Good News York by Growth Mode Content - GNY EP. 44 | Feat. Jeremy & Chris Doran of Stone Hammer Homes!

Episode Date: May 28, 2025

Building Dreams: The Journey of Stone Hammer Homes - Good News York In this episode of Good News York, Matt from Growth Mode Content is joined by his co-host Mikey B and special guests Jeremy and Chris Dorn, co-owners of Stone Hammer Homes. They discuss their inspiring journey of leaving corporate jobs to start their own custom home building company. The conversation dives into their passion for creating unique and beautifully designed homes, the challenges they've faced, and their involvement with the Home Builders and Remodelers of Central New York. The episode also touches on trends in home design and the use of modern materials and technology in home building. The Dorn brothers share their experiences in navigating the complex housing market and highlight the importance of trust and family in their successful business partnership. 00:00 Introduction and Casual Banter 00:52 Meet the Guests: Stone Hammer Homes 02:34 Starting the Business: Challenges and First Projects 06:26 Building Custom Homes: Process and Design 11:21 Expanding the Office: New Beginnings 12:53 Home Builders Association: Networking and Events 21:53 Vacation Vibes and Market Research 22:21 Parade of Homes and Builder Challenges 24:19 Family Business Dynamics 26:47 Trends in Home Design 30:29 Custom Builds vs. Existing Homes 31:36 Sustainable Building Practices 34:07 Regulations and Building Codes 35:27 Sprinkler Systems in New Homes 39:26 Upcoming Events and Final Thoughts

Nobody does it better than Regent's Seven Seas cruises. Enjoy all-inclusive unrivaled luxury with unlimited shore excursions, indulgent cuisine, personalized service and more aboard spacious all-sweet ships. Visit rssc.com to experience the unrivaled. Most meal delivery services promise healthy food, but look closer, and you'll often find cheap industrial seed oils hiding in the ingredients. Forkful does things differently. Forkful delivers chef-prepared meals,

Made with premium ingredients you'd expect at a great restaurant, from center-cut filet mignon to wild-caught lobster mac and cheese, and every meal is 100% seed oil-free. Instead of canola or soybean oil, forkful chefs cook with extra virgin olive oil, avocado oil, and grass-fed butter, because better fats make better food. Meals arrive fresh, never frozen, with clear nutrition and ingredient transparency, so you always know exactly what you're eating.

Restaurant quality meals, real ingredients, no seed oils. Discover Forkful today at Forkful Meals.com. Hey guys, welcome to Good News, York. I'm Matt from Growth Mode content. Joined on my other side today. This is weird. I don't know. You're too close.

But Mikey B is with us. Matt's getting his fourth grade pictures done today. He's got his dress shirt on. You look good. We need the laser background. Yes. That was what I always picked. My wife said the same thing.

It's like, wow, what are you dressed? I literally just put on a different shirt. You look good, but I guess this is what happens where you wear hoodies 98% of the time. I look like I'm, looks like a tuxedo I put on a button up. I'm still wearing jeans. You look great. I appreciate that, buddy. You look great and you're still getting heckled for it.

See, it's, you know, story of my life. That's okay. What are you going to do? The reason Mike's on this side is because we got a couple of guests over here. Gentlemen, go ahead and introduce yourselves. Yeah, so I'm Jeremy Dorn, I'm co-owner of Stonehammer Homes with my brother, Chris, here.

That's Chris. That's Chris. I was going to introduce myself, but... Can you tell their brothers? I love this. You know, I'm an only child, so I don't have this experience, but I just love when I see anytime you have family members that are doing stuff.

You guys are... You're not twins, but... but you're always together working on incredible things. And that's something we want to talk about. Before we mention that, though, I want to say, I was driving by your place, and I know you're moving to a new one, so I don't know if you've done it,

but the current one there. Yep. Two incredible bald eagles. What? Flying straight over top the roof of your, they must have just come out of the water or somewhere near there or something. And I don't know that I've seen too many bald eagles in Camillas

recently. And it was just incredible. I happened to be driving by and I see those ways. That's their play. Shit, they're coming on tomorrow. It was just a neat little, Yeah. In my head, I just heard of America.

Yeah. That plays in your head anytime you see it. Did you guys plan that? That's just a big heron. Yeah. Yeah, yeah, yeah. But these gentlemen own, as you mentioned, Stonehammer homes.

If you haven't figured that out, what they might do is they build some of the most incredible home. you can find mostly in the 315 area. I don't know if you gentlemen go. Mostly, yeah. Yeah, yeah. Watch out of there.

But why don't you tell us a little bit about how'd you get into this business and end up here? Yeah. So, you know, Chris and I have both been building houses since we got out of college in early 2000s. We've been in construction. We've been in construction management, sales. I mean, you name it in the housing world. We've done it. Gotcha.

And almost nine years ago now, we decided. if we're going to do this for somebody else, why don't we just do it for ourselves and do it better? Yeah. And, you know, we took a huge risk. We both have families. We both have bills, right? We both have responsibilities.

And we quit our big corporate jobs, and we started our own home building company. And it's not a super easy business to break into, right? Like people don't just flock to you to build a house. Sure. Because you had a new home building company. Right. It's a pretty big investment for folks.

