Affordable Housing, Custom Studios and Real Results with Hunter Young

Hunter Young (00:00)
I often tell some people please do not ask me to build you a house. I don’t want to build you a house. I want to build 10. So if you want to partner together and do three, four, five, six, seven, 10 houses, great. I’d love to do it. I’m not saying we won’t build a singular house, but at the end of the day, building those lasting relationships, building companies that people continue to grow into, I think that’s what the future is going to look like.

Michelle Kesil (01:53)
Hey everyone, welcome to the Investor Fuel podcast. I’m your host, Michelle Kesil And today I’m joined by someone I’ve been looking forward to chatting with, Hunter Young, who’s been making serious moves in the renovation space. Hunter, glad to have you here with us today. I think our listeners are really going to take something away from how you’re approaching custom renovations. So let’s dive into all of that.

Hunter Young (02:21)
Thank you for having me.

Michelle Kesil (02:23)
Sure. So first off, for people who may not be familiar with you and your world, can you give us the short version of what your main focus is these days?

Hunter Young (02:34)
Yes, ma’am. So I’m in the commercial residential construction space. We do affordable ground up builds. We do different renovations ranging from outfits from older properties, high end of fits. And then we also renovate and ⁓ build ground up construction for music studios as well.

Michelle Kesil (02:57)
Nice. And what markets do you operate in?

Hunter Young (03:00)
We are mostly in North Carolina. I’m actually qualified to be in 13 states plus the Virgin Islands, but right now we’re focusing on Eastern and Central North Carolina. We’ll be moving into Western North Carolina here pretty soon.

Michelle Kesil (03:14)
Amazing. Yeah, can you share a little bit about what your custom renovations look like and yeah, just expand on your business?

Hunter Young (03:24)
Certainly. So when we’re in the renovation space, we always try and look at the end product that somebody wants and then work backwards from there. like anything else, ⁓ people are unaware of what they’re unaware of. And we find that taking our experience, our expertise and folding that into what our clients are trying to achieve in their spaces, whether it be a

space, a commercial space that they’re operating a business out of, we like to try and work with our clients, with our subcontractors and get to an end product that

really serves the needs of the customer. And sometimes people come in with great ideas that are going to really fit what they’re trying to do. And other times we’re able to provide a lot of additional information that can guide them in a direction that makes their space more usable and also increases the longevity of it. And so some of what we’ve done on that side of things is a ⁓ lot of aging in place, doing things with people who may want to retire into a home or build a small accessory structure that they can utilize for family members.

So there’s a lot that goes into it, but we try and make sure that we’re always keeping our clients’ needs in mind.

Michelle Kesil (04:29)
amazing. So what has been like the key to keeping that business running smoothly?

Hunter Young (04:35)
I think that finding the right people is always important. One of the things that we’ve struggled with recently is labor shortages in the area, but we’re actually shifting more towards training individuals and creating that wealth of knowledge and experience that we can pull from as well, which helps everybody else out. It aids with our subcontractors and building their reputation, their skill sets, and also allows us to pull from that pool of labor when we need to. But yeah, it’s a…

Sorry, I lost my train of thought. if you could cue me one more time.

Michelle Kesil (05:08)
Alright.

Yeah, we were just talking about like what’s been keeping your business running smoothly and you were sharing like the people and.

Hunter Young (05:22)
Oh,

right. And so, you know, having having access to just skilled labor and people who are interested in this type of thing has been extremely helpful. And then really, a lot of it is just making sure you’re open to the opportunities in the market. You know, I started this company three years ago, I had a lot of experience, I’ve been in the industry for over a decade. But knowing the direction that you want to go and being open to the different ways that that may present itself is always

been extremely helpful for me. And so we actually found ourselves rather in the commercial music space

almost by accident, just by doing lots of quality work and having lots of good recommendations and referrals from ⁓ past customers and just people that we knew. And so by keeping the quality of work that we have high and being open to opportunities, it opened tons and tons of doors for us.

