08 May Ep. 54 Historic Tax Credits with Maureen McMillan

TRANSCRIPTION

Live on the rooftop of the Hermann London real estate group in beautiful downtown Maplewood it’s the St. Louis Realtor podcast with your host Adam Kruse welcome welcome everybody to the St. Louis Realtor podcast live from the rooftop with a Hermann London real estate group I’m your host Adam Kruse here with my co-host Shannon St. Pierre hello Realtor extraordinaire and we have a packed house today because our guest is really popular and what we’re gonna be talking about is super interesting and so I’m gonna introduce our other I guess attendees or what would you like to call yourselves we have three of our other agents in the room Loren burns hello Natasha who watt my Simon how’s it going and we’ve got Matt Simon here hello and our very special guest today is Maureen McMillan hi everybody hello and she’s a historic preservation consultant she has her own company and I’m gonna read your bio real quick Maureen works as a private consultant assisting clients seeking federal and our state of Missouri historic tax credits for their residential and commercial rehabilitation projects from the initial site visit to determine the viability of their project through project final application she educates clients on the requirements of the programs and handles all of the necessary paperwork related to the tax credit applications and I want to give a disclaimer to anyone listening a lot of the things that we say today are how it is today right and so like Maureen was telling me earlier things are always changing and so I don’t want you to listen to something that we say today and assume that it’s still the case we encourage you to call Maureen if you have a project going on and get like the updated information basically does that make sense yes okay now do you mind starting for all of us and our listeners just kind of giving an overview of what is the preservation consultant what is a tax credit can you can sure so back in the 1970s the federal government created a federal historic tax credit program it was used for income producing properties it was only for federal for your federal tax credits but a lot of states began looking at that as a model for economic development and so in 1997 the state of Missouri passed legislation to create a state historic preservation tax credit went into effect in January of 1998 and it is it is designed to be an economic development tool so the historic tax credit is again it’s an incentive to invest money in real estate development it returns a tax credit to the developer to offset the cost of doing a historically appropriate rehabilitation so since it is a historic preservation tax credit there are guidelines that we have to follow you can’t just go in and kind of do whatever you want you can’t gut the building and do the big open floor plan if you still have a an intact historic floor plan there are going to be certain spaces where changes are limited or prohibited certain spaces where you have more leeway and we’ll kind of get into that discussion that kind of that kind of specific information a little later but the return on your investment is that you get a tax credit in the amount of twenty five cents for every dollar that you invest that is a qualified rehabilitation expenditure so economic development and and historic preservation development kind of has its own lingo as with most industries so a qre or a qualified rehabilitation expenditure is an expense that is incurred in the rehabilitation of a building that is part of the building itself and that is permanent to the building that’s kind of the shorthand rule of thumb you may have project expenses that are not considered qualified rehabilitation expenditures because they are outside the footprint of the building they are something a portable item that you could pick up and take with you like an appliance but the rule of thumb is you have to you get 25 cents on the dollar for those QR EES now a tax credit is not a check what the state is going to give you is a form letter that says you have tax credits in the amount of whatever and you can use that tax credit to offset your state historic or your state income tax liability now the state the nice thing about the state of Missouri program is that you can either apply that tax credit to your current year’s income taxes the year that you’re filing you can carry it back three years and claim a refund from the state of Missouri on previously paid income taxes if you want to continue to apply it against your income tax directly you can do that for a period of 10 years or alternatively and this is what a lot of people do they sell them to a third party there are always people but you know high value folks who are looking to take a little bit off the top of their their tax burden so they will pay you ninety maybe ninety three cents on the dollar if you’re lucky you get cash in hand and they get a little bit of a discount on their income tax so there are a number of ways you can use that tax credit the state tax credit so that’s what it is the state is not going to send you a check they’re going to send you a form letter that you can use in a number of ways to offset state income taxes the federal credit on the other hand can only be used to offset federal income taxes for a period of twenty years you cannot at least at this time you cannot transfer them to a third party so they are not sellable but again they do give you 20 years to apply them against your federal income taxes so that’s what a tax credit is so in our case these are this you know these are historic preservation tax credits they are tied specifically to this program you get them after you have completed your project you submit your final application you submit all of the expense documentation that they request from you and then after you have to pay a nominal fee to the state of Missouri at which time they will release to