From the first shingle to the final deck board, your home is your biggest investment. But in a world of rising costs and contractor red flags, how do you know who to trust? This is the You Ask, The Pros Answer podcast. Hey, welcome to the You Ask, The Pros Answer podcast. Your questions answered by the pros you trust, presented by Pro Exteriors.

hey we are back we're doing it we took a short break but we are back for season three this year we have decided to change up the format just a bit so you might recall previously we were releasing an episode every friday oftentimes they were shorter episodes sometimes two or three parters this year we have decided to go to a once a month format so you can expect to see a new episode on the first tuesday of each month

But I'm excited because it's the start of a new season. I have with me the owner and president of Pro Exteriors, Aaron Rodgers. Aaron, how is it going? It's cold here, Cole. I don't know if you know this. I know you're in Kentucky. I'm sure it's cold there, but it's also cold here. And I hate cold weather.

Yeah, I thought before we started recording about what our pre-show banter would be, and I know it's cliche to talk about the weather, but goodness, that is kind of the headline here as well. It's 17 degrees currently, and it feels warm. Oof. Because last week we were in the single digits. I think maybe last Wednesday or Thursday I woke up to take the kids to school, and it was minus 7. That was the temperature, not the wind chill. Yeah.

so the actual temperature that sounds yeah yeah um so i am oof i'm ready for spring yeah for sure but i don't want to rush spring here too soon because first we have uh super bowl 60 coming up full transparency i had to google what super bowl number this was because they use those daggone roman numerals yeah it's not ideal and above like

15 or 20. It's tough. Super Bowl 60, this year's matchup will feature the Seattle Seahawks of Seattle and the New England Patriots. We kind of have an East Coast versus West Coast duel this year. In a minute, I know you're a huge sports ball fan. Humongous. You live, breathe it daily.

I want to get your take because I know people listening to this are going to they're really going to put a lot of stock in your your guess. But did you know that in 2003 Raiders center Barrett Robbins went missing in Tijuana for two days before the Super Bowl? He ended up missing the game entirely. It's that's not a real.

it sounds humorous but it was actually due to a mental health episode so that's not great but it starts out kind of humorous because you're thinking he went missing in tijuana that just sounds like the beginning of a joke not great this one was weird and i have not fact checked this one so audience you can look it up if you want during the 1973 super bowl the miami dolphins staffers uh so the miami dolphins were out practicing

before the Super Bowl against the Washington Redskins, they went out and checked the trees surrounding the practice field for spies from the Redskins. That's not surprising. Yeah. For some reason, the very first Super Bowl in 1967, this is just to prove how far the halftime shows have come. The very first halftime show included the release of 300 pigeons. Don't know why?

Let's see. Super Bowl XLV. What number would that be? Correct. 2011. No cheerleaders at all. Neither the Packers or the Steelers featured them for some reason. Interesting. Let's see. I've got two more. In 1973, Vicky Carr sang America the Beautiful instead of the National Anthem.

And I actually did fact check this because I thought, did she just, you know, you've watched some of those Star Spangled Banner national anthem blunders and you like you cringe and then you simultaneously feel really bad for the person. This was an intentional decision by the Super Bowl organizers. Interesting. I don't think they've ever done that since. All right. Here is the last fact that might actually help you make your prediction. Yeah.

Titled this White Jersey Magic. Teams wearing white jerseys have won 12 of the last 13 Super Bowls. So this Sunday, the Seattle Seahawks will take the field in their blue jerseys, while the New England Patriots will take the field in their white jerseys. So Seahawks versus Patriots. Tell us your expert prediction.

Well, based upon what you just said, I feel like the New England Patriots are probably going to hit a few more touchdowns than the Seahawks. You get six points for a touchdown, seven if you kick the point after. Unless you do a two-point conversion. See, I do no sports. True, true. All right, so what's your score? I'm going to go Patriots.

27 to 13. 27, 13. Do you have any attachment to either of these teams for any reason? Absolutely not. All right. So you know I'm from Baltimore. Back in the early 80s, the Baltimore Colts left town in the dead of night using the Mayflower Moving Company that's become a well-known fact.

