Episode 92: Relocating Homes

What if a home scheduled for demolition became housing for another community? Discover how relocating quality homes reduces waste, preserves resources, and creates new housing across British Columbia with HAVAN Award-winning member Renewal Development.

Listen to “Ep 92: Relocating Homes” on Spreaker.

You will also find “Measure Twice, Cut Once” on iTunes, Spotify, Spreaker, and on HAVAN’s YouTube channel.

GLYN LEWIS, Founder & CEO, RENEWAL DEVELOPMENT

At Renewal Development, we are redefining the way communities approach housing, sustainability, and urban growth. Our mission is to rescue quality homes slated for demolition, relocate and modernize them, and repurpose these structures for communities in need. By offering a sustainable alternative to demolition, we give homes a second life, preserving their character and reducing environmental impact while addressing the urgent demand for affordable housing.

Our work spans two key areas: Sustainable Removal and Home Repurposing. On the acquisition side, we collaborate with individual homeowners, design/build consultants, and real estate developers who need to clear sites for redevelopment. Whether we relocate the home or responsibly deconstruct it to salvage valuable materials, our process ensures that as much as possible is preserved, repurposed, or diverted from landfills.

Listen and like for your chance to win a gas BBQ compliments of our Podcast Partner FortisBC.

Ep 92: Relocating Homes

English (US) · 0:47:14

Audio transcribed using Ai technology. Spelling and grammatical errors can occur. We do our best to review and ensure proper nouns are correct, add hyperlinks, and continue to work with the programs to advance the results.

 

Glyn 00:00

And not every move and not every home deserves to be moved and not every home deserves to be rescued, right? So, of the homes, so about 3000 single family homes are being torn down every year across Metro Vancouver to make space for higher density development. 3000 We estimate about 20 of them are actually in good shape and can be moved. Those are the two criteria that we look at.

Mike

Welcome back to Measure Twice, Cut Once. My name is Mike. In addition to being one of the hosts here, I come back every time because I learn so much from our fantastic guests.

Jennifer-Lee

00:33

I thought you came back because you like co hosting with me.

Mike: Oh, yeah. And Jennifer’s here.

Jennifer-Lee

And I’m Jennifer Lee, keeping Mike on track as always. And if you haven’t yet, please follow and like our podcast so you don’t miss out on these amazing stories that we’ve got for you today.

Mike

And it’s really important because every time we do one of these episodes, we go on a little different journey and we learn some different stuff. Today, we’re going to be exploring an alternate approach to housing that we should talk about. Now, have you ever been driving down the road and seen one of those big wide loads where there’s a house in the back? It’s fast.

Jennifer-Lee

And then I honk at it because I’m upset that they’re going. They were talking about that the other day.

Mike

This lady from the podcast. And they did that one on my street about two years ago where they actually came in overnight and like I didn’t sleep.

01:20

I sat. And watched the whole thing. It was the most fascinating thing ever how they got the thing up. They got it on the, it was really, really exciting. And I could do no justice to it. However, we can talk about this today in a way that will make sense to everybody and will help talk about why this is such an important part of our housing strategy here in Canada. So we’re going to talk about how to relocate homes today. It’s going to be a really exciting conversation.

Jennifer-Lee

Yeah, I’m very excited about this. Like I said, I’ve always been fascinated by how they move the homes and why they do it at nighttime mainly. So people probably don’t get upset with them when they’re slowly moving through.

Mike

All right. So we have with us today Glyn Lewis from Renewal Development. Really excited to have Glyn first time on Measure Twice, Cut Once. And so welcome to our podcast. Before we get too much into what your company does, tell us a little about yourself because you have kind of a cool backstory and I think it’s something our listeners and viewers would like to learn about.

02:19

Glyn

Right. Thanks. Well, thanks for having me. Do you want me to start? Where would you like me to start? I don’t know. You have so many different hats. Like, how do you go from moving houses, I guess? Like, where do you begin? Was that always your passion? Yeah. Okay, cool. So, you know, I grew up in Burnaby. I went to Simon Fraser University. I studied chemistry of all things. When I was at SFU, I got involved in student politics, organized concerts. And at a certain point when I was at SFU, I watched this documentary called Inconvenient Truth by Al Gore.

