Real Estate Development Design Tips: Permits, Construction Costs, and Housing Trends with Andrew Goodwin

Andrew C Goodwin (00:00)

Yeah, this is great. And it’s going to be completely contrary to what most people think or what most people want to hear. But slow and steady wins the race. If you can think about things a little bit more in depth during design and get all of the potential threats and issues and risks taken care of during design before you even get into construction documents and permits, you can actually solve a lot of the ⁓

the budget overruns that we see in our world, right? ⁓ What ends up happening is if you try to make a decision or a change while the building’s under construction, it costs 10 times sometimes the cost of what it would have been if you’d done it in concept design.

Scott Bursey (02:14)

Welcome back to the Real Estate Pros podcast powered by Investor Fuel. I’m your host, Scott Bursey And today we are injecting some serious design fuel into your real estate strategy. We’re talking about projects that don’t just get built, but that truly elevate a community from high-end residential to massive civic structures. Our guest today is the visionary behind Andrew Goodwin Design, a firm that’s laying the architectural foundation for the future.

Andrew C Goodwin (02:14)

Thank

Scott Bursey (02:42)

of the Western United States across residential, commercial, civic, and educational sectors. Andrew is a master at translating vision into physical, profitable assets. Andrew, welcome to the show.

Andrew C Goodwin (02:54)

Hey, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

Scott Bursey (02:56)

It

is just outstanding having you here. And for our listeners who may not be familiar with your journey, please give us the front row seat and how your career ignited and where are you applying your fuel now?

Andrew C Goodwin (03:10)

Awesome, thank you. Well, I’ll try to give you the short story behind it all. ⁓ So I’m an architect in San Luis Obispo, California. I actually went to university here at Cal Poly in San Luis Obispo, California. I’m originally a Midwest boy, moved to California, graduated in the recession and ended up staying in California just trying to make ends meet. ⁓

After a couple of companies that I had started, I decided to sell a design build development firm back to my partners and went out on my own and launched what is Andrew Goodland Designs or AGD for short. ⁓ We’ve been around for about 11 years and we work in San Luis Obispo in the Central Valley out of an office in Porterville in Davis, California. And we just recently ⁓ opened up a small office in Steamboat Springs, Colorado. We’re licensed.

all around the Western United States and have done a lot of projects around the West, but also in Texas and Virginia and some other places on the East Coast as well. ⁓ But yeah, I got my start within architecture in the civic arena. I actually worked for quite a while doing even governmental projects. I worked for the Navy and did some other projects for design build companies before really locking into

Residential work is my main pipeline and my main ethos behind my work. ⁓ I studied and did a lot of research after graduation in affordable housing and I translated that into a working career at Cal Poly, my old university, ⁓ as a professor as well. So I teach there and my expertise has always been housing for people that are at risk and bringing that back into the classroom as well.

Scott Bursey (05:45)

That is

so noble and that journey is so incredible. You know, Andrew, what really caught my attention about you was the way that you’ve been able to successfully master and blend four distinct disciplines and execute massive impactful projects across the complex regulatory landscape of the Western United States and beyond really. That ability to manage diverse stakeholders and deliver world-class design is pure fire.

Andrew C Goodwin (05:50)

Thank you.

Yeah, I mean, it’s been a gift to have those different studios, but it was intentional. ⁓ The main purpose behind our setup was not only to invigorate each other by having these four studios that were our core competency, but also to be economically diverse just in case of a downturn. You know, I lived through the recession in 2008 and I saw what happened. And so when I first started AGD, I went back to my roots in Civic.

and knew that I had a core competency on how to deal with bigger projects, but I also had an empathy for my clients and I brought that from my residential typologies. And so between that and all the things in between, we’ve been able to create a very dynamic, hospitable environment for any client to come to, almost any client, and we value people, not the projects, right? We want to make sure that the people behind our projects are satisfied.

and all of those core competencies or all those studios, really use that as our message first.

Scott Bursey (07:14)

Having that empathy and deep understanding of your clients is so critical, yet it’s not the easiest thing to do.

Andrew C Goodwin (07:24)

Yeah, that’s true. I actually joke a lot that with my residential clients, ⁓ you know, I feel like I’m a therapist. A lot of times I’m dealing with little controversies between partners or husbands and wives and family members trying to figure out the best way to design space for living. We like to say it’s, ⁓ you know, we’re here to be stewards to our clients, but we’re also here to create transformative spaces for living. And how do you do that when people disagree? So

⁓ That’s a really, really important thing to have is empathy first. Listen first, act after.