I wasn't yet born when the Colts left, but my dad and his brothers were all huge Colts fans. They all were devastated, but they latched on to other teams because it wasn't until the mid-90s that the Baltimore Ravens came to town. So my dad, for whatever reason, picked the Seattle Seahawks. Really? Ever since. Yeah. One of his brothers picked the 49ers. I think they just went opposite coast. They're like, we're going to pick a team from as far out as.

So he's a Ravens fan now, but he's always had a soft spot for the Seahawks. So for that reason only, I am picking the Seahawks over the Patriots 22 to 17. Okay. Funny enough, my dad was growing up was a Colts fan and me not being a real big sports guy. I never really understood why someone from here.

would attach themselves to the Indianapolis Colts. And it wasn't until I was probably 10, 11, 12, somewhere in there where somebody else, not my father, but somebody else told me the story about the Baltimore Colts jumping ship. And I was like, okay, he just went with them.

Jump and ship is a good pun. Mayflower, moving company. Mayflower was a ship. Folks, you're going to have to follow us on social media. You can watch the game and find out who got the closest. Follow us on social media. We will post those predictions on there because it won't be until March that we get to come back and one of us will get to gloat because one of us will be right.

In some ways. All right. So as I mentioned, beginning of season three of the show, wanted to start with just the state of things in our industry, primarily directed to homeowners. So the state of the shore, you know, we serve the DeMarva Peninsula area. The last couple years, last few years, there's been a state of economic weirdness. And so we want to talk just.

we want to talk a little bit about where the Delmarva homeowner stands. So Aaron, if 2025, if we dub that the year of hesitation, is there a word that you might give for 2026 from a, from your expert? I would say, yeah, I, so again, love the term economic weirdness. Ew. Ew.

I would say maybe like normalcy. I think we're going to come back to some variation of, and again, normal. New normal. Yeah, because COVID has changed a tremendous amount of things in almost every industry. So the new normal for most things, home improvement industry, building and remodeling, changed drastically during COVID. It changed how a lot of people had to operate.

changed how a lot of people kind of had to go to market with their company. So yeah, I would say that this year, I think we're going to kind of fall back into a sense of normalcy in comparison to the last couple of years. I think consumer confidence is starting to grow a little bit.

I know we've talked about this before on the podcast, but election cycles are always kind of weird for home improvement. People tend to kind of hold on to their money to kind of see what's going to happen with the election. And then normally what happens is when the election, regardless of who wins, whoever takes office eventually, things kind of tend to open up. They didn't really seem to do that last year.

got into some financial hot water. We saw a lot of private equity companies filing for bankruptcy after purchasing very large improvement companies for many, many tens of tens of millions of dollars. So yeah, I'm thinking that this year is going to kind of settle back to some level of normal, hopefully. I'm encouraged to hear that. This is broadcast worldwide, but our primary audience is people that live

in the delmarva area yeah does our market here look different than on the national scale if so what is what are some of those differences well so we live in a uh we live in a rather affluent area um and not necessarily to say that there's you know huge industries and tons of money here necessarily uh we don't have a ton of industry here

The issue that we are is we are centrally located between a lot of major metropolitan areas. We've got Philadelphia that's 90 minutes away. We've got DC that's two and a half hours away. New York City is a handful of hours away. We live in an area that's very centrally located for people to kind of retire. We have very, very, very low property taxes and no sales tax. So people from surrounding areas that are used to dealing with insane property taxes and

sales tax on almost everything they touch. It's an easy place to kind of jump and still be close to, say, your family, your friends, the things that you're used to, the teams that you're used to rooting for kind of thing. So we have a lot of people that settle here. Our market has always been somewhat of a bubble, very specifically to where we are directly located. The shore, the coastline here has always been kind of somewhat secured from

like the rest of the economic downfall across the country. It's always a place where you can realistically buy a home at pretty much any point in time, and you're always going to see the value of that home go up. So we've had a lot of people come in and buy second homes, vacation homes, investment properties, and it pretty much stays comfortable that the price of that home is always going to rise. So it's a very safe bet to place your money here.

