth of these things are really
relevant.
So, um, yeah, I I wasinterested in being a museum
curator actually, and I I had ainternship at the Basque museum
in Boise and then I had aninternship in Rhode Island at,
um, um, you know, giving likehouse tours of this house that
(05:25):
was built and you know thecolonial, colonial era, it was
awesome, like they're they had,um, the uh colonial kind of uh
tax collector lived at thathouse and they like tarred and
feathered him during the stampact and like it had an awesome
history.
Um, Georgia, Whitfield, you know, ate there one time and I was
just like, oh, this is soawesome because their history of
(05:48):
the East Coast is so much older.
Yeah, there's so much stuffthat happened there.
So anyway, it just wasn't.
I think I would have been happydoing it.
But you know, I'm glad Idiscovered what I did.
It was kind of became anopportunity through the what was
in front of me.
It wasn't really likeintentional necessarily, it was
just like oh.
I like doing this.
(06:09):
Well, I better go get a degreeso I could do it better, you
know.
Mike (06:12):
Yeah, so you got your, your master's in economics and
that allowed you to just do morewith you came back to no, did
you come back to MZ at thatpoint?
Brian (06:22):
I did so.
I bounced around a number oftimes because after grad school
I went to Virginia where I had ajob working for a consulting
company doing economic analysis.
Didn't work out great, justdidn't really like living there.
I was a long way away from mywife's family, moved back to
(06:42):
Moscow where I worked for MZ asecond time, did that for a
couple of years and then went toIndiana to work for a different
company, just because I kind offelt like for me to do what I
wanted to do, that was thebetter place for me to do it.
More consulting type yeah rightand the uh.
the offer that they gave me islike hey, come live here for a
(07:05):
couple of years and then you canwork remotely from wherever you
want.
I was like, hey, that soundspretty pretty good deal,
especially in 2016.
Yeah, that was before before itwas cool, yeah, um.
So I took, took that option.
I lived there for two and ahalf years and then moved back
to Moscow again.
I worked for that company.
For another, I want to say itwas a year, year and a half
remotely, before I startedpoints consulting in 2019.
Mike (07:29):
Yeah, awesome, yeah.
And so what particular type ofeconomic, what, what type of
economic consulting are youdoing?
Brian (07:39):
It's the easiest way to describe it is.
We live at the intersection ofeconomic development, real
estate and land use, so anythingthat involves some convergence
of those factors is somethingwe're interested in doing.
It doesn't matter if it'sgovernment, nonprofit,
for-profit, what state you're in, that's something we care about
(08:01):
.
Mike (08:01):
Okay.
Brian (08:02):
Yeah.
Mike (08:04):
And is that the same type of thing you were doing before
with?
Brian (08:07):
a previous employer.
It's it's shifted over time.
We, um, the company that Ipreviously worked for, I'd say
that their real professionalstrength was in workforce and
economic development.
Um, so workforce development iskind of the.
The describes the process ofgetting people from the
(08:29):
educational system into jobsthat are meaningful.
So there's, you know, all theapprenticeship, job-based
training, educate, highereducation, secondary ed, all
that stuff you know.
So there, the consultingcompany I worked for was really
focused on helping make thosepipelines make sense and work
efficiently and that kind ofstuff.
And then they touched oneconomic development, which is
(08:51):
basically the process of sellingand building a regional economy
to have greater jobopportunities and greater
prosperity, job opportunitiesand greater prosperity.
So I was touching on those sametopics, but again I was.
I was really just kind ofgravitated towards things
related to real estate andhousing, cause I just it was
(09:12):
some of the more interestingthings that I did.
Mike (09:15):
Okay, yeah, so are you.
You mentioned lots of differenttypes of clients, right From,
maybe, municipalities,governments and others.
Is that most typical that you'dhave a government or a
paragovernment type organizationthat is looking at that?
That's saying basically, hey,we want, we want to, our job is
(09:38):
to grow our local economy and sowe've got whatever this land or
we're looking at when you sayland use, like zoning issues and
that kind of thing.
Brian (09:48):
Yeah, absolutely so.
The more often than not rightnow that's the norm is working
with a city, a county, a quasigovernmental organization which
might be like an economicdevelopment organization or
something like that, and they'rehiring us to understand their
local housing market.
(10:08):
And when we do that, we we deepdive on the data.
We talk to a ton of people, wedo a community survey so we can
get you know the full breadth ofpeople's perspectives on what's
working, what's what's notworking, what's missing that
they might want to see.
We look, look at thecomprehensive plan, the land use
plan, the zoning code I've readso much zoning code you
(10:31):
wouldn't believe it and then wepoint out where the gaps and
inefficiencies are.
That might be, you know,preventing supply and demand
from kind of meeting up, becauseultimately, as economists like
you, want to let the market dowhat it needs to do, but there's
a lot of ways in which it's notdoing that for various reasons.
So that's the what we try to doand I always tell the cities
(10:56):
that we're working with is, likeyou know, perhaps this entity,
you know the city of such andsuch, is the one that's paying
us, but we're really working forthe citizens, because the
citizens are going to be theones that are going to benefit
from better housing stock, more,you know, appropriately suited
to their needs.