02:53

It was that really famous one. I think it came out around 2005. Very depressing. Yeah, totally an uplifter for sure. But it was one of those moments in life that I just kind of took an inflection point. And I said, I think climate change is going to be one of the most defining issues of our time. And if I want to leave a planet To my kids, my grandkids, that they’re going to be able to enjoy, that we have to think about building our communities more responsibly. We’re going to have to think about building our economies more sustainably. And so I took this really big shift in my life. So I started thinking about sustainable development. I started thinking about sustainability in general. And I ended up working in politics for a while. I worked down in the United States for Barack Obama. I came back, got involved here in Canada, started a tech company. I’ve taken so many interesting different weaves and paths. Throughout all this, but I think the foundation was sustainable development. And how do I be an agent for change? How do I help move the needle forward? And I think that at my core is who I am and what I think about.

03:55

You know, how do I, and through the work that I do, help create change, social change, environmental change? And I’m using enterprise to do it, business. And so what happened was about six or seven years ago, my sister was living in this cute little home in Esquimalt. It was about 1910, 1915 home. Charming historic. And if you ever watch the Pixar movie Up, it looked exactly like that home. It was yellow, it was cute. And her and her partner, and they were, you know, bushy eyed and about 30, 35 years old, moved into it. And they took such good care of it, you know, and they were starting a life together and they were starting a home together.

04:34

And they painted it on weekends and they found knobs and tubes and all of these, you know, clawfoot bathtubs and all that kind of stuff to make it really charming. And I would go over there and we would play. And the dogs would run around, and I was so excited about what they were building. What ended up happening is a real estate developer bought the whole city block.

Jennifer-Lee

Yeah, that whole area is very different now. Yeah. So a developer bought the whole city block and wanted to tear down all of the homes on her block, including hers.

04:59

Glyn

And so she got really upset about this. She’s even more of an environmentalist than I would say I am. And she wanted to find some other alternative to seeing this beautiful home that she had taken so much care of and she poured so much love into to see that home not torn down and to do something responsible with it. So she contacted one of the companies on the island that lift and move homes. And she bought a property, her and her partner bought a property just north of Sooke near Gordon’s Beach. And they moved the home overnight from Esquimalt up to Souk. And when she did this, it was this huge aha moment in my head of like, this makes so much sense. It makes sense financially. It’s a good home. You know, it’s a good home that didn’t go to the landfill. It was cheaper for her to do it this way than building a new home.

05:43

And then I was like, why don’t we do more of this? And that question was the genesis of me starting Renewal Development, the company that I now lead.

Jennifer-Lee

Wow, so it wasn’t as easy as putting some balloons on a home and like lifting it up, right?

Glyn

I always say that’d be in some ways that’d be so much easier because then you wouldn’t have to deal with all of like the road width constrictions and the trolley lines and the trees and all that kind of stuff. It would just be so much easier just to go straight up and let the wind take it somewhere.

06:08

But no, we don’t use trucks and beams and dollies and all that kind of stuff.

Jennifer-Lee

Wow, I just think this is so fascinating because, like, I feel like a lot could go wrong when moving homes. What do you think your biggest challenges are?

Glyn

Yeah, that’s a great question. So, the first thing is you do it very carefully. There’s a lot of planning, there’s a lot of engineering that goes into this. You measure the home, you measure the dimensions of the home, you measure the routes that you’re going to take. We’re building a lot of proprietary software right now to map all of our streets and all of our routes. So, we will get better and better at knowing what our routes look like. So measuring is a Huge one. And so, that’s one of the challenges. And not every move and not every home deserves to be moved and not every home deserves to be rescued, right? So, of the homes, so about 3000 single family homes are being torn down every year across Metro Vancouver to make space for higher density development. 3000. We estimate about 20 of them are actually in good shape and can be moved.