Whereas a lot of times when we're dealing with economic crisis across the country, we don't necessarily feel it quite as bad here. So yeah, when things are weird here, the economical weirdness, when they're weird here, it's usually typically going to be much worse across the majority of the country. I remember before we moved to Delaware, we had somebody tell us that even socially,

i don't know if socially is the right word it it is like a protected because of that divide between the west coast and the eastern shore or the western shore and eastern shore it's weird how it is on an island almost and how a lot of things are that way you wouldn't think that would be the case in 2026 with social media and internet and yeah but yeah it still kind of seems to hold on to that okay so

Rates are in the low sixes now. Do we wait for them to come down into the fives before taking action? I've heard this concept of the wait and see trap. What do you recommend to homeowners who maybe have been waiting, maybe waiting for some more equity in their house so they can take out a home equity loan? What do you say about that? I mean, honestly.

Interest rates are kind of a weird conversation in this industry because when people saw 3% rates, that became their standard. And again, I say their standard because 3% rates were just ridiculous. There's no real benefit to the financial institutions to give 3% rates.

It's not great. So lending restrictions, it did make things a lot more affordable for most people. There were people that were able to capitalize on things that they wouldn't be able to otherwise afford. And the problem with people that got rates in the threes and fours is nobody really wants to pay above that now. So you have people that bought houses during the times when rates were super low that now they can't even fathom the idea of purchasing or

you know buying anything at above a six percent rate because the cost to them is you know we'll call it if they got a three percent rate before it's now double the cost so you have a lot of people that are basically holding on to the properties that they have and they're not really looking to do anything with them and then you have people that

have houses that they need to do stuff to. And the thought of financing anything at a 6% rate is kind of daunting. So I think that there is no time like the present. The rates are going to be what they are. I think that we might see some 5% rates over the next year.

whether they stick around, it's hard to tell. I honestly think that anything in the sixes is what I would consider a normal rate. Even the low sevens, historically speaking, is a normal rate. 5% rates are typically for people that have amazing credit and cash to put down type of deal.

so i would say there's no time like the present if you're looking to do a home improvement project and you need to pull the money from some sort of home equity or finance it into uh you know maybe home improvement financing that something like we offer i think six percent rates is is ideal so especially low sixes perfect all right so obviously we are not a financial podcast and we can't really predict what yeah the feds are going to do but what

What I do think you have a good handle on is material costs. We've talked before about the fact that material costs are never going to go lower than what they are. So if somebody waits the next year for a 1% lower finance rate, but material costs rise 6%, 8%, 10% or whatever, what does that end up doing to the cost of their project?

if they decide to wait yeah i mean if we look at just the last five years as kind of our benchmark you know we covet is kind of a very unique time and in the fact that like you can't really use a lot of the information or the data that that kind of came out of say 2021 and 2022 because it was such a unique time unlike any other in this industry um but i would say that you know on average if you

delay any project from this year going into the following year, I would say 10% is kind of normal. I would say material increases. If it's on the low, you're usually at a, say a three, four, three to 4% increase on just basic overall materials. You know, there are some things that are a little bit more volatile and there's some things that, you know, could potentially be cheaper. Lumber is one of those things because they're traded on like lumber futures and whatnot, but you know, like,

when covid was here we were paying say 25 a sheet for a half inch osb and now it's just under ten dollars you know four months ago we were paying almost 15 for the same exact thing so is certain items certain things like lumber your basic building materials fluctuate rapidly and there's a huge swing the the lumber that we use when

Rates were low and everybody was pulling money out because the rates were so ridiculous. The cost of lumber skyrocketed just because we could barely get our hands on stuff. So obviously when the demand is high and everybody's building or remodeling, we run into a situation where a two by four, which is historically like a $3 or $4 item, was $9, $10 in some situation. So there isn't really a...

there isn't really a great way to say, on average, you're going to spend about blank. I would say, historically speaking, even taking COVID out of it, 10% is about what you're normally going to spend. So a $10,000 project this year is probably going to be about $11,000 next year and the following. So the one big thing that we have to look at right now, and it's an extremely hard thing to forecast for, is the