It's going to be really qualitymarket research for anybody
who's in real estate or um, ordevelopment or anything like
(11:21):
that.
Mike (11:21):
Yeah, Okay.
So when you say thatintersection of real estate and
economic development mostly areyou talking about residential
really like housing, yeah,housing.
Brian (11:32):
Mostly what you do Right.
So let me first go the otherdirection to acknowledge some of
the other stuff that we do.
As an example, we're workingwith the city of La Grande
Oregon and it's a two-phasething.
The first phase was showingthat the city of La Grande
Oregon and what we.
It's a two phase thing.
The first phase was showingthat the city boundaries were
too small to fit the level ofeconomic growth that we
(11:53):
forecasted.
And the second step is actuallyhelping them expand that urban
growth boundary by looking atthe uh you know, the soils data,
the uh, the drainage stuff, thefloodplains, all that kind of
thing to tell them all right, ifyou need 150 more acres over
your next 20 years is what weforecasted, it can go here, here
(12:14):
and here.
So talk to those landownersabout annexation.
That one's a more commercial andindustrial kind of oriented
project.
Another example would be uh,we're working with the city of
Caldwell down in Southern Idahoto do a uh, business incubator
feasibility study.
So the the city is Caldwell isgrowing like crazy, as you might
(12:36):
imagine.
Um, and they're.
So their uh commercial realestate prices are skyrocketing.
Uh, they don't have any morespace and kind of downtown.
So the the city has this ideaof like can we just set aside a
place with some subsidized rentbasically and programs to kind
of help people get out the gateso then they can spend their
(12:58):
companies off and develop bigcorporate campuses and leases
and all that kind of stuff?
So we're helping them figurethat out.
And that one again is more kindof commercial, industrial
oriented.
Mike (13:11):
Wow, yeah, yeah, that's cool, that's, that's.
Those are always the thingsthat I enjoyed the most at.
Mz back when it was workingwith that kind of development.
Brian (13:20):
Yeah, yeah, like.
Well, why don't you come workfor those people?
Mike (13:23):
I'm busy, I got stuff going.
Yeah, Like those people is justkind of cool, right, they're,
they're looking at at being veryproactive.
How do we grow our town?
What do we do?
What's the right mix?
You know what companies can youattract, and then the wins are
always really cool.
You're like, yeah, they youknow attracted, you know X, Y,
you know manufacturer to theirtown, and then it grew and all
(13:46):
that stuff Like there's, it'scool, they're cool stories.
Brian (13:48):
Yeah, another way that to kind of describe what we do,
and I made a YouTube video aboutthis because I felt like I just
kept getting the answer.
Asked the same question over andlike what do you guys do is we
(14:08):
work in the background beforethe big news breaks.
So at some point in someregional newspaper it's going to
say new company arrives hiring3 000 people over the next 10
years.
Or you know developers building750 new houses on the south
side of town, like we've beenworking with that client for
like two years before thathappens in the background and
that you know that's our job.
But we're helping themunderstand like, does it make
economic sense?
(14:29):
Or that, is the city going tobe a good partner on it?
Um, or is the developer goingto be a good partner?
Just like putting all thosepuzzle pieces together to to get
it to fit.
So it's.
You know, those things, thosetypes of things, take so much
background work, especiallyworld that we live in now, for
better or worse.
Cities have an incredibleamount of discretion over
(14:49):
virtually every step of theprocess.
So there's lots of discussionswith city council and planning
commission.
So we're involved in all thosekinds of things.
Mike (14:56):
Wow, and how long have you been doing this?
Brian (15:01):
So I've been in consulting for, I think, going
on years, and I've been uh ownedpoints consulting since 2019.
Mike (15:09):
Okay, yeah, yeah.
Five years, yeah, five, nice,that's a big milestone.
And how many people do you haveworking for you?
Brian (15:16):
We've got five uh, including one intern, but that
intern is becoming full-timestaff this summer.
So, we'll be looking for moreinterns and then, you know, we
kind of just take itstep-by-step, but I hope and
expect we'll continue to growand continue to hire more people
around here.
Mike (15:34):
And you're doing projects all over the country.
Brian (15:36):
Yeah, so uh, kind of take a random sample for right now,
um Colorado, oklahoma, now UmColorado Oklahoma, alaska,
oregon, idaho, georgia, uh,those are just the ones off top
of my head.
So we've got um 15 ongoingprojects right now and that's uh
(15:56):
some of the locations.
Mike (15:58):
Okay, but and you have done locally right, so close to
home yeah, Is the housing studythat you did for Moscow-Polman
area?
Is that the closest you'veworked?
I mean, it's in our backyard.
Brian (16:11):
Yeah, is that the?
Mike (16:12):
only work you've really done locally.
Brian (16:14):
No, I've done other stuff too for the city of Lewiston,
the Nez Perce tribe, someprivate developers.
I've occasionally done justkind of these mini market scan
studies.
If somebody is like, hey, doesthis idea make sense?
Can you help me figure it out?
Um, and those ones aren't.
We have some of those, asmattering of them, that they
don't go public because it'sbasically you know they paid for
(16:37):
that research somebody's doinglike a feasibility study.
yeah, okay, so a few of those,but yeah, but probably the most
well-known local one that we'vedone was the uh Ploos regional
housing study, which was in 2019.