Scott Bursey (07:59)

Andrew, let’s jump right into the lightning round. This is designed to give our pros a high level view of your market and your unique process. In your view, what is the biggest advantage of approaching a project with a multi-sector design lens?

Andrew C Goodwin (08:17)

Yeah, I would say the best way to look at this is if we are working on a very technical project in a residential, custom residential project, and we want to get innovative, we want to use a fire resistant product on the outside, or we want to use a more commercial, durable, prefabricated system, we can turn around and grab our architects and our designers from a civic or a commercial team that’s been doing that all day long and have them charrette side by side with our team members.

to provide an innovative approach that otherwise may not have been thought of. And that’s really just to bring all the people together that need to be heard on that team to do good to them.

Scott Bursey (08:56)

Thinking outside the box, absolutely. And let’s shift gears totally. What aspect of design or construction compliance in the Western U.S. is the biggest drain on a project’s timeline?

Andrew C Goodwin (09:09)

Yeah, right now in California, the biggest drain on our timeline and the biggest suck financially for our office is going through plan checks and planning entitlements. ⁓ We have never in my life, 20 years of doing this, seen as much regulation as what we’ve seen now. And it’s hard to educate a client on. It’s very, very important to know that though you might be submitting for building permits or a planning application, you might not see comments back for six months.

And it’s just because it’s taxing to get through all the different players that have to say something on your project. ⁓ And right now, unfortunately, I would say this is a problem from the COVID pandemic, actually, not even the recession, COVID pandemic. We lost a lot of very, very important people in our building departments that decided to retire early. And we have a lot of…

green people coming into our building apartments. We have lot of outsourcing and that creates even more problems with people that are either inexperienced or have to put together a checklist to show that they’re doing more.

Scott Bursey (10:14)

You know, navigating through local and state nuances effectively is difficult, but it separates the average players from the pros.

Andrew C Goodwin (10:15)

you

Yeah, and I would even say that it separates the drafters from the architects. Because in the state of California, you could hire a drafter to design your custom home. But the architect probably has a greater understanding, hopefully has a greater understanding of the regulations, the people they need to talk to, the codes they need to think about, the innovation that they have to go through just to get the project approved, not even built.

Scott Bursey (11:24)

Great point. Where do you see the biggest opportunity right now?

Andrew C Goodwin (11:25)

Thank

You know, there’s a really great opportunity in the state of California for looking outside the box when it comes to residential infill, the missing middle, as we call it. ⁓ There’s a lot of regulation that’s gone through that has provided opportunities for single family home, ⁓ single family zoning to be up zoned. And a lot of cities have to do it anyway, ⁓ because they may not be able to keep up with their own RENA numbers. So ⁓ if you do it right, and if you approach it right,

biggest opportunity in development world and in our world for construction is to think about higher density housing, mixed use development housing, converting commercial buildings into housing, because all of it is becoming possible through regulation.

Scott Bursey (12:14)

It really is. And one has to stay up on that. What is the biggest cost risk when taking on large scale civic or educational projects?

Andrew C Goodwin (12:24)

Yeah, right now the biggest cost risk or the biggest problem is the schedule. So most people don’t really realize that scheduling a project has two different sides to it. One is, yeah, the schedule of the construction to be processed, but also kind of the construction risk that’s available. So the longer the project takes or the more ⁓ involved it gets, the more risk the contractor and the client has to take on from a

legal or liability standpoint from insurance, but also prevailing wages have to be continued. So the longer that project is, the more expensive it’s going to get in the long

Scott Bursey (13:04)

I appreciate you highlighting that. When designing a mixed use project, what is the fastest way to resolve style conflicts between the commercial and residential tenants?

Andrew C Goodwin (13:14)

Yeah, there’s always going to be kind of a bumping of heads between the two. I think that a lot of times we design these as podium structures. When you look at the urban fabric of the world, even going back to ancient Rome, you see that the first floor always had a different facade to try to treat it as a different object. And as you look at the podium structures that we’ve created, you start to see that they’ve been fireproofed accordingly to the code. They’ve got height.

for mechanical and other things according to the code, but they also look different. So if you can efficiently create these different objects when it comes to mixed use housing ⁓ and mixed use projects in general, you can solve a lot of the code issues. You can solve a lot of buildability issues, but you can 100 % solve the aesthetic differences that you get from the different tenants.