07:10

Those are the two criteria that we look at. So, even further to that, like what does make it can be movable? Like, do you have a little checklist of like if it’s the right candidate to be saved or not? Totally. So, we have an assessment that we go through. And so, we start with the first thing we do is we do a virtual assessment. So, we don’t go and look at homes if we don’t think there’s a good chance that we can rescue that home. So, we can go on Google Street View, we look at the home from the outside, we look at the roots where we think it is, and we kind of think yes, no, maybe. If it’s a yes or a maybe, we’ll go out to it go out to the home and we inspect it. What’s the condition of the home?

07:43

Because not every home is in good enough condition to make it worth doing this, right? And that’s where that 20 comes in. So if we look at 10 homes, usually about two, sometimes three of the homes are in good condition and can be moved. So that’s the second thing we have to look at. And then we do the measurements of the width, we do the measurements of the height, we look at our move routes, and we say, is this worth taking? That’s it.

Jennifer-Lee

Wow. I know. I feel like I have a billion questions for you about this because it’s so interesting to me too. Also, like, I’d imagine that. But this is so interesting to me too, because also, like, I’d imagine that there’s a lot of logistics in getting the house off of the current property. It’s not like you can just take a big knife and just slice the bottom of the house and pop it on to a truck. Jennifer, you already mentioned balloons. Oh, yeah. But there’s like, there’d still be pipes of things attached. Like, you got to figure out. It’s not like up where the pipes just like magically come off and like the house flips up.

08:33

Glyn

Totally. And they’re just dangling underneath. Yeah. No. So, you know, you got to do your service disconnections, which you would do anyways if you had to do a demolition. You do cut the belly band, and you do. There’s work, there’s prep that we do, and that we’ve learned to do to prep the home for the move. The lifting is not. The hard part. Is really getting it off the site, right? So if there’s a tree in a way, you know, how much space you might have, and then getting it through our roads. And ultimately, 90 of the homes that we rescue, relocate, and repurpose, they leave by barge. So we take them from growing urban areas like Metro Vancouver and we move them to non urban communities like the Sunshine Coast, Powell River, Comox Courtney, and you just keep going up and down the coast of British Columbia where there’s lots of land and there’s space and there’s a need For good housing.

09:18

Glyn

If you have to drive them though, what’s the farthest distance you can go? So I talk to companies that do this in the United States, in the Midwest, where it’s just like open fields or in Alberta, it’s like open fields, long, wide highways. There’s no end. If you’ve got an open road, there’s no end to how far you can go with it. It’s the constraints of trees and power lines and all those other things and growing in tight urban areas.

Mike

That was the interesting thing as I watched on my street when they did it. So they had everyone move their cars off. The street, and they had to take. We have power lines across, so they had to take power lines down. So it wasn’t a small, like, not the whole street, but it wasn’t a small thing. But the logistics required were massive. Now it’s really interesting though, because if we think about this, you’re saying, okay, so about 30 of houses that are going to otherwise have a date with a bulldozer can be saved. And then we think about some of our other guests who were working on a 1908 heritage house where they took a house, took it down the stud, added a second floor.

10:18

So if we think about a certain number of houses that can be saved that way, a certain number of houses that would be saved your way, that’s going to make a massive impact. And really allow us to accelerate our shift in culture. And I want to talk a little about the environmental impact of doing this, right? It’s great to save money, and we all accept that it’s going to be a few dollars to do business in Vancouver. But beyond that, and this wasn’t lost to me, the first time I watched the house behind us got bulldozed. And I watched, and they just loaded it in a bunch of dump trucks and took it away to go in the landfill. So that was all renewable materials. What is the impact of demolishing a house versus not demolishing a house? Let’s get right down to it, take the money out of it.

11:02

Down to the studs. Well, brass tacks, but yeah. Either way, what are we talking about, right? So let’s think about this and work backwards. What are we going to do by saving this house? And then where does that lead to in terms of other decisions we can make on our projects?

