[00:00:00] Intro: This is the Texas Land Guys podcast. Hosted by brothers Tim Dosch and Tom Dosch. With their partners, David Marshall and Tripp Rich, they have built DMRE, the leading land brokerage in Texas. With decades of experience brokering deals between landowners and real estate developers, they take you inside the deals that move the market.

[00:00:30] Tom Dosch: Welcome to the Texas Land Guys Podcast. Tripp, how you doing this morning?

[00:00:34] Tripp Rich: Doing pretty good. Excited to be back. Doesn’t feel like it’s been that long, but it has been a little bit. So excited to be back on here and certainly excited about today’s topic. It’s going to be pretty feisty.

[00:00:48] Tom Dosch: It’s going to be a good one. I was talking to a client the other day and they were listening to, I think, the last episode we did together. That came out a couple weeks ago, and they were like, I just love hearing Tripp on the podcast. So by popular demand, we’ve brought you back on, all the way from Austin.

[00:01:04] Tripp Rich: Love that. Love to be here.

[00:01:06] Tom Dosch: I feel like we always get the biggest spikes in viewership whenever we get you on, so I’m not sure what it is, but that’s great. I mean, Tim and I think you’re great, so you always bring a good perspective. Well, today, yeah, we’re gonna talk about the politics of land use. And where this came from was where I was, I think I was traveling, traveling outta town. I had a long drive until I called you and we were catching up and we had both just had something kind of crazy happen where you had, you had a meeting you were telling me about. And then I had just been through a zoning case that didn’t go the way that we had wanted it to go. And so we were trading war stories on just land use and neighbors opposing, you know, something getting proposed and built and, so I thought maybe we’d just start with your story, ’cause I think, I thought that was, I thought that was pretty entertaining.

[00:01:56] Tripp Rich: Yeah. Yeah. No, that’s a good way to kick it off. Yeah. So I’ve been on, you know, a handful of mud boards in my, you know, somewhat tenured career and got a story, third party the other day of something I’ve certainly never experienced or even heard of, frankly, which was pretty interesting. But I was talking to this lady just recently that was on a, or that’s on a mud board currently. And yeah, basically she pulled into this meeting, it’s up in pretty far north of Austin. It’s for a master plan. And yeah, came to the formation meeting and basically saw a ton of cars and there’s, I think there’s only 5 people on the mud board and yeah, evidently they posted it like they’re supposed to on the front of the property and then up at the courthouse. And I guess one of the neighbors saw the post and took a photo of it with their phone and posted on Facebook. And so all the neighbors evidently came roaring up with their pitchforks to this information meeting. And essentially they all have their 3 minutes to bring up any Questions, comments, or concerns? And usually these things, in my experience, and even in talking with other people, maybe one person shows up and usually within about 20 minutes of them listening to the attorney speak about what’s actually happening, they’re usually like, okay, great. Can I just sell my land with your,  can you just buy my land as well? Because this is happening either way and I don’t want to be surrounded by homes or industrial, whatever it is. So I’ll just sell with you. And this was certainly not the case. This was quite opposite. So about 30 people showed up and basically, yeah, she said it took for about 3 hours of questions, comments, and concerns. And it was very aggressive and there was multiple cameras on the entire time where people were holding their phones and it just got extremely emotional. And so I think it’s a great segue to start this podcast episode because listening to the story at first, my jaws kind of dropped because I’ve never heard about anything like this or experienced it. And at the same time, I’m listening to their reasons. And while most of them, I wouldn’t say are that valid, and a lot of people didn’t do their research, it definitely kind of brings up this concept of, well, it is pretty beneficial from a state level. As Texas landowners, it’s like you could pretty much control of your destiny for the most part. But that’s, you know, for your land. And, you know, I think the landowner in this scenario was like, why do you have a say on what I do on my property?

[00:04:43] Tom Dosch: Yeah. I mean, that, that story, and to back up for a second, if, if you’re listening and you don’t know what a MUD is, ’cause what you just described almost sounded like a city council meeting, you know, where, where, where it would be normal to have some people show up. And like you said, it’s not normal in a MUD situation. ‘Cause just the fact that there are ways that these MUD meetings are run, I think they’re run normally by an attorney, right? There’s like a MUD board attorney that runs the meetings.

[00:05:09] Tripp Rich: Correct. And like just for reference, yeah, MUD stands for Municipal Utility District and I’ll let you do your own lookup on that. But if you’re not aware of what it is, but yeah, essentially for reference, you know, a lot of these people didn’t,  it was just a lot of it was ignorance, right? So a lot of it was just misinformation where they hear from a friend or they read a Facebook post or a media that’s just posting something negative about homes coming in and just assuming that all their water’s going to be gone and that their treatment plant is not going to work and there’s going to be all this sewage that runs into their property and then affects their horses and their cows and their chickens. And all of those are actually pretty valid. It’s like if that was the case, that it’s like, well, yeah, that would be terrible. So I understand that. But as we both know, these treatment facilities can be hundreds of millions of dollars depending on the size, right? But it’s like millions of dollars go into these things and ultimately really handle it very well. Otherwise these wouldn’t be getting done. So it’s just, yeah, it was a really interesting scenario to hear about.

[00:06:20] Tom Dosch: It’s a very common response that we’ll hear from landowners that if they live out in an area, like you said, that’s more far-reaching where it’s larger acreage. So the, I’m assuming a lot of these landowners are on probably what, 5, 10 acres plus a lot. And some of ’em may be smaller, but a lot of ’em are on some acreage.

[00:06:38] Tripp Rich: Yeah. And so you call it 5 to 50 acres, basically they’re all adjacent or property adjacent.

[00:06:43] Tom Dosch: So you’re living out there and, you know, what we hear all the time is the reason I bought out here was, to be out. I didn’t want the traffic. I didn’t want the track home communities. These are the things that we’re told a lot. I wanted the views, and those are all great things. But what we experience in Texas all the time is there’s just so much growth. It becomes really difficult, really almost no matter where you move, if you’re trying to stay somewhat connected. Let’s say that would be like 30 to 45 minutes to the nearest grocery store. you might only be able to live there about 5 years before development hits you, ’cause that’s just how fast development’s going. And so I think when you and I go and we visit friends that live out in the country, the first thing we’re doing is like, I wonder who owns that farm, you know, across the street? ‘Cause everybody’s like, there’s 200 acres. And they’re like, this is great, I’m out here. And we’re just wondering like, I wonder if that guy’s already talking to a builder? ‘Cause that’s just the way, that’s just kind of the way that it goes, you know? And where we do have so much infrastructure. Yeah. constantly being put in the ground and there’s so much demand because of our population and job growth. There has to be a place for these people to live. And a lot of people want to own a home. And so more affordable homes often tend to get built further outside of town. ‘Cause, you know, it’s more affordable, the land’s cheaper, and it’s gonna be, it’s gonna take longer to drive. So that’s where, that’s where these, and they’re not all tract homes. I think you told me who this developer was and they’re, I would say, and actually this is a proven fact. The developer you were telling me about is like one of the top developers in the country year in and year out. When you look at like highest performing communities, and it’s not purely because of home sales, it’s like, it’s, I’m talking about like nice homes, everything probably from, you know, your, your first move up home to like custom homes get built in their communities. And so..

[00:08:30] Tripp Rich: Yeah.

