Charleston Metro Chamber Of Commerce CEO Brian Derreberry On Attainable Housing

Charleston Metro Chamber Of Commerce CEO Brian Derreberry On Attainable Housing

Episode Transcript

(00:01):
Hey, how's it going. It'sMichael Blaze. Welcome to Your Home three
sixty, the show where we talkabout everything to do with your home,
whether it's the real estate aspect ofyour home or the maintenance aspect. We
touch on all bases. Your Homethree sixty is brought to you by pool
Works. Go to Mypoolworks dot com, the Low Country's exclusive dealer of the

(00:21):
Little Pool line of pools. Whatis a little pool Stick around and find
out. Also on today's show,I just sat down with Brian Draberry.
He's the President and CEO of theCharleston Metro Chamber of Commerce. Now,
this was for a long form podcastfor a feature we call CEOs you should
know. But I'm going to playan excerpt of that interview in just a

(00:46):
little bit here, where we talkabout attainable housing and the work that's being
done in the Tri County area tomake sure that we have an ample supply
of affordable housing. We all knowthat housing costs, especially here in the
Charleston area, have gone through theroof, so have rents. So we'll
find out what's being done governmentally andotherwise to try to overcome that problem and

(01:11):
get more people into the housing market, into their own houses. Speaking of
affordable housing, let's check the latestnumbers. The latest numbers I have are
from March. The April numbers haven'tcome out yet, but I'll get to
those on an upcoming show. Butlet's check the March numbers and see what's
going on here year over year.We'll start with single family detached homes in

(01:36):
Charleston County. New listings down twopoint nine percent, close sales down eleven
point one percent. The median salesprice is up four point three percent.
The median sales price for Charleston County'ssingle family detached homes March of this year
six hundred and forty thousand, fivehundred dollars. The inventory of homes for

(01:57):
sale, that number's gone up teenpoint one percent. If we're talking about
townhouses and condos, new listings areup just under a point at point nine
percent. Closed sales are up fourteenpoint seven percent. The median sales price
for townhouses and condos up twelve pointeight percent to four hundred and twenty eight
thousand, five hundred dollars. Theinventory of homes for sale up fifty six

(02:23):
point six percent. For Berkeley County, single family detached homes new listings down
seven point two percent, close salesdown eleven point four percent, the median
sales price up two point seven percentto three hundred and ninety thousand, two
hundred and forty one dollars. Theinventory of homes for sale up three point

(02:44):
seven percent. If we look attownhouses in condos, new listings up sixty
point five percent, We're going tosee that in townhouses and condos all over
town because that's what they're building rightnow. It's the price point that they're
looking for. You see them poppingup everywhere. Closed sales of townhouses and
condos up thirteen point one percent.The median sales price this is for Berkeley

(03:07):
County down just a smidge at pointtwo percent. Three hundred and nine thousand,
five hundred dollars was the median salesprice for a townhouse or a condo
in Berkeley County during the month ofMarch. Inventory of homes for sale up
one hundred and eighteen point three percent. That's for townhouses and condos. Like

(03:27):
I said, they're they're building thosethings all over the place. Let's squeeze
Dorchester County in here real quick.New listings up seven percent, close sales
down seventeen point four percent, mediansales price still up four point five percent
to three hundred and sixty six thousand, six hundred and twenty five dollars.
That's for single family detached homes,and inventory of homes for sale down just

(03:50):
under a point at point nine percent. If we're talking about townhouses and condos,
new listings up nine point four percent, closed sales up sixty point nine
percent, median sales price up elevenpoint one percent to three hundred grand,
and the inventory of townhouses and condosfor sale up seventy eight point eight percent.