Michelle Kesil (07:02)
That’s cool, yeah. I’m curious about the music space. What does that look like?

Hunter Young (07:08)
So we do all sorts of different studios. We work with GAT3 in Charlotte, North Carolina, primarily, and we’ve done some private studios and some other lesser known studios. But we do two different styles of studios. So we do our large recording rooms, and then we also work in the Dolby Atmos space. And so if you’re familiar with Dolby Atmos, that is a 3D spatial audio that’s becoming a lot more popular. Apple just earmarked, I believe it was like $3 billion for re-recording old albums. And that’s the

three-dimensional audio that can be enjoyed on even just stereo headphones as long as they’re newer and have the processing chips that are compatible with it. But it’s more of a top-down approach than bottom-up, so you don’t need all this expensive hardware. And it really increases the fidelity of the music and the user experience. But I can get into the construction of that a little bit more if you’d like, but that’s mainly the area that we focus on. for sure. So when we’re building music studios, it’s…

Michelle Kesil (07:58)
Yeah, absolutely. You can expand on that.

Hunter Young (08:08)
It’s an interesting undertaking whenever we began a new studio, because we often joke that every single requirement for an audio studio, a video studio are a little bit self contradictory. So everything needs to have lots of mass in order to stop that sound transmitting through other areas. But you also want to decouple and disconnect things as much as possible. So you’re not getting vibrations into other spaces and everything has to be.

dense, but weightless and connected, but disconnected. And we deaden all the walls so that we can prevent reflections in the room. But you also don’t want it to sound like you’re in a black hole. So it’s a very fine balance between controlling audio and promoting enough liveliness in a room in order to make it sound natural. And then when you get into the 3D spatial audio space, that’s a whole nother animal. In a traditional stereo room, have anywhere from, really you have your left and right channels, your left and right audio channels.

but you might have a bank of left and right audio speakers. So you might have two to three speakers per side at most, not counting subwoofers and other things. When you get into the Atmos studios, the one that we built for GAT3 that partnered with PMC and some other people in Charlotte, North Carolina, that room is approximately, I’d have to go back and look at drawings, 15 by 20, maybe 18 by 25. And there are 79 speakers pointed directly at your head.

So the amount of balance that goes into that equation to try to make sure that you are not underpowering, not overpowering, and also keeping your delays acoustically down to a minimum can get pretty involved.

Michelle Kesil (09:52)
Wow, that’s fascinating. Yeah, very cool. So why are you like most focused on solving or scaling next?

Hunter Young (10:36)
As far as what we’re focused on scaling next, while I love the custom music space and we want to keep moving forward in that, there’s only so many music studios to build in the world. ⁓ So while we continue moving in that direction with one part of the company, the thing I’m most focused on and passionate about is going to be affordable housing. Everyone’s aware of the fact that we have a housing shortage in this country and that there are lots of large conglomerates buying of houses either for resale or for rent. And what we’re focused on is

multiple different projects and processes to try and get millennials and younger millennials especially as well as the upcoming generations into homeownership. And so we’re doing that through a variety of different programs or working on building affordable quality homes that are also going to last into the future or working on

more affordable and quality multifamily, and then some different projects that allow people to get into more affordable homes, build equity, and then be able to either add on to their existing property or build additional living structures with the equity that they create themselves rather than starting with a larger loan from a bank. And we think that keeping more money in the homeowner’s pocket and allowing them to grow into the future is going to be a lot.

better of an option for many people and you’re going to spend less money with lenders in the process.

Michelle Kesil (11:59)
That’s yeah, that’s so valuable. Are you planning to just do that, like within your area, or what does that expansion look like?

Hunter Young (12:08)
Yeah, so we’re definitely focusing on Eastern North Carolina, Charlotte, and Raleigh markets. And then we want to move into Asheville. Once we have that really fine tuned, I actually used to be a director for a national building company. I would love to take that model and be able to build it out into other areas to get people into affordable homes.

