Mortgage Motivation
Mortgage & Motivation advice that you can use in your life!
Mortgage Motivation
Unlocking the Secrets of Custom Home Building and Exploring the Real Estate Market with Cody from District South Real Estate
Unlock the secrets to successfully building a custom home with Cody, our esteemed guest from District South Real Estate. Cody's seasoned know-how and his association with the McLain Companies unravels the intricate journey of creating a dream home. From securing an ideal location to collaborating with a proficient architect, Cody guides us through every little detail. And guess what? You can now get your hands on the delectable honey and seasonings from the renowned MarketEats restaurant!
We're also diving deep into the world of real estate, spotlighting a new enchanting development in Magnolia Trace. Hear a local builder spill the beans on his experiences and expertise in the field. We debate the pros and cons of the current real estate market, including potential lower interest rates and the art of balancing construction costs. And if you're keen on expansion stories, Cody's successful extension of MarketEats Broussard to two new locations, with a third one possibly on the way, will surely inspire you. For queries, don't hesitate to touch base with Cody. This episode is truly a treasure trove of insightful information for anyone interested in real estate, home construction, or the food business. Tune in!
For more on Cody:
https://www.districtsouthre.com/agents/cody-musgrove/
For more on Mimi + GMFS:
https://gmfsmortgage.com/branch/lafayette/
Welcome to this episode of Margage Motivation. I'm excited to have Cody back with us today. How are you today, Cody?
Speaker 2:I'm back. I'm back. I'm excited to be back.
Speaker 1:Yeah, you know, the end of the year is wrapping up it is.
Speaker 2:It is. I'm glad we're there. I'm glad we're there. Yeah, it was a little challenging this year it was challenging this year, yeah, but I saw some news this morning. Maybe we'll have some good news going around the first of the year, so we're entering a new era. That's what the kids like to say.
Speaker 1:Definitely are. You know we had a great CPI report that came out this morning so we saw some movement in the rates. I know it was exciting for us. You know a little movement is a lot of excitement. So we do see the light. I feel like the light is at the end of the tunnel.
Speaker 2:I can walk toward it. Walk, do as I say Walk toward the light, walk toward the light.
Speaker 1:I feel like we're getting there. But to properly introduce you, agent with District South, a real brokerage, new to the area, new name, but definitely not a new face, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, new name, old face. I've been around. Most people don't know I actually got my license in 2006, kind of back in the Stone Age. I was actually with Vanity and Romero. That was when they saw the MLS book. It was right when they were changing over to computers. I remember Richard Tanner, our trainer. He took me in. He's like this is our brand new computer lab and you can get online and go in the MLS and look things up. That way I was like, oh, it's cutting edge. Now we don't have to use the book anymore.
Speaker 1:Oh, that's awesome so.
Speaker 2:I've actually been around kind of a while. I worked in radio for a little while and things like that, and I came back full time in 2013. So I'm at a decade right now. I'm hitting a decade. I'm doing pretty good.
Speaker 1:Well, I'm grateful to have you and grateful to know you and absolutely love your mother. Thank you. I mean she's just one of the sweetest things and Brian and Sylvia are the owners of McLean companies, which does a variety of different things but really known for their custom builds right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we're still primarily known as a custom home builder here in town. Brian's diversified. Recently he's done single family rentals, a few of those neighborhoods here that he's sold off to some national companies and he's doing a few more in Texas and then a lot of people know us now from MarketEats. That's a big project that Brian has going on.
Speaker 1:Let's talk about MarketEats. What are my favorite places to go? Absolutely love it. So what's new on the menu?
Speaker 2:So they're actually getting ready to start changing things up and they're doing like a catering a brand new catering menu and he's got the second location that opened in Broussard about five months ago that they're trying to get up and rolling off the ground. It's doing pretty good. So that's going on. So he's trying to scout to figure out where he's going to put the next one. We're not really sure yet, but that's doing pretty good. That's always been a dream of his. I know he had a restaurant in the 90s that didn't make it. So I know that's always been kind of eating at the back of his mind with like I got. He doesn't like to fail. So he wanted to go back and have another shot at it, and this one's as of right now. It's doing good.
Speaker 1:Well, you let him know that his sweet potato fries are making him famous.
Speaker 2:Okay, I'll let him know. Those are my favorite, but they make me sleepy.
Speaker 1:Today I was at a meeting and MarketEats came up and I was informed that you can actually buy the honey there and take it home with you.