(04:10):
That's for Dorchester County. So asyou can see by these numbers,
the prices are still going up,and it's creating what a lot of people
would call a housing crisis in theUnited States, and affordability crisis for sure
all across the country. I'm sureyou've seen story after story after story about
it in the nightly news. AsI mentioned before, I just recently did

(04:33):
a long form interview for a podcastcalled CEOs You Should Know with Brian Darraberry,
President and CEO of the Charleston MetroChamber of Commerce and That's one of
the things we discussed is the workbeing done to try to solve that affordability
problem here in the Tri County area. Let me play an excerpt of that

(04:54):
interview where he talks about something theChamber calls people First. Yeah, we're
really excited about people first. Webrought fifty five metro leaders together last year
and developed a process where we lookedout to the year twenty forty and we
said, if this region is goingto continue to thrive, what are the

(05:15):
things that we have to get rightover the next sixteen years. And we
identified attainable housing, a twenty firstcentury ready workforce, a multi modal transportation
system, and early childhood education andaffordable childcare and wherever we go. I
set with one of our most prominentbanks this morning and we talked about how

(05:39):
those issues impacted not only their customers, but every one of their employees.
And you know, I think,Michael, when you look at what the
housing and rental prices are in ourmetro market, we have a lot of
work to do over the next sixteenyears to obtain a housing stock that has
a better price point from an affordabilitystandpoint, and more houses period. Every

(06:02):
year, we should be building seventysix hundred attainable housing units. We've only
done that twice since two thousand andeight. So we've got a classic supply
demand issue in our metro market,and we just have to get more houses
built at a more attainable workforce pricepoint so people can afford to come here,

(06:26):
live here, and have their careersand families here. So excited about
the opportunity. We'll be bringing partnersthroughout the region together to work on all
four of those issue pillars over themonths ahead. Well, I'm also a
realtor, so I'm very familiar withthe problem, and you know what buyers
and homeowners and renters are facing.You know, the median price in Charleston

(06:51):
County for a home is now sixhundred and forty something thousand dollars. The
last numbers I looked at, rentsare incredible high. One of the things
that stands in the way, itseems to be in more and more attentions
being paid to this lately, iszoning. Are you working with the city
to overcome some of the zoning restrictionsin order to be able to meet that

(07:16):
demand. It's exciting, Michael,when you think about what happened in the
November elections. We have three brandnew mayors of three of our four largest
cities, and over the past twomonths we have met with Mayor Cogswell,
Mayor Burgess, and Mayor Touchbury andCharleston, North Charleston and Somerville respectively,

(07:38):
and we're looking at public private partnershipsto address the attainable housing that's needed in
all three of those communities, alongwith the three counties and other municipalities.
To your point, zoning, weare heavily zoned for single family homes and
that's not going to allow us toeffectively attack attainable housing demands, so we

(08:01):
have to look at the missing middle. I think you and I are both
familiar with the importance of duplexes,multiplex's, affordable townhouses, affordable apartments,
and greater density. So those areissues on the table right now with three
new political leaders that are chomping atthe bit to tackle this issue. They're

(08:22):
obviously hearing from their constituents how challengingit is, and I've been extremely excited
in meeting with each of them.Yesterday, we had a chance to sit
down with Mayor Cogswell and you couldoverlay our priorities with his priorities, and
the same thing we experience with MayorBurgess and Mayor Touchberry. So I think

(08:43):
we have a unique window as wemove forward to really begin to look at
our zoning. I think the otherthing that's costly is from the amount of
time that you buy a piece ofproperty to putting a back home. On
the ground of building a house canbe anywhere between three to five years.
That's costly. That's a lot ofcapital setting around that should be put to

(09:07):
work much more rapidly. So wewant to look at how we bring that
time frame down and make the processmore affordable, because those are the costs
that get passed on to the homebuyer or to the renter. Sure,
absolutely, And you know it alwaysreminds me I heard somebody accurately say there

(09:28):
is no such thing as free.All it means is somebody else paid for
it, right, And that alsoapplies to just about anything that has to
do with business. These costs getpassed down to the consumer. Absolutely.
You know. The interesting thing too, is when you look at when zoning
policies came into effect, some ofthem have a little gray hair on them.