Michelle Kesil (12:30)
Yeah, that’s a beautiful vision. So let me ask you this. I know that every operator had a moment where their business maybe got more real, a deal could have gone sideways, or you had to make a fast pivot. Would you mind sharing one of those moments for you?

Hunter Young (12:35)
Mm-hmm.

Yeah. Hmm. I think the moment that I realized things were really taking off was when I got my first contract to build almost a $2 million home in North Carolina. you know, I had, I had done this many, for many, years for other people and started my company very modestly built it from about $80,000 a year up to over a million dollars a year within three years.

But kind of somewhere in that middle ground, we had been doing smaller projects for, you know, at most 10 to $50,000 a piece. ⁓ and then I got another small home build that was about $250,000. And the next jump up from that was 1.7 million. So suddenly being in that position that every single thing stops with you and you’re now doing houses larger than, ⁓ you know, what you may have, or what I may have done in the past.

I think that was a moment where it was made very real for me. As far as pivoting from things, you know, I’ve had a couple of deals go south, but one of the biggest ones was a three unit triplex in Charlotte, North Carolina. And I had a developer just stop paying for what was being done out there. We had site work done.

Permits, pulled, plans, drawn, all that stuff, tens of thousands of dollars into the project, and they just quit paying their bills. So, ⁓ lots of people got defaulted on. And at some point you just have to ask yourself, is this the area of the market that I want to be in or don’t want to do something different? And that’s part of what instigated that shift or proceeded that shift rather into.

doing a lot more affordable homes and smaller builds and things that we could control a little bit better, just making sure we’re not over leveraged.

Michelle Kesil (14:57)
Amazing. Yeah. What do you feel like is your biggest

lesson from these experiences?

Hunter Young (15:45)
The biggest thing that I would tell my younger self, and I think I knew this to some extent, but I didn’t fully implement it. And then I would tell anybody listening is to focus on the things that are actually making progress. And so I’ve had more people than I can count come to me and have a big sales pitch. You know, we can do this, we can do that. The things that have continued to pay dividends over and over again are the relationships that we built early on.

And the ones that we had done some larger projects with, but a lot of smaller projects too, the people who can make decisions quickly, decisively, and act on them. If you continue to surround yourself by those people or with those people rather, you will do very, very well. ⁓ A lot of the people that over-promised and under or never delivered are long gone. And letting go of that was one of the best things that I’ve ever done.

And then continuing to go circle back and focus on those people that are actually committed and willing to do what needs to be done to get the projects across the line.

Michelle Kesil (16:50)
Yeah, that’s important. So let me ask you this. What is that next real goal for you?

Hunter Young (16:55)
Mm-hmm.

The next real goal is to grow the systems in place that we have for affordable housing to do probably about six at a time in each city that we’re operating in currently. And that allows us to turn everything into a more systematized process from start to finish. And then once that exists and it’s next form, I can have someone hired on who just manages maybe that portfolio.

Once we have those systems in place, that’s easily duplicatable across multiple areas. And I think it’ll put a lot of people who need and want and honestly deserve to live in a home that’s built in a quality fashion at affordable price into those homes. So that’s what we’re trying to go next.

Michelle Kesil (17:47)
Yeah, that’s amazing. So a lot of people listening to this show are investors, whether they’re early on in their journey or looking to level up. ⁓ How do your services support these people?

Hunter Young (18:03)
Yeah. So when we talk to investors, we kind of have two main programs. We can do just a flat interest rate where you invest with the company. We have a conversation. We’ve had investors with as, you know, modest of an investment is maybe 10, $20,000. And we’ll give a flat rate of return on something like that. What we’re really trying to grow is our partnership program where we partner together.

either directly through my company or we can even create separate entities for all the benefits that that might provide and keeping everything in its own silo. Where we partner together, you bring the down payments and financing for a build, and then we build together and split the proceeds in the back end. And those programs can start as affordably as $45,000 to $65,000. Whereas our interest only programs have

Really no minimum. try and be somewhere in the quadruple digits, but, um, yeah, that’s, think those are two really great programs. Then the benefit to our partnership program too, is it’s scalable to whatever level we’d like to be at. I have one going on right now where the resale price of the home is $259,000. I have another build going up where the resale is approximated to be $435,000. So we have all ranges of products that we can partner together on. The best part is.

