The Best of the Best
Each week we will seek out the best of the best in every imaginable business and explore the secret to their success. Prepare to gain insights and perspectives that will help you propel your business and personal growth forward. Hear how these leaders started, the stumbling blocks they overcame, and what’s next in their journey.
The Best of the Best
Crafting Dreams into Homes: A Tailored Journey with Peter Rotelli and Team
Feel the thrill of transformation as you listen to how the Rotelli team demystifies the custom home construction process, transforming it from a daunting endeavor to an exciting creative collaboration. They paint a vivid picture of the client's experience, from managing the nuts and bolts of site improvements to the joy of choosing those final touches that make a house a home. With the expertise of Rotelli, the path to your personalized sanctuary is laden with ease and assurance, culminating in that magical moment when you are handed the keys to your dream realized. If you've ever harbored the dream of building a home that tells your story, this episode is your blueprint to making it a reality.
Okay, here we are with another episode of the best of the best. Therese, who do you have today?
Speaker 2:Well, I have one of the best of the best right here with me, Peter Rotelli. We've known each other for a really long time, haven't we?
Speaker 1:Yes, we have.
Speaker 2:Tell us a little bit about yourself.
Speaker 1:Well, I am a middle-aged man, he's also a jokester. Yeah, hey, thanks for having me on. So I'll tell you a little bit about Rotelli. We've been in business for 35 years. We have an amazing staff here, a lot of tenureship. We have Anthony Holosco, who's the COO, been here for 25 years. Paul Farnsworth, the CFO he's been here for over 20.
Speaker 2:Side note I graduated with him.
Speaker 1:I know that. That's when I asked your age.
Speaker 2:I knew your age before I see you knew it.
Speaker 1:So and you know, we just have a, we've been doing this for a long time the business model has changed over the years. Really, the pandemic, not the pandemic the crash of 2008 really changed things and we're hitting stride and we have a unique thing going and we deliver just an amazing, amazing product. Yeah.
Speaker 2:Yeah, so I think that's one of the things that I find most is when I'm dealing with buyers of new construction. You hear the complaints, you know the stories. They're not happy. You know we don't have that with you. We really have very happy customers and clients at the end. I think you do a really good job making sure that the buyer's vision of what they want actually comes through, and that's something I think unique to Studio E. I think you should talk about that a little bit.
Speaker 1:For sure. Yeah, well, it's just, you know, and it's becoming more and more unique actually to new construction as things have changed. The pandemic really pushed with supply chain issues, that a lot of the we have seven public companies that build in our marketplace and the public companies are actually narrowing down their scope of what you can change. You can't move an outlet, you can't move a window, you can't add this and that, and, as you know, our model is we have an in-house architect, we have interior designers, so we encourage you to build a house that fits your lifestyle. And so, as they get more restrictive, we haven't changed anything. We're still allowing people to do what they do.
Speaker 1:So, at the end of the day, really, what we do is we kind of compete with that 800, 500 to 700 area, over a million. We compete with the public companies that build that, but we allow you to customize it. You can personalize it to fit how you live, to customize it. You can personalize it to fit you know how you live. We're really quick to change and picking up the new trends. Where a larger company is bigger ship, harder to turn For us. You know, we're kind of we're entrenched in what we do. We love it, we're passionate about it, and then we follow through right through construction and then deliver an amazing product at the end of the day.
Speaker 2:Yeah, yeah, and I think the lifestyle piece, you know you have all these little touches that you do. You know if someone has a pet, you're finding a way to put in a pet shower, or these little things that just you don't think of when you're building a house, because you're going into these larger track builders and you're seeing the model and there's some choices very minimal amount of choices, um and you're stuck with that. Like you said, you can't move a wall, you can't add a few things unless you do it after settlement. Who wants to go into construction again after they've already moved?
Speaker 1:in so.
Speaker 2:I think the process here is come to the studio. You get to see the sandbox, which I think is super cool, and you can see where's your house going to sit on this lot and taking people through that education process is something that most people don't do, and it takes away a lot of the questions during the process too, and it makes the buyers more educated. So I think, that's another niche that you have. That's really cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, yeah, thanks. So one of the things that I think is important is to shed a light on on what we do behind the scenes. We do a lot of heavy lifting. So to build a custom home today is Pretty complicated and pretty tricky. Two decades ago, I think, anybody could, you know. You could get approvals and you could hire a contractor and kind of muddle your way through it and build a house. Today it's become really sophisticated. There's a lot of approval process.
Speaker 1:So we're set up here at Studio E really, and we're the only full service where, if you come in and you do not own a lot and you're interested in finding out what we do, we have a wonderful studio here. Obviously it's tricked out, it's kind of eclectic. We appeal to every taste. That's right. That's kind of. You know. We want to show you a little bit of everything. So if you don't know your taste, that you know, you can point stuff out and we can show you pictures and we can pull stuff up on the screen. But at the end of the day we are the only company here that will actually take you in. We'll source a lot for you. We use a great real estate company.