And I don't want to dive super, super, super deep into this because it's kind of a charged topic at the moment, but it's with the current immigration issues that we're seeing kind of across the country, we do have a very large population of possibly undocumented workers in this country that have been the backbone of this industry for a very, very long time.

that tighten up more and more. I don't see that going away. In fact, I read an article a couple of weeks ago where they were talking about the increase in funding for immigration and also for additional safety advisors. So not only are we going to see an increase in the potential for more immigration status situations where we're going to have tighter and tighter labor regulations, we're also going to see an increase in OSHA.

in areas where typically osha is not seen like we we've had two osha run-ins in the last 20 years both have been in the last uh two years and i think that's going to increase massively so yeah so anytime you start pulling on the strings of labor the labor cost is going to go up because you know we the other issue of to that is uh the average age of most of the um techs in our industry and most trades industries like 56 years old

So those people are aging out and we don't have young people coming into the trades. And the trades that they are typically going into, we're going to be plumbing, HVAC, and electrical. So our industry, roofing, siding, doesn't have quite the same allure as some of those other trades do. So I think we're going to see a labor issue where the cost of a lot of things is going to increase even more.

based upon the fact that labor is going to go up. And I hear not just wages rising, but also money and resources spent on training new techs, but also revised safety and OSHA regulation training to avoid fines from organizations like OSHA. All right, so we're talking about...

future of labor but even just looking at where we sit today with the crews that we have you know i've sat in on some of the trainings of our crews that's something that you take seriously you want to make sure that the work that we do is done right the first time not just for the homeowner's benefit but also because having to redo something costs us more money in the long run too so could you explain

i think this is self-explanatory but to the homeowner who's out there looking for the cheapest solution to the project or problem they have why cheap labor in the long run becomes uh really the most expensive mistake that they can make yeah so i mean again i think it is somewhat self-explanatory everybody always kind of somewhat expects things to be a certain price you know for the longest time

a roof was $10,000. That's the number that everybody always seemed to have in their head. And when things obviously started to get much, much more expensive, a $10,000 roof wasn't even a fathom of reality. So when you talk about cheap labor, it's the longevity of the product itself. So for a roof, if we're talking about say a 25-year roof or a 30-year roof,

When you're talking about cheap labor, you're typically talking about carrying costs. So the carrying cost is the average roof repair, say $750. A cheaply installed roof is usually going to have one roof repair in the first five years, probably one a year.

year after that. So you're looking at, let's say you get a price for $15,000 and you get a price for $12,000. There's a $3,000 gap there. The $3,000 gap in reality, you could easily spend that in the first handful of years dealing with something where you're going to have to repair the cheap labor, the unskilled labor, or you're going to have to repair interior damages. It also falls back to

to warranty products and and things like that but you know when you're dealing with a company that you know has skilled labor that invests into training they're typically going to offer you a better warranty they're typically going to offer you something where they're always willing to stand behind their work if they do make a mistake they're going to come back and fix it you know we ourselves had an issue this year um i try to always be honest because we're we're not perfect we had a project that we did about five years ago and one little itty bitty little uh

one 80 bitty little thing caused tens of thousand dollars of damage that we ended up having to pay for so you know it's one of those situations where standing behind what you do and believing in the guys and you know understanding that people do make mistakes we're all human going into a situation like that where you're hiring a good company knowing that there's a possibility for mistake why would you ever risk the largest investment most people have to a company that you know hires the cheapest labor they can possibly get

So I think it comes down to being able to sleep at night. Yeah, it's nice paying less for things. It's nice feeling like you got a deal, but at the end of the day, I'd rather invest my money into something that's going to last and get me the full lifespan of the product and knowing that if I ever do have an issue that I've hired a company that's willing to come back and take care of things. We've talked about this before, but I think it bears repeating. If I put on my homeowner's hat, if I have a new roof,

put on it's very easy to look at the the packaging on the bundle of shingles and maybe i wouldn't even do that but i love reading the little features of all the products i buy like this little bullet pointless and and so one company or maybe yeah one company puts on this this shingle another company puts on the exact same shingle

but all of the underlayment that they use is different or maybe it's the exact same but they don't install it correctly the finished product to my eye from the ground might look identical but it's all of the stuff that went on behind the scenes that makes or breaks that roof and so i don't know i i bring that up because i fall prey to looking at the bottom line and being like well you know money's tight and

i'm just saying that as a reminder for myself that you do get what you pay for for sure yeah um okay so lead times and then we'll we're going to shift to what homeowners are looking for from a design standpoint but could you talk a little bit about where we've been and where you see things heading in this calendar year as far as lead times go yeah so i i think lead times are pretty standard right now um