So it took some time to grow. Like I said, now we're on year nine. So we've done a number of parade of homes. We've had some incredible projects. We've got an amazing team that works for us. Incredible designer. And our portfolio just continues to grow and grow. And it's really just attracting some amazing buyers that want to do some cool stuff that, you know,

we're traditionally not seeing in this market. Yeah. Like typically in Syracuse, we're used to seeing like vinyl-sided boxes. And that's just kind of the housing that we do here. And we're starting to get a lot of people that are like, I really like the way these houses in North Carolina and Arizona and Texas look, can we do that here? And it's like, well, of course we can do it here, right?

And that's what we've been doing. That's awesome. Yeah. That's amazing. Talk to me about that. I like when you mentioned, you know, getting started and the challenges in that. Talk to me about that first house. Was that one that you were able to immediately sell to a buyer?

Was it a spec house? How did that work out? Yeah, I'll let Chris answer that question. Yeah, so that was a combination of things. So it was actually my in-laws were building a house. And we took an opportunity to, you know, put a number to it. And it was kind of like start the business and that house all in one, you know, give them a smoking deal on a house. Yeah.

Basically, I was like, we'll get charged you just enough that like, if we decide this was a really bad idea, we don't lose it. Sure. Lose our houses, right? Right, right. So we basically took that leap with that house and, you know, it was a really good house, helped us get to the next house. And then we had, you know, a big network for meeting in this city. We grew up in this city, went to college in this city. worked in the city.

So, like, that next house just, like, organically came, like, in the middle of that house. And, like, a lot of us just kind of keep going, which was also another great project. But, you know, so it worked out that, you know, timing was good, project was good. And, you know, we took the jump. That was great. And you looked like a badass to your father-in-law. I could never do that. Like, I would be such a hero to my wife.

I'm like, I'm going to build your family a home. That's the most manly thing I've ever heard. I mean, also, I feel like. like it's a little brave, you know, of all the people that might be very nitpicky. I feel like in-laws are the top of that list. So the fact that that was your first endeavor, it's like, my hat's off to you. I think everyone's a little nervous. Yeah, yeah, yeah.

I hope you guys don't get divorced over this. Yeah, yeah, Chris, we're lucky because Chris, and-laws are just amazing human beings. We did have to bid the project against other builders, so it was, like, actually competitive, and we were, like, hustling trying to win it. So I really appreciated that process, but, like, that should have just been our job. but and maybe it was but they didn't lead that on to us so you know we had to make sure our numbers were sharp we had to make sure the scope of the project was sharp and the schedule and all that stuff

and you know you can only imagine how hard it is building a difficult house for somebody while you have another full-time job building houses for another company right so we're basically moonlighting at night and we could break away at lunch we'd go up there and check on things and pick up material and whatnot so it really worked out great and then one house quickly led to the next house yeah just really just started to spiral that's that's incredible Tell us a little bit about the process. So we talk about you guys building. Do you guys also design?

How does that all come to be? Yeah, so that's a great question. So people come to us at all different phases of this process, right? Some people are like, hey, I think I might want to build a house, right? And they don't have land. They don't have plans. They really have no budget. And those processes usually take a little longer to develop.

Some folks will come to us and they already own property. Some folks will come to us on the own property and they already have plans designed. and we just need to put a number to it. We're able to jump in really anywhere that the customer is in their journey. We have an architect we work with specifically who does a lot of design work for us. We have an incredible in-house interior designer who does interior design for a lot of our clients. So, you know, when you guys are looking at our photos on, you're going, that's sick, right? Those are super sexy.

That house is amazing. A lot of it's her helping coordinate with the owner. That's awesome. picking tile and counters and cabinets and lighting and all that stuff. So, you know, what we'll do is we'll get involved early on. We'll help people that property. Like, you know, Matt, if you're like, hey, I want to be in Camillas, I want one acre, and I want some woods, right?

We'll help put you on a search for how to find that. If you find something here, like, I think this is the one, we'll come out, take a look at it. We'll talk about the feasibility of building. Any hidden cost that may exist. if you go under contract with the property, then we'll start designing a house. The house is usually specifically designed for the property. Once the house is designed, Chris and I'll put pricing to it. We'll provide a very detailed pricing and proposal.

If everything meets the customer's expectations, then we move to a contract and we start construction. And, you know, houses nowadays are taking longer than they used to pre-COVID. You know, you're probably seeing things from eight to 12 months. Some go a little longer than 12 months, assigning on this, you know, know, deciding, depending on the scope of the project. But, yeah. That's incredible. Are you guys at this point, are you still getting your hands dirty?

You're involved in the actual building process? Are you doing more of the administrative side of things at this point? Yeah, more administrative side for us at this point. We've got some really great project managers. We've got some carpenters in the field and some just really incredible subcontractors. I mean, you look like you could build a house by yourself. Yeah, yeah, yeah. You're listening and you can't see.

It would take forever. It would take forever, but I don't know. You might be able to figure it out. Chris, let me ask you, what's your favorite part of the whole endeavor here? What do you like the most about this business? I mean, really, the end product. Yeah. So you get, it's, you know, billing a house is not easy.

It's like there's obviously a million parts. There's a lot of people involved from the different contractors, the clients, the suppliers, and there's obviously a lot of things that just, frankly, it doesn't always go perfect. Yeah. But when you get to the end, you got clients who are nervous the whole time that things aren't going to go right, or maybe the money's not going to go right or they're going to get to the end and then we're going to be like,

you owe us a million dollars, you know, and you get to the end and like these people finally realize that all those fears can go away and their house is done. And like our goal is like really turnkey. So like when you move in like you just put your stuff down.