[00:08:30] Tom Dosch: There’s nothing wrong with these more affordable communities because I think those are really needed. But this one was actually not that. And so it just, I think, more proved the point that even if you have a really high-end, nice community coming into your area, it’s more the fact just that those aren’t gonna be fields anymore, that there’s gonna be some kind of development.

[00:08:47] Tripp Rich: Yeah. Yeah. I mean, some of the comments that were being made from what I heard were, you know, like wanting to, like, yeah, certainly traffic, you know, concerns with traffic, concerns with noise, concerns with smell, from the treatment plant. You know, there’s big opposition about the schools and the commercial reserves. They’re like, we don’t need schools and we don’t need more retail. Like, we live out in the country and this is Texas history and you’re changing Texas history. And, you know, how can you live with yourself? And like all of these things that ultimately, you know, they don’t own the land, they don’t control the land. And it’s, yeah, it’s just really interesting.

[00:09:25] Tom Dosch: Yeah. Well, and I think we, the conversation you and I had about this was, we obviously often we’re, we’re helping a developer, we’re helping a builder buy a site. And so we experience a lot of the pushback from zoning, from city council, from planning and zoning, albeit, or from neighbors. But then a lot of times we’re helping landowners sell too. Now, we’re not, we’re not helping the landowner that doesn’t want development because we’re helping the landowner that wants to sell naturally. ‘Cause those are the ones that are approaching us and saying, will you help me sell my property for development. And so.. 

[00:09:59] Tripp Rich: Sure.

[00:10:00] Tom Dosch: Yeah, go ahead.

[00:10:00] Tripp Rich: Sure. But well, I just think it’s interesting too because like we are helping the landowner sell, but you know how it goes. I mean, anytime we get one of those people and they want to sell and it’s property that we think we can execute on and perform for that ultimately for that landowner, you know, one of the first things we do is call the adjacent landowners and say, hey, we’re going to be bringing this to market. Do you want to be included? Like here’s probably the highest best use. Like here’s where, range we expected to trade. Would you like to be included? Well, no, I don’t want to sell and I don’t want that stuff next to me. And I’m like, hey, it’s like you just communicate and explain what’s going on. And you’re like, well, per the zoning, we can do this by right. So if you don’t want to be next to this, I would highly advise you to consider selling in the event the deal goes through. So it’s not like we don’t give other people the opportunity and the wherewithal and the heads up. And I’ve seen it go both ways. I’ve seen the deal drop and die or the rezone doesn’t get done. And then I’ve seen the flip side where the owner says, you know, I’m like, if we’re doing an assemblage in the urban core and we get 5 to 6 owners, and then there’s like the small little cutout house that’s on, you know, a 10,000 square foot lot. I mean, you, you’ve definitely seen it in Houston too. But I’ve seen the person that’s like, okay, you know, I’ll do it. And they’re getting probably double, double the value of what their home’s worth. And then, then they’re able to move into like a, a really nice home, or they hold out and they get built around, and then the property’s virtually worth nothing. worthless.

[00:11:23] Tom Dosch: Yeah.

[00:11:23] Tripp Rich: At that point. ‘Cause it’s like, who wants to be surrounded by, you know, something that’s vertical or, you know, not super nice in 20 years so.

[00:11:30] Tom Dosch: Yeah, no, that’s a really good point that a lot of times we are trying to bring in neighbors. I think the point that I was getting at was just that the groups, the, the seller we’re representing actually does want to sell and they are there trying to monetize their property. And so the challenge becomes, you know, so you have one neighbor who doesn’t want any development, on the other, on their neighbor’s property, ’cause they just want it to remain whatever it is, a hayfield or, or, you know, a park for a lack of a better word. And then you have, you have maybe the, the, the family or the landowner we’re representing that now they’ve decided like, we loved living out here. And a lot of times the conversation is we’ve loved living out here, but now we know that we’re basically surrounded by development. Like I had one not long ago where they were getting surrounded by industrial development. It used to be, yeah, used to be an area that was pretty much all single family. They lived on 20 acres, but they just said, look, we, we’re pretty much being surrounded by industrial development. Like, it’s time for us to get outta here. Like, you know, we, we recognize we need to get outta here. And we had another one that we’re working on where it’s being surrounded by just a lot of single family. And so for them, it wasn’t that the single family wasn’t nice, it was that they just felt like the traffic, they didn’t wanna deal with the traffic anymore. Yeah. And so instead of opposing development on other properties, they’re like, we’re gonna sell. And so we helped them, you know, execute that sale. But I think the politics of land use, like that is the topic of our conversation. Why don’t we get into it? I know we’ve talked, we’ve hit some of this a little bit, and I think your story is a good framework for just, it can get contentious. And we understand when I was hearing you tell me the stories these people are sharing, you know, they lived there a long time and now there’s gonna be, you know, a, a very large community next to them and they feel like that’s gonna have a negative impact on their property value, which I don’t think it will, at least not in the long term. I think because of the community being developed, it’ll actually over time probably increase their value more than it would increase as just a single-family property. But that’s a very common concern that people have is this is gonna negatively impact me. And so there’s real concerns. And we were talking about different agendas, you know, like, The broker has an agenda, the developer has an agenda, the landowner has an agenda. It doesn’t mean that they’re all wrong. Right. And every situation’s gonna be a little bit different, but everything does have to ultimately fall under like, what is the law of the land in Texas? You live in Texas, there’s, I would say, very favorable rights to property owners and landowners in Texas. And we’ll get into that a little bit later. And it’s only become more and more so over the last couple years with some of the recent legislative actions that have been taken. And so it, it really, it means that like, if you own a property, that’s great, it’s good for you, but it all, it means you have less control over your neighbor’s property, which I think generally all of us feel good about that and say like, that’s right. Like I should have more control over my property. It’s probably not right for me to have a whole lot of control over my neighbor’s property. However, then when you get into the situations, that’s not always the way it plays out. So. I think we already started with a pretty good example. Why don’t we, why don’t we talk about property rights just for a minute and how they work? Because, you know, Tim’s not on this podcast, so we’re not gonna talk about Houston. Although Houston does have some suburbs that have zoning, it’s just not as, it’s not as common there that you run into rezones. Now, a lot of the suburban markets like Sugar Land and The Woodlands, those markets do have land use and zoning, but for the purpose of this episode, we’ll talk more about Austin and DFW because you and I, we’re facing zoning as a, as a really a factor into a property’s value all the time and/or future land use. So a lot of times when we are studying a property in DFW, we’re looking at what’s the current zoning. So maybe the current zoning is agriculture, ’cause that’s a zoning classification that would be further out. You’re not going to find probably a lot of agriculturally zoned sites in the city of Dallas. But you might find a single-family classified site in a single city of Dallas, like an, could be something like SF-5. And that just means like, and that may not be a zoning classification in Dallas, but that, that would be, you know, a certain density of single-family homes allowed on this site. But then what a city will also have, will have a future land use. And so the planning department at a city will say, okay, here’s all of our zoning for properties, but then we obviously know that our city is growing and times change. And so maybe we updated our comprehensive plan for future growth 5, 10 years ago. Now we wanna update it for the next 10 years or 20 years. And so we’re gonna go in and we’re not gonna change the zoning of sites, but we’re gonna change the future land use. They call it a future land use map to basically say, in the future, we think these sites that are maybe currently zoned commercial should be higher density mixed use, or these sites that are zoned single family should be,  Residential. higher density residential, like multifamily. And so they’ll map out like entertainment districts, they’ll map out future parks, they’ll make these decisions. And so a lot of times, really, when you’re a developer, you want to, or a landowner, you want to be focused for sure on the zoning because that’s really the value. If you had to just fire sell your property, that’s the value you can get for your property today is what can someone do with it today? But the highest and best use is probably more likely to be the future land use. But that’s also not guaranteed. That’s a political process that you have to go through because it’s gonna be, it’s gonna require a rezone if the future land use does not allow,  align with the current zoning. So that’s a very probably boring explanation of zoning and future land use. But what I wanted to add to that was recently, because the Texas legislature has passed a couple of these bills, they’ve passed Senate Bill 840, which we’ve talked about a lot on the podcast, trying to provide more affordable housing in the state of Texas. And so if your city population is large enough and the county population is large enough, commercially zoned properties can be developed into multifamily by right. And you don’t have to go through the normal planning and zoning meeting and city council meeting, which are really, those meetings are, you know, you can, as a developer, you can, you can do the best job you can. You can spend as much money as you want to spend. You can spend as much time as you wanna spend trying to get your project approved, but ultimately it comes down to a vote and they can say no. But with SB 840, it allows you to, if you, if your site qualifies, it allows you to go build apartments. And so specifically for apartments, that’s been huge. And there’s been a lot of backlash from cities and property owners, really neighbors that say like, hey, that’s not right. You know, because that the zoning is this, the future land use is not multifamily. And now these cities are having to allow multifamily because of the state. And there’s been others, there’s been similar SB 15 allows for single-family lots of 3,000 square feet because what you had a lot of cities doing, they were saying, you know, we’re gonna require density of like, you cannot develop a single-family lot less than an acre, or in some cases like less than 2 acres. And builders are saying, okay, well that’s great, but I can’t afford to do that because it’s too expensive. And the homes I built on these big lots, they’re gonna be so expensive. They may be $2 million. It’s just not affordable. But if I can do a smaller lot, then I can build a more affordable home. So I think for you and I, this becomes really interesting. I think, what do you see in Austin related to that, Tripp? Like, I know SB 840 is probably less frequent that you see a whole lot with that, but SB 15. I don’t know if you’ve seen that in play much.