(09:52):
They may be twenty years old,thirty years old. So I think
in a couple of those communities,there's a hard look right now at bringing
those policies up to twenty twenty fourand beyond. So I think that,
you know, every once in awhile and we have one of those windows
now you get people that want tohave action and have an immediate impact and

(10:13):
a long term impact on something likeattainable housing. So we're we're hopeful in
the year ahead that we'll see that. The other thing we're going to be
doing is we're working on finalizing itright now attainable housing targeted goals in each
of our cities and counties. Sothen as a region, we have a

(10:35):
overall attainable housing goal that we canwork toward to bring down both the cost
of home purchasing and rental. Sowe're getting ready to have a regional scorecard
that'll be part of people First andit'll capture those goals by political jurisdiction,
and then our overall progress across theregion. So my dad's an engineer,

(11:00):
and as he would say, youknow, measure twice, cut once.
So we're in that process now ofreally quantifying how significant the issue is and
then being able to benchmark year inand year out the success we're having in
building the types and numbers of attainablehouses that we need in our metro market.

(11:22):
That was Brian Darraberry, President andCEO of the Charleston Metro Chamber of
Commerce, talking about one of theirinitiatives called People First. You hear so
much about the causes of high pricesin housing, everything from inflation to high
interest rates. They've even managed toblame realtors and their commissions. I'm glad

(11:45):
to see that people are finally talkingabout zoning because zoning has a huge impact
on supply and demand of housing andcities municipalities. Their outlook on zoning is
starting to change under the pressure ofaffordable housing, so that's good news.
Brian had plenty more to say.It was a long form interview that's going

(12:05):
to be featured on an upcoming episodeof CEOs. You should know. I'll
let you know once that podcast posts. Right now, let's move on to
our next guest in the studio withme is Heath bod Orf. He's vice
president of Pool Works. They're theLow Country's exclusive dealer of the Little Pool
line of pools here in the lowCountry, welcome heath. Let's start by

(12:28):
explaining what a little pool is.A little pool is a plunge pool,
right, it is a plunge pool, but it's a free standing plunge pool.
So it's a fiberglass pool shell andthen surrounded with a exoskeleton of GRP,
which is glass reinforced polymer. Somepeople call it glass reinforced plastic.
It doesn't rust, it doesn't rot, it doesn't get termine damage. It's

(12:50):
pretty tough stuff. And just toset this up, so the fiberglass comes
from Australia, right, that's correct, and then you manufacture it put it
together here in Ridgeville, right herein South Carolina. That is correct.
It is shipped in containers nested together. The pool shells are it's a standard
fiberglass pool built for originally built forend ground, been modified a little bit

(13:15):
so that it can accept our exoskeleton. And once they're brought in, they
come in nested together in a container. And then here in Ridgeville they take
the pool shells and then convert thatover and add the GRP exoskeleton to make
it a free standing fiberglass pool.Now the exoskeleton is an important component,

(13:37):
if not the most important component ofthe pool. That's what gives it its
strength, right Heath. Yeah,So the exoskeleton is what allows this pool
to be free standing. So it'sa patented process of how it's applied to
the pool. And then once thatpool is built the exoskeleton, you can
fill it full of water. Netit allows the pools so that it can

(13:58):
withstand those forces of the you know, the water pushing outwards on that pool.
So most fiberglass pools, if youwere to take a standard fiber glass
pool and sit that on the groundand fill the full water, the whole
sides would just literally buckle. Theywould they would push out to an extent.
And then if you know, takesomebody and have to do a cannonball
in it, that force, thatpressure that would be a ford exerted on

(14:20):
the pool wall would literally bust thewalls. So is what the little pool
is. It's engineered and designed toa point that it can withstand that.
I think they're testing. One oftheir testing is they take a fifty five
gallon drum, raise it thirteen feetin the ear, and then free to
follow drop it into a water filledpool and it's able to withstand that.
So that's part of their testing procedures. They have a lot of patented trademarks

(14:41):
on the actual process that I can'tshare. But it's you know, it's
it's pretty strong, it's it's durable, it to last most people in entire
lifetime. Wow. And it's strongenough too. Where this is what impressed
me is you can attach a deckto it without any supports for the deck
right and strong enough to support notonly the water and people jumping in it,

