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Justin Brady: I’m Justin Brady. And are you in control of your own property? Think about it. Do you rent your property? Do you own your property? Even if you own your property, what does that even mean? Because we, we pay property taxes and there are permits and regulations and all sorts of hoops we need to jump through, including. Can you put an extra dwelling unit on your property? Are you allowed to do that? Sometimes yes. Sometimes no. We’re going to get to the bottom of that. We actually did a little topic on this earlier and there was some interest, so we’re going to do more on ADUs with Mike Stewart, the owner of Tiny Homes of Iowa. Thanks for coming on the Iowa podcast. Why is this such a charged issue? People are really excited about the ADU thing and the tiny home thing, but there’s this weird, there’s like this rise in interest. I’m not 100 percent sure if there’s demand there just quite yet, so we’re gonna talk all about that, but first, can we address the difference between an ADU and a tiny home? And some people are like, Justin, you already talked about that in the Mark Charter episode. I know, but not everybody listened to that one. So what is the big difference between those things?

Mike Stuart: Well, when people think of tiny homes, they have different things in their mind. Um, a lot of people are going to think of tiny homes on wheels. Um, or prefabricated something like that. That is not what we’re talking about. That is not going to be legal to put anywhere in Iowa for the most part, unless you live really rural and you can kind of connect utilities and things like that yourself. But an ADU is just going to be the terminology that the municipalities are going to use to describe a tiny home. So in their terms, it’s going to say an ADU or an AHU, an accessory housing unit, and they’ll define it by Um, a living space, a bedroom, a bathroom, and a kitchen, or just a dwelling unit. So, they’ll have accessory buildings, barns, sheds, and accessory dwelling units. So, that’s just the term that they’re going to use to define a tiny home.

Justin Brady: Okay. So I’m already a little confused, but it’s basically a classification, not an actual fabrication.

Mike Stuart: Correct.

Justin Brady: Ooh, I just did that on the fly. That was not even

Mike Stuart: I’m really the

Justin Brady: So it, the, the actual structure can change based on the classification.

Mike Stuart: so Right.

Justin Brady: Uh, what an ADU is essentially there has to be a core dwelling. There has to be a core dwelling already there

Mike Stuart: Primary residents already there on the property.

Justin Brady: and then an ADU would be an extra. What you’re saying is difficult or illegal in many cases would be a tiny home. Um, tiny homes on wheels, tiny Those are illegal. What do you mean by illegal? Like, it’s, you know, someone can buy it, right? They’re not the cops aren’t gonna go arrest them for

Mike Stuart: that. Right, right. You, so the way I like to look at this is, let’s look at the reason, one of the reasons that people. Want an ADU. Typically, the calls that I get are for people who want to have their parents age in place. They’ve been looking for, you know, what do we do with mom, you know, she, she took a fall. We want her close. We want her to have dignity and independence, but we want her. To, you know, not have to spend all of our money, you know, at a retirement community, things like that. So, can we have a tiny home in our backyard? Um, yes, you, you can. In most cases, or in many cases, So, it’s, it’s really, really difficult. In Des Moines, the answer is yes, you, you can. There are still some restrictions surrounding that. Iowa City and Cedar Rapids, all three of those cities are very favorable towards ADUs. And they’re encouraging multi generational, um, living. Um, and, um, I’ll talk a little bit more about AARP and their involvement in this, but

Justin Brady: Okay, that’s a good that’s a good segue, because You’re talking about people aging out, and uh, you shared with me some documentation ahead of time that AARP is definitely pushing this legislation,

Mike Stuart: they want to

Justin Brady: I’m glad you’re going into that, because why? Like, do the boomers, the baby boomer generation, do they not have enough money for housing? Like, what happened?

Mike Stuart: and they’re limited in their options to downsize because they want to be close to their grandkids. And, you know, do I go buy a condo, you know, in West Des Moines when my kids are over in Johnston? You know, I’d love to be closer than that. Um, and they like to have the fact that, you know, they have family that can check up on them, right? And be there for them in case of emergency. Well, in many cases, the city surrounding Des Moines either say, no, we will not allow an A DU to be built, or, it’s under a lot of various restrictions, unfortunately.