Glyn

Yeah, I love that. Framework and I love thinking that through, Mike. So I mentioned about 3000 single family homes are being torn down across Metro Vancouver every year. Metro Vancouver is one of the demolition capitals of the world right now on a per capita basis. And a lot of this is because the provincial government and local governments are promoting density, right? We have this housing shortage crisis. Housing’s become so unaffordable. People are saying a huge part of that is increase the supply. We need more rental housing. We need more housing for people to buy.

11:45

So this is a huge push to densify, get rid of the single family homes that are a block away from a SkyTrain station and put a tower there, right? Makes sense. We need density. We need housing. We need responsible density, right? But our point is, and to your point, Mike, is that the process to achieve that density is incredibly wasteful. Right? That’s 3000 single family homes going to the landfill, right? All of the wood, all of the concrete, all of the shingles, all the windows, all that kind of stuff. And so I think as an industry, it’s really important to think through, you know, for construction companies and demolition companies and developers and all of these architects, everybody to think, how can we maximize the preservation and the reuse of good building materials, or in our case, an entire home, right? And, you know, we can talk about the financials maybe a little bit later and why it makes actually financial sense to do what we do. But yeah, so it’s a ton of material. It’s a ton of embodied carbon, right? So every home in, in everything that you create, everything you build, everything you manufacture has embodied carbon in it.

12:44

And that’s carbon emissions that went into mining the copper or cutting down the trees or the transport or the manufacturing of the cabinets, all that kind of stuff. So there’s carbon that’s imbued into those materials that when you just throw it away, that’s carbon that you’ve lost. And then when you build a new cabinet or a new home, you’re emitting emissions again. So from a climate change perspective, there’s a huge benefit in preserving what you’ve have, right? From a landfill perspective, it makes a lot of sense to preserve what you have. And from a culture and heritage perspective Retain, like my sister did, right? Her home was a character heritage home. And so it makes a lot of sense to retain what you have. And ultimately, it’s a good story, right? You know, you were out in the middle of the night watching that home move.

13:25

Communities and neighborhoods, they want to see developers and development that’s responsible. And that if it’s a home that’s been there for 40, 50, 60, 70 years, but it’s been well maintained, well loved, well renovated, it shouldn’t go to the landfill. And I think communities and neighborhoods want to see these homes rescued and relocated and repurposed. That’s why every time we do one of our projects, there’s people at two o’clock in the morning in their pajamas having a cup of coffee or a glass of wine, depending who you are, watching these things go down the street. Does that answer a little bit of your question there, Mike?

Mike

Yeah, it does. And it helps us understand and set up the next part of the conversation. There’s a lot of the why is really, really important to help us justify the what. Because this isn’t as easy as bulldozing a house. A lot of the time, responsible solutions aren’t the easiest solution.

Glyn

Well, that’s fascinating. I just want to challenge, or just maybe we can riff off that for a second. I realized early, so I’ve started this company in 2020, so we’re in 2026, about six years now.

14:19

During COVID. Yeah, totally. At the very beginning of COVID is when I started this company, just riffing off what my sister had done, right? And I sat there and I looked at this and I was like, why don’t we do more of this? This is what my sister did. So I started asking the question, well, how many homes are currently moved? And it’s about 70 in British Columbia every year. So 70 homes every year in this province are moved and repurposed. Great. Then I started asking the question, well, how many could be relocated and repurposed?

14:44

How many good homes are there out there that are being demolished? It’s about 700. So every year, developers, construction companies are tearing down 700 good single family homes, right? So then I asked the question, well, why is there such a huge gap between how many are moved and how many could be moved, right? And therein lies the economic business opportunity for renewal to figure out the shortcomings, to figure out the inefficiencies in this whole thing. So, you mentioned the process, and now it’s not as easy. To move a home as it is to demolish, but we take care of that. And so, what we’ve done, one of the things we had to learn, Mike, is that one of the reasons why they only move the companies that do this, there’s about four or five companies that do this in BC, there’s about 300 around the world that do this.