you your tax credit voucher well yeah that’s what I was thinking okay so it’s basically the state or the federal government saying we want you to invest in this neighborhood but we want you to kind of keep it looking the same but it’s so they’re not available in every neighborhood they are not you have to be either individual your building has to either be individually listed on the National Register of Historic Places which usually applies to kind of the big significant landmark buildings or your building has to be considered a contributing resource to a registered Historic District now in St. Louis we have an we have a number of historic districts some of them have been nominated to the National Register of Historic Places some of them were created by local ordinance which means they are certified local historic districts which means that they meet the criteria to be on the National Register they are recognized as as potentially being eligible to be on the National Register but they have not gone through that formal nomination process instead they are created by the Board of Aldermen by local ordinance but you your building has to be in a historic district or it has to be individually listed on the National Register so you’re looking if you’re you know you we have a lot of neighborhoods in the city that are historic districts but not everything in the city has been registered so are there any areas in the county or there are there are historic districts in the city there are historic districts in the county there are historic districts in a lot of small towns across the state of Missouri a lot of small towns have their historic downtown’s their historic Main streets and they too are eligible for historic tax audits I mean it sounds like a huge benefit to people obviously they’re getting kind of a twenty five percent discount and a lot of ways on what they’re doing is are people not doing them sometimes because of things other than the red tape or because they they want to change the look of the building those are the two biggest reasons some people don’t want to be bothered with the process they just you know they don’t find that they find it either inconvenient they just don’t want they don’t want to they just don’t want to be bothered sometimes people choose not to do it because what they what their vision is for that building and the way they want to design that space is incompatible with the standards that show that we that are that are governed that governed this program so we are governed by the Secretary of the Interior standards for rehabilitation and there’s a set of guidelines that go with that that kind of tell us in general terms the do’s and the don’ts and so those guidelines those standards are going to be concerned primarily with what they consider to be the public spaces or the private uh the or the the public spaces are the primary spaces of a building so when you’re looking at a building the front wall is always going to be the most public space of that building the further you go to the back the less primary that space is the more room you have to make some changes when you get inside the building it is generally considered that the primary spaces the public spaces are your entry hall your foyer whatever your stare hall whatever that circulation space is and then your two front rooms on the assumption that historically you had maybe a formal parlor and a secondary parlor and that’s where your company would have come and so they’re always looking at where would your public have come in the way they the way that gets applied to houses is kind of based on when the federal credit was initially created it was designed for commercial buildings so where would your customers have come where would your public have come so when you adapt that to houses you think about where would your guests have come where would your company have come so there are certain spaces and if you’re looking at a two-family flat or a multiple family building that may apply to every unit in the building or at least the first several floors so that to room rule and the and the hallway is more or less going to apply in in each of those units within multiple family buildings okay and so for clarification purposes on the tax credits the federal tax credits can only be used for income producing properties yes and you have to hold the property for five years okay so you can’t rehab it and then sell it no half that we’re living minimum of five years it also can’t rehab it and live in it unless you’re living in one of the units yes so you can live in it as long as it’s still income producing as in like a multi-family you live in one unit the other thing you want the other unit units in the building however that’s not the case with the state tax credits correct absolute no it is absolutely the state tax credit can be used for strictly for owner occupied properties so let’s say you want to rehab your own home okay you can use the state historic tax credit program exclusively for that if you are doing a an income-producing property you can use the state historic tax credit in tandem with the federal historic tax credit in which case you would get twenty five percent back from the state and an additional 20 percent in tax credits from the from the federal you can also use that state tax credit for properties that you want to flip lots of investors use this problem this program they will they develop properties they sell them on to people who will then end up being owner occupants so you can use the the state program has a lot of flexibility both in how you use the final credit that you get and also how you use the building itself is there a simple website that I can go to to find out what areas in the county or the city are in his historical districts you can do a Google search for Missouri National Register if you just plug in Missouri National Register you can it’ll pull up a page and it’ll be list them by