(15:01):
but you can also if you wantto put it next to a deck,
you can attach the deck base rightto it. Right. Yeah.
So a lot of times, likeif you were to take a standard above
ground pool or you know the oldthe round, you know, type of
above ground pools, and you wantedto deck run it, you would have
to put support columns right up nextto the pool. Well, with this

(15:22):
pool, you know, first ofall, it's not you know, it's
not a tin can pool, butit is an actual fire glass pool,
and you can attach what we calla whaling board around the perimeter of it
and then set your floor joist righton it, so you don't need those
support structures right up next to thepool. The pool is the support structure,
so it's kind of like cannilever inyour deck off that so you could
go out eight ten, twelve feetbefore you actually have to put your first

(15:45):
post. Now, of course,a lot of that's in your designs and
everything. But yeah, the poolwas strong enough to withhold with stand the
entire deck load, all on allfour sides at once and still you know,
be strong enough to hold that water. Yeah, that's awesome. And
you know, and we had discussedthis before about you know, we're in
the low country, so groundwater levelis pretty high here. Sometimes you know,

(16:06):
I joke, it's like a youknow, right at the ground level,
at the groundwater. And so somepeople with these fiberglass pools, if
you don't keep them full, theycan pop right out of the ground.
And not only that, but withflooding issues and everything else, sometimes an
in ground pool is just not practical. So the little pool that you manufacturer

(16:27):
is perfect for a situation like that. And not only is it strong,
it's pretty too. Right. Withoutbeing over jellous or zealous on this,
I mean, it's it's a swimmingpool that is gorgeous. It's the colors
are beautiful. The warranty on it'sastronomical. It's they've never had a reported

(16:48):
case of osmosis in their pool shells, and so you know, they offer
a twenty five year warranty on that. And you know, typically in the
fibreglass industry, you see, youknow, had a bad name you know,
from the eighties in that where peoplewere using the wrong kind of resins
and stuff. So you've seen alot of osmosis on stuff on pool shells
and never has Compass Our manufacture ofour poolshell they never had a recorded case

(17:12):
of osmosis. So that's that's abig statement right there. And just the
pool itself is gorgeous. They've nailedthe colors. It's kind of a three
D look to it. It's apretty pool. And it's just like any
other fiber gospeel. You can dowhat you want with it. You know,
you can put jets in it andput different lights in it. You
can do all kinds of things init. Now. They're also light weight,
so they're perfect for tight spaces orspaces that are hard to get you

(17:34):
know, any kind of heavy equipmentinto that you would normally use to dig
an in ground pool and in alot of cases you can be swimming the
same day it's delivered, right,So explain the installation process. Yeah,
So, typically the pools are designedto sit on a some type of flat

(17:55):
surface, whether that is concrete orpavers. There's engineered drawings for each of
those tells you how thick the concreteneeds to be and how big the pavers
need to be. In stuff,But so whether you sink it in the
ground, partially fully or fully aboveground, or raise it up on a
steel platform for like say and IlePalms type project where they wanted their pool

(18:15):
up level with the first story ofthe home, then you know there's that
type of design. It's built intothe pool. It's able to do all
that, and when you take allthe benefits of having this type of pool,
it really fits different installation in scenario. So one one might be,
you know, one, the poolis super light. It's the biggest pool

(18:37):
I think is rated around thirty threehundred pounds. When you compare that to
say a shipping container pool or aprefab concrete pool, you know, those
things weigh twenty twenty six thousand poundsdepending on what size you're getting. Fifteen
thousand pounds and you take you mighthave to crane something over home or something.
Well, for every pound you've gotto move a foot. That costs

(19:00):
money. So if it's a lotcheaper to take a three thousand and thirty
three hundred pound pool, lift itover a home, sit it in somebody's
backyard than it is a twenty fivethousand pound pool, So huge cost difference.
There are huge cost savings in theactual shipping of the pool. You
know, less weight to ship downthe road, down the highway, but

