#265 Daniel Asbury & Ben Goehner — Western Dominion

Ben Goehner [00:00:00]:
They're overbuilding in the communities that don't need it. And we want to help not only, you know, DR and Lennar, but the little builders, the mid-market builders, be able to build the way we have here in Ohio and across the country by bringing the land, bringing the panel system, helping show them what units to do, how to do it, getting them that right blend, and equipping them to be able to build.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:00:23]:
Welcome to the Lay of the Land podcast, where we are exploring what people are building in Cleveland and throughout Northeast Ohio. I am your host, Jeffrey Stern, and today I had the pleasure of speaking with Daniel Asbury and Ben Goehner, co-founders of Western Dominion Land Company, a vertically integrated housing platform combining land acquisition, large-scale community development, and structural panel manufacturing all under one roof. Daniel came to housing through sales, investing, and real estate development, while Ben spent much of his life in construction before meeting Daniel in late 2024, coming to Ohio firsthand to see the opportunity and ultimately moving from Washington State to Mansfield, Ohio to build Western Dominion together. At the heart of their work is an important distinction between affordable and attainable housing. They aren't trying to build subsidized or stripped-down homes. Their aim is to deliver full-size, high-quality homes that working families can actually afford to own, and in their words, help rebuild the American dream of home ownership. In our conversation, we explore why the collapse of smaller and midsize home builders after 2008 left entire communities without meaningful new housing supply, and why Daniel and Ben believe the next generation of housing companies will need to manufacture, develop, finance, and deliver homes as an integrated system. We talk about the economics of attainable home ownership, land banks, and public and private partnerships, the role of structural panel manufacturing, rebuilding the middle market of American homebuilding, and Western Dominion's ambition to take what they've proven in Mansfield and scale it across Ohio.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:02:00]:
and ultimately the country. Daniel and Ben are refreshingly candid about the state of the housing market, the structural problems they believe are holding it back, and what it will actually take to build at scale, making this one of the more educational and insightful conversations I've had on housing. So please enjoy this wonderful and educational conversation with Daniel Asprey and Ben Goener. Lay of the Land is brought to you and is proudly sponsored by Roundstone Insurance. Headquartered in Rocky River, Ohio, Roundstone shares Lay of the Land's same passion for bold ideas and lasting impact from our community's entrepreneurs, innovators, and leaders. Since 2005, Roundstone has pioneered a self-funded captive health insurance model that delivers robust savings for small and medium-sized businesses. They are part of the solution to rising healthcare costs, helping employers offer affordable, high-quality care while driving job creation and economic growth throughout Northeast Ohio. Like many of the voices featured on Lay of the Land, including Roundstone's founder and CEO, Mike Schroeder, Roundstone believes entrepreneurship, innovation, and community to be the cornerstones of progress.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:03:07]:
To learn more about how Roundstone is transforming employee health benefits by empowering employers to save thousands in per-employee, per-year healthcare costs, please visit roundstoneinsurance.com. Roundstone Insurance, built for entrepreneurs, Backed by innovation, committed to Cleveland. So somehow both of your two paths converged in Mansfield, Ohio, around a pretty awesome ambition with Western Dominion. And the first time I met you, Dan, out of the gate, we were talking about fundamentally rethinking the system by which we build housing at very significant scale, which is always a fun place to, you know, start a relationship. But I'd love if you could just take me back to when the two of you first really got to know each other and what did you see in each other that made you believe that your very different experiences might fit together around this problem?

 

Ben Goehner [00:04:01]:
Yeah.

 

Daniel Asbury [00:04:01]:
So we met in Salt Lake City in 2024 at a Jetson Capital event and shout out Jordan Hutchinson if he's listening. I'm going to send this to him when we're done. So that's kind of like a high net worth Family office type event, highly curated people. He goes to, or he rents out private airplane hangars, brings in cars, planes, uh, you know, big money type people. And then it's kind of just a big networking group. Um, and I met him at one of the, uh, Airbnb after parties. We still kind of disagree where we met exactly. I think it was at the house.

 

Daniel Asbury [00:04:34]:
He thinks it was at a different luncheon.

 

Ben Goehner [00:04:36]:
We were at a luncheon at the Price is Right office for some reason. I don't know why we were there.

 

Daniel Asbury [00:04:40]:
That's not where we met.

 

Ben Goehner [00:04:41]:
That's where we met.

 

Daniel Asbury [00:04:41]:
That's not where we met. Um, so yeah, so immediately I could kind of tell he was, uh, I think I actually saved him from doom scrolling on the back deck, kind of sitting by himself. I just sat down next to him, started talking to him, and he said he was from Seattle, had a construction background, and, uh, got to talking about what we were doing out in Ohio. And, uh, his eyes kind of lit up and he just kind of started asking way more questions than people typically do. So I could kind of tell he really did speak the language of like the construction background, the home building process, things like that. And just couldn't really come to grips that we get, you know, free land from land banks and port authorities, that those type of entities out here, and we're building for a cost that makes no sense anywhere else in the country. And it's working out here. And, uh, how I knew it was, and we had been talking, you know, for several months after that before he made the official move, but I mean, he literally packed his truck up in October of last year and drove out here to like live here.

 

Daniel Asbury [00:05:40]:
Uh, and that's kind of when I was like, all right, he's, he's for real. Like we can do this together. And, you know, it's, I think it's kind of happenstance that, uh, we kind of evolved into like best friends over the last year or so. And it's just, it's been awesome. So.

 

Ben Goehner [00:05:54]:
Yeah, it's, it's been a lot of fun. And when we met in Salt Lake City. And he told me, like he said, they get land for pretty much free, and they're able to build a home for $130,000 to $160,000. And I'm from Seattle, where to buy a 10,000-square-foot plot is like $1.2 million. And you got to essentially build a home for $1.5 million, you have $800,000 in carrying costs. And by the time you're done, you're selling it for like $3.5 to $5 million for a house on the wrong side of the freeway with no land and no view. I was like, that sounds a lot better. It also sounds like we can actually help people because the only people buying the homes back in Seattle work for the tech companies and everyone else just has to live further and further away.

 

Ben Goehner [00:06:35]:
It doesn't make sense. So I came out here last year and saw what they were doing. And I was not only impressed, but I was like, we can, we can do something with this. We can actually make a difference. And so, like he said, packed up all my stuff and drove out here. And it was kind of funny because the development that our— the most recent development that he and Will had done has a 200-person waitlist and no vacancy. And I was planning on moving into one of our own builds, but then I couldn't because it's full, right? And I didn't want to kick someone off the list. So when I first moved out here, I ended up living with him for like a couple months, and his wife no longer likes me.

 

Ben Goehner [00:07:15]:
But now I'm in Redwood, which is down the road. Hmm. And it unintentional market study. And this is nothing negative about Redwood because I actually quite like their space, but they're more expensive than we are. And so they had a vacancy and no waitlist. And our development a mile away had a 200-person waitlist and no vacancy, all because of, I think it was $350, $450 a month difference, depending on if you count, you know, renting their washer and dryer and that kind of stuff. And It shows how price sensitive these markets are and how being able to deliver what we like to call attainable housing is critical because the $350, $450 a month difference makes or breaks everything.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:08:02]:
So. I appreciate that you guys use the word attainable, because I think it sort of does stand in some contrast to affordable generally.