county okay so you can do a search by county and that will give you the National Register historic districts you can also if you’re on that same page it you know if you use the little search bar up in the top and you say certified local districts that same Historic Preservation website will take you to the St. Louis in the Kansas City certified local districts St. Louis in Kansas City are the only places that have certified local districts so so if you’re on that that that web page for the Missouri National Register districts you can also kind of leapfrog over and find the certified local districts in the city of St. Louis before everyone dives into their more specific questions do you mind giving your contact information sure so if you want to reach me by phone my cell number is three one four four zero two nine four four five my email has a lot of M’s in it m t– McMillan and McMillan is spelled MC M I ll a n @ att.net no question about I guess the application process specifically and if I guess it’s competitive or not like what kind of steps do you have to take once you’ve identified a building with the assumption that there’s a limit on the tax credits I guess yes and if there’s certain financial thresholds you have to there are so for any project for the state of Missouri the other criteria that you have to meet for eligibility once you’ve established that it’s in a historic district it’s a contributing building and when I say it’s a contributing resource I mean that it is a building that was built during the period of significance for that district which means that most most neighborhoods had a period during which most of the construction happened and that was when the biggest period of development for that neighborhood when they say they establish a period of significant significance for a district that’s what they’re talking about and they’re looking for buildings when they surveyed the district to create that district they they identify those buildings that were built during that period of significance those are the contributing buildings you may have a building that was built in a historic district but it was built in the late 1970s in the period of significance ended in 1945 that building will be probably be listed as a non contributing resource because it is a essentially a new building in a historic district so you do have to be sure that you are a contributing resource within a historic district for the state program you have to spend 50 percent of what you paid for the building on your qualified rehabilitation expenses for the federal program it’s a different threshold and it’s actually a somewhat higher threshold and it’s a little more complicated formula so for the federal program they are looking to strip out the value of just the building so they take what you paid for the building you subtract out any depreciation if you have it you may have owned the building 20 years in which case you would have potentially have depreciation you would add back in any appreciation again if you have it and you strip out the value of all of the land associated with the parcel not just the back yard but also you strip out the value of the land that the building is sitting on that takes you down to the value of just the building itself and then you have to spend one hundred percent of that number so that can be a little tricky to figure out and really that only you only have to really start slicing and dicing to get to that number if for example you paid a lot for the building and your rehabilitation expenses may not quite be more than what you paid for the building that’s when people start having to really figure out how to how to how to get to that adjusted basis so many details I can see why people call you it’s it it is not it is not for the faint of heart you’d hate to do a project thinking you’re gonna get all these tax credits because you’re kind of spending extra money in some ways to do it yes you are to this guidelines and then find out you’re not actually going to get the money right and and and if you’re new at this the rules not only the rules about the numbers and you know getting the paperwork filled out right but the others more importantly the understanding of what changes you’re allowed to make to the building and how you make them is where it’s really easy to get in trouble and do something wrong and find that you have gotten you are denied on the back end so those are the things those are the places where you know hiring a consultant makes a lot of sense so do you and is it possible to know for the state of Missouri the only expenses that are considered to be eligible are those that are incurred after your application has been received by the Department of Economic Development it does not mean that you have to have preliminary approval although there are some changes to the rules that are coming that are going to affect when your costs begin to count historically though the state says once your application your preliminary application is received by the Department of Economic Development that is when your expenses begin to count but again there are some changes that are coming those are still kind of in the works so we’re not exactly sure how that’s all going to shake out yet and so I’m a little hesitant to go too much into detail about what those changes are because again we don’t know exactly where they’re gonna land can you talk a little bit about the application timeline and how long it takes to you know start to finish to get these tax credits or even to be approved like you said right so the application process is broken up mainly into two parts you have to submit a preliminary application and as part of that preliminary application there is an act there is a preliminary application form there are backup documents that they are going to require as part of the application they want a copy of your settlement statement so they know how much you paid for the building