(19:22):
you know that's one way to installit. You can install it with a
crane. The cool thing about thelittle pool is in some scenarios it's actually
easy enough to actually put casters underit and wheel it into somebody's backyard.
It's that light as long as youhave some way to lift it off the
truck, whether that's with a telehandlertype of piece of equipment. Very few

(19:44):
people will probably familiar with that term, but a brand name would be a
lull A. It's a fork truckthat's kind of all terrained with an extendable
boom and then so that that caneven lift it in most of the times
that it'll fit between people's homes,and that's very cost effective way of getting
in a backyard if you have tolift it over a fence or something like
that. So the site work gettinginto a little bit of the site work

(20:07):
part of it. The site workis you know, it can be as
minimal as putting some papers on theground, you know, ripping up some
sawed a little bit, not reallydigging into the ground and putting a paper
base down and putting the papers in, stamping them in place, and then
putting the pool on top of that. Or it can be a little more
intensive. You know, let's doa concrete pad because maybe we need to
bring it up to an existing decklevel. Then at that point you might

(20:27):
want to bring it up you know, save foot you know. Then okay,
so you want to bring your concretepad up level so that the top
of that pool is going to beeven with the existing deck that's already there,
so that, you know, thesite work is minimal. When you
consider pools, a tip of windground pool, you know, there's a
lot of dirt to move and alot of dirt to haul out of somebody's

(20:47):
backyard, and this one here,you know, it depended on the situation
and it's not made for every situation. You know, that's something that you
know, it's got to be takeninto account when you're when you're thinking about
a little pool or any punch pool, you know, is it going to
fit the family of six? Right? You were telling me off the air,
You're like, you know, Ijust don't want this to be a

(21:10):
sales piece for the little pool.I want to be informative and let people
know what they are and let peopleknow that it might not be right for
everyone. That's correct. So youknow, if you look at you know,
trends in the pool industry, youknow, years ago, everybody wanted
that free form pool that was bigand you know, it had an eight
foot nine foot deep end. Andyou know, since most people have gotten

(21:33):
away from because of mainly insurance reasons, have gotten away from putting diving boards
in pools. Today, you know, your average homeowner, they're not going
to use that space out there that'sseven eight foot deep unless they purposely got
that pool to swim laps. Nobodywants to go out there and tread water.
So the need to have that bigdeep pool in it today is is

(21:55):
really not there unless it's just mindsetfrom Well, that's what my parents had,
or that's what my grandparents had.But nobody puts diving boards. They
might put a slide here and there, but really that's a thing of the
past. And so when you thinkabout pools today and how the industry has
evolved, you know, you seepeople a lot more companies offering these plunge

(22:18):
pools. Well, let's let's explainwhat a plunge pool is. So a
plunge pool is a smaller pool.It's designed for, you know, coming
home from work and relaxing. It'sdesigned for entertaining a few guests, having
some you know, a glass ofwine or a cocktail or even a beer
after work whatever, getting in there, chill, let your stress take you,
you know that just wash that stressaway from you, just cooling down

(22:41):
after mowing the lawn on a Saturdayor something. And that's what a plunge
pool is, you know, It'sit's a pool to just sit in,
relax, enjoy company of others,enjoy, you know, just taking that
stress away from the day of work. And that's what you know, I
think, you know, that's whata plunch pool does. I think when
they originally started out, people werecalling them party pools. You know,

(23:03):
it's it's not even really a partypool. It's it's a something for you
to enjoy almost on a personal levelwhere you know, your typical big,
you know pool. You know,you've got a family of six. Is
a plunch pool going to work forthat person? No it's not. And
some people, you know, theygot it. They want that big pool.
They want to be able to swimlaps in it, and not that

(23:25):
plunch pools can't offer some forms ofexercise. You know, there's there's stuff
that that are made to to youknow, you can actually swim with and
stuff. But and those options areavailable even on the little pool. But
you know, is it going tobe the right pool for a family that
has maybe three or four kids andthose kids are going to grow up for
the next ten years in that homebefore they go off to college, and
they're going to have friends over andthey're going to want to play you know,