It was one of the last projectsI did before I started my own
company.
Okay, so that was with yourprevious.
Mike (16:54):
It was yeah Okay.
Brian (16:56):
But you know it?
Um, and in fact it it's.
I stayed with that employer foran extra three months to finish
that project.
Nice, like, let me out of here.
Mike (17:04):
I stayed with that employer for an extra three
months to finish that project.
Brian (17:06):
Nice, Like let me out of here.
But I couldn't because I neededto get the job done and it
would have just kind of rockedthe boat too much if I left.
Mike (17:12):
Yeah, so tell us a little bit about that.
Yeah, so it was in 2019.
Who were you doing the studyfor and what were some of the
major things you guys found?
Brian (17:23):
Yeah, so we did the study for the Partnership for
Economic Prosperity, which hassince folded up, but it was at
the time our regional economicdevelopment organization for
Latah County and there was anumber of partners involved in
it City of Moscow, city ofPullman, wazoo, and so on.
The, I think, the localrealtors organization kicked in
(17:47):
some money at that time too.
Mike (17:49):
So and so it was.
Brian (17:50):
they were a Latah County accounting development
organization but they partneredwith the others to do a regional
so it was pretty unique in thatsense that most of the studies
I've done since then are for onejurisdiction, in a sense like
the city, montrose, colorado,city of broken arrow, oklahoma,
(18:11):
but this was like regional andit crossed two states, which, uh
, is tricky.
You know, legal, legalinfrastructure, uh, real estate
and development stuff is justvery different between
washington and idaho.
So, yeah, so, uh, so some ofthe biggest things, I mean we
projected that there was apretty dramatic shortage of
(18:33):
housing for the Palouse area.
Multifamily, which is a codeword for apartments, more or
less, is a kind of takes care ofitself.
You don't necessarily reallyneed to advertise it because
there are developers that knowhow to do it and they know what
metrics they're they're lookingfor and then they build when you
(18:54):
say know how to do it, know howto do the analysis themselves,
they know how to build that typeof housing.
Oh, okay, you know, because it'sa different skillset than, um,
you know the financing isdifferent, the building styles
are, you know it's, it'scommercial because it's
multi-story and all that kind ofstuff.
So, um, you know that what thething about multifamily is, that
you know, if you could chartthis out my brain thinks in
(19:15):
charts, so this will sometimesbe less interesting if I'm doing
things with my fingers butmultifamily goes at this low
boil and then it's like boom, ahundred units.
And then it goes back to likenothing for like five years and
it just does it.
most places it does that,including moscow, pullman, you
know, um, because you build ahuge apartment complex and then
those builders know that we aregoing to fill this gap for x
(19:38):
period of time and then we'regoing to wait for it to absorb
and then we'll go do it again,right and um, and we're actually
it's worth mentioning thatwe're blessed that we don't have
to really think that hard aboutthat, because there are so many
rural and semi-urban places inthe country that no multifamily
developers pay attention to atall, like they have no idea what
(20:00):
the market is or it's like well, I could build 500 in this city
, you know, in the next 10 years.
Why am I going to drive 70 milesaway to go do that?
But we actually, you know what?
Mike (20:09):
because the university, university market.
Brian (20:11):
It's a it's a captive market.
The builders know that they canmake money doing it.
It just takes care of itself.
Single family is kind of ourpinch point, um.
So we found there was ashortage and that to meet the
shortage, it was going to besomething like 270 new uh new
units, single family units peryear over the next, uh, 10 years
(20:34):
.
So that would be, you know,2017 to 2027, um, so at the time
, that would have beenessentially doubling the
production levels for LatahCounty, um, and I I just looked
today cause I was curious andwe're not close to that number
still, so the shortage stillexists.
Mike (20:56):
And the shortage in that case seems to have that gap is
getting bigger than right.
Yeah, if we're not, we're notkeeping up.
Brian (21:03):
Yeah, so that yeah, I mean it is, but also in a sense
like they're um.
Tracing out what the demandcurve looks like is always kind
of a mystical exercise, causeyou only see the people who show
up and what and who actuallytransact right.
So, what does that whole otherdimension on to the up and to
the right look like?
Like?
How steep is it?
How far does it go?
(21:23):
It's, it's a bit of a mystery,so, um, but that's that's our
guess.
That mystery is that if we do,you know, 270 a year, that will
pretty efficiently meet themarket and, um, you know, we'll
also kind of help keep costs ina re, probably bring them down
and keep them, at least keepthem from increasing at a really
(21:44):
radical pace, like housingprices.
Mike (21:46):
You mean Housing prices.
Brian (21:47):
Yeah, so, um, but we've never accomplished that, so we
haven't really yet to experiencethat.
And again, this this was astudy that was done in 2019.
Um, I'd love to yeah, a lot haschanged Turns out, um, you know,
for a minute, there in 2021, wewere, you know, latah County.
I don't remember the numbers,but I was looking at the
(22:08):
in-migration statistics and theIRS statistics and it was like
you know, we were one of thehigher growth counties in the
state in terms of in-migrationwhich was one of the highest
growth states which is yeah,right, so we're probably in the
top 10th percentile.