Speaker 2:So, yep, you can buy the hot honey, and they sell like a truffle honey too that you can get, and he's also got some seasoning that you can buy, and I've had the seasonings also, so they're wonderful.
Speaker 1:But let's talk a little bit about business, because you know just tracking by for me once again. Cajun, cajun culture, the food takes us away. So on the custom bills, you want to kind of go through the process of how do you guys, um and McLean companies like what, if someone's interested in building with you guys, where would they store it?
Speaker 2:Sure. Well, the first thing that's the most important thing to figure out, is where you want to build. I get a lot of people that call me that want to do a custom build and ask them where are you thinking about doing it? And they don't have an answer.
Speaker 1:So that's where you come in and find them property yeah.
Speaker 2:So we got to work with you. Okay, well, you got to buy a lot first. You got to find out where you want to be. You got to figure out how big it is, because if you want to house, you got to know how big a space you have to build on. And usually what I'll do is I'll take a like a just introductory preliminary meeting with them. You know, if they have an agent, bring their agent in and we'll just we'll just hash it out, we'll sit there and chop it up and see what they want to spend, where they want to be, when they want to be there. And you know, if everything kind of fits together, we'll move forward.
Speaker 1:we'll find them a plan, we'll pair them up and you'll have several plans in house already or you'll work with a certain architect.
Speaker 2:We have some plans in house, like if somebody saw one of our houses that we built, we would you know just customize it.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we would just use that plan. They would have to get with the architect to. You know you have to license plans and things like that. But a lot of times is we have three or four architects that we've worked with in the past and, depending on what kind of style they want, we'll send them to that architect and they'll meet and pick a plan out and they'll purchase it or license it and then send it back to us. We'll bid it. It takes about 30 to 45 days depending on the size of the house, and after that we'll get started. That's really the hardest part is getting all the details hashed out, getting your square footage hashed out, getting your lot cost.
Speaker 2:You have to have a certain percentage of lot cost in relation to the entire job to make sure that you can afford the actual structure. There's a lot of math that goes on. We do all the math for you, but it does have to fit and that's usually the hardest part and the most stressful part. After that, when you sign on the dotted line, it's way easier.
Speaker 1:Right, but you know what? Custom building's not for everyone. But some people still want a newly constructed home. But they do not want to go through the process of making all those decisions. They just want to walk in to a house that's already done, smells new and ready to move in, and I think you guys have can accommodate for that also, right.
Speaker 2:Yeah, we can. A lot of it depends on when you catch us, depending on what we have, but we have three neighborhoods right now that are kind of in the Youngsville Bruce Art area that have finished products in them. Anywhere from half a million down to 235 is our cheapest house. That's a 3-2.
Speaker 1:It's a great home. Yeah, it's a starter home.
Speaker 2:It's a starter home and I actually lived in one for a little while when I was building my new house that I'm in now.
Speaker 1:We rented one and we, that's OK, you're a busy man.
Speaker 2:No, it's well. I don't like the sound of that. We lived in one and it was super comfortable. You know, we were able to fit all of our stuff in Not all of my stuff, because I have a lot of toys. I'm a musician, I have drum sets and amps and things like that.
Speaker 1:So you have a music room in the new house. I do?
Speaker 2:I have a music room above the garage. I'm actually running out of space so I'm going to need to do something else, but we lived in it super comfortably. It's a great, great starter home and those things are already built. But we can do some customization. We can pretty much do whatever the client wants to do and however involved they want to be.
Speaker 1:Or as however little they want to be Exactly so.
Speaker 2:If they only want to pick paint colors and they only want to pick some tile, they can do that. We can pick everything else. If they want to pick everything, we will give you a schedule of when you need to have it picked and what your budgets are on each item, and they can pick everything.
Speaker 1:You know it's not an all or nothing. You do have some homes listed, though, that they can just walk in and purchase from.
Speaker 2:Oh yeah, right then, and there, absolutely yeah.
Speaker 1:And what neighborhoods are those?
Speaker 2:So we have Magnolia Trace, which is on Highway 92 by Kidd Anna Bottling. We've done two St Jude houses in there, and one this coming year will be in there too, so it'll be a total of three.
Speaker 1:Talking about St Jude, I want to say thank you and please relay the message. I know Brian has a very special place in his heart for St Jude and you and your family has dedicated so many. How many years have you all been doing that?
Speaker 2:We've been doing it since 2010. Brian donated a lot in 2009 in Vintage Park and then the year after that they needed a new builder, so Brian just took the whole project. So we've been doing it 13 years.