again because they need to know that you’re gonna hit that 50 percent they’re gonna want a copy of your recorded general warranty deed or special warranty deed if that’s what you happen to have to show that you in fact are the owner of the building they’re going to want things like before photos showing the condition of the building as it is right now they’re going to want a set of floor plans showing the existing condition of the building and what we typically refer to as as Bilt’s although if your building has been changed over time obviously the as-built is not really as it was built but as it sits right at this moment and then you submit a set of proposed floor plans showing what you want to do to the building what changes you want to make to the floor plan additionally you if you are a company that is applying they’re gonna want a number of company documents your operating agreement if your company has two or more members you have to enroll in the e-verify program with the Department of Homeland Security so there are going to be company related documents that you have to provide as well so there is there is a substantial and you also the other thing we have to include our copies of the historic district survey map showing that your building is in fact a contributing resource to that district so there’s a fairly hefty packet of stuff that has to go in depending on how many of those pieces you have and how long it’s going to take you to get them together so typically the consultant will come in and take the photos for you that’s usually part of a consultants job taking the photos walking through and making sure you understand before you develop your proposed plan what changes you’re allowed to make where you can make them you don’t have to have full-blown architectural drawings I have a number of clients who will do their own as long as you can within reason lay out the plant the floor plan of the building show the location of windows and door openings and things like that where the stairs are you can do them by hand assuming of course that the city isn’t requiring you to provide full-blown architectural drawings but you do need that as built set and you need the proposed plans and so pulling everything together that’s necessary for the application it’s going to depend a little bit on how quickly you can pull all of those things together a big part of the preliminary application is going to be a description of all of the work that you’re proposing to do to the building and what the condition of the existing features are so to do that a lot of consultants are going to be asking you questions about you know okay what are you doing to the roof what are you doing to the masonry what are you doing to the floors where are you making changes to the walls so there’s going to be a lot of back-and-forth making sure the consultant understands what it is you’re doing to all of those things because that’s going to be a big chunk of the application is making sure that the reviewer at the state understands what you’re proposing to do to the building to ensure that it’s going to live within those guidelines so assuming you have all the preliminary legwork done and you go forward with the application I mean typically are we talking weeks months years for the preliminary approval wait are you asking that Matt with the assumption that you need what I guess you have to wait to hear back from them before you start on the project I’m just asking what you know the average client can expect on a timeframe process from start to finish how long this typically takes right because everyone’s always worried about sitting on the investment they want to get work started right away usually absolutely that’s that’s a big concern and so again you’re allowed to begin work once your application is submitted typically when I mail an application into de D they receive it in two business days they stamp it that they have logged it in or they’ve stamped it that they received it and that stamp date is the login date so you are when you can be incur expenses that is when you’re typically allowed to incur expenses however I mean this is a big however right now the State Historic Preservation Office which reviews the scope of the work that’s their role in this in this program they are currently running they have been running about a year behind on their reviews they had been grossly understaffed they have hired up a few new people so they’re trying really hard to plow through that backlog in normal times the review period would be 30 working days which would be about a month and a half so again we’re pretty far off that right now I’m not gonna sugarcoat that we are pretty far so when you take year that I mean that’s pretty far off it so you don’t even get your voucher for and then once well so assuming that you get your preliminary review any and I have projects to be quite honest I have projects that have been finished and sold and we don’t have preliminary review okay cuz that was gonna be my next question so you can’t still sell it and then they do it and they say hopefully you lived within the guidelines and you didn’t do anything that they have any major concerns about but then one your project is finished there is a second application phase you have to submit a final application and the biggest part of that final application is going to a CPA who understands the tax credit program not every CPA does you want to find a CPA who knows the tax credit program who’s going to take all of your proofs of payment all of your invoices your material receipts all of that stuff they’re gonna put it into a spreadsheet the way the state of Missouri wants to see it they’re going to organize all of your backup documentation in the right format and that is called either a cost compilation which is one level of review for projects that are under two hundred and fifty thousand dollars in construction costs if your construction costs are