Justin Brady: Mm, okay, so this is interesting, because in my mind, like, we have a 900 some square foot house. It was our starter house, and then we’re just like, dude, I can clean the whole thing in under an hour, like, you know, and our mortgage payment is next to nothing. Why would we move? It’s just my wife and I, we had a little dog there for a little while, and But most people don’t live that way. And so I’m just operating the under the assumption. Oh, this is good for You know a newly married couple like a tiny little thing, but you’re actually saying Actually, there’s more demand for people looking to downsize and they currently can’t do that right now. This is the focus area

Mike Stuart: Yeah. In, in addition to parents aging in place and wanting to have that multi-generational living, um, I get calls with, with people who say I have a, uh, just yesterday, I, I literally had a lady say my older sister is disabled. And she can’t live in my house because I have stairs. She can’t go up and down stairs. And so, that, um, caregivers for small children, when they have kind of a full time nanny, and they want to have them outside of their house, um, but still close. Um, even had a gentleman who had a son with autism, fully functioning, and he had a job. He was going to pay for his ADU. Some things happened and their financing fell through. But, they want those sorts of opportunities as well. The last thing I would say as a reason to build an ADU, and this is where some people may have the rub, and that is for rental income. We still have an affordable housing crisis, and so people are looking for, I get calls all the time, do you have any of these tiny homes for rent? I’m looking for low rent. It’s just me and my dog or my cat, and the answer is no. We just don’t have any to rent, and very few people will bill them just to rent them.

Justin Brady: got it. And so I want to talk about the bill you mentioned, HSB 162. And this bill is seeking, it sounds like AARP is probably lobbying for it, would be my guess. Um, they’re pushing this bill to do what? Like, if this is passed, what would it do exactly?

Mike Stuart: It would really, it’s going to increase housing choices for Iowans without taxpayer subsidies. So the cities are looking at how can we increase our density without having to fork over a bunch of money? Right. Clive is a good example. Talking to some of the folks there. They have, um, the older part of Clive, these houses are, they’re decent size, but their backyards are huge and they know that they want to increase the density and that their, their infrastructure can handle it. And of course, if that happens and people start to build on their own property, the property taxes go up. There’s an incentive for the cities for that. Um, so, a lot of reasons to, to have these. Um, I don’t see very many reasons to not. Um, but all those cities and counties are completely different in when they adopted these rules and regulations. Um, one of the bills we have going on is in Urbandale. Urbandale has had Very restrictive, um, policies and we are starting one there. But the way that we had to do it is look closely at the language and it said you cannot have anything detached. You can’t have anything above a garage. Um, and I said, well, what does attached mean? You know, what if it was attached? Well, does, does it have to share a wall? No. Could it be a breezeway? Yes, possibly. So we had to go through the language, but we’re going to build one by, and it’s connected via a breezeway, an open area breezeway with the door covered from one house to the next. And we got a conditional use permit to do that. So I would say that, that that’s one thing that we can do, but the cities like Urbandale and Clive, they are changing their regulations and their rules. They’re having those conversations and hope to have. New requirements rolled out by the end of this year or the first of next,

Justin Brady: Okay, got it. Um, so

Mike Stuart: of the bill, I would say

Justin Brady: Yes, but, so the bill is, is kind of a blanket over the state, um, like taking down red tape and regulations and saying, cities, thanks for your input. You have no input. ADUs are legal and you have to make it that way. Is that basically what the bill is?

Mike Stuart: the state of Massachusetts just did this two weeks ago. Um, and basically took the same a a RP language that was recommended and, and did just that. They said, here are the requirements and um, this allows everybody in the state to build an A DU by right. Okay, which, which means they don’t have to go through the planning and zoning. The Board of Adjustments to get a conditional use permit, which most cities will make you do right now. Um, if you meet the setbacks and the building codes, By right means you can build it as long as you’re doing everything according to our building codes and setback rules. Because

Justin Brady: What’s behind the pushback? Because clearly there were rules against these to begin with. Clearly someone wrote that into the law because they didn’t like them. Clearly you’re having these debates with, I think you said Urbandale or Clive or something, about, well, can it be a breezeway? How big does it have to be? You know, does it have scalloped edges on it? Is it, like, what’s the, what is, is there some underlying thing that cities are fighting against? They don’t like the ADUs. Is it visual? Is it, is there income? Is there something about taxation? What’s the thing they’re fighting

Mike Stuart: I wish I could put my finger on it. Um, and some of these regulations are so old that it’s catching some of these cities off guard because now there is this interest. You know, AARP has a document out there, and by the way, I should say, if anybody’s interested in learning about ADUs ARP. org has a great document called the ABCs of ADUs. And in that, it talks about how, uh, about how, uh, the back after World War II and up and through the 80s, they made them illegal. And I, I think it was probably because they just wanted to control how many houses, you know, they have so much infrastructure. And if you built a house on a lot that was maybe an acre and then you put two or three on there, they couldn’t control how many houses were gonna be put into that particular area and in that infrastructure. That might be one reason, but fast forward to, you know, the 2000s, early 2000s, there became this affordable housing crisis, specifically West Coast states, California, Texas, you know, um, Pacific Northwest. And it was skyrocketing so much that they had to figure out how can we build more in the area that we have. So, AARP came up with the standardized language back in 2000 to start helping these cities and towns do this. Now it’s gone through a second revision and they’re still kind of, you know, helping these cities come to the standard language that makes sense for, for the state.