 

Ben Goehner [00:08:11]:
Yeah.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:08:13]:
How do you think about that word and what it actually means?

 

Ben Goehner [00:08:16]:
Is there's, there's lots of different terms in the housing space right now on both the construction and the for sale side. So when, when we hear the word affordable, what we think of is Section 8 or low income neighborhoods, and that's not what we're building. And then some people use the term workforce housing. And when we hear that, we think of small and cheap homes. That's also not what we're building. We're building full-size, full-quality homes. They've got standing seam metal roofs, they've got LVP floors, stone counters, soft-close cabinets, a garage, a little bit of land to it. And we're doing all that and selling them retail for $215,000.

 

Ben Goehner [00:08:57]:
And that was all under the, you know, previous operation with Will and Dan. And what we're working on is putting together a panel system and kind of a platform So that we can take what they've been doing and not only do that statewide here in Ohio, but help other builders do it nationally so that we can deliver that attainable model. Because the way we think of it is it's not going to low-income communities. We're not doing Section 8. We're not giving the homes away for free. They're not government subsidized. So, and one of the families I met in the home, the last home we sold, it's A military husband and a wife, and they have 4 children in one of what we call the Buckeye models, which is a 2-bed, 1.5-bath. And I got a chance to kind of talk to her in the driveway because I was walking through the neighborhood.

 

Ben Goehner [00:09:44]:
And I asked her, hey, if you would change something about this, what would you change? And she was like, really, the only thing we would want is more storage. Otherwise, we love it. And we want another. And so she started asking when we're going to build another house because they want to get that so that they can Either, you know, move more family out here, potentially turned into a rental unit, have more room as the kids grow, etc., and so forth. And that kind of model of bringing back homeownership is what the country needs. Because if you— I mean, if you go 30, 45 minutes south to Columbus, you get D.R. Horton building neighborhoods, but the homes are $750,000. And in Ohio, Ohio is actually doing better than most of the country.

 

Ben Goehner [00:10:27]:
But The rest of the country has this issue where about 60-65% of homebuyers can only afford about $300,000 and below, and 45% of homebuyers can only afford $150,000 and below, which means a huge percent of the market is in that like $150,000 to $300,000 range. And then the way we currently have our homes priced is they've been appraising For $250,000. And because we're selling them at $215,000, it helps buyers that might have only been able to afford about $180,000 get into that house because they're walking in with a little bit of equity. So the lenders typically like that. And that way, we're able to get people in homes as owners without having to have, you know, Section 8 or government subsidies on the back end. And that's, that's what we call attainable housing. It's, you know, it's just bringing back

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:11:25]:
homeownership. So I think and know for sure, actually, that a lot of people have looked at housing and said, this industry is inefficient, it's not working, we need to sort of reindustrialize and rethink how we are approaching the building of new housing. I think a lot of folks have struggled to figure out a model that works. How have you guys figured out a model that works? And what does it actually look like? And maybe just kind of lay out what Western Dominion is.

 

Ben Goehner [00:11:58]:
So Will Barber and Dan Asbury here— Will started building here in Mansfield, Ohio about 6 years ago. And the first home that he had done was on a land bank lot for a house that had been burnt down. And it was the first new build here in literally decades. And they have it framed on their wall because they're quite happy that someone started building. And then he had built more homes. He met Dan, they raised more capital, built more homes. But what has happened to the country and the reason why we're in this housing crisis right now, it harkens all the way back to 2008, 20 years ago. There are essentially 2 major markets in the US.

 

Ben Goehner [00:12:44]:
There's urban and suburban. And then there's rural. And part of the issue is from the '90s all the way up until 2007, rural America, which constitutes roughly 1,958 counties and about 45 to 60 million people, was getting about 220,000 new homes and housing units built every year. And then 2008 happened, and that number dropped all the way down to 60,000. And it didn't rebound. So from 2008 to 2017, it went up to about 70,000. From 2017 to now, it's gone up to 100,000. But part of the issue is some of those are trailer homes, like for that 60,000, half of them were trailers.

 

Ben Goehner [00:13:26]:
And now at 100,000, you're getting only 8% of the country's new builds for roughly 20% of the population. And the demand has gone up with reshoring manufacturing and population growth and the fact that cities are so expensive, people would rather commute. Like about a third of the homes that we sell go to commuters for Columbus, which is an hour away. And so there's this 2 to 2.5 million unit housing shortage in rural America. And where the issue lies is, if you're a developer, and you want to build homes in a community, and you go to a lender and say, hey, we want to build on this lot, the lender's gonna go and they're gonna look for comps or comparable homes. And if nothing's been built for the last 3 to 20 or 40 years, in a lot of these examples, then they're gonna say, well, there's nothing to comp against, we can't loan on this. And that's Exactly what Will and Dan ran into. And so they had to go out and raise small check equity to do these developments, which is very difficult.

 

Ben Goehner [00:14:25]:
And most homebuilders aren't going to do that. So there's lots of kind of walls and bottlenecks to each element of this. And I'll get into what the big boys are doing and what the little guys are able to do. And the fact that there's no longer a major kind of middle market. And by that, I mean, 55% of all new homes are built by the top 10 companies in the country. And then the other 45% are built by the next 6,000 dudes. So that's a problem. With there being no comps in these communities and having to go out and raise that small check equity, it's not only difficult, but it's also something that most builders aren't going to be able to do.

 

Ben Goehner [00:15:06]:
They're just not built to go out and talk to investors. They know how to build homes, they know how to get land. And so once 2008 happened, all these mid and small builders went out of business, and no builds had happened for a while, the market just got cut off. And now what's happening, and we've actually heard this verbatim from politicians, is like, hey, this market's population is decreasing. So they obviously don't need housing. When in reality, it's because their current inventory is aging out. And all of the young people that are born there move away because there's no new homes to move into once they, you know, outgrow their parents' house. And so on paper, There's no demand for housing around here.

 

Ben Goehner [00:15:44]:
In reality, we have hundreds of people on the most recent developments' waitlists. There's a 3,600-unit demand. All of our single-family homes usually go under contract when the foundation is being poured. And in June, we had like 3 foundations poured, they went under contract, the home was built, sold, a family moved in before July 10th. So from like June 6th to July 10th. We finished 3 homes, right? And that's from foundation to family. And most builders can't do that. And the way we've been able to do that here is 2 secret ingredients.

 

Ben Goehner [00:16:19]:
One is Will Barber, who's possibly the best home builder I know, by far. And then the Amish community, like, they're incredibly skilled builders. They have the team around here and they can move quickly. Now the issue is that's not a scalable model on its own. Right. And so, hard to scale

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:16:39]:
the Amish. Yeah.

 

Ben Goehner [00:16:40]:
Yeah.

 

Daniel Asbury [00:16:40]:
Well, I mean, unless you start breeding

 

Ben Goehner [00:16:42]:
them. Yeah, we're working on a breeding program. It's Rumspringer at home. But what we want to do is be able to take the way we've been building and not only go statewide with that, but help other developers across the country. And There's many different bottlenecks to that. So what we found is you have to solve each one, and then that allows a little bit more, but you need the whole picture to actually get something done. So, um, the first and most important bottleneck is price point. You can build homes anywhere you want, but it's going to cost more if you don't have the rest of the system set up.