two hundred fifty thousand dollars or higher you have to have what’s called a 100 percent cost certification which is a somewhat higher level of review of those expenses so that is the biggest piece of the final application process once your CPA once we finally get the preliminary approval in our hand and we have that expense certification from the CPA we submit the final final application document along with after photos so that they can see that what you did lives within the guidelines you did what you said you were going to do in the application so there will be final photos keyed into a floor plan so that the reviewer at shippo can look at those photos look at that floor plan make sure that it it is done properly and once they’ve signed off on it then it gets in line over at de d and de d will just go back through that expense certification to make sure that there aren’t any ineligible expenses that somehow got through and the CPA didn’t catch them and you know or they they look for little things so it can be a process to get your final to actually get that voucher in your hand because not only do you have to get through the preliminary view but then once you have that then you have to go through that second step of the application process so right now it is definitely a challenge we’re hoping that with the addition of staff at both Shippo and de D they will get caught up again and be more operate more on their traditional time lines which again were 30 working days for Shippo to review your preliminary application and back in back in the good old days de D would once they got the final application assuming that the preliminary review was in place and the Shippo did their final review again within 30 working days de D could was routinely turning around those Tax Credit vouchers within a couple of months so once we get back to normal timelines you’re looking at maybe a couple of months waiting for your preliminary review on the front end and then probably you know three to four months on the back end again once we’re able to get back to those normal timelines so we’re looking at about six to 18 months generally speaking depending on the scale of the project and all the documentation rated to be reviewed and and rules are going to be different for really large projects projects that have like a million plus in Q re s are treated differently those that are receiving two hundred and seventy-five thousand dollars or more in tax credits there is a cap per year on those projects so if you have one of those large projects you could submit your application and they may say the cap for this particular fiscal year has been exhausted which means that then your project would get in line in the next fiscal year to receive credits in that fiscal year hopefully I’ve never seen anybody not get their get approved for their tax credits in the following fiscal year if they if they if they missed the cap on the when they first applied I’ve never seen anybody not be put in line right you know for the second for the next fiscal year I’ve never seen anybody pushed out beyond that but there is a cap on the large projects there is no cap there is no fiscal there is no budget cap on small projects so when you hear about historic tax credits having there’s a cap and it’s so many millions of dollars a year that only applies to the large projects people can do small projects all day long and there is no cap so there’s no point at which they’re going to say we’ve used up all of our money for this year and you’re out of luck what a project is based on an address you couldn’t have multiple projects at the same property so if you have I have a couple of projects where we have more several buildings on a parcel sometimes in old neighborhoods you had a house on the street you had an alley house in the back for the state purposes we have treated that as because it is really kind of one large rehabilitation project the state will treat that as one application for the federal though if you’re doing that as rental property those will be separate federal applications because they are physically separate buildings but you can do now if you have let’s say you buy five buildings on a block and you want and you’re essentially going to rehab them all at one time they are still for the state’s purposes separate applications because each address there is its own application so uh to go back a little bit you mentioned the qre budget and I was just kind of wondering you know it had to be a fixed and permanent part of the structure correct so like plumbing electric is that all eligible roof asad we talked about facade that’s eligible flooring yes okay what about interior painting all of those things again if it becomes a permanent part of the building so the things that are typically excluded and this isn’t an exhaustive list so don’t come back to me later and say but you said so but the typical things that are excluded are things like appliances window treatments mirrors those kinds of furniture items like you may you may get like a large armoire and you can even fix it to the wall but that’s still considered personal property shelving is can is an ineligible expense so if you put whether you put wire shelving in your closets or wood shelving in your closets shelving as an entire category is excluded they’re also going to exclude carpet counts if it’s tacked out if it’s a rug no they’re also going to be looking to exclude work done outside the footprint of the building so let’s say you have a building where you have to do a new waterline a new sewer you have to bring new electric into the building the rule there is on the electrical for example once it touches the building it becomes eligible so your panel your wiring your light fixtures all of that stuff once it’s in the building its eligible what are in sewer lines this is governed by an IRS rule from everything within the building so every all your water lines and sewer lines