Coming out of COVID, we were seeing insane multiple monthly times for most things. We were seeing availability of a lot of colors and styles. They didn't exist. They weren't being manufactured, so you couldn't get a lot of things. I know at one point, like JF, we're a big JF roofing contractor.

At one point, I think we were limited to like almost four colors. The only certainty we really had was like you could sell Weatherwood or you could sell black. Those are the two colors. We knew if we sold those two colors that they would be there. The rest of it, it was like, okay, that's the one you want. Okay, just let me call around and see if anybody has them. So as far as lead times go, I mean, things that are custom sized like windows and doors are the one thing that as long as you have a standard window and door.

uh, choice. Like if you're going with a standard white vinyl window, nothing crazy, you know, our, our lead times are pretty, pretty normal under four weeks is, is normal. Um, you start to go into more custom, you know, you could go into eight weeks. Uh, we recently had a couple of doors that we ordered that were 12, that were 16 weeks, but yeah, for the most part, everything is usually under four weeks unless it's something that, you know, specific size, custom color options, you know, all that kind of stuff. So, yeah, you,

you saying four weeks is like a normal lead time i think often about um this amazon prime era that we live in and so where we live we live near an amazon hub and so i ordered guitar strings last week on like a wednesday and they showed up overnight thursday morning so four weeks seems almost like an eternity so yeah do you have any

I mean, we're all human. We all have microwaves in our house. We've gotten used to this immediate gratification. What do you tell customers? You do sales at times and how do you just talk them off the ledge of like, are you serious? It's going to take that long for it to come in and it's going to take this long for us to get scheduled. Do you have any words of advice for that? Well, so I always give people a word of warning to anytime they talk to a company and the company's like, yeah, we can be here next week.

Like, obviously, there's always times where you say, you know, you can have a gap in your schedule or, you know, you've got, you know, additional manpower that you can fill in on a project maybe a little sooner than expected. But any real contractor is going to be busy enough where, you know, they should have a backlog. And, you know, hiring a company that can get to you right away is, I don't want to necessarily say that it's a red flag because, you know, everybody has different capacity.

But I would say that it's definitely would make me kind of raise an additional question mark of like, okay, good companies, busy companies can't get to people right away most of the time. So yeah, so I would say I usually go into it with the expectation of like, hey, projects like this, you know, would typically have a wait time of roughly this. I can tell you with our current backlog, we would be looking sometime in the next, say.

five to seven weeks you know i try to set that precedent on the front end so that when you know if they do choose to hire us and we give them the final eta on something that they're not you know scratching their head going i don't understand why is it taking so long sure you know you try to set those expectations from the very beginning of the initial meeting but yeah we can go into some sales training if you want to talk about that i'm good i'm good on that um all right we've again some of this stuff we've touched on before but

but all of what we're talking about is relevant to 2026 and things do change whether significantly or subtly so let's talk a little bit about what you are seeing boots on the ground some of the design trends for our specific service area obviously you go out to arizona houses look very different than they do

to what they look like where we live and work. What are some of the design trends that you see right now? So black is still a popular color. We're not getting as many requests for the white siding black trim that we were over the last five years, which thank you for that because that was getting a bit much. I am seeing a trend where people are spending a little bit more money on the products. People are not going for the generic, I just want the...

cheapest vinyl siding, the cheapest white window. People are investing into their house a little bit more and they want a little nicer of a product. If they're going to get vinyl, they're going to get a little bit better of a vinyl. They're going to spend money on getting upgraded trims and more people kind of realizing that their home...

is kind of a showpiece and they're, they're willing to spend a little extra money to, to have a little bit nicer of a product with a warranty that stands behind it. And yeah. So do you think that's because people are also staying in their house longer too? Like we talked about people aren't. Yeah. I mean the average home ownership prior to COVID was what? Six, seven years. Six, seven. Yes, exactly.