Justin Brady: So could, theoretically then, People add, I don’t know, buy a bigger property, put a, and here’s the other thing. Here’s the other thing, Mike, is that everyone, all these cities have minimum square footage requirements within a property when you build a new home. Right? And so we’ve talked about that on this show before. So are we going to see people get around that by buying double lots, putting a minimum square footage house on it, and then putting a ton of 80. Use on these properties or do they have that language already

Mike Stuart: in? The language is worked in, so I don’t think in Iowa at this time, uh, I don’t think that there is ever going to be more than one ADU allowed on a property. Is

Justin Brady: Is that law or just opinion based on

Mike Stuart: I’m going to have to look at the bill and the way it’s worded right now. I have a feeling that that’s the way it is. That’s the way it is in many states. They still wanna control how many are on a particular property. Um, and, and it’s interesting, you’re right, some of these cities do have, um, minimum res restrictions. I get calls all the time, Hey, I bought a lot in Des Moines and I wanna build a tiny house on it. And come to find out you can’t. You have, you have to, it’s at least a minimum of a thousand or 1100 square feet depending on what zone you live in. And my biggest tiny house is a two bedroom at 816 feet. So people get excited about that and then disappointed when they, they have to meet that minimum requirements. There are other requirements like when you do build on a property with an existing residents. You know, some cities will say you can’t take up X percent of the yard. It has to be, you know, restricted to this or it can’t be so many, a certain percentage of the primary residents. So I think that this bill is really addressing a lot of that, kind of clearing out the red tape and allowing people to build those ADUs.

Justin Brady: The is it you mentioned earlier? Subsidies like tax, you know, this gives more housing without tax subsidies And I was reading that and I’m like, what subsidies? What are we subsidizing currently that this solves? Like, make that connection for

Mike Stuart: Well the, the bill is interesting because a lot of the bills that you see going through right now, they’re asking for a lot of money. This doesn’t ask the state for any money.

Justin Brady: Oh,

Mike Stuart: Right. So, and it doesn’t impact any of the existing exemptions that somebody could get on a property like the Homestead exemption as an example, or the senior exemption. These things can still be in play. Um, and all of this is done by private money on people’s private property. So they want to increase the value of their property. I think they should be able to do that, especially if it’s because mom’s living there. And when mom passes, I could potentially rent that out and have an income stream.

Justin Brady: got it. So the other bills that are asking for taxpayer money or subsidies, not wrong or right, that’s not my area to decide that, but they are coming and saying, Hey, we have a housing problem. We have a housing crisis problem. We need more cheap housing. And therefore, if you pay us X amount of dollars, we will build that subsidized housing to solve the problem for you. And you’re saying that this bill says, hey, we’ll solve the problem and we don’t want any money at all. Just let people build this stuff. Problem solved. So who’s losing the money then? Right? If the ADU thing goes through, who’s losing the money? Because someone is probably losing money, I would guess? That’s why this isn’t an easy solution? Maybe I’m wrong?

Mike Stuart: plus, this is not, this is not going to explode overnight. Right? I mean, you could take that scenario and somebody could say, well, let me build a multifamily apartment complex and we can, we can do that. Well, that is one solution, but also the solution of, you know, the aging parents or the caregivers or, you know, the adult children that want to live close to me, I’d like to be able to build that house and be able to do that. And so it’s, it’s achieving the same thing. ADUs are going to be slower, right? You can’t have that mass volume like a multifamily, you know, project could, but still. It’s, it’s a viable solution.

Justin Brady: sure, absolutely. Um, I wonder if one entity that’s losing the money is cities. Are cities somehow concerned? That ADUs are cutting into property taxes of some kind.