[00:19:02] Tripp Rich: Yeah, specifically the SB 840, it, you know, it’s really only applicable to Austin. And when that became available, or I guess enforced, the market wasn’t doing too hot. So the owners that, you know, quickly learned about it were like, okay, great, now I don’t need to give you the time. And it’s like, well, no, actually we do need time because the market’s so bad. So I think it’ll help down the road. But yeah, unfortunately we don’t have any suburbs that are close enough or that are within the population requirement to approve or have SB 840, you know, be triggered. And so city of Austin, like it’s helped a little bit, but honestly due to the market, you know, maybe covered land plays look a little bit more interesting because you don’t have to worry about the zoning, so you can go and close on it quick at the right cap rate. But no one’s going to sell it at an attractive cap rate today anyway. For SP-15, you know, that was certainly pretty interesting here because Austin’s a pretty dense city, and in my opinion, it’s much more poised for townhome development, which those 3,000-square-foot lots, you know, are you know, basically for townhomes. And so, you know, coming from Houston where we saw that, you know, constantly, you know, in the Heights and inner city Houston, and then coming here and only seeing like a couple of those projects, it was pretty mind-boggling. So once it hit, it’s been pretty awesome. But to date, you know, there’s not a lot of guys doing that at scale, mainly I think due to land prices. But as you drive around the urban core, you might see like a 6-pack or a 10-pack or maybe they get to 20 homes if it’s a little outside of the city, but not a lot of townhomes in the urban core. So we’re anticipating getting more phone calls. We’ve already gotten a few. We’re anticipating getting more. It’s just that it makes it pretty difficult with where land prices are. But I think it makes great sense. One just popped up around the corner from my house. I think it even helped me on the balance of my land at my house. I think I can build by right now, you know, 6 townhomes. Not that I would, but it’s like, 

[00:21:18] Tom Dosch: Is that why you’re happy your property just went on the market?

[00:21:21] Tripp Rich: Yeah, exactly.

[00:21:22] Tom Dosch: Now you finally finished getting everything ready to go move in, so I’m sure you’re not selling right now.

[00:21:27] Tripp Rich: Exactly. Yeah.

[00:21:29] Tom Dosch: No, that’s interesting. Well, as you were talking, I was wondering, has ETJ had a bigger impact, the ETJ laws in Texas? Because that, those go back a lot longer too. I mean, that was, I think that was 2019, wasn’t it? I mean, that goes back prior to COVID. So that was part of the whole upswing in the market. I mean, we’ve seen a lot of that here. Have you seen a lot of that in Central Texas?

[00:21:50] Tripp Rich: Yeah. I mean, the big thing with that is people being able to de-annex from the ETJ has been like massive. 

[00:21:58] Tom Dosch: That’s right. Because that’s more recent.

[00:22:00] Tripp Rich: Yeah. That’s a lot more recent and that’s had a massive effect. Certainly ETJ did, you know, but in, in now that they’re basically where there’s become options where a site, you know, has access to water and sewer but is in the ETJ and, you know, like, so they have to be served because they have, you know, water and sewer through their property, but then they de-annex and then they’re only having to deal with the county, which is basically like, I’ve heard of guys going in with like a hand-drawn site plan. And you’re basically like, present that and they just go, okay. And then the fire marshal comes out and he is like, yeah, we’re good.

[00:22:41] Tom Dosch: Yeah.

[00:22:41] Tripp Rich: And then you have your permit. It’s like, yeah, depending. That’s insane.