You know that would have been2020, 2021.
It really tapered off afterthat.
Um, I was, you know, I Iexpected at that time and I told
(22:32):
people that I think this isthere's an idiosyncrasy to this,
like it's not going to go away,but it's also not going to
sustain at this level, and Ithink I've turned out to be
right about that.
Um, at least until the nextinsane thing happens, and then
we'll see.
Mike (22:47):
Yeah, yeah, so did that when you were looking at a
shortage.
Was that similar to thenational trends of kind of post
2008,.
You know the post the housingcrash, I know that nationally
that's the case that you know.
Basically building fell off andhas never recovered.
Brian (23:06):
Like we're.
Mike (23:08):
Moscow.
Pullman is not alone right,basically the rest of the
country where we are shorthousing units at a national
level.
Brian (23:15):
Yes, at a national level.
That's still the case.
Now, I do see markets, causethis is, you know, housing
permits is something that wetrack in every region we work in
.
I see places where in 2017,2018, even 2020, that it
exceeded where they were at in2006.
So it has happened in someplaces.
(23:36):
It tends to be in the southpretty often, sometimes in the
west in certain types of markets, but, as all real estate is
hyperlocal, so it's you know,when you read articles and stuff
about the national market, it'slike, oftentimes, I think
that's true, but also that meansnothing for this particular
(23:57):
market, right, um, so, but whatyou're saying is yeah, that's
that's true.
Mike (24:01):
We haven't we haven't gotten back to that level, um,
and it's, it's tough to get backto that level.
Brian (24:11):
Did you guys identify some of the main roadblocks to
that?
Yeah, we did Um.
So you know I'll say that.
And again, so it was two, twocounties, two cities, a lot of
kind of smaller towns outside ofthe big towns.
Um, the city of Moscow has donea lot of really proactive
policy stuff on housing andbecause of that you see a market
for the size of town that we'reat.
(24:34):
The articulation of housingoptions that we have is really
pretty advanced.
So the fact that you can, youknow you've got a large lot
single family like, like youknow, up on the other side of
mountain view, you've got kindof your historic district that's
kind of more urban density, andfor russell you've got a couple
(24:55):
of kind of pockets withmulti-family and then you have
all the other stuff out on theeast side of town, like white
avenue, where they did someexperimental, um, what you call
planned unit development orpudUD type of stuff at, like
Tiempo Commons and some of thoseplaces that you don't just go
build that stuff.
A builder is effectively walkinghand in hand with the city to
(25:15):
say I'd like to do this toachieve more density so I can
bring costs down and things likethis, and a lot of cities are
really hard to work with on thatstuff.
But the city of Moscow ispretty good.
City of Moscow has been greatabout figuring out what, what we
should do about accessorydwelling units.
That can oftentimes be a pointof contention in a lot of
(25:36):
communities too.
So so the city of Moscow, I'dsay there was less to less like
low hanging fruit, to just belike do these things?
you know cause they're.
They do a lot of a lot of thethings, um, so I think more of
the, the barriers for, uh, forMoscow and Latah County is just,
uh, it's hard.
We have a um.
(25:58):
One of the one of theintentional kind of barriers
that are put in place is theprohibition.
It's kind of an anti-sprawltechnique in a sense, that you
can't subdivide lots beyond acertain number of times, over a
certain number of years andstuff.
So yeah, we experience abenefit from that that's.
You know, honestly, like we allkind of like driving in rural
areas too, right, we don't wantto see just constant sprawl
(26:20):
spreading out in every direction.
But it does mean that it kindof limits your options for
building outside of the citylimits.
And we don't have enoughbuilders.
Yeah, I mean that I shouldn'tjust say builders, because what
I mean is we don't have enoughgeneral contractors, we don't
have enough subcontractors, wedon't have enough tradesmen and
(26:41):
we don't have enough developers,developers.
So now I, since the study wasfinished, I had a lot of
conversations with people who inthat whole world that want to
get into the weeds on.
You know our numbers and, likeyou know if I built 500, in one
year would I be okay, right.
(27:02):
Well, nobody's ever done itbefore.
Yeah exactly Like we.
We have kind of a chronicshortage.
So there would certainly, youknow, absorption would not be as
fast.
But maybe you know, like 270 ayear or 501 year, when you're
already like consistently superlow, Maybe that would work.
Just you know it's you need,which again comes down to the
(27:24):
kind of unique geography of ourarea.
We're not going to havebuilders come down from Spokane
or Coeur d'Alene, we're notgoing to have them come up from
Boise, we're not going to havethem come east from Tri-Cities.
We're too far away.
So we're a build your own.
Mike (27:36):
Well, yeah, that's always been the way I've thought about
it is.
I'd be interested to get yourtake on this.
We're in this weird catch-22 isthe wrong term but kind of this
weird in-between state, right,where we're growing.
So we have that demand thatyou're talking about, but we're
not large enough and we'regrowing at a pretty good rate,
right, but our size we're stillstarting from a place that's
(28:00):
small and so you know you're notgoing to have a KB Homes or
Pulte, come in and build 500housing units for example no,
you're not Because they one.
that's a low end for them, right, like that's probably minimum
what they would want to do.