Mike Stuart: property

Justin Brady: So it would increase property taxes. So maybe that’s why they’re allowing ADUs and not tiny houses, because tiny house would decrease property taxes, but ADUs would increase

Mike Stuart: Well, again, the AD, I’m equating the ADU as a tiny home. That’s just so my properties that I build are all stick built. They’re all custom. They’re on slabs. It’s just a smaller footprint. And so that is a tiny home, but they call it an ADU. And so when you build that, let’s just say a matter of fact, for your listeners are probably like how much does it cost to build an ADU or a tiny home? So what I always tell people is that. It’s like buying a car, you know, how much is a car? Well, what kind of car all of that, right? There’s a lot of variables Especially because the cities will require that we tie into the utilities of the primary residence, right?

Justin Brady: interesting.

Mike Stuart: and if you’re in an unincorporated Like like North Polk County where you’re not tied into the sewer you have a septic that might be additional cost. Let’s say but I always tell people the ballpark of Um, about 230 to 250 per square foot, okay? That’s all in, that’s me handling the building permits, the process. Right now we’re jumping through a lot of hoops to get provisional, you know, you know, permits and things like that. Um, the build, everything, uh, it’s turnkey. I don’t want people to worry about this, cause it As you know, it can be very complicated. So taking that complication out of it, 230 to 250 a square foot is kind of the approximate. So I always tell people, if you’re looking at a 600 square foot one bedroom, uh, tiny home, you’re going to look at 138 to 150, 000 is what that’s going to cost.

Justin Brady: Wow, okay. Crazy,

Mike Stuart: So, uh, that’s the other misconception, right? When people call and they

Justin Brady: just think they’re like 20 grand.

Mike Stuart: just yesterday again, uh, same lady, uh, she was, I said, well, tell me about your financing. And she said, well, I got 30, 000 and I said, and, and we’re, you know, she’s like, can I get one for that? And I’m like, no, we don’t do anything on trailers, wheels. We don’t do modular prefab.

Justin Brady: is like the concrete and that kind of stuff, is that where

Mike Stuart: The materials and labor are going to be pretty much the same as building a larger house, it’s just a smaller footprint.

Justin Brady: And this probably gets back to why builders don’t want to build them. Because they, you know, want to build by, because of square footage, and um, you know, the materials aren’t that much more if you increase by square footage, but they get paid more because they get paid on square footage, so Here’s the rub, right? Here’s the delicate balance. People have to walk the, I will say there is an aspect of humor about like

Mike Stuart: a problem. We

Justin Brady: government, government, local governments or governments of some nature, seeing a problem and saying, we want to address that. And then other governments saying, we’d like to address that, but you’re not allowing us to. And so it’s kind of interesting to see, like, you know, here’s a problem and people are like, yeah, we have the solution, but you won’t legally allow us solve it.

Mike Stuart: right, right

Justin Brady: of sometimes, uh, life works like a, you know, you’re watching a clown show. Um, do these, if I, if like someone puts an ADU on their property. Does that negatively or positively affect the resale values? You mentioned the property values go up, but does the resale value change because someone’s like, I want that house, but I don’t want this thing on the, in the backyard. Does that change anything?

Mike Stuart: It’s, it’s a really great question and unfortunately we don’t have enough data because when I started this research, um, back, you know, a year ago and I’m calling the city leaders and talking to the right people. Um, at the time, Des Moines had only built about 10 ADUs over the last 10 years.

Justin Brady: Wow!

Mike Stuart: So that shows you that it’s slowly creeping in, um, this Urbandale house will be the second in Urbandale ever. Um, so there’s not a lot of data. Now when you think about it, and I talk to a lot of realtors, cause I go to their offices and I give a presentation on this because they’re always interested, Oh, I’ve got clients that want a mother in law suite, um, or an apartment for their grandfather or whatever. Well, this is an answer to that. And then they say, what does it do to the resale? Well, it’s not a one for one necessarily. Um, and so it depends on the neighborhood. It depends on the quality of what, how it looks on your property. And you just have to find that niche buyer that’s looking for the granny flat. Or a studio to have a business, or a place for their adult children, or if they want that rental income.

Justin Brady: Yeah, and that’s the challenge. Right. That’s the challenge because a lot of people are probably doing the math and they’re like, okay, 130, 000. Does that mean I can sell my property then for 130, 000 more when it comes

Mike Stuart: don’t know if it’s going to be dollar for dollar. I really don’t.

Justin Brady: no simple math. There’s what you’re telling. So it’s basically if you have the need, it’s probably for you, but if you don’t, maybe it’s not the best. If you have a specific use case where you need it. Then sure, but as far as is it going to increase your property value, jury’s

Mike Stuart: right. Yeah,

Justin Brady: might not be back for a

Mike Stuart: it’s a niche. It’s a niche, small market, um, for sure. But there is a demand out there for it.