Yeah. And so like when people walk in and they see that that's like true. Right. That's hard. So it's like extreme makeover home edition. Like that I used to love that show. Yeah. They reveal it.

That's the most. They do the big reveal. But like it is turn. They walk in and like that's. Yeah. fast forward to the end. I don't care about it. I want to see it. You know, so you guys kind of get that effect. Yeah, right, right, right. But still, that's awesome.

And you try to make sure that the house has enough design elements that, like, you don't need a lot of artwork. You don't need a lot of, you know, decor. It's like, hey, you've got beautiful windows and trim and built-ins and kitchen cabinets and your lighting's awesome. That, like, you know, a lot of people come and they roll in with a whole tractor trailer full of pictures and artwork and stuff. And there's, like, really just nowhere to hang it because it's just getting in the way of some of the natural beauty of the house. Yeah. That's, I love that. Danny and I have had conversations recently about the lack of design and so many things, you know,

and it's, you look at a lot of older properties, older buildings, and they have intricate everything and they're really cool. And it seemed like we've gone through this period of the most boring cookie cutter, you know, no design elements ever. And, you know, when I hear you guys talk about doing something different and, obviously, I've seen a lot of your incredible. You're listening to a podcast right now. Driving, working out, walking the dog. If you're into podcasts, chances are you have something to say too. With RSS.com, starting your own is free and easy. Upload an episode and we distribute it to Apple Podcasts, Spotify,

Amazon Music, and hundreds more. Track your listeners, see where they're from, and start earning from ads like this, even with just 10 listeners a month. If you've been thinking, thinking about starting a podcast, this is your sign. Start free at RSS.com. You're listening to a podcast right now, driving, working out, walking the dog. If you're into podcasts, chances are you have something to say too. With RSS.com, starting your own podcast is free and easy. upload an episode and we distribute it to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and more. Track your listeners, see where they're from, and start earning from ads just like this. If you've been thinking about starting a podcast, this is your sign.

Start your new podcast for free today at RSS.com. Work, it's true what you're saying. I love to hear that because we need, that message needs to be spread far and wide. These horrible, ugly, boring buildings. We got to, yeah, I don't know who came up with that trend, but it needs to go away quickly. Now that's a new goal. Like, you know, build yourself a house so beautiful that you don't even need to decorate. I've never thought of it that way that you can, there's beauty in the design it.

self. Right. Wow. These guys. That's, I mean, that's why they're killing it over. Yeah, yeah, yeah. No, I absolutely love that. I think that's great advice. Hey, yeah. I briefly mentioned your office over in Camilles, but I believe you're expanding or you're in the process of that. I know that's been, is that moving forward? I know you've been looking for a while for a bigger space. Yeah, so that happened last week. Gotcha. Yeah, we're one weekend. So we're getting settled down at the Deedslofts downtown off of Wilkinson Street. Okay. You know, we basically tripled our space. We've got space for our project managers, our designer. We've got an incredible conference room, super sexy. That's awesome. So just a really good spot to inspire ideas and, you know, get people excited. You know, big conference room screen so we can show some pictures.

No artwork. Virtually no artwork. Yeah, yeah. Well, it's an old building. It's an old loft lantern factory. So, like, the building is awesome. There's a lot of brick and steel and, you know, 100-year-old hardwood. and stuff like that.

I'm a sucker for exposed brick, man. Yeah, yeah, 14 foot ceilings, and it's really cool, very cool space. That's great. I'm glad to hear. I know, like I said, I know you guys have been talking about for a while trying to find something like that, and I'm glad you've been able to land that. That's really cool. I thought for a minute we were all going to end up at Remington Arms. Yeah.

Anillion, but it just didn't happen, right? I launched that building so. Somebody beat us to it, so. Oh, did they? Yeah, yeah. Wow. They haven't announced what they're doing with it yet. That's the big question mark.

as long as something happens. Oh, definitely, yeah. Something has to have. You know, building of that magnitude. Sorry to got vines growing all over. It's crazy. But anyway, that's great. I really love to hear all about that.

Something else we should mention is you're part of an association that I'd love to talk about a little bit. Can you tell us a little bit about the homebuilders? So I'm the president of the home builders and remodels of central New York. We're an association of trade professionals that work in the housing industry. We host a number of different events, but, you know, stuff that probably people would most notice would be the home and garden show at the fair and the parade of homes. Chris and I, our companies participate in the parade of homes four times. We're looking forward to participating next year for a fifth time.

That events really helped grow our business. You know, one of my biggest push is as the president and Chris is part of the leadership role there too is to increase membership. So, you know, we've obviously got Micron coming to town. There's this huge influx in housing. We're trying to increase the housing permits by 800% over the next 10 years, so from almost 300 to 2,500. So we really want to build this association up. Like if you've got a touch point with the housing market or building,

you know, whether you're a real estate attorney or insurance provider, you do marketing, you know, even someone who's in IT, right? Like we have 200 members who, you know, we're in home building. So we need IT services, virtually all of us. there's really a need for almost every different field within our association to help our association flourish. So we're making a big push right now for a membership drive coming up in a few weeks and really hoping to have a substantial number of new members and grow that, grow that association so that we can help the community grow. The association has a good job of networking too for that. So if you're in the association, like there's member mixers and there's golf tournaments and there's clam bakes and stuff to just as long as you're willing to show up.

Sure. There's a lot of opportunity to mingle and get to know people. And, you know, you'll see people coming as a banker and also they know every builder in town. Right. Right. Right. Yeah. No, that's, for years, I've heard great things about your organization from different people that's in it.