[00:22:44] Tom Dosch: Yeah. Depending on the county for sure. I think, but yeah, the county is gonna be, should be a lot quicker process for sure and just have less restrictions. And so the ETJ, again, just like quick educational moment, stands for extraterritorial jurisdiction. That question gets asked a lot. I think there’s a lot of misunderstanding and just confusion around ETJs and how they work. ‘Cause I get the question a lot, like, ETJ, what does it stand for? But also, can a city, because maybe it’s in a city’s ETJ, can they just, can they just like force acquire you and can they make you become a part of their city? So if you were in Houston ETJ, can Houston force acquire you? But what you’re talking about is now you have the right as the property owner to de-annex from the ETJ. So you don’t have to stay in Houston ETJ. You can say, I’m gonna file to de-annex my property and now I’m just gonna be in Harris County would be, I guess, an example of the of that. And so that gives a lot more, that gives all you a lot more latitude as a property owner. And from a development standpoint, you know, what’s, I think what’s confusing about it is yes, if you have access to water and sewer to your property and you’re in an ETJ, you should be able to develop, but not every city sees it that way. And then yes, you can de-annex and get into a county, but unfortunately you may not be able to get water and sewer service that’s not from the city. And so if you have to go back to the city, it makes it tough. But there’s a lot of, we’ve closed a lot of sites where we’ve helped developers and even Ascent acquire properties all over. I mean, we’ve done it in Austin a couple times or in the Austin area. Yeah. And then we’ve done it for sure in the DFW market. quite a bit, but that’s an example of legislation that was passed that property owners really like because it gives a lot more rights back to property owners. And then it would be an example of something cities hate because from a city standpoint, you know, a lot of what we’ve been a part of, and again, we’re following the law as it stands. And so I think the way we look at it is we understand that someone’s always gonna be upset in the situation. But when we see legislation come, we’re gonna go follow that legislation on behalf of our clients, right? So we’re gonna help a landowner sell into legislation that benefits them, and we’re gonna help a client buy into legislation that benefits them. Right. But we’ve definitely had, you know, we’ve definitely seen cities say, and I think it’s, it’s, you know, it makes sense. It’s like if you’re gonna build an apartment project in Austin in the ETJ, but the apartment won’t have to pay city taxes ’cause they’re in the ETJ, but then they get city services. That frustrates a lot of these cities that it’s set up that way. And so we’ve seen some cities figure out ways to work with developers to say, look, you can or could develop an ETJ, why don’t you zone instead? And we’ll try to get you in our city and do it that way. We’re like, we’ll give you your zoning and we’ll work it out, but we want you in our city ’cause we want you on our tax roll. We don’t really want you in the county. Like, we want you in the city. So it has created just more leverage for the property owner, but obviously it’s made it more challenging for city officials. And so when you’re thinking about land use, when you’re thinking about laws getting passed, it’s not that there’s like pure winners and losers, but for sure it has impact. And I’ve heard on several zoning cases, city council members say like, this legislation could be coming from the state of Texas, Like we had it on a deal a couple years ago, it was a single-family deal. And he just, one of the council members said like, we need to approve this. ‘Cause most of the opposition was, we want this to remain a park. They’re like, Yeah. We, you know, we get it, like, but we want this to remain a park. And then one guy gets up and you’re like, that poor guy, he probably just got mobbed when he left. But he was like, I just think it’s not fair that the property owner can’t sell his property, which I thought was pretty cool. He’s like, I know all of you want it to be a park, but he’s like, I just think that we live in Texas, the guy should be able to sell his property for a single-family. It ended up getting approved, and it was a, it really was very close to the zoning, and it was even like less density than the future land use. But what was interesting about it was so many of the comments were, we want this to remain a park. And so the city councilman said, and this was before SB 15 and before SB 840, he just said, he said, there’s, they’re talking in Austin about taking this decision away from us. And so he said, we need to make the decision that’s right for our city, which in this case was approving this project. And we’ve had that now a couple times recently where I think because a lot of these city councils have turned down zoning that they probably shouldn’t have. I mean, for sure there’s times when you, a rezone should, or you should be shot down, but there’s others that probably should have been approved, but it got overly political. That happens enough and there’s enough lobbying going on in Austin that these laws are getting passed. So there’s a lot that plays into all of this, but I wanna move into, oh, kind of away from the educational side and move into more like some examples. So why does land use become political? Like, kind of just talked about it on that deal, but I think let’s talk about like how the different players that come to the table, like, I kind of hate the word agenda ’cause I don’t know, agenda sounds negative. Like, everybody obviously has a motivation or an agenda or something they’re trying to accomplish, right? Yeah. I think there’s a perception in all these cases that depending on what side you’re on, like you may not like city councils, you may not like planning and zoning, you may not like developers, you may feel like property owners are greedy, you know, you may not like the neighbor, whatever it is. Like there’s kind of an, it’s easy for everyone to be somewhat biased in these situations. But when you’re thinking about what a developer is thinking about when he’s looking at a piece of land and he’s gonna go zone it, what do you think a developer’s approach is? When we’re also thinking about, we’re going to talk about what is the city council approach? What are they all really trying to accomplish or care about?

[00:28:33] Tripp Rich: Sure. Yeah. I mean, from the developer standpoint, it’s a great question, but I mean, they kind of have to walk the line a little bit. Ultimately, they want to get the deal done and close and appease the landowner and be able to move to development and not waste money and time. But at the same time, kind of have to, at least in Austin and some of the suburbs we deal with, you kind of go, gotta go prove why the rezone should get done. And part of that is like convincing the community if it’s a, you know, I guess like a strong heartfelt community that, you know, doesn’t feel too peachy about apartments or industrial or whatever that may be. You know, it’s like it’s appeasing to them that it’s not going to affect them negatively. You know, we’ve had, clients that’ll go have noise studies done, have traffic count studies done. Most of the time a TIA is required if it’s in, you know, the city or if it’s zoned. And so you have to prove to them that it’s not going to affect them negatively. And in fact, it’s probably going to bring the city a lot of revenue, which is ultimately going to affect in a positive way, in my experience, you know, like the roads, infrastructure, the schools, et cetera. And I think that’s kind of the swing thought to city council as well. But then city council’s having a really hard time because they wanna keep their positions. Then, and they, you know, if they vote for the rezone and, and then the, you know, the, the neighbors are against it, then they might not keep their position next year. So it’s, yeah, I, I mean, unfortunately, agenda probably is the word. So, what do you think?

[00:30:12] Tom Dosch: Yeah, I mean, I think the developer, to your point, they, they, they evaluate properties and they’re trying to make money, right? So they look at a property. Sure. And then depending on what they build, they put it under contract because they believe if I buy this and build my project, this could be profitable. And so a lot of times when we’re marketing a property, the landowner is really focused on getting the most money they can, right? And so what, who ends up being able to pay the most for a property? It tends to be the highest and best use, whatever the highest and best use is. And maybe that’s apartments, maybe it’s industrial, maybe it’s townhomes. They put the property under contract through a marketing process. Now, not every time does the highest and best use put a property under contract, right? But a lot of times through the processes we run, because we are marketing properties thoroughly, we’re talking to a lot of buyers depending on the site, we might be getting use offers from a lot of different uses. You bring that offer to the table, that developer, they’re, they’re willing to stretch on their pricing because they believe that that’s the highest and best use for the property. So they put it under contract, and then like you said, they have to do a ton of work. To your point, we’ve had those. It’s, you’re doing a traffic analysis, you’re doing a sound study. We’re actually putting like devices, you know, in the neighborhoods around the site to measure sound and to be able to show like, this is the type of noise you will experience if we develop this project. Even like renderings, here’s, this will happen to your views, or this is what this will look like. Even architectural requirements of saying like, we will do glass or stone, or like, what do we need to do to make you happy? We’ll do a buffer, we’ll do a trail, we’ll do a park, we’ll do trees. Like, it’s pretty amazing what developers are willing to do to try to work with neighbors. Now it becomes challenging, obviously, if now from the neighbor standpoint, if they have more of a NIMBY view, which is like,”Not In My Back Yard”, then there’s not really a whole lot a developer can do. Unless the neighbors feel like it’s inevitable, they just can’t stop it. Right. But a lot of times what we see is through working with a neighborhood, like we had one where the neighborhood just wanted, they wanted a gazebo built in their park, and that’s what they asked the developer to do. Like, you know, if you do this, like, we’re good, we’re not gonna oppose your development. And the developer was like, yeah, we’re willing to do that and like help with that. And a lot of times it’s like helping build a fence. Like if there’s an adjoining fence, like making a masonry fence instead of a wood fence, you know, things that to those property owners actually could be somewhat meaningful. That’s great. Or providing walking paths that connect or, you know, things like that. So you have the neighbor who, if they’re willing to work with the developer, a lot of times they, there can be a lot of benefit. It can, it can be better for the community. And then you have the property owner who’s thinking, you know, I just wanna sell my property. I mean, I think a lot of people, they hear something sold for this price and they don’t understand that actually there’s a lot that goes into selling your property as far as getting it to closing, especially if you’re thinking about a use that’s, that’s not the use it’s zoned for. It’s not by right is what we would say. And so, the person trying to sell their property, the question they’re asking is, you know, why, why does everybody else have such a say in what happens on my property? And it’s hard, ’cause I’ve seen this a couple times where, like the whole park example, like that just got brought up on another deal recently where it’s like, I bought this property because there’s a field there and I just want it to remain a field. And, but it is zoned for commercial. So it’s like, that’s gonna get developed someday. So it’s hard to fight that NIMBYism. But what do you think the city council is trying to accomplish when they’re kind of ’cause you get all, you get all the way to that stage and the city council has letters of opposition from neighbors. They have a really well thought out plan from a developer with maybe all the studies we talked about, but it’s not the use that is zoned for the site. But let’s say that that developer has already worked through planning and zoning. So they’ve already worked with city staff and they’ve already gotten support there. So now you’re the city council and you’re like, I’ve got a qualified developer, the city staff and planning department is saying like, we would support this. It doesn’t align with future land use, but we would support it. But the neighbors are not happy about it. So what do you think the council, what are they really focused on?