that run inside the basement going out four and a half feet are considered eligible from that four and a half foot mark out to the connection in the street is considered site work and therefore not considered to be eligible as a rehabilitation expense so that’s an IRS distinction so you want to make sure that your plumber can reasonably give you a number and say this portion is from the from the building out to the street that part is ineligible this portion is within the footprint within that four and a half feet in the building and therefore that part is is eligible and generally de D is just looking for you to give them a number what about rooftops do with those count redoing a rooftop with that count as part of the building when you say redo it like a rooftop deck sure if it’s new construction anything that’s new construction is considered ineligible now if you have a if you have a porch that is eligible if you’re putting on a new deck or a rooftop deck no they’ll allow you to put it on generally but they won’t allow you to claim the expense if you’re doing a new addition to a building let’s say you’ve got a relatively small building and you want to build out and you so you you know frame it out you put your hardy board all the way around that new addition is considered ineligible because it is not part of the historic structure so when you’re talking about Curie’s you’re talking about materials not materials and ladies and labor yes so it’s for all those do-it-yourselfer rehabbers um can you do some of the work yourself how do you but you can you only clean materials and not labor right if you are doing your own project you cannot pay yourself and claim the labor unless you have a separate entity that is that can leg against tax income like a construction company that can be your general contractor but if I am doing my own house and I want to claim it I want to claim credits on the labor I put into the project I can’t do that okay I can claim my material receipts but I cannot claim my own labor that’s probably another big reason for some people not doing this right and and if you’re doing a lot of the work yourself you may not that helps keep your budget down but it could impact your ability to hit that 50 percent of your purchase price because again you’re not allowed to pay yourself for the labor and if you’re doing most of it yourself that would take a big chunk out of your labor cost now another thing in terms of just the and because this is a question I get a lot on Q are ease in kitchens and bathrooms cabinetry countertops fixtures all eligible so that’s a big expense and a lot of people think that you can’t count those but if they are if your cabinets are permanently affixed to the wall not a piece of furniture that you can pick up and walk away with then it is in fact an eligible expense kind of getting a little bit back towards one of the previous mentions here you mentioned the ability to sell tax credits you said that was for the state only the federal is not eligible that’s correct okay is there any restrictions on the sale of them and can anybody go out and buy them and apply them to anything where do you sell them I’m assuming Craigslist isn’t where you Wow so all of the all of the banks buy them but most of the banks want to buy larger packages Commerce Bank used to buy tax credits from anybody but they implemented a $50,000 minimum rule recently so you have to have a minimum of $50,000 in tax credits to sell to them there are individuals who will buy them and the best way to find those people is through a CPA a lot of CPAs have high value clients we’re always looking to knock a little off in your CPA may be able to point you to an individual you can transfer them from one individual to another does not have to be through an institution now there are syndicators there are brokers out there I don’t really know a great deal about using that vehicle for transferring them I’m assuming your return there might be somewhat less than if you’re able to sell them directly to an individual but there are in fact you know there are people out there always looking to knock some off their liability yeah I’m sitting here thinking hey call me Adam Kruse I I’d like to save some money on my state taxes and you could so if if if Adam Kruse one that has a big tax build and wants to save a little bit of money somebody could come to you and there’s a transfer form and they could transfer their tax credits to you and you could use them call me okay a final question for me how much does this I guess consulting this preservation package with you coming in to help and you don’t have to quote your specific rates so no one boxes you in what is the average range for consultants for like just oh that’s that’s hard I don’t know does it range depending on the range it does range and some consultants will charge you a percentage of the project I’ve asked some consultants bill on a strictly hourly basis and some consultants will either do a flat fee or at least at the front end to be able to kind of quote you an amount so it varies dramatically okay so varies as in like you know five hundred or two you know five thousand for a small small like a jungle family home in the city that’s being rehabbed you know snacks are finish start to finish you’re even on somewhat smaller projects you’re probably looking at a couple of thousand dollars from start to finish which seems so worth it and the ending another thing to be aware of is that those consultant fees are eligible for credits they are a an eligible soft cost one of the things I didn’t talk about is that in addition to your hard construction costs there are soft costs that are eligible your building permits your architectural fees during the construction period real estate taxes your construction interest your utilities during the construction period those things are all considered eligible soft costs your CPA fees to do your cost compilation at