So that's really cool. Pray to homes. So for folks that aren't familiar, correct me if I'm wrong. The idea is you take a neighborhood somewhere, or build a neighborhood somewhere, basically, right? With a number of different builders and folks who are able to. to check out these houses. Is that kind of an accurate description of that event? Yeah, definitely.

So last year's event was at Timber Banks, which I'm sure a lot of people are familiar with out in Baldensville. And basically we've got a blank street of lots. It's a new road. We have a lottery. Each builder picks a lot. Oh, wow. Then we design a house.

And, you know, we usually have like anywhere from five to eight custom homes. And it's really an opportunity for builders to put their best foot forward and show the general public, you know, what they can do. Sure. We get about, you know, it varies in the year, but it could be anywhere between 10 and 15,000 patrons. We'll buy a ticket and they'll come walk through all the houses. They're all professionally decorated. We usually have food trucks and sometimes there's bands and stuff like that, yeah.

And it's a great opportunity to shop for builders. It's a great idea to get ideas for your own house. Sure. And it helps drive revenue for the association, too. It's a really, really great event for us. I can speak, you know, for Chris and I that it's been amazing for our company to basically put up a product and get 10 to 15,000 people to walk through it in a 10-day period and see what we can do, right? Hand out some brochures and talk to folks as well.

Sure. That's such a neat event. Yeah. And then afterwards, what's really cool is if you love this thing, you can buy it, right? Yeah. All those houses are for sale. Yeah. Some are pretty sold.

So they'll be, maybe we'll call half and half usually. Okay. Or someone, the builder, connected with a buyer. Sure. The house for the buyer and then the other half are usually for sale. I mean, that seems like a little safer deal. for the builder, but yeah, you know, all of them are so beautiful. I don't think anybody has any trouble moving them, right? Yeah, usually take the perspective and we want to do something

different. Like, we're talking about Lansing styles up here. So, like, we always do a house. Like, we did a black house. And like, no, not a lot of people in Syracuse were doing black houses. Right. That's like four years ago. Right. So like, people came in and they're like, this is crazy. I've never seen a black house before. I love it. Yeah. They have the chili cookoff in, follow me here. The chili cookoff in Ithaca in February. And so all these restaurants compete with chili. but they'll roll out the carb like they're going to do a chili that's going to stand out and I feel like it's kind of the same effect you're going to it's your Super Bowl you know yeah you're going to you're going to give your best so that's what a great event I love that I wonder how that comes to be afterwards when everybody moves in because you think about that like to meet the neighbors literally all of the neighbors are at the same time that's kind of a neat you know you don't have any of that hey you know I've been here for three days longer than you I'm the old guy here in town.

Well, and it's funny to do because they've all been in each other's houses, right? So they go to the event and, like, they know what your master closet looks like, right? Because they came and walked through it. By the end of the event, we know some. We'll know the neighbor. Sure. You'll hear the neighbor from next door, right? Yeah.

They've come to our house five times during the show. Yeah, it's funny because the public gets to see it during the event. And then what they don't see behind the curtain is, like, we've been planning this thing for a year. Sure. We've been designing it. We had to buy the lots. We had to pick out all the fixtures and stuff. You've got to work with a decorator and a designer and all that stuff.

So there's, you know, when the doors open day one of the event and we're standing there in, you know, blazers and our mother usually is the greeter at the front door, there's a tremendous amount of work, time, and effort that's gone into getting to the event. Yeah. Yeah, I can imagine. For all the builders. I can speak for everybody. I can imagine. You know, when you talk about building and delays and things like that, this thing's got a date, right? Like, you've got to have that house ready.

Exactly. You know, and that's a good point. You know, a lot of times will build that house. on spec, which I know you covered in a recent show, because we can control the timeline a little bit. So we have our own designer, and we're not going to wait to pick light fixtures and plumbing fixtures because we're like, hey, Ash, you've got to get that stuff done. Right.

You've got to move, right? Whereas if you've got a buyer attached to it, obviously it's a little safer for the builder to already have a buyer, but you're kind of at the mercy of them making selections. But everybody does a great job moving it forward. And so far in the years I've been a part of it, nobody's missed the deadline. That's incredible. Yeah. When I was a kid, my dad had a house built, and I remember we lived out in Hercimer way far away,

but we came to Syracuse to the light store to pick out light fixtures. And just that process, you know, you never imagine you walk around your house how many light fixtures there are. So when you're in a shop and there's just a million of them hanging from the ceiling and then you've got to try to pick, this one should go in this room and, you know, I can only imagine, you know, times every other fixture and every other thing. So many options. Right. So many. On them on a dimmer pack.

Yeah. And then what they do is they tie them together so that all the style actually streamlined. That's, I mean, I would go in and I'd be like, yeah, this is kind of over here modern. Then I got something over here. Right. You know, like, but she can tie all that together for you. I'm with you. I'm like, that all looks cool and none of it goes together.

But it's cool. Yeah. Yeah. And just imagine now like the possibilities are endless with the internet, right? So you could go to the local lighting department store and pick out lighting where there's, you know, 100 different options. Or you can get online and view thousands. Yeah, thousands and thousands of options. I know you said you guys have an in-house architect now, but was there ever a point along the way where, like, do you have to, like, stay up to date on modern architecture?