[00:34:28] Tripp Rich: I’ve seen it both ways. It just kind of depends on the municipalities we deal with. But I think that they’re kind of, I think there’s some that are like, hey, this will ultimately benefit, you know, the entire municipality. More and they go with it. And they’re like, if my neighbors don’t trust me and they cut my seat and I lose this power position, then it is what it is. But I know true to my heart that I did something that’s ultimately helping the community, although it might leave a bad taste in 5 neighbors’ mouth. But if there’s 100,000 people in that city or town and it benefits all of them and their kids and their families, then it’s like, for the greater good. And then the other half I’ve seen where they love that position of power that they’re in and they don’t want to lose it. And they’re people pleasers and they’re there to appease the neighbors or the local townsmen. Right. And so it’s hard to say. I’ve seen it both ways, honestly. And I’m not saying either one of them is wrong per se, but it does feel like from our position that, you know, being a landowner in Texas, and frankly for that matter in America, you know, we’re ultimately capitalists and capitalism works. You know, we’ve seen all the other things that don’t. And, you know, if you don’t like that, then you can leave.

[00:35:52] Tom Dosch: I think what you’re saying with both sides of I’m trying to do what’s best for the city, or I’m trying to do, I’m trying to, you know, I’m trying to stay elected is really, yeah, they both people are thinking about what is my constituency actually want or need.

[00:36:07] Tripp Rich: Yep.

[00:36:07] Tom Dosch: One of them is more concerned about what does that impact have on me versus what’s just better. And sometimes it’s the same thing. Sometimes what they believe is best for the city is what the constituency wants and/or the vocal minority, right? So 20 people come out super loud and are upset. And the reality is most everyone else is fine with it, but like the 20 people are really upset about it. And so, from a city council standpoint, I think they’re really trying to think about these cities and say, you know, we just can’t approve everything that comes in, and we’ve gotta think long-term, and we do have to think about what’s best for the city. And then at the same time, people are gonna probably be mad at us for making the right decision, and sometimes they’re gonna really praise us. Sometimes they might really praise us for making the wrong decision.

[00:36:55] Tripp Rich: Wrong decision. Exactly, yeah.

[00:36:57] Tom Dosch: And so, it’s, I think in general, it’s just, it’s a lot of responsibility to be in those positions that people are taking on themselves. And you just hope that they are doing it, like you said, they’re thinking longer term, they’re thinking what’s actually best. And I think human nature is wanting to protect yourself and wanting to stay in that position. So, that’s probably a constant fight, but I think you’re right. It’s like trying to think what’s best for the constituency that I’m serving. That’s their goal. And so the things that get brought up very often, and I’ll lump planning and zoning into this, the thing about traffic, that’s really common, ’cause it’s like, what does traffic congestion mean for these sites? They’re gonna be thinking about noise, which you brought up, depending on the use. If it’s like a retail use, they might be thinking about trash, you know, they might be thinking about dumpsters and things like that. I think that when it comes to apartments, they’d be thinking about impact on schools. because it’s a lot more people on a, you know, a smaller property. Now, a lot of times apartments don’t actually feed that many people into schools. It just depends. But that’s often brought up and discussed and debated when you have these city council meetings. And then jobs, jobs are really important. You know, does this bring jobs? That’s where industrial can be huge. And then you were talking about this with data centers, ’cause data centers have become, Yeah, 4-letter word, just like horrible. We shouldn’t have any of ’em. But you were talking about just the benefit they can bring from a taxable revenue standpoint. You know, it’s like kind of unparalleled because if you’re building a billion-dollar data center, which many of them can be, or several, several hundred millions, I mean, that brings a lot of taxable revenue. So you should be also, as a councilman, they’re thinking about that. You know, they’re thinking about budgets, they’re thinking about revenue, they’re thinking about sustainability for their city. I dunno if you have any comments on any of that, but those are, those are the ones that I see probably brought up the most in these zoning cases and discussed.

[00:38:50] Tripp Rich: Not as much comments, but I have a story I can tell about data center. I love stories. Let’s go. Yeah, I love some stories.

[00:38:56] Tom Dosch: Little data center story. That’s, you’re walking in dangerous territory there.

[00:38:59] Tripp Rich: Yeah. Data. Yeah. So we, I can’t talk about where it is ’cause this one kind of came across my desk pretty recently, but I’ll just say it is in a near suburb of Austin or Central Texas, if you will. And essentially, guy reaches out, has a site, he’s getting entitled for data center. I’m like, man, are you not seeing what’s going on in the news? You’re not nervous? I don’t think this is going to work. It might be a while. I’m trying to shoot him straight. And he’s like, no, I’m really aware. And this guy’s real sharp. He was like, no, I’m aware, but You know, it’s kind of a perfect storm. You know, it’s not a major site, it’s not gonna suck a major amount of power. And, you know, this particular city is having some financial issues and like they have a grade that’s like failing, but it’s like a, you know, a beautiful little town that could easily be your next Fredericksburg if they just had some money. And in this particular scenario, yeah, the city would be the power provider and they would be getting a ton of revenue from the data center development. And so he thinks he’s ultimately gonna get it done, assuming these bans get lifted. And it just really kind of opened up my perspective. Not that it wasn’t already, I’m pretty open-minded, but it’s pretty fascinating because for some of these smaller towns in Texas that historically haven’t had tons of revenue or job growth or even because there’s not even a lot of growth, there’s not a lot of tax revenue, right? And so then things kind of struggle or people move to a bigger city where they can get a higher paying job and this, that, and the other. But in these scenarios, data centers could actually be a massive resource to kind of renew these small towns in Texas. And if you think about it, kind of like oil, oil did in the past. If you think about a lot of these Texas towns, a lot of them dispersed off from big oil booms in the past. So it kind of feels like data centers are the new oil, if you will. And I think there’s a lot of misconception around, obviously there’s a lot of political pushback right now, but I think there’s a lot of misconception and ignorance around water usage and power usage and the ability to be able to use natural gas, which we have what feels to be unlimited resource of. And so yeah, pretty fascinating. Excited to see how that ends up turning out. Should know a lot more around October.

