Developers should target municipalities friendly to development and focus on commercial rooftops, which generate sales-tax revenue that cities depend on more than residential property taxes. Present 20-year revenue forecasts and get local business owners to publicly support projects, since their backing sways municipal decision-makers.
So what do you believe are the most impactful things that a developer could do to make a community improve by the houses instead of— of course you improve it by adding housing stock, and I'm a big proponent of the multiple price points in any neighborhood. I think that's a positive thing. But when you're talking about things like sidewalks, walkability, you mentioned improving utilities. What are you hearing and seeing as a developer? Because I'm sure that you network with other developers, working with some of the biggest national home builders. What does bridge that gap? What's important right now? Where are you guys bringing solutions to the areas where you build?
You know, each area is different, right? I don't do anything in Williamson County, and there's reasons for it. They are very difficult to work with, and I'm not gonna wait 3 years to get a project approved. So there's certain areas that have bigger needs than other. We prefer to focus on the developer-friendly area. So These might be smaller municipalities outside within an hour drive in Nashville, Tennessee that have a shake. They want development, they need development, they need the rooftops in order to be able to attract the businesses that they want to. Because what a lot of people don't understand is that, yeah, you got property taxes and stuff like that for residential, and that's great, but what really greases the wheels are the sales taxes from the business. They want the sales taxes. So every transaction that you've got that goes through that business, the city's getting a cut of that. And so the more rooftops means the more businesses, which means more tax revenue for the city. So we really, we'll bring in charts and show like, hey, over the course of 20 years, here's how much revenue this is gonna bring in. Here's how many rooftops. This is what it's gonna mean for local area businesses. That's another really good way to start. If you want to gain support for your communities, go talk to all the little local business owners and ask them to show up because they are 100% for increasing and, and getting business better, right? And then they can tap into their little communities and ask them, hey, would you guys show up and show some support? This would be really good for our business. So there's little things that you can do like that, but that's where we focus. We want to pick and choose our battles, and certain battles are easier than others. So we tend to focus on those smaller municipalities.