Like, how do you kind of keep it fresh and see, like, trends in architecture and things like that? Social media, right? So social media. So everybody's algorithm is figuring out what you're flipping through. So eventually you just start to see the same stuff. And then we start to share it with each other. And then we start to share it with the design team. And social media will help you see what's trending in other parts of the country.

So, you know, Syracuse is a relatively small market, things considering across the country. So, you know, your bigger markets, you know, in Carolinas and Texas and stuff, I mean, there is just thousands, tens of thousands of homes being built every year. So there's a ton of inspiration stuff, right? Everybody gets stuff in their news feed. You know, you think of Cribs and we used to watch Cri's Derby, right? It's kind of like that, right? You see something that's really cool and you're just trying to recreate it or one-up it. I can imagine.

It's also the buyers, right? Yeah, yeah, definitely. We've built the same house exactly twice. Right. Right. And we don't, a lot of Martin neighborhoods, right? So they're on a lake or they're on a piece of farmland or they're 600 feet off the road. So, like, these buyers have some inspiration from their property and other things.

Sure. And they all have their own lifestyle, right? So everything we do is custom. So you're getting a house designed to your lifestyle. Yeah. And then we're helping with the architect, helping to pull the elements together to make it look. I worked with a tattoo.

You're listening to a podcast right now, driving, working out, walking the dog. If you're in the podcasts, chances are you have something to say too. With RSS.com, starting your own podcast is free and easy. Upload an episode and we distribute it to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon Music, and more.

Track your listeners, see where they're from, and start earning from ads just like this. If you've been thinking about starting a podcast, this is your sign. Start your new podcast for free today at RSS.com. You're listening to a podcast right now. Driving, working out, walking the dog. If you're into podcasts, chances are you have something to say too.

With RSS.com, starting your own is free and easy. Upload an episode, and we distribute it to Apple Podcasts, Spotify, Amazon music, and hundreds of months. more. Track your listeners, see where they're from, and start earning from ads like this, even with just 10 listeners a month. If you've been thinking about starting a podcast, this is your sign. Start free at RSS.com. Artist that told me, he's like, I will never do the same tattoo twice on two different people. Like, I always want something original about that.

Yeah. I guess it's kind of the same mindset. I can imagine you guys on vacation. You must be just constantly driving by, oh, look at that house. I like the roof on that. Do you guys do that? No, we drink as many margaritas as we can when we're on vacation and we carry our head in the sea. Yeah, try to enjoy ourselves. Right way to do it.

No, but we actually do that. Nothing but landscape. That is 100% true, Mike. I mean, we were literally like, the market research never stops. Yeah. Right. I mean, I don't, I'm not in your line of work. And when I'm on the road, I'm always like, oh, my God, I love the way that

porch looks, you know. I imagine that must be a constant thing for you. Yeah. Yeah. Like, I went to the parade of. homes in Saratoga last year just to check things out. And they do a different type of event and actually we're going to do something similar next year. But they do what's called a scattered site parade of homes. So instead of being in one neighborhood on the same street, they're all

over town and you get like a passport and you go from house to house to house, but you've got to drive there. It's a little more challenging, obviously, because you've got to hit the road to see everything. But it allows the builders to build a lot of different product and showcase a lot of different stuff that you can't necessarily put in one neighborhood. Right. And at some point, I feel like there's got to be a limit to the developments or ones that have open lots and things, I would think. For sure. So that's got to be a challenge. For sure.

And everybody's, all the towns, local towns, I mean, obviously we know there's a lot of growth coming. Sure. So everybody's trying to grow very deliberately, right? We want to just be like scattered with thousands and thousands of, you know, cookie cutter builder grade houses. So the towns are being very deliberate about what they're allowing through and approving for subdivision. for builders to move forward with. So it's been, it's been an interesting growth phase. Like, the demand is there.

The lots aren't necessarily there. We're like growing slowly, but about to grow really quickly. Yeah. Along those lines, are you seeing people looking for things like in-law apartments and in sort of extra units in the house for those reasons? Yeah. Yeah. Yeah, more like, not necessarily like a true in law, but like a potential, right?

Like my parents are getting older at some point. Yep. Yep. So, like, this bedroom is going to be a little bigger. It's going to maybe have a tiny kitchenette. It's going to have its own owner's sweet style back. Sure. Like the just-in-case.

Yeah. Yeah. Now, we've talked about that ourselves for our parents. Like, they don't want them in the house, you know. And they don't want to be either. They want their own space in it. It makes a ton of sense. But to kind of share some space would make a lot of sense.

But, yeah. That's awesome. Do you guys find, because, you know, you hear the old saying, like, you shouldn't, you shouldn't go into business with family. How is that dynamic with two brothers? I feel like there's a better. That's a great question. Because I feel like you can be like, you know, fuck you, fuck you.

And then you can be honest. And then go back to business where that's hard to do if you're not related. I don't know. That's pretty much how it goes something. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Most days not, but there's days where it goes like then they're like, get the end of there, like, go out of a beer. Yeah, exactly.

Yeah. Honestly, it's great. Chris and I have different strengths in the business. We have different roles within the business. We complement each other very well. That's great. Our mom works with us too, and she's absolutely amazing. She wears a lot of different hats, as you can imagine, like most moms would.

But we just see things differently. We both have an entrepreneurial spirit, and we literally see how to run this business differently, and then we just come together and we just make it work. We honestly agree on 99% of the things that we get into. So it works out great. and, you know, our goals are aligned. Our trust is incredibly aligned. We went to college together.

We lived two houses. Oh, wow. We're super tight. We do. We do. Yeah. I love it. As you know, right, our time and profound, like, we're attached at the hip.