Justin Brady: I want to talk about that, like, because I assumed when you came in here, The, or not when you came in here, but I’ve assumed when talking about tiny houses and ADUs, the demand was in the younger market. And, I’ve had a realtor in here, and he was like, you know, honestly, the younger people say they have budget problems, and they’re like, oh, we need to keep the budget low, and we want to, you know, keep it super, super cheap. We’re brand new, we don’t make that much money. Because, but at the end of the day They go after the four bedroom, four bath, four car garage, and they just, the priorities, and then they complain about their mortgage payment. And so, I was just like, man, that audience, for whatever reason, is just not interested. And so, the demand really does focus on those almost edge cases. Right? Is there enough demand in just the aging population, or are there other uses for these things?

Mike Stuart: Well, I get calls a lot from investors who want to rent them out. I’ll just start there because people, you know, investors are smart and they’re like, Hey, I’ve got a huge backyard in my Des Moines property. Um, unfortunately, and this bill I believe is, is going to, it’s going to remain the same. It’s, they’re probably going to say you cannot rent out an ADU unless you live in the primary residence.

Justin Brady: Wait, what?

Mike Stuart: so that’s the way it is now. And in most cities, you have to either, you have to either live in the ADU or the primary residence in order to rent the other one out.

Justin Brady: So if you have, okay, so if you have a house and you’re renting the house, Then you can’t also rent an ADU. That would be, Ehh, okay.

Mike Stuart: And that’s one of the rubs that I think people are worried about that, that they just won’t be taken care of or managed. Well, I mean, think about it. If I had a tiny house in my backyard, I’m watching people go in and out. I’m going to, I’m going to manage it well, right? And it’s going to be something that I’m going to take care of and make sure of. But. You never know. So that’s one thing to keep in mind with that. I’m an investor. I don’t like that necessarily, but I don’t know. Can you see their side?

Justin Brady: I mean, I already got that problem, right? Some communities already have that problem. There was a house next to me that was being dilapidated, and the, the person’s, like, mother bought it for him, and he just didn’t care. And so, he didn’t have an ADU, it’s just his house, and it looks like crap. You

Mike Stuart: you can buy every house on your entire block and rent them out. Right? So you would think that you would be able to rent out the one in your own backyard. Not the case. Not the

Justin Brady: not.

Mike Stuart: Well, and kind of back to your point, I’m like, Younger people, a lot of them have this idea of, I want to be good stewards of resources and I want to live in a smaller footprint and to have more, you know, impact on the environment and things like that. I do get a lot of calls when I want to talk about. What it’s going to cost. They typically like, Oh, I can’t afford that. Or I’d have to ask mom and dad for a loan or whatever. Um, but an interesting statistic that a AARP put out. It’s like, how, how many square foot feet do we really need right now? And is that shrinking back in 1950?

Justin Brady: it shrinking? I

Mike Stuart: Is, is that, is that footprint shrinking or should it?

Justin Brady: be, but, goodness fricken

Mike Stuart: do we, exactly. So bigger houses are being built, but smaller houses are needed. That’s the theory that we’re going, that’s the theory. It’s the theory that we’re going for.

Justin Brady: way to wrap that,

Mike Stuart: So, so median square footage of a new single family home in 1950 was right where you’re at, 983 square

Justin Brady: Because my house was built in 1949.

Mike Stuart: so there you go. In 2020, That median square footage was 2, 261 square feet.

Justin Brady: Wow. Yep.

Mike Stuart: what makes it worse is that the number of people per household at 1950 were 3. 8 versus 2. 5 in 2020.

Justin Brady: We have more, we have fewer people living in houses and more room.

Mike Stuart: Which, which,

Justin Brady: square feet a person nowadays.

Mike Stuart: Is, is what that is versus 292 back in 1950.

Justin Brady: Wow.

Mike Stuart: So the homes that we design are specific to, you know, one person, even one person at 600 square feet. It’s quite a bit of

Justin Brady: mean, I do have to have, Mike, my podcast studio room. And my yoga room, and my colored pencil room. So, you know, get off my

Mike Stuart: Right. Yep. There’s a lot of, there’s a lot of need for that space. I don’t know. I mean, especially with the costs, the way they are now, we haven’t, there’s a statistic I heard a couple months ago that 50 percent or more of the Um, permits in California right now are for ADUs.

Justin Brady: Say that again?

