Dave:
New construction is reshaping how deals are getting done and it’s changing where the numbers actually work. It’s sort of crazy, but right now, on average, a newly built home in the US is cheaper than an existing home, making this a uniquely attractive investment. Right now, I’m Dave Meyer and today on the Market I’m joined by Doug Brien to dig into when new builds beat existing homes, how institutional investors are actually behaving and what you can learn from them and how to negotiate with builders to land a great deal on a newly constructed home. This is on the market. Let’s get into it. Doug. Brien, welcome to On the Market. Thanks so much for being here.
Doug:
Thank you. Good to be you Dave.
Dave:
I’m excited to have you on. We’ve been talking a lot about new construction sort of theoretically on the show the last couple of months, but I’m really eager to have you on since you have so much personal experience with this. But before we jump into the topic, maybe you could just introduce yourself to our audience and explain your background in real estate.
Doug:
Yeah. I am currently the CEO of Roofstock. The company that I founded in 2016 was called Mind. We were more focused on property management. Roofstock was more focused on transaction activities. We just merged about a year and a half ago, so really the same company for about the last nine years. Prior to that, I founded a company called Waypoint Homes back in 2008, wrote a book about it called The Big Long If you want to learn more, we bought 17,000 houses between 2008 and 2016 and created a public REIT called Starwood Waypoint. And then prior to that I spent 12 years in the NFL as a place kicker, which interestingly was kind of my foray into real estate. I was trying to make sure that I was being smart, having that great opportunity and wanted to invest the money as wisely as I could and did a bunch of research and ended up figuring out that real estate was by far the most interesting…