No, that's awesome. I'd love to hear that, too. It was a great question, buddy. Yeah. We duked it out enough when we were little that we got it out of our system. Yeah, yeah. Yeah, yeah. I think the biggest element, though, is trust.

Like, you're not going to be able to trust. it's hard to trust anyone more than your brother or your sister or something like that. Right. And I think that's wonderful. And I think like in any sort of process, especially a creative process, because I would consider what you guys do. Obviously, it's blue collar, it's manual layer, but there's a lot of creativity to it as well. 100% that people don't give enough credit for. But, you know, in my experience, you know, my ideas have only been made greater by other people.

So I think whatever you said you're lacking that he brings, vice versa, I think it makes you both better. Yeah, 100%. Because it's a different point of view. Yeah. It's a different skill set. So it's a good recipe. Yeah. Like, I don't have to worry about Chris stealing coffee mugs or 40 pens or anything like that.

Yeah. Oh, man. Fellas, I know I've got to get you back to building houses here in a few minutes. But one of the last things I want to ask you is tell us a little bit about some of these trends, if you wouldn't mind. A couple of these, maybe design elements, things that are coming might not be in the market yet, but you know are going to be popular in homes. Any neat innovation things along those lines that come to mind? Or something you're seeing like a lot of lately all of a sudden. Sure.

That's a little. Yeah, we're definitely seeing like a shift away from the farmhouse style. Okay. People are moving away from white shaker cabinets. In a lot of instances, we're starting to see some more colors, some more warmth. You know, we do still see a lot of, you know, black window designs and stuff like that. A lot of outdoor living, so front porches, back porches, terraces, stuff like that, even though, you know, it's... We're going to get back to the days of the big wraparound porch like they used to do?

Maybe, yeah, maybe. I mean, it's only nice weather in Syracuse for 60 days a year, so maybe those go away. But, you know, it's really funny the way things trend. So, you know, a lot of the things you're going to see are going to be trending in, like tile and lighting and counteract some cabinets and stuff like that. And not so much like the design. I don't know. Do you have anything else to add?

I mean, the reality is different buyers have different preferences, right? Gotcha. They don't come and you say, hey, you can pick from these five hardwoods. Like you see a hardwood store and they have 3,000 hardwoods, right? So like, you know, we might build a house over here that is a totally different, they don't even look like they're the same designer. Yeah.

Right? But it's really about the person going to the store. saying like this is kind of looking for it, helping tie that, that type of design together versus like this type of design together. And it's about like just tying what they really want at the end of day together. So there's definitely like some trendy stuff. Like you see a lot of boarded bad inciting now that you didn't see 10 years ago. You see a lot of black windows.

You didn't see 10 years ago. White Oak is like people love white oak. Yeah. You know, but it's really at the end of the day like, you know, we might do white oak in every house for last year. And then like this year we're doing 10 different things. Only one house has white oak. Sure.

So it's like our buyers are all different. And they're from, you know, some of them are out on a 40-acre piece of a lot. It's like a farm kind of, and they have that, they want that farm style versus someone who's over the lake, and they, like, want that lake style with blue cabinets. Outside of hardwood flooring, is vinyl flooring still a thing? Is that still king right now? Because that was big, you know, five, ten years ago. Everybody was getting vinyl floor.

Like the vinyl planks. Yeah, it's like, it's like per go, like it snaps together, but it's like waterproof. It kind of looks hardwood, like hardwood, but it's not. And I don't know, it's more affordable, but it's, it's good quality. I think there's a lot of things where they're trying to use plastics instead of wood, right? Yeah, yeah. Yeah, we don't use a lot of that on our projects. You know, our people are usually getting into like eight-inch white oak type stuff.

But the luxury vinyl plank is still super popular. It's affordable. And I think that affordability is probably the biggest thing you're going to see and term you're going to hear in home building, right? So prices are through the roof, right? So the price of building a new house is almost doubled since before COVID. Wow. So a lot of the challenges were all up. is how do we still build this big, beautiful, sexy house and not spend $3 million on it,

right? Right. Keep it under a million dollars, which is even becoming a challenge. So, you know, the market and the buyers are having to get a little creative. You know, it's weird to feel like you've got to make sacrifices in your house build when you're spending a million and a half dollar. Right. But the reality is you kind of have to, right?

Yeah. You can't have all $2,000 faucets in your house and still maintain a budget. So there's a, that's probably one of the biggest challenges in home building is just maintaining expectations and budgets and still making sure that when the house is done and you deliver to the buyer that like they're stoked, right? They're like, this is sick. This is exactly what we wanted. You guys delivered.

And not like, hey, we spent a ton of money and like we didn't get. Sure. It didn't land where we wanted it. And is that, would say that's the biggest reason somebody would build rather than buy an existing home is that custom element they want it to be completely unique? Or are there other kind of driving factors that might make somebody want to build rather than buy? Yeah, I think that's one of them.

I think here locally that the prices on the resale market have gotten so high, right? So, like, people are spending $4,000 or $600,000 for a house that was built in the 70s or 80s, and it needs $500 or $600,000 of love to it, right? Sure. And even when you spend that money and you renovate that kind of house, you still have eight-foot ceilings, right? And you still have maybe a leaky basement. You're not on the best lot. So I think that's what's pushing a lot of people to building is they don't want to buy something existing

and have to renovate it. A lot of the folks we see that are building are, you know, either baby boomers looking to get into like a retirement one level. I see. We've got a lot of millennials that are just looking to get into something like they're forever home. And they don't want to live in the houses like that we all grew up in. So they're looking to do something unique. And that's kind of pushing them to building as opposed to buying existing. Absolutely.