 

Ben Goehner [00:17:20]:
So that's something that we see a lot of from Lennar and DR, where they're building mostly in suburban and urban markets, sometimes rural, because they, they're typically expected to do a blend. But the issue is they are not fully vertically integrated. And by that, I mean they buy the land already pre-developed by a developer who goes in, buys it, does the utilities, get it all plotted. And here in Ohio, I don't want to give away their numbers, but we, we know how much they're buying their land for and we know how much they're getting it for urban. And it takes a huge portion of the development. For percentage, let's say they're spending roughly 20 to 25% of the price of the home on just the land. Then they have to build the home. And to do that, you have 2 options.

 

Ben Goehner [00:18:10]:
You either get a lot of labor, which can go build it the traditional way, or you have something like modular or panelized. And for them, they don't manufacture their own modular. They buy it from a third-party provider, and then they just assemble it on site. So they're losing some margin to that. And then because they do modular, it's also kind of a logistics headache because modular, the big restraint is it has to be the shape of a semi-truck because that's all the more you can fit on there. So essentially you have these long elongated, almost trailer-like rooms and you can leave off a wall and attach 2 of them to make a house, but then you still have to stand the garage up with stick framing, all these different things. And in the end, it means That if they build a home for $250,000, that's kind of the floor of what they can go to. And if they want to go cheaper, they have to start making them small and cheap.

 

Ben Goehner [00:19:01]:
So Lennar, I mean, both Lennar and DR are great companies. I'm not going to talk negatively about them. But there is a house that Lennar produces that you can Google. It's nicknamed the Lennar Ozempic home. Because it's 600 to 900 square feet and 2 stories and literally so narrow and doesn't have a garage that Like some of the hallways I wouldn't be able to walk through, like I'm just too big for the house. And that's, in our opinion, not a solution to the housing crisis. Because part of our kind of recipe and part of our mission is to only build homes that we would want to live in, right? And if we wouldn't want to live in it, why would other people live in it? I mean, I'm a young male bachelor, if I'm not to live in something, it's terrible, right?

 

Daniel Asbury [00:19:48]:
And even before he came into the picture, like Will and I had known for a while that, you know, we were onto something. It's working in Mansfield, Ohio, of all places. Like, if it works here, it works anywhere. We've always believed that. And we knew early on that we would either need, uh, a combination of either manufactured, modular, SIP panels. We looked at SIP panels. So he and I traveled around the state, um, looking for that solution. I— and we actually went to Middlebury, Indiana to look at Clayton Homes manufactured, uh, manufacturing plant.

 

Daniel Asbury [00:20:18]:
If anyone listening ever gets a chance to do it, do it. It's absolutely incredible. It's like multiple 2 million square foot plus buildings, and like they crane it in different places to get worked on. It's insane. Yeah. But it's not gonna help us. So the problem with— we saw twofold was, A, 9 times out of 10, modular manufactured and even SIP panel guys, uh, are direct-to-consumer, so they're doing a lot of custom stuff and they don't work with developers. And then B, They work on insane margins.

 

Daniel Asbury [00:20:46]:
So both of which did not benefit us in any way, especially the margin piece. Like, if we want to keep our home selling at $200 grand, we can't be buying our homes for $200 grand. Just never gonna happen. So, uh, at that point we kind of realized, wow, we have to own the means of the production. And that kind of takes us into where we are now and, uh, with the Thermonist building and all that stuff. So,

 

Ben Goehner [00:21:05]:
so what's happened since then, and also since I got here, is we went around

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:21:10]:
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Ben Goehner [00:22:06]:
And to rewind a little bit here, if you want to do a development and keep the whole thing at an attainable price, you have to be vertically integrated. And I got into that a little bit with Lennar and DR. And part of their issue is also structural because they're publicly traded, they have to show earnings per share. And so they're less incentivized to build an attainable home than they are to make shareholders happy. With And they build like 30% of the country's supply, by the way. So we can't really speak negatively about them. Without them, we'd be in even worse problems.

 

Daniel Asbury [00:22:38]:
It's insane.

 

Ben Goehner [00:22:39]:
With an attainable development, you have to incorporate each phase. And so for us, we go out, we get the land, and then we develop the land. And that means you get it shovel ready, you put in the utilities, you put in the roads, and then you are going to build on it. But on that build stage, you're either going to order modular or panelized, or you're going to build it And today we've built everything with traditional stick-built, and we're able to do that quickly. But like I said, it's only because of the Amish. And so in order to scale that, you now have to have a system that lets you build faster and ideally for less or at the same price. And there's only really 2 options right now that make sense, and that is either panelized construction, where essentially you take your walls and you build them in a factory and they come to the site pre-finished, and then you crane them into place. You drop your trusses on, you drop your roof on, you can have the home dried in in a day or 2, and you can finish that house in a matter of weeks versus a matter of months.

 

Ben Goehner [00:23:40]:
And like Dan had said, we went around the country and the state to try and find someone who can provide that for us.

 

Daniel Asbury [00:23:48]:
And he went globally,

 

Ben Goehner [00:23:50]:
by the way. Oh yes.

 

Daniel Asbury [00:23:51]:
You getting

 

Ben Goehner [00:23:52]:
there?

 

Daniel Asbury [00:23:52]:
Yes.

 

Ben Goehner [00:23:53]:
Okay. What we found was they either produce for themselves, like Toll Brothers does panels, and they build theirs and use it on their own developments. And there's several Midwest developers that have some panel manufacturing, and they put it on their own sites, but they don't sell it third party. And then we have done A/B testing on developments today. So we know exactly which homes we can build at which kind of speed and price point, what's popular, what people want. And so we wanted specific models, we didn't want them to come up with you know, whatever theirs were. And no one could really fill that gap. And I went to outside America, went to Europe.

 

Ben Goehner [00:24:33]:
We were talking, we were in Bosnia.

 

Daniel Asbury [00:24:35]:
Bosnia. We

 

Ben Goehner [00:24:36]:
were even talking to a Bosnian company at one point. And then I went to Perth, Australia and toured a company called Offsite AU that does panels. And they're a great company. Shout out to Norm if he ever watches this. When I was there, they had a politician come and do an interview with him. And she was about yay tall and Norm's about this tall. It was hilarious. And he's very soft-spoken.

 

Ben Goehner [00:25:00]:
So when I first met him, I didn't expect him to be an absolute giant. And then I went up to Hong Kong and went to Guangzhou. And when I was in Guangzhou, we went to the National Industrialized Housing Expo in China and met with the China State Construction Company. And part of our goal was to see what's going on on like a global stage of actual production volume. Yeah. And what we learned is because they have a population demand, they build with a lot of volumetric metal modular. And that means essentially it's a pre-finished apartment made out of metal and the inside is all done. So they hang the drywall, they install the sink and the flooring and everything, but the outside's not finished.

 

Ben Goehner [00:25:40]:
And there's a company here in Ohio. They're, they're actually the biggest single plant in America for volumetric metal modular. They're called Connect Blocks. Again, shout out Brad DeHayes if you watch this. And they do a really great job. And they're at— and I don't want to give away numbers for them or something like that, but they're at about 4 units a day, which is great. That's huge in America. But China is doing 168 units a day of the exact same product.

 

Ben Goehner [00:26:03]:
And they're catching up on quality. I was expecting it to be like bad welds, bad finishes. And then I walked through and saw— I toured like 6 factories there. And I was like, oh no, this is actually a decent product. And if we didn't have tariffs and we didn't have the constraint of having to ship these across the world, They would blend in here in America these days. So what that said to us is there is a problem on the manufacturing side. And there is a problem on the development side, because this is— rural communities are kind of being blocked organically from developers being able to come in because the government's not paying attention. And lenders don't want to lend in these communities.