the end another eligible expense your your consultant that you hire another eligible expense so your categories you are both hard construction and soft costs that are eligible last question from me here in the last year we’ve seen the emergence of opportunity zones and designated throughout the city are there any additional incentives or restrictions applied to those specific zones when it comes to tax credits no because the opportunity zones are a function of that tax reform bill that came out in 2017 and that is a federal thing only and what that opportunity zone does is it essentially allows you to reduce the amount of capital gains you pay when you sell the building that’s really about as much as I know about that one but but that is really a very different thing but there are there definitely is some overlap between opportunity zones and I know people who are looking to try to take advantage of all of those things Natasha you had a client the other day asking about something like market credits new market credit Newmark is that something you handle I do not do new market tax credits and to my knowledge I asked about them a couple of years ago and there at that point in time they were not accepting applications for new market tax credits that program I think was kind of had been suspended what is a new market credit you’re getting that’s something I couldn’t really I I couldn’t speak to okay cuz that’s what I really just don’t know that much about my little niche in the world is historic preservation tax credits I will very quickly say there is a second state of Missouri tax credit available for residential rehabilitation it’s the one known as the lottery and that one is called the neighborhood preservation tax credit that’s when that one is only available for owner occupied properties it does not have the restrictions of a historic tax credit program but you can use them again in conjunction with each other so I’ll just make a really brief plug on that one one thing I just wanted to clear up because I this all sounds really interesting for me as maybe something I would want to do for my house except the part that you you kind of said that you have to keep the interior you know I would want the open floor plan and you’re saying you can’t have that if you have an intact historic floor plan if you if your house has not been changed at least not significantly from when it was built then they would say no you can’t knock out all the walls and open up the floor plan now I have clients who will specifically look for buildings that either were previously renovated and somebody came along and completely reconfigured the floor plan back in say the 90s or the 2000s or they’ve got a building that has been gutted and is now just a shell in those cases where the historic floor plan has already been lost either through reconfiguration or through demolition you can do that historian you can do that open floor plan there but if you still have your original walls they’re gonna say in those front spaces in those primary spaces no you can’t rip it all out they want you to keep those big pocket doors and all that kind of stuff yes even though they don’t work you can fix them though yeah that was amazing man awesome thank you very much I can see why you have to have someone who specializes specifically in this type of thing because there’s so many little details to know there are a lot of details to know and you can get yourself into trouble again if you don’t know for example that you’re not allowed to come in the house and rip the plaster off the walls and expose the masonry underneath and you submit your final photo showing all this exposed masonry your whole project compose brick unless it was existing when you got the building and so so there are a lot of places there are a lot of potential pitfalls that that people don’t necessarily know about going in so that’s where your consultant is worth his or her weight in gold and I don’t want someone to listen to this thinking that they now know everything and don’t need to call you because there’s a lot of things a whole lot we that that that we did not talk about and if you want to do a like a part two to this someday we can come back and do it everything even hit the top of the iceberg here yeah there there’s a whole lot more we could be talking about so if you don’t mind tell us again how people can get a hold of you and then we’ll wrap it up sure my phone number is area code three one four four zero two nine four four five my email address m/t Macmillan at att.net beautiful thank you so much for being here and thank you everybody for listening we really appreciate it anybody who’s out there with questions or ideas for the future shows please email us podcast at Hermann London comm we look forward to hearing from you and thanks for listening and take care bye I have George Tamara here with endeavor Capital Mortgage today I wanted to talk to you guys about our fast-track mortgage program what that does is it allows us to get your loan close within 14 days in today’s market we’re still seeing multiple offers on properties which means you’ve got to be one of the most competitive offers out there first thing you want to do is make sure you have a great pre-approval and what I mean by that is turn in your credit your assets and your income and make sure an underwriter looks at that and approves it first that’s one of the great things that endeavor capital is we have our own underwriters on staff we can get that done for you in an hour that will make your offer look that much more competitive if you’re in a multiple offer situation so with our fast-track mortgage program from start to finish we can close you in 14 days makes everybody look great it’s fast easy and efficient and will hold your hand all the way through look forward to working with you please feel free to reach out to me three one four three seven eight zero three three one thanks so much you