That makes a lot of sense. Are you guys involved in solar at all? Is that something that's on your radar at this point? Oh, yeah, solar, geothermal. Yep, yep, absolutely. Heat pumps. So we basically just connect with the vendors on that stuff because there's basically a federal task credit.

There's a state tax credit. So we basically will do the prep, and then the homeowner will run that on their end so that they make sure that they get all the credits that associated with federal. I'm always interested in that, but I get overwhelmed because there's all these companies that claim, you know, we're the best, where the best.

And I don't know where to go. Well, yeah, half of them are just nonsense. Well, one came to me, And I was close to pulling the trigger because I'm interested in it. But then I was like, wait a minute. So what happens when I need to redo my roof? Well, you will have to on install. I was like, there it is.

I'm so glad I thought to ask that because those are the little loopholes you don't think about. Yeah. And solar is amazing. It's a great product. Solar providers are not apples to apples, right? Right. You can get three or four different quotes and they can be wildly different, but their scope of work will be vastly different.

But you're not, I mean, at this point, it's safe to say that there's really no, companies that are out to get you. They're all fairly reputable, the ones that are out there on the map. Yeah, I mean, I go back to the Home Builders Association, right? So, like, if you're shopping for a reputable contractor, that's a great place to shop, right? So they're basically, we vet these folks out before we bring them in as members. And there's like a level of accountability that we hold. So that is, like, an amazing place to search for contractors.

It's almost like your local Angie's list. See, I didn't know you could do that, right? You go right to the website, I'm guessing. Yeah, yep. And you can search by, like, you know, different industry, right? Sure. Solar. I'm looking for a builder.

What's the name of the website? The home builders and remoders of CNY, so HBR of CNY. That's amazing, man. That's awesome. That's really where I've been at. In these kind of interviews, I always represent just the general public. I'm not hugely knowledgeable in this. So that's important to know because, like I said, I'm interested in solar, but I didn't know who can I trust, where can I go.

So there you go. Thank you for that. Are you, I remember the last time I attended a parade of homes, the, you know, the modern efficiency and the energy and things like that was a huge factor that a lot of the places had on display. How much of that are things that you have to now accommodate for that you maybe didn't have to in your design? Like are there extra wires? Are there extra piping, things like that that you have to now account for for some of these modern solutions? Yeah, I mean, that stuff is always evolving, right? Yeah.

A lot of it just evolved with code. Yeah. Right? Because, you know, with all of that stuff also comes cost. Sure. Right. So code is constantly changing. Like, literally this year we're talking about is up January first.

Like, we can't put gas to a house. Yeah. And so all houses will have to be electric only. So electric stones. Really? No gas fireplaces. No gas furnaces. Any of that stuff.

This is a state thing? State. Yes. Yeah. It's part of that climate action thing that state passed a few years ago. So, you know, these are like the challenges that are, coming constantly. Sure.

Efficiencies and stuff. So especially as we all talk about climate change and all this other stuff, these things just keep changing and changing and changing. So I would assume on a state and federal level, when there's an administration change, you guys kind of got to be in tune with what changes, right, with regulations and grants and whatever else. Is that something that you've got to kind of pay attention to?

Yeah, and it's something that the association, our association, so when you're a member of the local association, you're also a member of the state association, you're also a member of a national association. So you're kind of like it's like a triple tier association. So we get, you know, fed a lot of this stuff that you don't, you know, necessarily have time to be on top of all the time. They have their folks plugged in.

Yeah. The luxury of getting the Cliff Notes version of all this stuff, right? No, that's great. And, you know, the association helps, you know, lobby and do those, the types of things that needed to get are appropriate for our association. The last thing I'll ask you is that I've heard some talk about sprinklers. What? Tell me a little bit about that and how that might play out if you got to put

sprinklers in home. I love that. So same thing. This is another thing that's been getting, really it's been getting passed around in potential over, I think, over a decade. This past spring, I think we're over the hump, but they almost

required sprinklers in all new houses. They decided not to. But it will if you build, I think, townhouses with three or more units. I see. You're going to have to start putting sprinklers in. But essentially, you know, if you put a sprinkler system in, you're going to have

pipes running through your house, and you're going to have basically a second water service that comes in, you're going to have something to maintain, honestly. Yeah. So obviously, in the case that there's a fire, it's excellent to have a sprinkler system. Yeah. But the reality is a lot of fires are in houses

that are much older. Sure. And aren't going to have sprinkler systems regardless. So it's, you know, on our end, it's one of those things that's great if it saves a life. Yeah. But it also is a clock. Sure.

Sure. Every new construction as we fight cost daily. For folks that are real apprehensive about the look of the thing, you know, we think of these sprinklers. We've seen a lot of buildings are retrofitted and there's just a pipe run in the middle of the wall. Can you just talk for a second about how that might work in a design? If you're planning for those things from the jump, can you make it look a little better? Yeah, I mean, in new construction, all this pipes will be in the wall. Yeah.