 

Ben Goehner [00:26:40]:
And so unless someone's going to raise enough money to build here on their own, or they're huge enough to to finance it themselves, no one's gonna do it. And so for us to build a platform that can help solve this problem nationally, there's a few things we can do. And that we're already working on. One of them is, of course, building up relationships to get as much land as possible, and be able to make these developments happen. And so far, we've been doing a combination of both buying those retail, and working with, you know, land banks and port authorities and groups that have land that they want developed. Including private companies. We've had companies approach us and be like, hey, we have this big factory or warehouse and a field out back that we'd like some housing on. That's an option as well.

 

Ben Goehner [00:27:22]:
And so that kind of uncorks the land portion. And then for us internally, we have now built enough units where in the state of Ohio, we can underwrite against our own comparables. We can be like, hey, we know exactly which units work. We've done these. So now we can work with lenders and that kind of uncorks the capital side. And then to own the means of production and be able to do these at scale, we can't just magically come up with people, but we can make the panel system so that we need less labor and we can do more volume. And to do that, we're buying a building here in Mansfield, the old ThermaDisc building. If anyone's from Mansfield, they'll know which one that is.

 

Ben Goehner [00:28:01]:
And we're going to be producing structural panels out of there. And we're doing— There's also no term. for this. Like, there's structural panel and there's offsite panels. There's lots of different spread-out terms, but if you were gonna name everything it is, it's technically a structural stick-built insulated pre-finished offsite panel. That's a mouthful. So we're gonna be nicknaming them national standard panels, and we're gonna be building them to a standard where whether we put them here in Ohio or in Texas or Michigan or Arizona, they'll still be approved and can be built there. And it'll be with 6-inch exterior wood framing, 4-inch interior walls, You'll have them roll off the line.

 

Ben Goehner [00:28:40]:
They'll have the plumbing and electrical roughed in, the insulation. You'll have your sheathing on there, and sometimes even the windows and siding as well. And we're working on coming up with a way to pre-install roofing materials as well. That one's a little bit of a trick that no one's really doing right now, so if we can figure that out, that'd be cool. Um, but once we have it, essentially the panels then go into a metal cradle, and then you forklift those cradles onto a truck. You can fit about 2 to 4 cradles on a truck that then gets covered so it's weatherproof, drives to the job site, they get forklifted next to the pad for the house or next to the foundation, and then when the builders show up, they take the tarp off, they use the same crane that they would have to install the trusses, and they start just dropping those panels on site. And what we can do today with 7 or 8 really trained Amish people, we can then do with 2 or 3 guys who have minimal training and experience. And have the quality be as good, if not better, because it was factory built and they're all going to fit together tightly.

 

Ben Goehner [00:29:40]:
And kind of a— and not even purposeful advantage is it's also better for the environment. Like, the amount of waste you have after building a whole home, when you have it in a factory setting, you know exactly what your cut list is. You have like about this much wood left versus if you build a home on site, like every house, you have like a dumpster of extra wood and material that you didn't need. that just goes to waste because you're not gonna like take the leftover piece from that house and then go use it on that house because that's hard to keep track of and it gets dropped on the floor. Yeah. It's all muddy and broken. Whereas in a factory, you can pre-plan all of that. And then once you have that home assembled, you connect your MEP, you get it inspected by the local inspector, then you can hang your drywall and do your interior finishing, and then that home is done.

 

Ben Goehner [00:30:24]:
And so what would normally take you know, 3 to 6 months, we're already doing in 1 month, and then we can help other developers get that down to 2 to 4 weeks. And with that, that's a way to make use of the existing labor in an area. And so, like, let's say Williams County, for example, they are very gung-ho about getting some housing built because they have cities like Holiday City, 45 people live there, but 1,500 people commute into town every day from Indiana and Michigan. Wow. because they have the country's largest Menards distribution center and 2 other factories and no homes. So if they got some housing, you know, you build 200, 300 homes there, it's actually going to help the community as something that it could absorb. The people that are already commuting for work are going to be grateful for that. But there's just simply not enough people, even with the surrounding cities, to do that the traditional way.

 

Ben Goehner [00:31:16]:
So you need that panel system. And then on top of that, because on paper That doesn't sound like a good development. You're building where there's no one. How do you know the homes are going to sell? The only developers that can do that are either people that are already building there or the big guys. And so we're able to go in and show like, hey, we've built in communities like this that haven't had housing in decades, that desperately need it. We know exactly which models they need, and we can put that here. And so then we can bring the money, we can bring the capital, we can bring the system. And work with the local labor and local builders to make that job happen.

 

Ben Goehner [00:31:51]:
Because it no longer has to be like one developer or one general contractor that can do the whole thing. We show up and we're like, all right, we have the HVAC guy, got the concrete guy, we got the painters, and put that together to make the development happen with the people that live there so that the money stays in the community too. And then for us, part of every development is we do some for sale and some for rent. And with like the duplexes, for example, we're going to be building them as townhomes so that we can do a lease-to-own model if someone wants to buy and stay. But yeah, if you build 300 homes for sale in a community like Holiday City, they're not all going to sell right away. But if you build, you know, 50, 100 homes for sale and you build the rentals that can be sold later, they'll be absorbed because rentals are much easier to get into. They're for 12 to 36 months, usually that kind of thing. And then it gives more flexibility for the city and they get the housing units they need.

 

Ben Goehner [00:32:48]:
And with that kind of model, that's also something Lennar and DR don't do. They do very, very, very few rentals. And so that means the whole neighborhood has to be absorbed. And because it has to be absorbed, it hasn't been. And so for the last 12 months, they've been giving on average $45,000 in discounts per unit they built. And that Took out a huge chunk of their margins. And they're already building. And they make a pretty good margin because they're— I mean, they've been doing this for a while, they're good at it.

 

Ben Goehner [00:33:13]:
So their earnings were like 26%, 27% for a second there. And now they've dropped down to like 17%, 15%. So they're still making money, but they're overbuilding in the communities that don't need it. And we want to help not only, you know, DR and Lennar, but the little builders, the mid-market builders, be able to build the way we have. here in Ohio and across the country by bringing the land, bringing the panel system, helping show them what units to do, how to do it, getting them that right blend, and equipping them to be able to build.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:33:47]:
That's pretty awesome. What an amazing kind of backdrop to all the work you're doing.

 

Ben Goehner [00:33:55]:
It's— yeah.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:33:58]:
So few threads to pull on, but one of which I'd be curious to hear is, Daniel, if you sort of walk us back to the original insight here, what did you see in— like, did you have the foresight of the scale of what you wanted to work on here? Or were you really, you know, in Mansfield, there's the land bank system, there's overlooked Ohio markets?

 

Daniel Asbury [00:34:24]:
I mean, what—

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:34:25]:
how are you thinking about this?

 

Daniel Asbury [00:34:26]:
We— so we had started Uh, getting approached by other land banks even before we spoke at the, the conference in April for the last few years. So I mean, we knew that there was a need for it, a want. Um, didn't really know the extent until, uh, really I brought someone to the team who can actually, you know, single guy, no kids, can actually travel and go around and talk to more people because I'm married with 5 kids, so I can't really go to Guangzhou and Australia in like the same month. It's just not gonna happen. Um,

 

Ben Goehner [00:35:00]:
had 3 days notice.