[00:41:31] Tom Dosch: Yeah, I think that brings up a good discussion point. So when you think about just the pushback that has been against data centers recently, I was thinking about this and let’s say you buy a property, 200 acres. Let’s say you buy a property that’s next to 200 acres, and it’s, it’s your house, it’s a great view. But then 10 years later, your neighbor who owns 200 acres wants to develop single family. Would, I mean, your opinion is probably, it may not be the same as somebody else in this scenario, but I’m guessing you would be okay with your neighbor developing single family. You may not like it, but you do unders, you would understand he has the right to go develop single family, at least at some degree. But you depend, it’s really more comes down to lot size, but…

[00:42:16] Tripp Rich: Yeah, I mean, being in the land business, I’d absolutely,  like, if I didn’t like it, okay, well, that’s, that’s, that’s on me. But yeah, if they can do that by right and I, I don’t have any say and I don’t, I don’t like it, it’s like, okay, well, I can either, you know, sell into that development and move on or move further out, or, you know, I, I can say, hey, congrats. And honestly, it’s probably gonna make my property value go up. 

[00:42:39] Tom Dosch: Well, here, I’m gonna ask you a couple questions. Sure. So let’s say hypothetically, this is, this is the situation, right? So you bought a property, it’s a couple hundred acres. Now your neighbor is trying to, let’s say he’s trying to, to go to a single-family community. And so he’s trying to pull that off. He needs some type of approval for that because maybe utilities or density or something. So I guess the first question is, did you buy the property or did you buy the view? the property you bought.

[00:43:10] Tripp Rich: Legally?

[00:43:11] Tom Dosch: Yeah. Or just, yeah, practically. Yeah, practically. Yeah. But it’s interesting. Yeah. ‘Cause I think a lot of people will talk a lot about, I bought this property for the view, which is correct. But it’s also, you have to remember like you bought the property, you didn’t buy the view. So. That’s right. So that anyways, I think that’s important just like practically. Okay. Now should, do you think this existing homeowner, so you should have veto rights over the neighboring property? Like, should you have veto rights over your neighbor’s property?

[00:43:42] Tripp Rich: No, it’s just not my property.

[00:43:45] Tom Dosch: So how much consideration should you have? Like, should he have to, or she have to bring you into the loop, or should they be able to not even have to discuss with you and proceed with what they want to do?

[00:43:59] Tripp Rich: Yeah, I mean, super situational, but it’s like, again, I bought my property, I didn’t buy the view, you know, and I didn’t have, I didn’t buy their property next door. If I already owned the property next door and it came on the market or became available, I could have also bought it and avoided all of this, right? So ultimately, like, yeah. Now granted, if I live next door and then they’re trying to like say it’s zoned single family and then they’re trying to rezone it for mobile home park, this would never happen. But let’s just say it did. Yeah. Like, I would want to oppose it. And I think in that scenario I would, but it’s like, it’s very situational, right? If I don’t own the property and it’s not ultimately going to affect me, which they’re gonna have to provide me with tons of due diligence showing how it’s, you know, not, and basically explain that, then I don’t see why not. You can build whatever you want by right.

[00:44:52] Tom Dosch: Well, you bring up an interesting point. So if it was a certain use that maybe you would say, I don’t, I don’t want that use, or I don’t want that product or density, then you’d have a problem with it. So you would oppose it. But there’s a difference between opposition and maybe saying you almost had like a vote in it, you know, where you could, you can oppos. Which we have, right? So when you, so in Texas, depending on the city, when you file for a rezone, you have to send letters of notification out to neighbors. And so it can be like 200 feet, I think what’s pretty cool is most of the developers we work with, they never just do the 200 feet or 300 feet. They’re always like, we’re gonna do further because they know like more than those people are gonna find out anyways. And so they send out notifications to a lot larger radius and then they go like door knocking and try to say like, this is what we’re doing. ‘Cause a lot of it, you brought up a really good point earlier. I don’t like the word ignorance ’cause it sounds really negative, but you’re right. Ignorance is just not fully understanding. It’s misunderstanding the information. It’s not saying like you’re ignorant, you’re not smart. I know.

[00:45:56] Tripp Rich: Yeah, no, just lack, a lack of information. You know, like we do this for a living, right? And these people don’t. I understand that. But it’s like to come in, you know, to come into these scenarios and have not like asked chat or done any due diligence or research and come in and yell at people and make it really emotional. That’s where it gets pretty frustrating. Not saying you have to go become a professional about it, but that happens more often than not. And then on the flip side, I’ve seen plenty of people at these rezonings, they’re actually pretty sharp and they have legitimate Yeah. opposition and reason, but it’s more of a conversation. And they’re coming in asking legitimate questions that they’ve obviously reviewed due diligence and are trying to understand. And I think all of that’s completely valid. I would want to understand what’s being built and what the impacts are and all of that. And I think those are all fair. And if there is opposition, it’s like, by all means, let’s have that conversation and I’ll hear you out. We can talk about it.

[00:46:56] Tom Dosch: Yeah, I think the information’s so important, and that’s where good developers will go and educate as much as they can. Because if you’re against something, you tend to exaggerate, and so you’re probably gonna exaggerate like how bad it’s gonna be. But if the developer can go and explain, no, this is actually what we’re doing, here’s pictures of what we’re doing, here’s examples of what we’ve done, you know, It starts to help bring down some of the barriers, and then you can start maybe talking about, can we figure out a way to work on this together? Where like, I could get you excited about the opportunity this could bring to your community.

[00:47:27] Tripp Rich: Yeah. And if you’re a developer, always bring the cookies.

[00:47:30] Tom Dosch: That’s right. Always bring the cookies.

[00:47:33] Tripp Rich: I think you know that reference. We’re not gonna say their name.

[00:47:36] Tom Dosch: Well, the, uh, 100%, the,  I think the tension here is you have property rights, but so does your neighbor. Sure. And so there is a balance, right? Of the good thing is we don’t have to make these, like I’m asking you these questions are hypothetical and you can have more of a libertarian view, which is like whatever they do on their side of the fence, I don’t care, sewage plant, like whatever it is. Or you could be like, no, like that’s not right. We should have, you know, a lot more controls and it should be a lot more difficult to change land use and all these things should happen. Fortunately, Texas has laws in place. And so there’s laws in place. Yeah. And, you know, Texas is, in some cases, they’re trying to correct what they feel like are maybe the laws in place not being handled correctly. And that’s why they’ve had to pass these bills that they’ve passed, which the cities are not happy about. I was listening to a zoning case the other day and the residents, you know, came up and they were talking about some of these different cases like SB 15, SB 40. And they’re like, we need you as the mayor, we need you as the city council to be in Austin, to be fighting this, you know? And so Texas has their agenda of saying like, hey, this is the law and we want you to abide by it. And then the cities are trying to abide by it, but then they’re saying like, hey, you don’t fully understand our situation down here in whatever city we’re in. Like in this case, we’re not, they’re not gonna say like, we’re not abiding by the law, but like we felt like it was appropriate to not zone these maybe several sites, this certain use and this, and And Texas is saying like, hey, that’s not right because we feel like you don’t have, really in the case of their last several bills, it’s been all about affordable housing. So Texas is saying like, we feel like you as a city are not providing enough affordable housing for your constituents, for your people, for your, you know, everyone in the community. But I think that tension is interesting. It’s unfortunately we do have laws in Texas and I’m thankful to live in a state where it is more landowner friendly. I mean, we pay a lot of property taxes. Yeah. in Texas. Yeah. And so it’s like, I want to be able to do things like, you know, if I have an ETJ property, develop it and, you know, and not have to zone it into the city and have that kind of flexibility. Or some of our clients have tried to sell their properties, I’m not kidding, for 40 years. And they, it’s zoned to use like office or commercial that it just won’t ever be. You’d have to just give it away and they can’t. And they’re just held hostage because the city won’t rezone it. And I’ve had this happen in 2 different cities now where a use that was a use that made sense, it was in line with the future land use, was denied at rezone. And then immediately the city tried to buy the property. And it was like, what’s going on? Oh, it’s so corrupt.