Mike Stuart: 50 percent of the building permits are for ADUs in California. Now,

Justin Brady: Oh my

Mike Stuart: have a huge,

Justin Brady: Huge housing

Mike Stuart: right, so, and it goes in from the coast to Iowa. We’re anticipating higher costs at some point. And I think this bill, going back to the bill, is I’m going to address, let’s have that language that says we can build this when that crisis comes or just the fact that I want mother in law to live behind us, you know, and have that right to do

Justin Brady: It is funny to hear younger people though. I will, I’m, I, I don’t even know if I count as a younger person anymore, but I represented them at one point. And it is funny to hear younger people complaining about mortgage prices. But at the same time, I’m like, bro, it’s like triple. You’re like, the house you’re looking, and they’re like, oh man, those people in the 50s, everything was cheaper then. I’m like, it was also, I mean, it is cheaper, but it was, they were also living in houses that are the, a fifth. of the size of the house you’re living in. So maybe look in the mirror. Uh, last question before I let you go. Are there any, you mentioned California, 50 percent of the new building permits in California are ADUs. Are there any communities, maybe it’s California, maybe it’s somewhere else in the country, maybe it’s somewhere in the state, I don’t know, that are doing this really, really well? And it’s like we can look to them as a model and say, Hey, If we do this and allow tons of ADUs, I would say legislature, you can see the capital right out the window here, maybe allow us to put anything we want on our property within certain, you know, let us put a tiny house on there. If a proper, if, you know, our property isn’t for resale at a higher value, who cares? It’s my property. That would be my thing, but what communities are doing this really well, so we can kind of look 10, 20 years in the future and see where we’ll be.

Mike Stuart: thing. But, what communities are doing really well? So we can kind of look 10, 20 years ahead. Um, again, because their housing prices are a lot more, but I think it goes beyond that to it. We need to be thinking about, um, what it’s going to do for our economy. It’s unfortunate. There’s some really cool communities. There’s, there’s a community. In Colorado, one in Ohio where there’s a tiny home retreat and it’s a, it’s a, um, a six or eight of these really cool Scandinavian designed tiny homes. And it’s, it’s a luxury. It’s a high end. I’ve been working with someone in Iowa who’s wanting to do that here,

Justin Brady: cool.

Mike Stuart: getting major pushback from the

Justin Brady: I bet you

Mike Stuart: Because, because they’re like, you can’t do more than one, but they’re saying, hey, we’re going to have this be a focal point in this county with the goods and services of these people and I am, I will made products and all this stuff. So they’re having to jump through a lot of hoops, but we need. People investing in little communities like that, and these are just Airbnbs, these are not necessarily communities. Austin, Texas has an actual tiny home village that was specifically made for, uh, homeless. And, um, they work at the tiny home village. They, um, pay rent. They have things that they have to participate in. Unfortunately, that’s about 75 percent subsidized, but that model is actually being replicated all over the United States and including here. Um, there’s a plot of land on the south side that Joppa purchased to do just

Justin Brady: They’ve been trying to do that tiny home community for a long

Mike Stuart: It’s come, I think it’s coming along. I think they’re gonna get it done at some point. And it’s, and it’s

Justin Brady: a long time,

Mike Stuart: it’s a long time. It’s needed right here in Iowa Right. So, you know all that to say, hopefully the bill will pass and, and, and take away some of that red tape. Allow homeowners to be able to build properties on their property. It’s only gonna increase the, the, um, tax taxable value. And I think I did mention the tax abatement, didn’t I?

Justin Brady: We can go, we have like 10 seconds to go into

Mike Stuart: Des Moines has a 10 year tax abatement, so no increased property taxes when you build on in, in Des Moines. Um, that’s going on right now. I think that’s the only one in the state and hopefully other cities will take part of that as well. And Des Moines has a couple of non profits that will give grants for building an ADU in particular areas, like Invest Des Moines.

Justin Brady: Fascinating. Mike Stewart with tiny homes of Iowa. Mike, I appreciate you coming in here and explaining this to us. What’s the website of people want to reach out to

Mike Stuart: it’s tinyhomesofiowa.com

Justin Brady: Tiny homes of Iowa.

Mike Stuart: form, tell me what you’re thinking, we’ll let you know what the current laws state in your particular area. I can help you out with that. If the bill passes, we’ll have kind of freedom to work with people all over the state. It’s going to be

Justin Brady: Absolutely. Mike, thanks so much for coming on the Iowa podcast. Really appreciate it.

Mike Stuart: Thank you. Appreciate it.