 

Daniel Asbury [00:35:01]:
Nor would I want to. Like, dude, go ahead. Um, so the, the need, as, as he kind of like would travel and talk to more people, uh, even just in Rhode Island, uh, Arizona, Florida, Texas, like this problem is everywhere. So we originally had the thought like, if it works here, it works anywhere. We can start like this county, this county, kind of like, you know, sundial it all the way back around and eventually do it in Ohio. And now it's slowly turning into like, this could actually be like a national solution.

 

Ben Goehner [00:35:30]:
An international thing. Perth, Australia has the exact same problem.

 

Daniel Asbury [00:35:32]:
Even international. Yeah.

 

Ben Goehner [00:35:33]:
Yeah. And they've got nothing but land. And for some reason their land's really expensive. Like, oh, you want to build 12 homes? That's gonna be $14 million. Relax.

 

Daniel Asbury [00:35:40]:
Makes no sense. That's insane.

 

Ben Goehner [00:35:42]:
And so what had happened organically in the last, I guess it's 5 months now.

 

Daniel Asbury [00:35:50]:
Yeah.

 

Ben Goehner [00:35:50]:
So we found out from the Richland County Land Bank that we're apparently one of, if not the biggest land bank developer outside of the 3 C cities in Ohio, which goes to show you that like people are only building in the 3 C's because we've built hundreds of units, but the state does 30,000 units a year. So how is— how are we even on the map, right?

 

Daniel Asbury [00:36:13]:
Doesn't make sense.

 

Ben Goehner [00:36:14]:
Um, and what we learned is no one's paying attention to these rural markets. And as we've gone further and talked to more people and done more research, and we're actually commissioning 3 or 2 university studies. One's already being done that— what's the name of the county here? Morgan County?

 

Daniel Asbury [00:36:31]:
Yeah.

 

Ben Goehner [00:36:31]:
Or— No. No. It's got a girl's name as the county.

 

Daniel Asbury [00:36:35]:
It's probably Morgan.

 

Ben Goehner [00:36:36]:
Yeah, Morgan County is commissioning a study with Marietta College for the Ohio housing market. And we're now talking to San Diego State and Texas Tech to get a national rural and Ohio study done. to bring attention to this and have it peer-reviewed. Because we've sat down with probably, what, 26 politicians now, and none of them realize that this is a thing. Like, they know there's a housing problem, they just don't know that it's in rural. They think that we need to give more money to the cities and suburban communities to make it happen. And what we've been able to kind of discover organically is we got invited to speak at the Land Bank and Port Authority Conference because we're one of Ohio's biggest land bank developers. We speak there and we're in like a side room that you wouldn't really expect anyone to show up to.

 

Ben Goehner [00:37:21]:
The room like packs full and then we give our little spiel and then we start getting followed up with by everyone and everyone wants our attention. And Williams County, the reason why I bring them up is they were the most gung-ho. They actually showed up in here. Wow. They showed up in the cafeteria and threw these files down in front of us and they're like, hey, we, we want you guys to come build ASAP. And they have communities like this that they need built, but there's no one there to do it. And the conversation from there was like, okay, we'll start talking to you. And then everyone else started pouring in.

 

Ben Goehner [00:37:57]:
And then as I've traveled to meet with different people for different reasons, we've heard the same thing from other states. So we've now met with either land bank or utilities or some sort of government rep from Iowa, Michigan, Arizona, Illinois, Pennsylvania, Rhode Island, Florida, Texas, like 20+ states. And they all have the exact same problem going on where there's no one building rural. And that's where the demand is, because that's where manufacturing jobs go. That's where all these new businesses like Andrew, they're building a project here in Ohio, they need housing, they're not going to get the housing unless someone like us goes in and does it. And currently the plan for like these data centers and things, not that I'm trying to support data centers because that's a politically sensitive point, but they aren't planning on building any permanent housing, which puts the whole onus on a community that doesn't have any resources to build housing. And so we can go in and actually help provide the community the resources, get the housing that's going to leave something that's helping everyone else, not just a corporation that's not even here. And that isn't being done.

 

Ben Goehner [00:39:06]:
And so it's a problem not just here in Ohio, not just here in Richland County, but national. And everyone's asleep at the wheel. Because on paper, rural, like, population's going down. And it looks like that means everyone's trying to move away because they don't want to live here. But in reality, if you haven't had any new housing for 20 to 40 years, some of these communities in Williams haven't had something built in 40 years. something since the '80s. The housing is just going to age out because part of the problem is this original inventory. Let's say you buy a house here in Mansfield and some of these older homes, they're large.

 

Ben Goehner [00:39:42]:
So you get a 4,000 or 5,000 square foot house and it's like, you know, $200,000, $250,000. You then have to spend another $150,000, $250,000 to get that thing up to snuff. And that means you've got a half million dollar house. Now, what we had already mentioned is A $350 a month difference makes or breaks having a 100— like a 200-person waitlist versus no waitlist and vacancy. Right. So a quarter-million-dollar difference means no one's going to do it, and that's exactly what's happening. And because no one's going to move into this old inventory that needs to be remodeled and there's no money to do it, they're going to move where there is housing, and the housing is suburban. And then that means that you've got both the urban that's super expensive and the rural, which has no inventory, moving suburban.

 

Ben Goehner [00:40:23]:
And now you get, you know, $750,000 homes 45 minutes away from us. And it doesn't make any sense. So we're trying to bring that attention to the markets that need housing. Because rural is truly the— it's the backbone of America, the rest of the country doesn't run without it. And California doesn't want to believe that, but they're mostly rural anyways, they just don't realize it. The issue is something that needs both like state and federal attention. State politicians have to be able to help make these happen. And one of the ways I think Ohio can get more involved is they have a program right now called REDD, R-E-D-D, which gives grant money for the infrastructure on these developments.

 

Ben Goehner [00:41:10]:
And sometimes people are like, oh, well, money from the government, there's free money, it's just helping developers. Part of the problem is you have 3 options. You either get a developer to spend all of the money and do it themselves, and that's an option, but then the house is going to be really expensive and then it's not going to work for the market. Or you get the government to subsidize the housing, you make affordable housing, which is Section 8, and then they're paying your rent, and then you can build housing. Sure. Because it's guaranteed by the government. But that's not only a tax burden on everyone, but it's typically not going to be a community that the city wants. Because when you're building here in rural America, It's been preserved.

 

Ben Goehner [00:41:46]:
You have a small tight-knit community, you have people that know each other, you've got families, you've got all this stuff, and they don't want that. And the third option is the state comes in and helps pay for the roads and utilities, which they're getting value out of anyways, and then a developer can put the housing up. And they still spend all the money on the housing, but if the state can help with the roads and utilities, it actually gets that price point where it needs to be. So what we are pushing on right now is getting not just a rural but an economic development initiative going to develop the infrastructure and utilities for these so that not just us but other developers can put the housing where it's needed. And the current RED program has been used every year, but it's too small. Like, it's a $25 million a year program for a state that needs 17,000 more homes per year. And with that $25 million a year, to put it in perspective, one like 250-unit development is going to need somewhere between $3 to $6 million to cover the infrastructure portion. So you get maybe 1,000 units a year with your $25 million program at best.