[00:50:18] Tripp Rich: Yeah, we’re dealing with it too here. We’ve got a local group that, we’d sold a site for and they traded into 2 other sites with the money ’cause they made a lot of profit. And the market kind of turned and, and, you know, demand for apartments changed and particularly apartments with ground floor retail. And we’ve gone back to this municipality a few different times being like, hey, if we can just remove the retail, someone will JV with us at a lower price, then we’ll get this deal moving. And they’re like, no, we want the ground floor retail. That’s what we agreed 2 years ago with, you know, the previous owner. And that’s what we want, even though it doesn’t perform well. And it honestly doesn’t even look, that nice. And it’s sad because these people are having to pay interest on the land that they bought and it just makes it a really difficult situation. But they own the land. Yeah. It’s not the best, highest and best use or scenario because the market changes. But what we find is that these municipalities don’t often change with the times or the market, and it makes it really difficult to get things done. Another aside, by the way, you were talking about, I just realized I have dealt with this. But per the law, I didn’t have to, like, I was in the right, so it was all good. But yeah, at my house, talk about like bought the house or bought the property, didn’t buy the view. Whenever we bought it back in ’21, it’s in older South Austin and it had chain link fence. The guy that lived in it was one owner since 1972 when he built it. So we immediately, you know, are high fencing it. And I, from the fence company, was like, hey, you don’t technically have to do this, but just go get signatures from all the adjacent property owners, you know, approving this so that they don’t like try to cause a fuss or anything like that. Or if they like try to sue, you can be like, we already signed approving this kind of thing. I go get all the signatures, obviously like, yes ma’am, no ma’am, run through the gambit. And yeah, then I get a phone call 2 weeks later when the fence is up and it’s this older lady, she’s like, hey, what the heck? You put your fence up. And I’m like, yeah, I came over. We had tea and crumpets. We discussed this. You signed the paper. You don’t remember? I was pretty clear. And she’s like, yeah, but I didn’t realize it was going to block my view. And I’m like, well, did you buy the property or did you buy the view?

[00:52:42] Tom Dosch: Well, it’s smart that you went and explained it on the front end. And hopefully you’ve been able to go have tea and crumpets again and everything’s good.

[00:52:50] Tripp Rich: I did. Yeah. And we’re totally fine. She comes over and pets the dogs. It’s great.

[00:52:55] Tom Dosch: Because there’s a whole other side of this is you’re trying to get,  you don’t want contention. You’re trying to get everyone to work together because especially in situation of neighbors. Like, you always wanna be on good terms with your neighbors, you know? And so, that’s what can make these situations so hard is you both have property rights, but it’s also, it can be really difficult. Some people are like, I totally get it, like, go for it. And then other people might be like, no, absolutely not. And you’re like, well, just ’cause you’re saying absolutely not, I’m almost doing a favor by asking in some cases, you know? And so…

[00:53:30] Tripp Rich: Yeah.

[00:53:30] Tom Dosch: So I mean, you definitely did the right thing there, but that’s really interesting just to kind of see that play out firsthand, how that can play out, because we see that play out in our business for sure.

[00:53:41] Tripp Rich: Well, and just like to nip it in the bud too, we had that conversation afterwards. We went and talked in person and a lot of it was just explaining our side of the story. It was like, hey, we’re not trying to separate ourselves from you, but at the same time, it’s like, my family feel uncomfortable with all these other people looking into our property all the time when we’re hanging out with our family in the backyard. Once you kind of explain the side with reasoning and some logic and even some, maybe a little bit of emotion too, but mostly reasoning and logic, you’d be surprised when you just go talk to someone, sit down with them, talk face-to-face, it’s like you can kind of actually understand where each person’s coming from. And there’s usually either a happy medium or if they’re still not happy, they’re at least like, well, ‘Cause a lot of times it’s like, hey, put yourself in my shoes, right? And I know it’s vice versa, but a lot of it’s just, yeah, that communication of information I think is vital. We all just have to communicate more.

[00:54:38] Tom Dosch: Well, it’s interesting ’cause there’s times when city council gets put in pretty difficult situations where, like I said earlier, the staff does all the planning and they say like, this is the future plan. So then perfect developer comes in, puts together a plan, it aligns with what the city had said they wanted. And so your city council, you’re getting ready, you know, to go to city council that night, and there’s 150 people there to oppose it. And it’s like they’re there to oppose a project that actually fully aligns with what the city has said they want this to be. But it, so it’s gonna put you in a really tough situation ’cause you’re like, to what you said earlier, okay, this is good for the city ’cause the city has already decided this is good for the city. Yeah. But then it’s like, but is it good for the city because 150 people are against it? Yeah. And I’ve had this happen where we’ve seen some crazy things that shouldn’t have been so contentious, but like we’ve had clients walked out with a police escort because it got so rowdy. And we’re not talking about, I’m not talking about data centers. Like, I’m talking about like townhomes, you know? And like, you’re getting a police escort. We’ve had people get up and threaten clients. ‘Cause you can get up as a, you know, member of the community and you can speak against a project for like 3 minutes. They’ve threatened clients and they’ve been asked to leave with a police escort because they’re threatening like someone they don’t know. What’s sad is it’s like you’re threatening someone you don’t know that wants to maybe build. In that case, it was, you couldn’t believe it. They wanted to build single family. So it’s like they wanted to build single family, like nice single family.

[00:56:07] Tripp Rich: I’m bringing you more, you know? I’m bringing you more neighbors.

[00:56:10] Tom Dosch: Yeah, but you had someone that was so upset

[00:56:14] Tripp Rich: Yeah.

[00:56:14] Tom Dosch: That the mayor was like, okay, we’re gonna need you to leave and we need a police escort. And so, if you put yourself in a city council person’s shoes, to your point, like these happen, this happens a lot where, and it’s happening a lot right now with data centers, where I’ve seen some videos of just some of these city council meetings where, I mean, in some cases, it’s not an exaggeration where like you can get a little bit of like the mob rule where people are so upset and you would be, even if they’re not gonna do anything, like if you’re a city councilman, you could be nervous, you know, or city councilwoman, like kind of like your friend that was out, you know, in the boonies at that MUD meeting and you have really angry neighbors and they’re videoing you and they’re kind of, you know, saying mean things to her and all that. It’s like, how do you respond to that? Like you start to kind of worry about your own safety. And so that’s where it’s starting to get a little bit outta hand, you know, when, And we see that, like we definitely see that. Unfortunately, it can get very emotional, which is I think the word that you said she described earlier. Glad you weren’t there, right? That sounded a little crazy. Yeah, it’s sad. So I think kind of wrapping it up, ’cause we’ve been going a while, but this is fun. It’s interesting. We could just keep telling stories ’cause as we’re talking, I’m just thinking about zoning’s always the most stressful for I think everybody. I’m sure city council, the developer, The neighbors.