And then there's the questionof, well, yeah, what would that
do?
Could you sell them all?
Yeah, you know, based on ourrate of sales, right, granted,
(28:24):
that's dealing with theinventory we've had.
It's like, yeah, you wouldn't,I mean not, certainly not right
away.
Yep, you know, um.
And then there's the issue of,I don't know if the study got
into this at all, but, um, price, right.
How does that work when, if you, let's say, we need 270 more
housing units every year, well,if those 270 housing units are
(28:46):
$700,000 plus, that's probablynot actually what we need, right
, like, that's not going to dealwith it.
Brian (28:52):
But now If you build 500 units at $700,000,.
You might have problemsgetting-.
Mike (28:57):
Yeah, you just might, you might, yeah, especially at 7%
interest rate, that kind ofthing, and yeah, so I'm curious
where that fits in, because itseems like that's one of the
challenges again nationally, notjust here is that new
construction costs are so highthat it's like that's not
necessarily where the greatestneed is or the greatest demand
(29:21):
is for housing, and when yourreplacement costs are that high,
then obviously that's justgoing to continue to drive up.
You know existing home pricestoo.
Brian (29:31):
Yes, exactly, so the um, I agree with everything that you
said.
I I think that Moscow is inwhat I would call an awkward
adolescent stage growth, wherewe have some characteristics of
being young and I have, you know, a little kid, and we have some
characteristics of being youngand we have, you know, a little
kid and we have somecharacteristics of being more
mature.
So you see these awkward kind ofthings where it's like we at
(29:54):
the same time get on the list toget a target and to get a
chick-fil-a and stuff like this,but we also have, you know, no
uh, you know hr hortons of theworld are going to look at us
Right.
So you were not big enough andwe're far enough.
You know it would be one thingif we were where, say, cheney is
(30:15):
located Right, like whereyou're.
What is that?
30 miles from Spokane, we'dhave a lot fewer problems
because those builders could doprojects there and get their
subs to show up Right.
But where we're at, that it'stoo far away for them so again
the, the build your own kind ofthing and there's some, some
blessings to that, you know.
You see, builders that kind ofget the community Um.
(30:38):
They have a pattern of of howto do things.
They we, we do have some more.
Usually those big buildersdon't do innovative very well.
They, they cut cookies superwell, whereas you know, some of
those developments we talkedabout on the east side, some of
the, you know, I know you hadthe wins company folks on, like
the stuff that they're doing.
It's companies like that thatare like let's do this
(31:00):
differently, cause it'll be goodfor the community.
You know that's um, those typesof things often get crowded out
when you're in bigger cities.
Mike (31:08):
Yeah, yeah, that makes sense.
So have you.
You're obviously you were justgoing back looking at some data.
Housing starts we're still notthere.
Have you revisited anythingelse from that study or kind of
have any ideas of you know whereare we at now and what's the
forecast?
Brian (31:26):
It's.
You know it, it'd be hard tolike.
I'm a very data driven guy andmy hands are in numbers all the
time for different areas.
I'm not day to day living inthe Moscow, you know, pullman
real estate market to be able toto say like there's little
anecdotesotes that I found onoccasions where somebody asked
(31:48):
me or because I was interested.
But you know, I would love todo an update on it.
You know, and I think even ifit was just like pulling 10
metrics and doing a white paperit's like five pages that would
be useful.
But I haven't had time to dothat so is there?
Mike (32:03):
so you said partnership for economic prosperity is no
longer folded since then.
Right, what's the state ofeconomic development for Moscow?
Latah County, I guess.
Brian (32:14):
Yeah.
Mike (32:15):
Did anybody take up that mantle Right Like who would hire
you to do the study?
Brian (32:19):
Yeah, If it was now, it would probably be one of the
cities or, you know, Avista hasalways been a big player in
these types of things becausethey care about economic
development too.
Yeah, economic development inLatah County I mean this gets to
the other side of the story isthat people don't follow houses,
(32:40):
they follow jobs and thenhouses follow jobs, so that's
almost always the pattern.
Follow jobs, so that's almostalways the pattern.
And statistically, you know themodels and the papers that have
been written on the topic.
That's that's how it goes Right.
Um, but it's very much like a.
Oftentimes the things work verymuch in parallel.
Mike (32:59):
Yeah, I was going to say that's where maybe my earlier
term of catch 22 could fitbetter, where, yes, that's the
case case.
But I know I've talked topeople who are like, well, I
couldn't move my business therebecause there's not enough
housing, yeah, so, yeah, itseems like that's a, so it's a
it's a huge speculative thingfor a developer to be like you
know, 300 new homes, here we go,when there's been no
(33:21):
announcements about.
Brian (33:22):
You know new company expansions, like you get the
hesitancy.
Hesitancy when nobody's everdone something to that scale
before, um, but that so usuallywhat had happened.
So Boardman, oregon would be agood example of a place that's
gone this, this route which umis.
You know, if you go West fromhere towards Portland, it's kind
of in the middle of everythingand historically it's always
(33:44):
just been kind of a.
You know a small town with aport and a bunch of cows, but
next time you're driving through, get off because it's like
there are factories everywhere,like the place is booming.