 

Ben Goehner [00:42:54]:
And if you do that in suburban or urban where pretty much all the money went, because they also didn't write that some of it has to go to rural, it doesn't make any meaningful impact and you're just throwing money away. So we're pushing to get the state to spend it where it's needed. And expand the program so that a meaningful amount of housing can come in. Because if we want more jobs in the state, we want these communities to thrive, we want families, we want people to own their home, we have to make that possible. And right now, that's just not happening. And I think that's the same story federally, like the big housing bill, did it pass? Or is it still being— Either way,

 

Daniel Asbury [00:43:30]:
it has not passed.

 

Ben Goehner [00:43:31]:
The only major housing bill is just tax credits for multifamily and urban Which means some apartment developers lobbied to get more money for themselves, because they were going to build them either way. And they're going to be expensive either way. So why are we giving initiatives to urban multifamily when the demand is rural and suburban? It's my 2 cents on that. I'm sure there's a few people that we know that wouldn't appreciate my opinion. But—

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:43:59]:
Oh, man, a lot of, a lot of questions here. Let's go with— so I feel like we are sort of zoomed out. So we'll stay there for a sec. Like, what if this model works? What becomes the moat? Like, why? I think you've spoken a little bit to this, but like, what is preventing a much larger, better capitalized homebuilder from looking at what you're doing and trying to replicate it themselves?

 

Daniel Asbury [00:44:30]:
So we get that question a lot.

 

Ben Goehner [00:44:31]:
We do get that question a lot. DR Horton and Lennar both have to build urban or rural sometimes, right? DR Horton is actually looking at— and I don't know if I'm even allowed to say this, but I'm gonna say it anyways— they're looking at this portion of this development, but they only want one portion because they want to dip their toe, right? They have to show earnings per share. They have 14,000, like, people in the company. They have bureaucracy for years, literally. And they need this community ASAP. So we said, like, hey, even if DR Horton builds there, that's awesome. We can build next to them, show that our home's better, and then help DR Horton build like us. And I'm so confident in that too.

 

Ben Goehner [00:45:09]:
It's like, I'm not gonna say negative about them because I don't think there is a negative. They're helping us build homes, but we can help them do it better. And part of the thing is on the large-scale side for the major homebuilders, there's really only 2 at the top of the list. That's Lennar and DR. They're both pretty much neck and neck. They are structurally limited to be able to build like us because they aren't like buying their own, aren't manufacturing their own modular and panels. They could, but that would mean like a huge investment on their portion, onboarding even more employees, changing the business model. And what they have built is essentially like a hungry machine.

 

Ben Goehner [00:45:46]:
They have literally billions of dollars in payroll to cover. They've got all these developments to do. They need to build more homes next year than they did last year. And they've gone down this year by like 7,000. 100,000 units. So to do that, they go out and they just buy, buy, buy as much land as possible. It's already developed and shovel ready. They're not doing their own developments.

 

Ben Goehner [00:46:04]:
And they just have to feed the beast essentially. And they have to show earnings per share. So they're going to— they're going to build a more expensive unit that gets them more cash profit to show that. And then that is just more expensive for the end buyer versus Trying to come up with better tax strategies, etc., and so forth, ways where they can make that up without putting the onus on the end buyer. That's the large-scale structure. The small end, it's a lot. You need a team. No one, like, no one that's doing sub-100 homes a year is just going to miraculously go out, buy a factory, like, start doing this all unless someone on the board or on the team has the time to do that.

 

Ben Goehner [00:46:48]:
and the knowledge on how to do that. So there are examples of that happening, and it happens quite successfully when it does, but it's rare, and it takes a lot of capital, a lot of time and energy. And then on the middle market, they're either, you know, building a product that they already know and they just don't want to expand, or they don't know how to expand. And the issue there isn't so much that we're afraid of competition, it's actually that we want to help those guys. We want to Yeah. And help the small and medium builders build like us and scale up their operation and be able to deliver more housing units and provide them the panel system to do that, provide them, you know, the know-how and the training, help them find the land, even maybe get the land for them, bring the capital partners and lenders that they need to be able to do that so that they can deliver more housing units. Because the way we look at it is housing is a need nationally. And money will be made regardless.

 

Ben Goehner [00:47:48]:
We want to actually help solve the issue, right? It's not a competing with other people. It's a how can we actually build 4.7 million units as a country? Because that number is getting larger, not smaller. And right now, we're only delivering 200 and what, 40,000 homes a year or something like that?

 

Daniel Asbury [00:48:06]:
Roughly,

 

Ben Goehner [00:48:07]:
yeah. Yeah. As a, as a nation, which is simply not enough. We're no Is it? No, we're building 1.2 million homes a year. Sorry. But that's meeting the current demand barely. And that backlog is growing year over year. So we need to build more homes.

 

Ben Goehner [00:48:25]:
And on top of that, the way we look at Western is it's got a mission statement. And it's a for-profit company. Yes. But we're putting together a nonprofit Because there's an element of this that's not what we're doing with the homebuilding. And that is both bringing attention to the issue and helping these communities that don't have— and it's not like they're, you know, desperately in need and starving or something like that. But if you haven't had any new tax revenue as a city for 10 to 40 years, your community center is going to get dilapidated, you might need a new elementary school, there's going to be historic homes that are falling apart, etc., and so forth. So On the nonprofit side, we want to be able to go in and spend money on fixing up the community, not just our housing, but like if there's a, you know, a church or whatever it might be that they need, help them with that. Or an example, we're actually donating some school supplies to a Catholic school up in Cleveland this week because they don't have enough school supplies to finish the school year.

 

Ben Goehner [00:49:27]:
So we're showing up with, you know, papers and pencils and everything they need to actually help the kids. And that's in Cleveland. So imagine how rough it is in rural, you know. We see that as a way to make a difference and kind of give back because if we're building homes, it's already helping, sure. But we're making money on it, of course. And we want to be able to help even further. And we want to give an avenue for other people that see the issue and want to help also get involved because If like, I mean, what's, I mean, there's all sorts of athletes and different celebrities here in Ohio that I'm sure have friends that live in these communities that know people. And just throwing money at the problem is one thing, but like coming together as a community and getting everyone involved and bringing attention to the issue, not just here, but nationally, is something that we would like to do.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:50:23]:
In your own entrepreneurial journey, Growing from, you know, that the first home that you're building to 10 homes to 100 homes, you know, working our way up that exponential. What were some of the hardest, most expensive lessons you guys learned along the way, scaling to the quantity of homes that you're building today?

 

Ben Goehner [00:50:49]:
I feel like Will would love to answer that question.

 

Daniel Asbury [00:50:52]:
Will would have a great answer for that.

 

Ben Goehner [00:50:54]:
Will would be like, well, first of And then go on a rant. I can't take credit for what's been done to date, truly. So that would be more of a Dan question. I can talk about what I've done in Seattle and what we're doing to essentially build this platform for the future. But the growing pains to date, I'm sure would be raising the money.