(23:48):
volleyball, basketball, stuff like that. Is it the right pool for
that? No it's not. Andso really educating the consumer about what works
best for them, I think that'smore important than actually selling the pool.
I think, you know, ifthe industry I had a customer and it's
a very well known person in thearea. He just bought a little pool
from us, and one of hiscomments was he said, your industry is

(24:11):
broken, and that it took mea step back. But you know what's
funny, I knew that the industryhas broken. The pool professionals don't have
a good name. I think currentlyin the state of South Carolina there are
three or four lawsuits against pool companies. That's bad press. That's why.
Is that what's going on in theindustry. So I think that's These are
all questions people need to talk totheir their pool company about and you know,

(24:36):
educating themselves. What what makes agood pool company a good pool company?
Sure? And you know, andwhat makes a pool a good pool?
And what makes the installation process agood installation process one that's not going
to cause you headaches down the road. That's correct, That's correct. You
know, it's all about, youknow, making the right choice. And
you know, if I got towalk away from a job, even though

(24:59):
I might want that sale, ifI got to walk away from it because
it doesn't fit that customer or itdoesn't fit that situation. Maybe they even
believe that it fits them. Butif it doesn't and if i've you know,
you got to look at you know, consumers, not a pool professional.
They haven't installed fifty or one thousandor one hundred or whatever that number
is for each each different pool builderout there. If if if you got

(25:22):
to walk away from it, youknow you got to because that's it's more
about that consumer's happiness. You definitelydon't want a consumer that you sold a
pool tool just for the pool saleand then next year them realized that,
hey, this wasn't really the greatestpurchase for us. You know, pool
is a big investment. It's nota necessity, it is a desire,
it's a it's a it's a want, and you know, you want that

(25:45):
person to make the right choice.And that's that's what we're about. That's
what pool Works is about. That'swhy we you know, have the reputation
we do have. You know,we're not afraid to walk away from it
if it's not the right fit forthat customer. Well, for those that
are interested in learning more about thelittle pool line of pools, what should

(26:07):
they do here? One they couldcall us. That's probably the best way.
It's eight four, three, six, nine five eight three five five.
The other way is just go toour website and you know, we
have some contact of stuff. Wedon't spam people, really, we don't.
You If you fill out that formon our website, it stays in
house. We don't sell it.We don't do anything like that. We
just contact you and if you're interested, we're not going to hound you or

(26:29):
if you know, if you justwant general some knowledge, you know,
we're here to help educate people.That's that's the important part in the websitees
mypoolworks dot com, mypoolworks dot com. Go ahead and give the phone number
one more time. It's eight fourthree six nine five eight three five five.
Well, you're celebrating a birthday andyou're having a spring promotion, and
right now for our listeners, you'reoffering them two thousand dollars off their order,

(26:52):
right, that is correct. Sopool Works has been in business sixteen
years as of March, and we'reextending that promotion to the end of April.
So yeah, take get your poolordered and we'll help you and you
can take two thousand dollars off thecost of that pool, or you can
add it to some you know,something else that you want maybe you want
a heater or something like that.Definitely, and you said you can even

(27:15):
you even have the equipment. Itescapes me what it's called, but you
can even there's all kinds of addons and you can even swim laps,
right, that's correct. So weoffer a super swim system. It's actually
what the University of Florida uses totrain their swimmers. So that's that,
that's part of a package. Andit's very affordable. It's nothing like putting
a you know, like a poolpool or something like that in your back

(27:38):
eye. It's this is very easy, very affordable, and it's it's great.
It provides resistance training and it's that'swhat really builds exercise. Well,
that's excellent. Go to mypoolworks dotcom or the phone number one more time
eight four three six and nine fiveeight three five five. Heath bod Or,
vice president of Pool Works, theLow Country's exclusive dealer of the Little

(27:59):
Pool line of pool Thanks for yourtime and thanks for the explanation today.
Thank you, Michael, appreciate it. That's it for your home three sixty.
Make sure you tune in every Saturday, and if you want to catch
the podcast, you can download thatfor free on your iHeartRadio app. You
can also find it online at ninetyfour to three WSC dot com. Just
look under podcasts