Yeah. It's not in the walls. but um and the heads will be like what they call it concealed sprinkler head so we'll just have like a white circle cap ceiling that you see so you don't necessarily see like an exposed head um you may see exposed head in certain locations yeah basement or something like that and it all depends on how the code gets passed so sure they tell us we got a sprinkler porches then that's right right thing because obviously we live in Syracuse and that line will freeze in the winter so there's you know i used to work in commercial and there's different ways that all those things get accomplished yeah so really if they

write the code and it gets written to you got to do all your porches too then you got to have a whole separate system for that called a dry system so that those don't free so so first of all shows you how I don't belong in this conversation when you said sprinklers I'm thinking like the sprinkler on the lawn oh you think of long like you run through yeah yeah why are you at standard with every home now yes yes have uh something fun for the kids no but the other I'm thinking of though is like I remember growing up my mom cooking yeah and just like the little bit how often you set that off you can't with sprinklers it's springing Is it that sensitive or is it?

They look for actual. It's heat. It melts like a little device that sets off the water, I think. Yeah. Because I'm just picturing cooking, you know, get a little smoky. Next thing you know, I'm in four feet of water. Yeah. We had our place remodeled and the new smoke detectors we put in are the worst on the big go off for everything.

Really? Really? Yeah. But yes, luckily that we wouldn't get flooded if that was the case. Yeah. Well, and that's one of the challenges, right? So like the sprinklers are going to add about three. $30,000 a house in companies, right?

Which is a lot of money. But also, like, the argument that they're going to save the structure is not really true, right? If you've ever been in a house where a sprinkler system's gone off, like, it is completely destroyed. You go from fire damage to water damage. Right, right. It is waterlogged from top to bottom and everything has to get replaced. Yeah. It's a whole different set of challenges with bringing a house back to life that's been water damage as it is smoke damage.

So when the airbags come out of your car. Right. You know what I mean? So what's the point? I guess to stop the fire, but once it's activated, that's your toast. Yeah. What are you going to do? Good times.

That's why we have experts in an association that stays on top of these things. I love this, guys. I've learned so much in this conversation. You definitely need to come back anytime. Just real quick, when are the dates of these events that folks should put on their calendar? Yeah, so Home and Garden show is typically mid-March. We just had that a couple months ago. So look for the Home and Garden show coming up, again, March, 2026.

Right now we're talking about the scattered site parade of homes being next September, so September 2026. Gotcha. We're all starting to work on our designs and our locations and all that behind-the-scenes stuff that I mentioned before right now so that we can have a really cool show for everybody next fall. What else you got for plugs? Website, social media handles? What do you got?

Yeah, so we can be found on Facebook. Facebook, Instagram, website, Stonehammerhomes.com. Come visit us at the new office space at the Dietz. It's a really cool spot. We've got some really nice things to see down there. And yeah, we're pretty easy to get a hold of and pretty accessible if you're looking for us. Well, we appreciate your time.

That's awesome. And especially me, I learned a lot from you guys. And if I'm ever building a home, I'm coming to you for sure. We appreciate that. You might have pulled up their Instagram already because you're the king of research. But if you look at these fellas' work, It's, it doesn't get any better than that.

Well, thank you. It's pretty cool. We appreciate that, guys. We appreciate you guys having a song. Top-notch stuff. We appreciate it. Really? That's amazing.

That's amazing. That makes our whole thing. And I love to see all of our friends on here doing all their thing. We're building a little community. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. It's going great.

And, you know, we're spreading the word. All of our creators are getting noticed all over town. Oh, yeah. That's kind of, that's the wild part. They tell us. Yeah, some guy in the street was like, hey, are you the one I saw in that video? Yeah. Yeah.

It's what we're doing. And we've got our boy Danny behind the scenes over there. It is. I also realize I'm old today because at one point and I wrote it down, I quoted, and I was serious. I said, clearly I'm in my 40s. I'm like, I'm a sucker for exposed brick. I think the oldest man. That's a very dead.

After I said that I went, I'm a sucker for exposed brick. Wow. Yeah. You are. But I'm embracing it. Well, add that to your fetish for lawn work, right? Yes. I love lawn work, dude.

You know. I'm a fan, dude. I'm a fan boy. I love this is amazing Yeah I'm a huge Huge landscaping guy I don't even remember you saying that You just met me 25 minutes ago

But like I know about you No it's awesome It's awesome I feel so cool right Oh man Yeah no I'm a sucker for a long This has been awesome Just a little programming note Before we dip out of here tomorrow

Oh yeah You're gonna you're gonna recap Yeah I went to the Dave Matthews band concert last night and holy shit. I was front row for the first time of my life. Made new best friends. This mother and her two daughters.

We were VIP front row buddies. We experienced some crazy shit. But at the end of the show, I turned to him, and they were like, can we get your number? Because they wanted to sell me tickets that they can't go to a show. I said, I'll do you one better. And I handed him a card. And I said, I think you should come on the show and we'll recap the show together.

So I'm going to bring them on. And we're going to talk about the Dave show. That's a great idea. Yeah, it was awesome. And then I got to, I was starving. And as I'm leaving, toss and fire were there in their food truck. I grabbed a pizza pie and handed the owner a card. I said, I want to get you on the show.

So he's coming on. Nice. I was, you know. I'm still not paying for your ticket. I was trying to get you to reimburse them. Yeah, yeah. It's on your desk, man. Side note, I got to get one of those hats, dude.

That's fire right. Yeah, we get a new line. We're working on all new apparel right now. Look at this guy. I love these guys. It's the best. It's great. If you need a home, Stonehammers where it's at.

I'm Matt. He's Mike. That's Danny. We will see you tomorrow. Peace out. Thanks, everybody.