Speaker 1:Wow, did y'all ever calculate over the years how much have y'all donated to that? I'm sure?
Speaker 2:Brian knows I know that our max contribution one year was $1.8 million, but that was the lady that won the house, lived in New Orleans and she donated the house back. So we had $1.2 million in ticket sales and then the house was worth like $600, so we were able to do that. But last year was our second most. We did $1.6 million last year and that was just through ticket sales and fundraising to pay down the balance of the house and we actually we raised too many funds. We had extra so we sent that along too.
Speaker 1:And I think the new home is going to be where it is going to be the Slabs.
Speaker 2:Port. It's going to be the Slabs Port. Yeah, Slabs Port is going to be in Magnolia Trace this year.
Speaker 1:And when will the tickets go on sale for that?
Speaker 2:Tickets usually go on sale in the spring time. It varies year to year, but we make announcements through all of our radio partners and all the television partners and will you come back when? It's time for that, absolutely, absolutely. I'll come back.
Speaker 1:You don't realize how much St Jude can help the families until you actually need them. So please don't wait till you need them. Just such a wonderful organization. When they do, we'll have you back so we can get it out to the public to get their ticket to donate and anyway you can help that association and I want to say thank you to you and your family. For 13 years that's just unbelievable in millions of dollars. That has helped several children. So let's recap on everything we talked about today. One agent, all right with real.
Speaker 2:So Agent with real yeah.
Speaker 1:If you're not looking to build or buy something newly constructed, can you find them a house?
Speaker 2:I can still. I have a lot of value other than just doing McLean home stuff. I can still find a house, list their house. I can still list your house Primarily a listing agent, but I do have buyers from time to time. My deal is being so experienced with new construction. I would say that if you're coming into the market and you're looking for a new house, find an agent that has new construction experience. There's a lot of them in town that even if they've been doing this for 15, 20 years, a lot of them don't have very much new construction experience. It's almost kind of its own thing. It's not quite its own thing like commercial versus residential, but it's a totally different animal.
Speaker 1:It is because I feel it on the lending side, because I love new construction, specialized in new construction lending it's a big part. I don't wanna say it's all in my business. It's a really big part of my business and it's almost a niche.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's important that your representation knows the process of construction. He needs to know, he or she needs to know how long things take.
Speaker 1:Realistic expectations for your family.
Speaker 2:They need to know how to do punch lists and know where to look for things, know how to talk to builders. Builders are unique creatures, so you need to be able to communicate with them in a way that they know how, when you have representation like that, they might be able to get you more things than someone who's inexperienced, because you need to know the right questions to ask.
Speaker 1:And you don't know what. You don't know right.
Speaker 2:That's right. You don't know what you don't know. Look, I have plenty of things that I don't know. Just ask my wife. But you know, when you're doing something like that, it is an inch and you need somebody that has some experience in it.
Speaker 1:So I know we're in a different world today. Things have changed a little bit on the real estate side and on the lending side, so I feel like you know we're involving. What are some of the challenges and benefits that you see us moving into the new year in real estate.
Speaker 2:Well, the first thing is hopefully we'll have some lower rates.
Speaker 1:Well, CPI report came the bond. It looked great today, you know, so it's definitely moving in the right direction.
Speaker 2:That would be huge. I think you know construction costs have started to come down since the market has gotten slow. We had at the beginning of this year and a little bit last year we had, you know, as all things have had, we had some inflation and the cost of new construction went up. But that's starting to even out. Now Lumber is back to unnormal, what we consider to be normal. So you're going to see kind of new construction pricing balance out it already has some, but you're going to see it balance out even more. I think that you know the cost of new construction is going to come down a little bit. You know we need to be more competitive and right now what you're seeing is you know everybody's probably seen emails and advertisements of builders offering, you know, buy downs and things like that. As a small local builder, you know we don't have the same kind of financial power that somebody like DSLD or DR Horton does.
Speaker 1:You know those are national companies, but you're not getting the same product.
Speaker 2:Well, you're not getting the same product. But you know we're also a locally owned family company. So you know, while they can offer things such as buy downs and things like that which we can too, but not to that degree what we are that they're not as flexible. So we can offer, you know, some closing costs. We can offer a little bit of buy down. We can offer, you know, blinds in the house if you need some help with an appliance or things like that. We're not rigid like those companies are. You know they have stockholders to answer to and they have a system and they have lawyers that look at here's what we can offer and here's what our CPA says. We don't have that. We're a little more flexible and you know it's the benefit of knowing your builder. You know you can go out on the job site and if there's an issue you call the actual people that own the company.