We split on the back end as an equal partnership. We’re in it to grow together.

often tell people, please do not ask me to build you a house. I don’t want to build you a house. I want to build 10. So if you want to partner together and do three, four, five, six, seven, 10 houses, great. I’d love to do it. I’m not saying we won’t build a singular house, but at the end of the day, building those lasting relationships, building companies that people continue to grow into, I think that’s what the future is going to look like.

Michelle Kesil (19:56)
Absolutely, relationships are everything. So yeah, when it comes to growing your network and building relationships, what has made the biggest difference for you?

Hunter Young (20:10)
Honestly, I think that word of mouth and just organic growth has been the biggest thing. ⁓ if you do a good job, people want you to work for them. And it’s not as aggressive and foolproof as spending thousands and thousands of dollars on advertisements. ⁓ you know, not to say that you shouldn’t advertise. actually think that one of my weakest points is the amount that I do advertise or rather don’t, but anybody can sell you something. I’d rather do a good job.

continue to get more work based off of that. So I think that just doing what you’re good at really, really well has been the biggest reason that we’ve stayed in business and continue to grow in the way that we have.

Michelle Kesil (20:55)
Yeah, that is important. So what do you feel is something that people often are like missing when it comes to customer innovations that your company is like hitting on that’s, yeah, maybe unique in this space.

Hunter Young (21:19)
The two biggest things are keeping the customer’s angle in mind. I’ve had a lot of designers or other professionals come in and really push their own vision. And sometimes, you know, there’s a, there’s a time and a place for that, but I think oftentimes the customer can get left behind in those situations. And so I’ve always believed that we excelled in keeping that as a primary priority.

And the second thing to that is just quality. And it sounds a little bit, you know, just maybe overstated or too often people say, well we have quality and they don’t. But the reality of the situation is that I know we build a better product at the price point that we’re at and any situation I walk into a lot of our competitor spaces and things just aren’t done correctly.

And in my opinion, I don’t care how much money you have to spend. It should be done correctly. If you can’t afford a higher end material, that’s fine. What you can afford will be installed the way that it is supposed to be and will be warranted. And that’s something that I think is missing in a market where because things are booming and doing so well, um, there’s just a lot of guys willing to throw something together that doesn’t look right, isn’t going to hold up and somebody’s not going to be happy with. So making sure we keep it prior, you know.

that we’re making that a priority has really set us apart in lot of ways.

Michelle Kesil (22:50)
Absolutely, yeah, quality and results are everything. So definitely. All right, so before we wrap up here, if someone wants to reach out, connect, collaborate, or just learn more about what you’re doing, where is the best place for them to reach you?

Hunter Young (23:12)
Yeah, so we have our company Instagram. It is Paragon National Construction. And I can send you the links for all of that. That is where we update our current builds. And you can reach out to me directly. And yeah, as we try and kind of just keep everything focused on there, because you can see exactly what we’re doing. You can see different builds. We’re starting to upload a lot of the processes through

know, build start to finish and ⁓ people can really get an idea of what we’re doing with our work.

Michelle Kesil (23:47)
Perfect. Well, listen, I appreciate your time, your story and perspective. We need more people in this space who are doing things in this right way. So thank you again for being here.

Hunter Young (23:59)
Yes, ma’am. Thank you.

Michelle Kesil (24:02)
And for those of you that are tuning in, if you got value from this, make sure you’ve subscribed. We have more conversations coming with operators just like Hunter who are out here building real businesses. And we’ll see you all in the next episode.