Speaker 2:Keller Williams. You know, and so we'll source a piece of ground for you.
Speaker 1:We do something that we have proprietary that we call lot scrub, which will say, hey, you know, and uh, so we'll source a piece of ground for you. We do something that we have proprietary that we call lot scrub, uh, which will say, hey, you know, you have a, you have a lot here they're selling for 150 000. We run it through this proprietary, you know algorithm that we've put together. That's taken us years to kind of establish. That's going to tell us how much that lot is going to cost to put your improvements on it. And with an industry that has been kind of plagued with a lot of regulation, those costs have gone up. So it could be a a huge surprise Someone who buys a lot without this lot scrub. They come back to us and they're shocked to find out. You know, maybe I bought something I shouldn't have bought, right? Because it's not absurd to find a hundred or a hundred and some thousand dollars worth of site improvement costs that need to be done after you already purchased your lot.
Speaker 2:Yeah, and they're adding more and more regulations and more conditions, and every one of those is expensive. Just keeps going up, yeah, and sometimes you can't even put the house where you think you wanted to put the house. So I think that's one of the things buyers go in almost blindly, sometimes relying on maybe just a real estate agent to say, hey, this is a great lot, let's buy it. And then all of a sudden you purchased a lot and now you can't build the house or it's going to cost you 300,000 more than you thought so this could be a really great opportunity to come in and just get that education on.
Speaker 2:what could it cost? To really build this property, and then we can build a property around your vision. That's right, which is so cool.
Speaker 1:Yeah, so, uh. So it's definitely a collaboration between the real estate community and us as a builder. The real estate community really understands land and housing. So you know, if you have a client that you're interested and you can't find something, bring the client to us. Okay, we're pretty easy, you know, and what we know is we know all land and we know housing and construction and we do a really tremendous job with that. We're an education center here. You know, we say, hey, this is Studio E, we're a custom builder, but really we're an education center to bring someone in.
Speaker 1:And if you're not ready and you think you're going to move in five or six years, plant the seed now, find out the process, how it takes place, how it works. I mean, that's what we want to do. So we want traffic to come in here, look at the studio and be able to talk to you and say, hey, you know, someday or if you're ready now, let's start looking for lots for you. Because it definitely is a process. It takes time. Versus if you're going into community and you're buying a track house, it may be an eight month process. Here we're touching about 12 months. If everything fires on all cylinders, you come in, we source a piece of ground for you, we gain approvals, we get a building permit, we begin construction. Once we begin construction, then we can, we can work, we can tell you the timing of things. It's tough up until then when we have different municipalities that are involved. You know to be able to give you timing, but roughly it's about a 12 to 14 month process.
Speaker 2:Okay, and that's good to know, cause I think people in their head for some reason think it's that eight to 10 months, but that's more of a, you know, going into a new construction development where everything's been done already.
Speaker 2:Okay. I think the other thing to mention too is you're so easy to work with as a real estate agent. I find that you know we can always get ahold of you for questions answers. You're very honest. You'll let us know right away before we spend a lot of time. Hey, that lot's just not going to cut it, sure, and it saves the buyer at the end of the day a lot of wasted time and energy. So I appreciate that from you, yeah.
Speaker 1:Well, thank you, and we we we appreciate, we love working with you guys.
Speaker 1:So one of the things that I didn't mention that I do want to bring up is, when it comes down to the site improvement costs.
Speaker 1:One of the things that we do when we do our lot scrub, we give you an estimate for that and that cost.
Speaker 1:We go ahead and we do that, we sub it out because we have contracts with well diggers, we have contracts with septic companies, contracts with all the different professionals that are needed to be able to get this done. We pass that along free of charge. All we want is the opportunity to build you a house. So, and again, if you take this entire package, that what we offer and you put a red bow on it, that's what we do and at the end of the day, all the heavy lifting is done behind the scenes and our goal ultimately, is have the client come here, the real estate agent dropped them off we're happy to pay commission on them, and then the client has all the fun stuff picking the colors, bringing you know Pinterest stuff in and we build the house and we go through all this stuff, the township and everything and at the end of the day we get to turn the keys over and they have a beautiful custom home.
Speaker 2:Yeah, I love that, so I listen, if you're out there listening. I think one of the things you should take away from this is, if you have thought about building um or it's a dream, you should make an appointment, come in and find out if that dream can become a reality here and get the education. It's such a great idea.
Speaker 1:We're easy peasy, man. Stop on in.
Speaker 2:Peter, thank you so much.
Speaker 1:Thanks, great to be here.