Nothing derails the conversation like a Gen Z. So yeah, I think that people investing money into their home, realizing that they are probably going to be there, especially anybody who has a good 3%, 4% mortgage. I know a couple of people that have mortgages that start with a 2.

which is just insane um i mean the money's almost free at that point so i die a little bit i just full transparency i die a little bit every time you mention this because when we bought our house in 2020 in delaware it was 2.9 something when we bought our house here in northern kentucky in 2024 it's six point something and our mortgage um is ridiculous

And it makes me sad every month when I pay it. I'm very grateful, super grateful, but it's like, whoa, that's a big change. And now we moved for my wife's job. It's not like we were like, well, yeah, we didn't move for pleasure, so to speak. Anyway, I just had to share that because every time you mentioned that, I'm like, oh, man, it hurts. It does. So, yeah, people are staying in their houses longer.

so when i put together the conversation we're having um i came across impact resistant shingles high performance windows are you finding that people are gravitating more towards those well you already said people are gravitating towards some more premium products is some of that driven by home insurance like homeowners insurance premiums too or

So there is, man, that's a slippery topic. So I would say there is a very much kind of conversation happening in the background right now with insurance companies dictating certain requirements, like specifically the roofing industry. There's a program called Fortified that essentially is going to, it'll eventually be nationwide, but insurance companies aren't going to.

warranty or not going to cover roofs. They don't have a fortified installation system installed. I know that we've had a handful of people reach out to us and say their insurance carrier is requiring this. We need to come figure out if our roof qualifies. It's two years old, three years old. But it comes down to it as the insurance company does have a very large say in dictating certain aspects of home construction.

As far as the windows and stuff go, certain areas, we do live in a coastal region here, where in reality, I could be at the waterfront bay in less than five minutes if I just drive east. So we have certain requirements for our windows and our doors and things like that. So we are seeing kind of a change within the industry of insurance companies dictating how things have to be in order to maintain policies. And I know that that is kind of...

Different depending on geographically where you are. But yeah, I would say that eventually windows and doors, there's going to be probably a massive overhaul on requirements for windows and doors as far as energy efficiency and as far as the strength rating. There's a thing called DP rating for the glass as far as being able to withstand certain wind ratings and barometric pressure and all that good stuff for storms. The impact resistance shingle.

So I don't know how far that's going to go. Certain areas that get big hail were the insurance industry. If you go into a lot of the Texas markets, you have roofs that are a four-year-old roof in certain parts of Texas is an old roof. And impact-resistant shingles there, a lot of those policies are dictated and saying if you don't have a class four impact rating on your shingles, then essentially you're not going to get covered for your roof. So yeah, insurance companies definitely have a...

a big say in, uh, in construction. So, okay. Any other trends that you see, uh, in 2026, it could be design. It could be materials. It could be buying. Um, what do you see in our specific area? I know we're only one month into the new year, but what are you already seeing this year? Um, I mean, it started kind of in the last couple of years, people investing more money into outdoor spaces.

we see a lot more people getting screen porches and decks and patios and outdoor kitchens and things like that where, uh, you know, you can obviously see that people are, are investing more money into kind of living in and around their home. So yeah, a lot of that stuff is, is, has seen a massive increase over the handful of years. I know there's more pool companies in our area than there's ever been. So people are putting more money into it. So I know people,

I know life has sped back up for my family, but one of the silver linings of COVID was I think a lot of us learned how to live a slower pace and to learn how to love our home. For a lot of people, and my family included, for a long time, our house was like a train station. It was like, okay, where are the kids going? Where are we going? We're going to all come back and we're going to sleep here tonight, but then tomorrow morning we're out again. Right.

