3/27/23 Dallas Mastermind Group Meeting Copy

Dallas March 2023 Key Take Aways!

Kimber Davison, Vice President & Managing Shareholder at Griffith Davison

Guest Speaker Phil Crone, Executive Officer, and Housing Advocate with Dallas Builders Association, shared the following:
• The Dallas Builders Association currently has 1,300 members which includes 500 builders and 800 various suppliers, subcontractors, and others in the home building community.
• Once Covid began and everyone realized it wasn’t going anywhere anytime soon, Dallas became a haven for people both outside of Texas and in other areas of Texas. Therefore, the Dallas Chamber of Commerce is predicting that another 600,000 people are expected to move to the Dallas area over the next five years.
• The Dallas market was defined as “a great place to do business and affordable to live with great communities” but now “it’s starting to lose the affordability edge”.
• Lumber prices are down but concrete is still going up. Other building materials are stabilizing as well, which has helped with the construction crisis somewhat.
• Builders are concerned with 55,000 lots delivered in the metroplex within the duration of 2023 which is approximately 8,000 more than what is needed.
• In 2010 the median household price was under $200,000 but now if you look at median price, for example in Collin County, it’s hovering around $500,000.
• For every $1,000 that a new home price is increased, approximately 20,000 families lose out on the opportunity to afford to live in those homes.
• The ongoing permit issue in Dallas County is slowly improving with updated software and the hiring of new employees to solely focus on the permitting problems to get them back up to a more timely manner than the upwards of four month wait.
• There is a nationwide shortage of transformers due to supply chain issues. There is currently only one domestic manufacturer, and the rest of the supply comes from China.
Kimber Davison with Griffith Davison, was excited to share that Griffith Davison has opened two new offices in Austin and Fort Worth.
• REAL Professionals have begun offering local meetings in Austin and have already met a couple of times. They are currently in the planning stages for a meeting in May. She encouraged everyone to reach out to colleagues who may be in the Austin/San Antonio area and tell them about the upcoming meeting in hopes that some new people will attend.
• REAL Professionals would also like to start having meetings in Fort Worth and Kimber will share any and all information as it becomes available.
• Kimber shared that a colleague, Jeff Leach, who is an attorney with Gray Reed law firm and who was just re-appointed to serve a third term as Chairman is also serving his sixth term in the Texas House of Representatives, is “leading the charge to promote having a special business court(s) with specialized judges who have business experience in their background.
• Kimber explained that in the State of Texas, the “Statute of Repose” is for a period of 10 years, which means an owner must file suit against the contractor for a construction defect during the first 10 years after substantial completion of the project.
James Smih, Managing Director at Smith, Jackson, Boyer & Bovard, told everyone that the official filing date this year is actually April 18th and not the 15th.
• There is $33 billion surplus and another $12 Billion they don’t need in the rainy-day fund” and the Texas Legislature cannot agree on how to spend the money.