[00:57:33] Tripp Rich: I think it can be, but like, you know, we were dealing, we’re dealing with one right now in Bastrop. It was, you know, it was a 2-phase multi-site and obviously Elon’s, you know, putting Bastrop even more on the map and blowing up. They’ve got a Buc-ee’s, they’ve got all this retail. I mean, you know, long-term it’s great, you know, gonna be a great municipality. And, but yeah, apartment market turned here. And so these guys, you know, were like, hey, if we can get a certain number, we’ll sell, you know, we bring it to market, You know, we obviously are tracking retail and other development type or use types pretty closely. And it’s a really well located retail site. We ended up getting like, you know, 6 or 7 retail offers like really quick and, and they got really aggressive really fast. And so we ended up going to the group and, you know, speaking of going through these rezones, they had to rezone it to retail obviously. And I think we’re gonna get the rezone done like 75 days. Wow. Wow. And it’s incredible. Yeah. Because the city’s looking at it like they never wanted apartments in the first place. These guys kind of had to go fight tooth and nail to get it and kind of convince them. Well, now they’re about to get all this revenue. You know, retail’s really hot. They’re gonna lease up. It’s an incredible location. Road, like, access is great. It’s right next to a new Sprouts. You know, it’s gonna be awesome. And then the apartments in the back will be like, you know, half hidden by the retail, but it’ll still have access. And all those people can walk up to all that retail. And I don’t know, the city just gets it, you know? And I think it’s because the, the original developer and owner of the property has always overcommunicated and built a really good relationship with the city on the front end, you know, their original rezone. And they explain all of this with like logic and reasoning and how it’s beneficial. And yeah, it’s like Bastrop, great. And it’s probably like, probably case in point as to why Elon’s in Bastrop because they’ve been so easy to deal with.

[00:59:16] Tom Dosch: Yeah.

[00:59:16] Tripp Rich: And naturally they’re seeing a ton of growth for a town that’s so small. 

[00:59:20] Tom Dosch: Well, I think maybe where we should finish up is politics can either create or they can erase a ton of value. I mean, and, and we haven’t really talked about this, but because we so often are representing, a lot of times it’s a family that tends to be like trying to, that they’re a part of a big rezone. ‘Cause like they’re zoned a lot of times just some like lower density zoning, like agriculture or single family. And they’ve been there a long time. And so there’s been families where they’ve owned these properties for years and now they’re finally in a position where they’re like, you know, maybe the parents have passed away, the kids can’t keep the property anymore, they need to sell this, or this is retirement. Like, this is it, this is retirement. And, you know, and it, and again, it like, it’s the situation where 100 people show up opposing it, but it aligns with what the city said and it’s been denied. And it’s so crushing. For, you know, everyone goes out celebrating that opposed it. But for that landowner, it was like this was their retirement. This was 50 years. I’ve had,  we’ve had this happen. 50 years of owning a property. This was their retirement. They had,  it wasn’t, it wasn’t an unreasonable use. It aligned with what the city, but politics got in the way and the city shoots it down. And then, you know, this family is kind of like trying to recover. Like they had,  they were making other plans. Like, again, this is their retirement. And so that’s really the sad side of it from a political standpoint. And again, it’s bad for the city. So a site that sits there, as you know, on the tax rolls at $500 grand, that could be on the tax rolls for $50 million, like the taxable revenue to the city is massive. Jobs, depending on what it is, if it’s retail, if it’s commercial, if it’s office industrial, that’s jobs. Even Jobs and tax revenue.

 [01:01:01] Tripp Rich: Yeah. From, you know, like what’s being sold in those retail sites. I mean, it’s  wild.

 [01:01:07]Tom Dosch: And I had a city that even with apartments was like, ’cause apartments is, it’s the other 4-letter word that we are always hearing, you know, that’s like apartments, apartments, apartments. But I had a city say, they’re like, we’ve made a mistake not approving more apartments because they’ve all gone down the street. And they’re like, we’re actually losing residents because they’re looking for nice apartment complexes and we don’t have ’em because we haven’t approved any. And I was like, wow, that’s awesome.

[01:01:33] Tripp Rich: Well, yeah, and that’s another, you know, call it, you know, depending on the unit mix, but it’s like, call it 400 to 600 people that are now living in your town. And guess what? They’re spending money at your restaurants and your retail centers, and they’re going, they’re putting their kids in your schools, you know? And then, and then to your point, yeah, that property, that 13 acres was, you know, assessed value $500 grand. Well, now it’s assessed at $70 million.

[01:02:01] Tom Dosch: Yeah.

[01:02:02] Tripp Rich: So,

[01:02:03] Tom Dosch: well, and I think

[01:02:04] Tripp Rich: That’s a good spot.

[01:02:04] Tom Dosch: When we’re helping a landowner, I think we’re always thinking about, you know, they’re saying, you know, I got an offer for $15 million, right? But then the first question we’re always asking is, what were they gonna do with the property? ‘Cause a lot of times it’s like, I got an offer for $15 million, this is what they’re gonna do. And we’re like, no way that ever gets approved. There’s just some cities where like there’s no way. And unfortunately, like the city itself has eroded the value. If you were in this other city, that would approve it, kind of your Bastrop example, it’s like $15 million probably all day. But because you’re not, it’s like, let’s talk about what would get approved. Okay, $10 million. Like this other, this other, this can get approved, $10 million. And so it’s helping landowners. It’s funny, our business is so simple, I feel like, with land, but then it’s also not simple because of all that we’re talking about. You’re having to underwrite all these different political risks. Like what’s staff gonna say? What’s council gonna say? And also, like, is the mayor in his last term? What’s the new mayor? Is he pro-development? Is it, we’ve had so many where we’ve been told by a zoning consultant, like, hey, don’t go submit before elections. 

[01:03:08] Tripp Rich: Right.

[01:03:08] Tom Dosch: Or get it in now. Like, get it in now. Yeah, that’s the same. If you don’t get it in now. Just get it in now. Yeah, it’s like, hit it now or wait, you know? And it’s like, there’s,  it’s crazy because it’s sad that it’s like that. Where it’s like a city. We’ve also seen cities where they’re, they’re one way and then they get a new city staff person and they flip immediately. And, and what’s hard, I think it’s just hard for the landowner. ‘Cause again, the landowner is like, they think they have something of value and they do. But if politics gets involved in the wrong way, a lot of that value could be eroded. So.

[01:03:43] Tripp Rich: Yeah.

[01:03:44] Tom Dosch: Call Tripp or I if you have a property and you want us to tell you what the value is, what could get approved on it. And we can walk you through all the fun ins and outs of what we’re talking about. But Tripp, thanks for joining this morning. This was,  I didn’t know that we’d go like an hour on this, but this was interesting and fun to talk about. I love all the stories you always bring. There’s a ton of stuff we work on that we can’t just talk about on the podcast, unfortunately. But this was fun.

[01:04:08] Tripp Rich: Thanks for joining. But I appreciate it, man. Thanks for having me on here.

 [01:04:09] Tom Dosch: Yeah.

[01:04:10] Tripp Rich: It’s been fun.

[01:04:11] Tom Dosch: To our audience, please subscribe to our channel, Apple Podcasts if you listen there, Spotify, Go to our YouTube channel. Also, if you could leave us a review, a 5-star review wherever you listen, that’s big. We really appreciate your support and we love hearing that you are listening. So send us questions you want us to answer on the podcast. Those have been some of the more fun episodes for us, just getting to answer questions from our audience. Thanks, Tripp.

 [01:04:34] Tripp Rich: Thanks, man.

[01:04:40] Outro: Thank you for listening to our podcast today. If you have questions about land you own in Texas, send us an email at texaslandguys@dmre.com and follow us on LinkedIn to stay updated.