It went from um, maybe.
You know, I think uh, 10, 12years ago was like maybe a
(34:04):
population of a thousand.
Now it's's like 12,000, youknow, like, and that's that's
all.
Economic development driven jobgrowth by the Port of Morrow
County local economicdevelopment organization.
Port of.
Mike (34:15):
Morrow.
That's see, that's a flashbackCause I was like 10 years ago
that's about when I was tryingto sell packaging in Boardman,
Oregon, Like that's why I knowBoardman.
But it was like it was a longtime.
It was 10 years ago or more.
So yeah, we used to.
I used to go sell stretch filmthere and bags because it was
like agricultural processing inthe Port of Morrow.
Right, there was about it.
Brian (34:36):
Yeah, well they're, they're banging now they need
some stretch packaging.
So, um, and when that'shappening simultaneously,
anybody who's in the developmentcommunity is like, hey, let's
put you know, 200 departmentsright there.
So it happens like at the sametime because people are paying
attention to it and there's, youknow.
But if there's no signals thathousing could feasibly even be
(35:00):
developed, then that is a redflag to the people who work on
this flag, to the people whowork on this, whether that's,
you know, uh, department ofcommerce for the state, the
local economic developmentdistricts have a hard time
selling it.
Uh, the, uh, that siteselectors who are kind of the,
you know, the real estate agentsof the economic development
world, they, they're like thisisn't going to work, where are
you going to get all thesepeople?
Uh, so you gotta have both kindof moving at the same time.
(35:24):
But it's more likely.
I have more often than not seena job announcement followed by
a housing announcement than ahousing announcement followed by
a job announcement.
Just put it in those terms.
Mike (35:36):
That makes sense yeah.
Yeah, the jobs, job, yeah, andthe jobs is what that's.
That's all the data thateverybody's watching right now,
anyway, too, right on thenational level.
It's the jobs, data and dataand it's yeah, we're not going
to see a bunch of foreclosuresas long as unemployment's low
like you need jobs to pay thosemortgages and that kind of thing
.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, interesting.
Yeah, it'll be interesting tosee where where it goes.
(35:59):
I was, I feel like it.
We're in this funny town whereit's.
It is kind of small and yetit's the universities.
So it feels a little bit biggerand yet you know it's, it's
growing, it's pushing, but yetit's, you know, hard to really
maybe break through some ofthose barriers.
Yeah, but I mean, since yourstudy there are two, you know
you mentioned Wynn's company,their development North of town,
(36:21):
Eddington, south of town, likethere's some stuff, there's some
lots right now.
So at least there is a littlebit more of a runway anyway for
development which you know,preceding that there was hardly
anything for quite a while.
Brian (36:34):
Yeah, right, and you know the the.
You mentioned the cost persquare foot, right, like that.
That's all that's partiallydriven by these labor shortages,
but it's also driven by thosedistances to move the materials
and the quantities at whichpeople can buy them, and the
difference in that is reallystunning.
(36:56):
I don't have a current numberfor Moscow.
Do you know, like, what's thecost per square foot for a
single family?
Mike (37:03):
I don't.
I mean I know if you're goingto go hire a builder.
From what I I've heard, they'rekind of in that 225, 250 a
square foot.
Brian (37:11):
So 250 a square foot the project we're doing outside of
Tulsa.
Their cost per square foot thisis per their building permit
data for 2022, 125.
Wow yeah that's a bit of a.
Mike (37:23):
It's been a long time since it's been that bit of a
difference.
Brian (37:26):
Yeah so again, if you're anybody who's in that national
landscape, you're like Ooh thatdoesn't look so good.
Mike (37:32):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
You just don't get theeconomies of scale here at all.
You like Boise area, rightCalled.
Well, we're at.
You know, we were visitingfamily and it's like, yeah, you
just see basement after basementafter basement or foundation
going in.
All that.
You know that economy of scaleof just cranking on those houses
.
Brian (37:52):
It's incredible.
Mike (37:53):
Yeah, Plus it's flat and.
I mean there's a lot of otherthings that help.
There are hindrances here, butyeah, yeah, I think one of the
things that I don't know ifyou've looked at it but would be
interesting is looking at someof the commercial real estate
too, because I know from beingin the real estate business this
is mostly anecdotal which Iknow talking to an economist is
(38:16):
probably anathema, but in amarket like this size, it is
anecdotal.
Mostly anecdotal, but I mean,for a long time when I was
selling real estate commercialreal estate was kind of at this
a little bit of an equilibriumas well, where there really
wasn't a whole lot of supply butthere also wasn't hardly any
demand and so there were a fewvacancies around, there's a
(38:38):
little bit on the market.
But you know, it was just kindof sitting there and then I feel
like in the last two years allthat vacancy got taken up and
all of a sudden it's like yeah,there's just nothing available.
But we're kind of still itfeels to me anyway like we're
still a little bit bumping upagainst that lack of demand.
It's not like there's a ton ofdemand where, similar to what
(38:58):
you're saying, a developer couldcome in and build a bunch of
commercial right Right, but it's, the thing that's changed is
essentially all the suppliesgone and so vacancies are
practically zero.