It's kind of a nice thing to see. This kid's going there. It's nice to see that people are living in their homes again. I'm grateful that we are in a business where we get to help people love their homes. Let's come up with the pro game plan for 2026. I want to get three tips from you.

I would say get through the winter. I always suggest that people have their home inspected both the spring and the fall. Get it inspected after the winter season. Get it inspected right before the winter season kicks in. So I would say definitely try and get your house inspected regardless of what you have going on. Most contractors will come out and give you a free inspection and just let you know what's going on with your house. I would say if you have any sort of an itch or an inkling that you want to do a home project for this year, I would say now's the time to schedule an estimate.

you know, lock in, lock in your pricing or lock in kind of, or at least at a minimum, get an idea of what a project's going to cost. It'll give you a baseline for, you know, ultimately if you're going to do cash, if you're going to trade in stocks and that kind of stuff to finance the thing, or if you're going to actually physically choose home improvement financing, it's better to have a price in front of you. So you know what you're going to actually have to do and budget for it. And then I would say, you know, ultimately look into, you know, what's the best bang for your buck.

You know, we always talk about ROI in this industry. And I would say, you know, figure out what is going to give you the best ROI for your property. You know, one thing about this economy is when it does open up, when the interest rates do get to where everybody's like trying to spend stuff, you know, you may be in a situation where you want to possibly sell your home or, you know, you want to do some major improvements and that type of stuff. So I would say anything you're going to do now, focus on the things that are going to get you the maximum ROI on the back end. And every home is a little bit different.

you know but we could definitely have that conversation with you if you're if you're interested so if somebody watching this uh has never had their home inspected before they've just been living

in it and hoping for the best yeah how would they contact us to get an inspection for their home and maybe even give us like a 30 second synopsis of what inspection looks like what could they expect to see yeah so obviously we're not licensed home inspectors that's a whole different thing than what we're than what we're kind of talking about here but yeah if if somebody wants to get the outside of their home inspected

There's usually never a time where we don't find something going on when someone's home. And we usually can find the signs of a potential issue and at least point you in the right direction. But yeah, if somebody wants to get the outside of their home inspect, give us a call here at the office, 302-664-1700. Just say, hey, I'd like to get the outside of my home.

inspected, we'll look at your roof, we'll look at your siding, your gutters, we'll look at your windows, your doors. We can pretty much look at the entire outside of your home. You may be perfectly fine. We're not going to try and sell you something. We're literally just there to kind of inform you like, hey, you've got...

a couple years left on your roof or your roof looks great. You've got 10 years. I wouldn't worry about that. Hey, I noticed, you know, your window seems to be fogging up. That's probably covered under the manufacturer's warranty. Like the amount of times we go and people are like, hey, I need to have this window replaced. And we go, oh, okay. That glass is covered under a warranty. You can just get the sash replaced by the manufacturer. That happens at least once a week.

so yeah so i would say you know just call us and say i'd like to get a an inspection on the outside of my home you know it's something that we typically do for free unless they want like a very long drawn out written report and then we'll charge for that but yeah give us a call we're happy to come out take a peek and see what's going on i would uh i'm going to talk to you after the recording because i would like to schedule my free home exterior inspection out here in northern kentucky so if you or brad would like to

Travel 600 miles. Yeah, for sure. I'll get you some Skyline Chili. You ever had Skyline Chili? Do you know what that is? I have not. The only chili I've ever had that I enjoyed is my wife's. Well, when you guys come out here to visit sometime, we'll get you Skyline Chili. It's basically chili with no beans, which is good for me. I'm not a big fan of beans. It has a little bit of cinnamon in it, and it goes on top of either spaghetti noodles.

or hot dogs it's delicious you're gonna have to convince me yep it's delicious don't ask my wife she can't stand it all right aaron uh it's good to be back in the saddle with you uh season three we're we're doing it it's happening thank you for your expertise yeah it's good to catch up with you you too cool

All right, that is all we have for you today on the You Ask the Pros Answer podcast. The first episode of season three, it's in the books. Hey, would you please continue to help us get the word out about the show? The best way to do this is to leave reviews on Apple Podcasts or wherever you are watching this. Also, follow us on social media, Facebook and Instagram.

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