 

Daniel Asbury [00:51:15]:
The easiest, the easiest answer is, yeah, raising small check equity, finding Finding, turning down a lot of money for the same, I guess, not, I won't say ideology, but like goals. 'Cause a lot of investors have different goals and you have to have the same alignment with goals that as you would do with your investors. And we, there's a few that we, you know, looking back, it would've been like, okay, maybe let's not engage this person this quickly or however that transpired. But. Yeah. That was a pretty—

 

Ben Goehner [00:51:50]:
just to say that nicely, essentially—

 

Daniel Asbury [00:51:52]:
Yeah, I'm trying not to—

 

Ben Goehner [00:51:53]:
A lot of people that are willing to invest into a community that hasn't had housing in decades are like the high-risk, high-reward type. So they want their return now, they want it back in 6 months, they want high interest, etc., and so forth. Which is, you know, to a degree that's fine because they put the money in and we were able to deliver the housing and they got their returns. Like, I think historically, without, without a manufacturing system and with no debt and with half the land being bought at retail prices and with no grant money at all, Will and Dan were still able to return like 20 to 30% a year. And that's crazy. That's absolutely insane. Because most, most developers, they're going to get like, you know, 15% after leverage and everything. And that's what's selling homes for far more money too.

 

Ben Goehner [00:52:42]:
So the fact that they were able to do that is kind of a testament to, like I said, Will Barber being an incredibly good developer and Dan's charisma. Yes. The struggle there and part of what we're building with Western is an actual platform to scale that and avoid those pains because now that we've proved that we can build in these markets, we don't have to take that kind of fast, brutal money from hungry investors. Not to call them all—

 

Daniel Asbury [00:53:13]:
That's what I was trying not to do. I was trying to be so deliberate in my wording.

 

Ben Goehner [00:53:17]:
They don't even know, so I get to say it. Plus, it's a totally different company. We haven't used any of their money. None of the money from the old business is in this one, vice versa. They can keep it. Um, going forward, we get to use lenders and have our own means of production on the manufacturing, and we're able to work with these communities to get the land in, to deliver housing at that attainable price point where it's needed. And that's what we want to do across the state and across the country.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:53:49]:
Do you guys fundamentally disagree about anything here?

 

Ben Goehner [00:53:53]:
Where we met?

 

Daniel Asbury [00:53:55]:
Pretty much it.

 

Ben Goehner [00:53:56]:
Yeah, it was at the Price is Right place. I swear.

 

Daniel Asbury [00:54:01]:
We're both putting a lot of trust in each other right now with this whole process. So it's It's, uh, we've had disagreements, man, but I mean, you're not progressing if you're not. I don't think so.

 

Ben Goehner [00:54:12]:
The way that I kind of have a philosophy in business, like there's different types of business partners, right? And if you have a business partner that is taking minimal risk and throwing in like money is very minimal risk, you can make more money throwing in some time. That's a comfortable amount. That's minimal risk. You like, Okay, you lost a little bit of time, but it's not the end of the world. Like, putting everything on the line to make something happen and like fundamentally changing your life is something that you can't just take back. And Dan and I and Will have, have all done that. I moved across the country. I closed down the businesses I had in Washington.

 

Ben Goehner [00:54:51]:
So I'm all in here in Ohio. He's got 5 kids and every, like every ounce of his effort goes into this business. We call Will Barber Bruce Wayne because he's so busy. There's no evidence we even know him. I have one picture of the back of his head. He's always on the job site. Every time he shows up to meet with someone, doesn't matter if it's a congressman or whatever, he's in dirty boots and work pants because he's off making it happen. And so we're all in.

 

Ben Goehner [00:55:19]:
There's no going back. There's no, oh, we don't really want to do this. And it's not because we—

 

Daniel Asbury [00:55:26]:
Jeff, our feet are taped to the bicycle, brother.

 

Ben Goehner [00:55:29]:
Yeah,

 

Daniel Asbury [00:55:29]:
that's where we're at.

 

Ben Goehner [00:55:31]:
We're here to make it happen, you know, and whatever is required to do that is what we want to do.

 

Daniel Asbury [00:55:36]:
We're burning the boats.

 

Ben Goehner [00:55:37]:
The other thing, and we all agree on this, and I think this is important too, is we're not doing this for money. Like, there's ways to make money easier, faster, simpler, even in real estate. And if we wanted to just continue doing what we've been doing and, you know, make a small tweak and you know, start using debt so we don't have to use certain investors. That's one thing. But going out and opening a factory, getting— because we have thousands of units in the pipeline. It's not like, oh, we're going to build 100 units next year. It's we're trying to build like thousands of homes across Ohio and expand from there to tens of thousands of homes, etc. That's not something you do because you're like excited to buy yourself a car.

 

Ben Goehner [00:56:16]:
That's something you do because you have a vision. Right? And that's— everyone on the team has agreed with that. And I think that's really important. Like, we don't text each other and be like, oh, I really want to get this watch or something. We like, we text each other and be like, hey, check out this saw we could get for the facility. Look at this parcel of land. Like, I'm heading out to talk to this person to make this thing happen. It's all work-related.

 

Ben Goehner [00:56:40]:
And we love that. You know, that's the name of the game. And it's what's What brings meaning to it all, you know?

 

Daniel Asbury [00:56:48]:
Makes it fun.

 

Ben Goehner [00:56:48]:
Yeah.

 

Daniel Asbury [00:56:49]:
Makes it really fun.

 

Ben Goehner [00:56:50]:
And one of the things, so previously, to give a little bit of frame, I was working in like private equity for a few years to do roll-ups of construction companies. And everyone hates you when you're doing that. No one's on your side. No one's glad you're there. The people selling just want money from you. The employees hate you. The government's like, just pay your taxes or die. It's not— there's no assistance.

 

Ben Goehner [00:57:14]:
But when you're building homes, especially attainable homes, and you're doing it in the markets that need it, everyone's trying to help you. Everyone believes in the dream. Everyone's on board with it. And that's— that alone is worth, you know, the time and effort because you feel like you're making a difference. We're out here to help people, not to gouge them for corporate profits and gut a company or something like that. Not that that's what we're doing at PE, but that's what PE is known for. And that's something that you just can't replicate in most companies. Like a lot of people when they're like, what do you do? They say something and 99% of the time it makes no difference in the world.

 

Ben Goehner [00:57:53]:
You know what I mean? And there's a handful of companies that have that mission. And I think like Ohio Fund's one of them. They go out and they're trying to invest in Ohio and they're for-profit as well, but they want to invest in every county. They want to try and get all these different market sectors, they want to make a difference. And we feel aligned with that kind of ideology of like, okay, you have to make money so that's actually scalable, but you can make a difference, you can help while you're at it.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:58:23]:
I feel like from my perspective, one of the questions I was gonna ask is like what you wish more people understood about homebuilding and I feel like even just the nomenclature of attainable housing, like a home that you too would be comfortable living in for your own families, that we can do it economically. You know, what, what do you wish more people understood about this?

 

Ben Goehner [00:58:48]:
There's so many elements that get lost in translation when I give the full spiel. And I'm actually having to learn to just peel back and only explain what's the bare minimum. Because I can talk forever.

 

Daniel Asbury [00:59:00]:
Except today.

 

Ben Goehner [00:59:02]:
Yeah. This is the piece.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:59:02]:
No, I mean, here is, we could, we could keep going.

 

Ben Goehner [00:59:05]:
It's still service though.

 

Jeffrey Stern [00:59:06]:
I would imagine it is hard to.

 

Ben Goehner [00:59:08]:
Yeah.

 

Daniel Asbury [00:59:08]:
Yeah. We're getting there.