Um, I know, obviouslyresidential rents have gone up,
but so have commercial rents.
Like it's just really changedthat landscape a lot and it
seems like that's another placewhere if we're going to attract,
(39:21):
if we're going to get thosejobs that are going to help you
know, fill some of that housing.
We're going to need more space.
Brian (39:27):
Yeah, so my read on the commercial market in Moscow is
that it's still pretty immaturebut it has matured a lot just in
the past five years, justbecause you've actually had like
real companies taking realsizable leases and, um, so those
(39:48):
, those places that were kind ofsitting around for a while
didn't, you know, weren't reallybeing taken up or taken up.
And then it's like, oh, now wehave nothing, or next to nothing
, and I think it just comes backto the.
You think about the.
You know commercial is going tobe driven by, uh, small
businesses in a town like this.
(40:09):
We'll look at the smallbusinesses that we have in
Moscow right now.
They're, they're in mostly inthe kind of card table, in the
garage, you know second bedroomkind of stage of development.
Um, like, like my business was,you know, four years ago I
didn't need an office, but I, Itook a commercial lease, just,
you know, a couple months agoit's, you know, maybe, only a
(40:31):
you know 1600 foot, um, littleplace that can fit five people
in.
But where am I going to be fiveyears from now, 10 years from
now?
We'll extrapolate that out bythe number of businesses that
are in the same phase that I amand that you're in and you know
all these people that we know.
So it it goes in.
(40:51):
The market's always trying tofind equilibrium, but when
supply and demand are bothpretty small, it tends to come
in these like punctuated pointswhere it's like you know, all of
a sudden supplies way up andthen all sudden demands way up
and it's just like boom, boom.
They're kind of battling witheach other and, as that happens,
you start to see people seemore of an opportunity to be
like okay, maybe we can actuallybuild a you know, 20,000 square
(41:14):
feet of flex space, because youknow we're consistently seeing
prices go up in low vacancy.
Mike (41:20):
Right, yeah, yeah, that's interesting, yeah, um, so what's
next for points consulting?
Brian (41:29):
Um, so we are.
Um, one of the things that we'retrying to work on is just get
really good at the analytics on,uh, housing in the U?
S and uh, these markets thatwe're working in are, uh, all
very different and veryinteresting, so it gives us kind
of a lab to experiment with.
(41:52):
You know, we're in somecommunities where the median
home price is, maybe, you know,700 and one's 500 and one's 250.
And it's like, oh man, you likewe're trying to build models to
be able to forecast populationgrowth, housing unit growth,
split that out betweenmultifamily, single family, the
(42:14):
stuff in the middle, the middledensity stuff, and be able to
say, like, how do the metricsactually affect affordability in
this area?
Like, you know this as arealtor that every customer you
have has a slightly differentsituation, right, well, we're
not dealing with individuals,we're dealing with thousands of
people in statistical kind ofdatabases at a time.
(42:35):
But I want to be able to tellthat story accurately and say
you know what percentage ofhouseholds in this location can
afford a median priced singlefamily home?
No idea how hard that questionactually is to answer.
Like we're doing that right nowand I feel like we're doing it
at.
Like we're doing it better thananybody else I've seen, but I
(42:57):
still give ourselves a C becausewe're not able to.
There's so many other databasesthat we need to kind of bring
into to be able to do that.
So we're going to keep doingcool stuff like that.
Um, we're going to, uh, youknow, keep, uh, building on our
good reputation to get more ofthe type of work that we want to
do.
Uh and uh, you know, in 10years, who knows where we'll be?
Mike (43:20):
Yeah, yeah, well, that's, that's exciting.
I mean, that's fun stuff.
I said those are the thingsthat I think are I find
interesting and really do affectso many people.
Yeah, it's weird to think abouttoo, though.
How do do you guys look at,like, how do national politics,
how do national trends affectthat stuff then?
(43:41):
Because it's like the Fed andinterest rates affect that a ton
, right, I mean talking aboutwhen you talk about
affordability, really in Americatoday you're mostly talking
about mortgages, right, likebecause that's what most
people's metric is, for what canI afford?
Is that monthly payment?
And when you have nothing elsereally changed that much in a
(44:03):
market but interest rates morethan double in the last year,
it's like, yeah, man, that thatchanges everything.
Brian (44:09):
That's the single biggest thing.
And you know I'm not a I'm nota macro forecaster and I'm also,
like you know, for for a lot offolks that are in real estate
or mortgage or development, likethe interest rates are the
single biggest metrics.
I feel like there's actually alot of people who know, who have
a more informed opinion aboutwhere interest rates are going
to go than me, because kind ofmore of their livelihood depends
(44:32):
upon it.
Um, but you know we, yeah, wedo track that.
Um, you know I have my my owntheories about where that kind
of stuff is going to go, but Ialso, um, you know, um, you know
we've seen enough kind of blackSwan events for a lifetime in
the past.
You know, three years that I'malso hesitant to, you know, to
(45:00):
say like I have 90% confidencethat I know what's going to
happen.
Like you know, the, with theelection coming up.
I also heard somebody sayrecently that it was like
greater than 50% of the freeworld's leaders are up for
election in 2024.