Speaker 2:We are a family business. I represent the company on the real estate side. You know my brother, my two brothers, actually are project managers. Parents own the company, so we're all in it together so you don't have differing interests and things like that. Like we don't punch a eight to five clock. You know we're not on salary. We're all invested in the company doing well. So because of that, we want to make our clients as happy as possible, because when we have a happy client, they tell their friends that they're happy and their friends call us. So it's in our benefit to, you know, make the house as great as possible. So, like we want everyone to sing our praises.
Speaker 2:You know we don't want to. You know we want to make sure that your punch list gets done. We want to make sure that you get good customer service on the back end. We want to make sure that our office is easy to talk to and get in touch with. So that's sort of the benefit you get with a local builder. And we've been around for 20 years, so we ain't going anywhere. We will be here.
Speaker 1:You will be there when it times for the warranty and the things that need to be taken care of right, that's right and that's really, really important. So our local trusted builder McLean and real estate agent, mr Cody Musgrove, yeah, I got it right.
Speaker 2:You got it right, you got it right.
Speaker 1:You know, as long as we've worked together.
Speaker 2:It's not Cajun, so I understand why it's a little weird.
Speaker 1:Yeah, but how do we get in touch with you?
Speaker 2:I'm all over the place. I have social media all over the place. I have a website, but my phone number 337-962-4296,. You can get in touch with me that way. Find me online, you can send me an Instagram.
Speaker 1:I just got to Google right Just got to Google.
Speaker 2:My Instagram is just my name, Cody Musgrove. It's super easy to find. We have a business Facebook page. I guess the only thing I don't have is smoke signals or an AM radio.
Speaker 1:And we could put them out if we need to right.
Speaker 2:Yeah well, it's raining today, so it won't work too well.
Speaker 1:Yeah Well, I just want to thank you for all the years of working and I have to tell you, on the construction side, lending portion, our clients are always satisfied when they work with you guys. So, if you're interested in building or buying a home that's already built, or selling your existing home or eating a good meal, we can definitely really.
Speaker 2:We can build your house and feed you.
Speaker 1:And feed you all at the same time? Anything.
Speaker 2:Yeah. So one of the things I do want to say I get this question a lot and some people are confused by it and I just want to point it out. We can build anywhere. A lot of people think, because we're a developer and we have our own subdivisions and all that, that we stay in there. That's not the case at all. We can build. If you own a lot somewhere, you don't even have to be in a neighborhood. It can be out in the country, it can be just within driving, reasonable driving distance. We can build anywhere. So if you own a lot in I don't know, sugumopan, or if you own a lot in a river ranch or Stonehater or whatever and you want to look at us In charge.
Speaker 1:point of a million.
Speaker 2:Or in charge point. We did want a home at one time, so we're around, we can build anywhere that you have a lot. We're not just confined to our subdivisions. We'd like for you to live in our subdivisions, but if you don't want to, we can build a McLean home anywhere.
Speaker 1:And y'all have a beautiful brand. So thecleanhomescom for more information.
Speaker 2:Yeah, it's actually we changed it. It's McLeancompaniescom and you can go to the MarketEats website from there. We have landing pages for all of our subdivisions, not just the ones that are active, but our historical ones as well. So if you wanted to go see what, like Vintage Park was about back in the day, you can go and find that landing page and see what we did in there. Every subdivision we've ever done is on there.
Speaker 1:So you have tons of product that they can see before you get started, whether you want to build on your lot, buy a home that's already built. And, of course, please visit the two new locations of MarketEats Broussard and.
Speaker 2:So yeah, with MarketEats Broussard, which is at the Patrick Williamson roundabout, kind of off of Fairfield, and then we have the original location in Lafayette, which is off of E Broussard Road, by the bridge On kind of. There's an entrance to Grand Point right there. You can find it. But you know, we have two locations, probably a third in the near future. I do have inside info on that but I don't think I can Reveal it at this time.
Speaker 1:I don't think I can reveal it just yet.
Speaker 2:It's still being worked on, but yeah, they are. They're slowly expanding.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you so much for joining us and we're looking forward to working with you in 2024. If you don't get the smoke signal on reaching out to Cody, please give us a call here at GMFS and we will definitely connect you with him or one of the representatives at McLean's. But please, you can Google Cody.
Speaker 2:But only me, only call me, only call Cody, just call me.
Speaker 1:We're going to take care of you. Thank you so much.