Scott Bursey (14:07)

How is being unique moving

the needle for your business?

Andrew C Goodwin (14:11)

Right now we’re doing a lot of things I think outside the box. We’ve partnered with lot of innovative ⁓ prefab companies and actually for the past decade or more we’ve ⁓ been on the cutting edge of it. Right now we’re working as an architect for a couple of shipping container companies, prefab companies, SIP manufacturing companies, creating innovative housing typologies for the coming future.

⁓ And I think that’s kind of a great advantage for us, but it’s also a great advantage for the world. If the more that we experiment in these typologies, hopefully the more they get used, the faster housing production comes up, the faster mixed use development gets in place. We start looking at urban fabric changing to more of a walkable community. Those things become really, really important. So we’re seeing that if you can engage the prefab or the component systems in your design.

you’re going to be taking advantage of a lot of great aspects of our work.

Scott Bursey (15:08)

I love your macro

perspective there, Andrew. You you’ve worked on massive projects across multiple asset classes. If you could give our listeners the best advice on, let’s say the strategy or insight you wish every pro knew about design, you know, and how it directly influences valuation and long-term asset performances, what would it be?

Andrew C Goodwin (16:12)

Yeah, this is great. And it’s going to be completely contrary to what most people think or what most people want to hear. But slow and steady wins the race. If you can think about things a little bit more in depth during design and get all of the potential threats and issues and risks taken care of during design before you even get into construction documents and permits, you can actually solve a lot of the ⁓

the budget overruns that we see in our world, right? ⁓ What ends up happening is if you try to make a decision or a change while the building’s under construction, it costs 10 times sometimes the cost of what it would have been if you’d done it in concept design.

If we do it on paper, it’s a lot cheaper than doing it in wood and steel. So I want to impress upon this fact that if you can slow down, which is really hard to do in our world today,

and spend the energy and time with it, a good architect, a good engineer, a good planner, and get all those issues figured out with the contractors, you’re going to save yourself time and money day after day.

Scott Bursey (17:17)

You’re clearly staying ahead of the curve with that perspective and definitely playing the long game. You know, Andrew, you’ve given us so much really good concrete advice here today, but is there any golden nuggets or any additional words of wisdom that you could leave with our listeners?

Andrew C Goodwin (17:34)

Yeah, I would say going back to one of my earlier points, I think the world in our industry just needs a lot more empathy. I think the fact that people are too fast to make money and disregard the end user, which is oftentimes not our client, it’s somebody else in the future. ⁓ If they were to spend the time to think about what it would be like in their shoes, what do they need? What makes them

smile, bring joy to their life, what brings them dignity, right? Somebody that is feeling the dignity of a space is going to take care of it. So if I think back on all these ideas that I’ve gone through in my life, the biggest thing I’ve come away with is empathy is what has grown my business. It’s grown my ability to understand my clients, but it’s also taken care of those people in the long run. And ultimately we are a customer service provider.

You know, we have an engagement that we’re providing a product at the end of the day, but it’s a service. So if you can’t take time and understand the people you’re serving, what’s the point?

Scott Bursey (18:40)

That is a great, great point. What is the point if you cannot serve your clients? And that’s the approach that you take. And it’s been a great approach.

Andrew C Goodwin (18:50)

Thank you.

Scott Bursey (18:52)

Andrew, your insights are really gold. For those of our listeners that want to follow your journey or collaborate with you, what is the best way for them to reach you?

Andrew C Goodwin (19:02)

Yeah, right now you can go to our website at www.andrewgoodwin.us You can follow us on Instagram @agooddesign ⁓ We have a TikTok. have ⁓ all kinds of different ways to follow us and see the journey, but those two platforms can connect us directly. We encourage everybody just to listen along, be supportive, help us out when we need a hand. But I would love it if you guys ⁓

took a look and gave us your insight.

Scott Bursey (19:34)

And I, for one, definitely will be taking a look. Andrew, thank you for joining us today.

Andrew C Goodwin (19:39)

Thank you for having me.

Scott Bursey (19:40)

And to our listeners, we appreciate each and every one of you. If you got value from today’s episode, please subscribe. We’ve got a lineup of exceptional guests, just like Andrew Goodwin, who are making huge moves in the market. Until next time, keep your standards high and your vision clear. We’ll see you in the next episode, everyone.