Because this also involvesMexico and a few other places
and it's like, well, that's anelement we don't think about
(45:20):
very often.
No, yeah, so there's crazystuff that could happen.
I don't know if you saw whathappened down in Argentina,
where they uh from out of yearsof socialism they elected a
libertarian economist and it'slike whoa, that's crazy, like
what's going to happen in thatplace?
Um so uh, and then you know,potential for international
(45:41):
conflict like that alwaysdrastically affects what happens
domestically with our economy.
Mike (45:49):
I don't know who's going to get elected.
Brian (45:52):
In terms of the interest rates, the outcome is probably
pretty similar depending on whoit is.
But those are all some of thetypes of things.
Mike (46:03):
So that stuff is in your mind but at the end of the day
you're really mostly focused ona particular area, a particular
place, what their local dynamicsare.
Yeah, and that's probably less.
I mean it's always impacted bythose national things, yeah, but
I mean, at the end of the day,somebody's got to make a plan
and move forward.
Brian (46:29):
Speaking of that, though, one of the most fun projects
that we ever did was the uh, theeconomic impact of the greater
Idaho concept.
So that was one we did.
Two and a half three years ago.
Mike (46:33):
I didn't know you guys were involved in that.
Brian (46:34):
We did.
That's awesome, yeah.
So, and my goal with that wasto write a report that it
doesn't matter how red or howblue you are, you can read it
and be like.
They tried to be as fair asthey possibly could and I think
we accomplished that.
But the problem withaccomplishing that is that both
sides are also mad at you fordoing it.
So, um, so it was a reallyin-depth type of thing.
(46:59):
You know, we looked at, like,how does this affect, uh, uh,
you know, income tax?
Uh, between you know the peoplewho are in that in between
place, how does it affecteconomic growth?
What sectors are going tobenefit?
What about transient tax?
What about sales tax?
What about marijuana tax?
Like we, we looked at all thatkind of stuff and it was that
(47:19):
was an extremely politicalsituation and in fact, we've
still.
That report has been publishedfor two years and there was a
moment for about a week wherethe Idaho State House was
discussing it and that's it.
The Oregon State House hasn'treally paid much attention to it
and it's just it's notseriously on their radar yet,
(47:42):
but it's always in thebackground and you know, I
continue to see like big newspublications writing about it
all the time.
Mike (47:48):
Yeah Well, it's interesting because I just
listened to a podcast with theguy, a guy who runs the greater
Idaho something or other.
Brian (47:56):
I can't remember the guy's name, but probably Mike uh
MacArthur, I think maybe, yeah,guy from Eastern Oregon.
Mike (48:02):
Yeah, and it was interesting, and I don't know,
maybe he was talking about yourstudy, but he certainly made it
sound like, yeah, we've done thehomework to find out that this
is actually an economic benefitfor both states at the end of
the day, there is a, you know,political filters.
I'm sure you could spin it ineither direction.
Brian (48:20):
Yeah, yeah yeah, but from and this has been a while, but
from what I remember, the stateof Oregon would save a billion
dollars in annual cost.
It's a lot of money.
Yeah, it's amazing.
Mike (48:33):
Yeah, because he was saying yeah, they're really
statistically more of aneconomic drain.
The eastern part of the stateis.
Brian (48:41):
So that's the politically difficult thing, though, is
that how do you simultaneouslysell Oregon that this is a dead
weight and you don't want it,but then turn around, you know
180 degrees and be like theseare great counties, you need
these counties, uh.
But so really, what we found isthat it would save, uh uh, the
(49:01):
Willamette Valley a billiondollars a year, and it would
cost the state of Idaho 300million a year, but you can
start to find some unique taxtools for covering $300 million.
So one of them would be this isgetting super nerdy, but it
would be like a weight mileagetax for that particular district
, which the state of Idaho it'scurrently unconstitutional, but
(49:23):
it's constitutional state ofOregon.
So what they said is like well,what if we had an MOU for a
period of years where these anysemis driving on these roads
have to pay tax according to theexisting Oregon laws, and then
that gets fed back to the stateof Idaho and then, over time,
the it kind of equilibrates,because you know those counties
(49:44):
become more like Idaho and startto appreciate the uh, a lower
minimum wage and less regulation, all that kind of stuff that
actually helps economies grow.
So it's true that we found itcould kind of be a benefit to
both.
But you have to kind of squintand turn your head and say this
(50:05):
is going to happen, and this isgoing to happen.
Mike (50:07):
Yeah, that's fascinating squint and turn your head and
say you know this is going tohappen and this is going to
happen.
Yeah, that's fascinating.
It's one of those things thatit seems like that's just so far
out and ridiculous, yeah, andthen you hear a couple of people
tell you maybe that's, maybeit's possible, it'd be pretty
cool, yeah, but anyway, well,thanks, brian.
Yeah, appreciate the time.
Super interesting and yeah,hopefully somebody pays you to
update that study.
Brian (50:28):
Yeah, we'll see, we'll have you on again.
Yeah, we'll see.
Mike (50:29):
if somebody on this listening to this, that's right,
make it happen, make a pitch,all right, thanks.
Thanks for joining us.
Like, share, subscribe.
We'll see you next week.
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