 

Ben Goehner [00:59:09]:
We want people, I mean, on the business side to be able to understand what we're doing and what we're building. Because I feel like a lot of people get lost in translation. Like, oh, are you a manufacturer? Oh, you're getting land. Oh, you're trying to get this grant program made. And they don't really understand that those are all affiliated because you can't just have one piece of the puzzle. If you have one piece of the puzzle, it's, it's what other people are already doing. It's when you bring all that together to build a platform to actually solve the problem that that makes a difference. So I think that one's pretty critical.

 

Ben Goehner [00:59:42]:
And then the other 2 would be what kind of housing we make, because we are trying to kind of carve our own little market sector of attainable housing. No one calls it that yet. Everyone either compares it to workforce or affordable. We're not workforce. For sure affordable. We build attainable. And that means we're trying to bring back the American dream. We're trying to rebuild the American dream of homeownership and help people buy their home, raise families, live where they work, you know, stay here for generations, be happy again.

 

Ben Goehner [01:00:11]:
Everyone's like stressed and depressed because they have to cover next month's bills because their rent's $3,600 for like a 2-bedroom apartment. What is that? You know, that sucks. Like, I have a buddy back in Washington, just moved into a new apartment with his baby and his wife, and it's in the hood, and it's a 1-bedroom, and it's $3,600 a month. I'm like, bro. So we want to help avoid that. And then on the panel side, there's really no good term for what we're building. That's why we're trying to coin the term of national standard panel, so that there is a new kind of industry vernacular for this type of construction. Construction specifically, with it being pretty much finished on the exterior, electrical and plumbing is roughed in, insulation, and you can assemble the home faster.

 

Ben Goehner [01:00:57]:
That's, that's what we want to achieve there and have it be like, oh, this home is built with NSPs, National Standard Panels. Um, because if you like, there's another term, SIP. We're not SIP. That's another confusion. SIP is a structural insulated panel, not to be confused, because that is Styrofoam pretty much with plywood glued to it, and you have to CNC out for your electrical and plumbing. That is not what we build. There are other companies doing that, not gonna name them, and they've raised a lot of money to do it, but their team comes from an engineering background at a certain space company.

 

Daniel Asbury [01:01:29]:
And I think— Ending in a certain letter.

 

Ben Goehner [01:01:31]:
Yeah, and they need a little help on the development side, 'cause they've raised a bunch of money and opened a second factory, and they've still built no homes. And I'm like, how about, hear me out, we build some homes. So actually, if they watch this, and you know exactly who you are, call us. We wanna help you get land, we wanna help you develop and be successful, 'Cause if you guys fail, it's gonna make us look bad 'cause we keep getting compared. And so far I've seen nothing actionable on that shit. Plus their version of housing that actually solves the problem is $750,000 row homes. Again, they know exactly who they are if they're listening to this. Not $215,000 homes with land and a driveway, you know?

 

Daniel Asbury [01:02:11]:
Coming for blood today, dude. This is good. I like this.

 

Ben Goehner [01:02:14]:
No names were said. Let's go. But yeah, there's a problem to solve. And we all need to be on the same team. So I don't see them as competition. We're not in the same markets building the same product at the same price point with the same materials. But we want to help them. Because if they're not successful, it's just a bigger hole in the problem.

 

Ben Goehner [01:02:30]:
So we want to talk to them.

 

Daniel Asbury [01:02:33]:
Awesome. Well said.

 

Jeffrey Stern [01:02:34]:
Well, you guys definitely seem like you're having a lot of fun in pursuit of great ambitions here. So I'm, I'm grateful you guys took some time to come on and share a bit about this journey that you've been on and, and what you're building. It's really cool.

 

Ben Goehner [01:02:51]:
Have you been out to visit us yet?

 

Jeffrey Stern [01:02:54]:
No, I need to.

 

Ben Goehner [01:02:55]:
Yeah, come, come out. We'll show you around, show you the homes, show you the factories, and, uh, it'll be a good time. Plus, there's— this will be a shout out for Dan Niss if he watches this one— Westbrook, this is the local country club. Dan bought that, Dan Niss, and spent way too much money fixing it up. So now we have this like world-class golf club in the middle of nowhere. So if you golf, it's a good time.

 

Jeffrey Stern [01:03:18]:
Well, I was gonna ask because it's always our traditional closing question for a hidden gem in, in the area.

 

Daniel Asbury [01:03:25]:
That's about it.

 

Ben Goehner [01:03:27]:
Yeah, that and we had the penitentiary from Shawshank Redemption, not to brag, but, and the country's first carousel ride and the world's first streetlight.

 

Daniel Asbury [01:03:39]:
That's right.

 

Ben Goehner [01:03:39]:
Red, yellow, green.

 

Daniel Asbury [01:03:40]:
Yep.

 

Ben Goehner [01:03:41]:
Again, not to brag.

 

Daniel Asbury [01:03:43]:
It's a gloomy

 

Ben Goehner [01:03:45]:
withdrawal. Awesome.

 

Daniel Asbury [01:03:47]:
Gloomy withdrawal.

 

Jeffrey Stern [01:03:48]:
Well, if folks had anything they wanted to follow up with, learn more about, where would you point them?

 

Ben Goehner [01:03:57]:
They can visit our website. I'm not going to throw out an email or phone number because we get enough. I have quite literally like 1,400-something texts right now.

 

Daniel Asbury [01:04:06]:
I don't know how you sleep at night.

 

Ben Goehner [01:04:08]:
I don't.

 

Jeffrey Stern [01:04:08]:
I believe it.

 

Ben Goehner [01:04:10]:
Go to our website, westerndlc.com. We're gonna buy Western Dominion, but they want like $55,000 for it, so we'll get that later. There's no website on it right now. It's just someone bought the thing probably in like 2006. But yeah, westerndlc.com. We have a forum, so whether you want your land developed or you want panels or you want to partner or you want a job or you want to invest, whatever it is. There's different forms for that. And we are hiring, by the way.

 

Ben Goehner [01:04:41]:
We need lots of people. And this first facility will probably over time have about like 100+ jobs for that building. Second and third facility, same story, possibly even more. We need hundreds of people on construction. We need dozens of people for admin and other jobs. So— We're actively hiring and we're looking for people and we need everything. So if you have a skill set, just reach out because we'd love to talk to you.

 

Jeffrey Stern [01:05:14]:
Well, appreciate you guys. Thank you very much.

 

Daniel Asbury [01:05:16]:
Thanks, Jeff. Appreciate the time, man.

 

Speaker D [01:05:20]:
That's all for this week. Thank you for listening. We'd love to hear your thoughts on today's show. So if you have any feedback, Please send over an email to jeffrey@layoftheland.fm or find us on Twitter @PodLayofTheLand or @SternFA, J-E-F-E. If you or someone you know would make a good guest for our show, please reach out as well and let us know. And if you enjoy the podcast, please subscribe and leave a review on iTunes or on your preferred podcast player. Your support goes a long way to help us spread the word and continue to bring the Cleveland founders and builders We love having on the show. We'll be back here next week at the same time to map more of the land.

 

Speaker D [01:05:57]:
The Lay of the Land podcast was developed in collaboration with The Up Company LLC. At the time of this recording, unless otherwise indicated, we do not own equity or other financial interests in the company which appear on this show. All opinions expressed by podcast participants are solely their own and do not reflect the opinions of any entity which employs us. This podcast is for informational purposes only and should not be relied upon as a basis for investment decisions. Thank you for listening, and we'll talk to you next week.