15:27

But the four or five companies that do this in BC don’t provide a one stop solution, so they just take the part that they want right? But if you’re a real estate developer and you’ve got a 10 home land assembly in Coquitlam, well, you don’t want to be dealing with two different contractors. You don’t want to be dealing with a company that’s just going to take one home, one part of one home, and then a different contractor that’s going to take the other nine homes, right? Now you’ve got schedules, you’ve got different contracts, they’ve got to talk to each other.

15:52

It’s a bit of a mess. And that was one of the inefficiencies in the existing industry. And so I figured this out pretty quickly because I did a project with a huge project with Wesgroup out in Port Moody where we moved 10 homes out of the inlet district and it used to be Coronation Park now it’s called the inlet district right by the SkyTrain station there and we realized then this is about three years ago. That it’s not a good service just to take part of the home. We needed to become a demolition company and so one of the divisions of the company that we’ve created is a demolition company. So we do the abatement, we do the demolition, we do the site clearing, we do the permits, the site the service capping, all of it. So I can come to you as a developer, and I can say, listen, you’ve got 10 single family homes in Coquitlam that you need to get removed.

16:37

I’ll take all 10. I am I’m your demo company. And here’s the crazy part I can undercut and underbid the demo companies. Maybe we can talk about that a little bit more after. And so I get the contract from you to clear the entire site. I worry about the logistics, I worry about the road move permits, I worry about all of those things. I figure that out. You don’t have to worry about any of that. What do you want? You want a site clear on schedule, on budget? I’ll provide that to you. In the process, I’m going to maximize the reuse of good buildings. The community is going to be happy with you, the city council. And there’s the crazy part I will save you money. And we can riff off and explain how that happens.

Jennifer-Lee

And then you’ll also demolish, I guess, if there was a home that you would not think is okay to move. Yeah. So for let’s say it’s 10 homes.

Glyn

Yeah. I always, every time I’m at dinner, I put down like all the salt and pepper and I put each one at the glass of wine and everything becomes one home.

17:31

And I have to like articulate this or I visualize this for people. So if you’ve got 10 homes and if there’s two or three that are really Good, we will move and repurpose those two or three that are really good. The other seven we responsibly demolish and we hit their 80 or 90 requirements for whatever the municipality is in terms of salvage.

Jennifer-Lee

And I was going to say, you kind of mentioned it there, but responsibly demolish, does that mean you’re like basically taking anything that’s good and reusing it again or sending it somewhere?

Glyn

Yeah, so we don’t do full deconstruction. Deconstruction was where you would pull the entire building apart and then preserve the materials in their original form to go back into things like a window or door the framing all that kind of stuff but we would responsibly demolish in the sense of put all the lumber in one pile, we’d put all the concrete in another pile, the shingles in another pile.

18:17

And then send that for recycling. That’s for the other eight homes. But then here’s the brilliant part of our model we save two entire homes as they are, and we move them away and we move them to a community that needs good, climate resilient, affordable housing. So we’re maximizing the preservation of good building materials, in this case, two good homes, and it’s cheaper. And we provide one service. We’re the only company, this is really interesting actually. For Jennifer and for Mike. We’re the only company in North America that does both of those things, that we vertically integrated the move component and the entire demolition site clearing component. Because I realized there was an inefficiency if those two things weren’t married and coupled together. Does that make sense?

Jennifer-Lee

So smart. I just think it’s funny, just on a funny note, I was thinking about it. It’s like, it’s so great that you’re demolishing the other ones, but I said, it must be sad when you’re deciding which homes go and which homes stay.

19:12

Glyn

Yeah. I mean, well, so, you know, as you’re not good enough. Yeah. It’s funny you say that, Jennifer, because I didn’t start this company to be a demolition company. Yeah. Right. I didn’t start this to tear down a whole bunch of homes. I started this company because I want to rescue as many good homes, just like my sister did. Right. That’s our driving why. Coming back to your why, Mike, question, Mike. So that’s really what’s motivating us. But we also have to be economically responsible and things have to make sense. Right. So we take the homes that have the best value. And we have a careful assessment. We look at the condition of the windows, are they double pane? We look at the condition of the roof, does it have some good life left in it? We look at, you know, the bones and the mechanicals. We look at, we have to assess those things because it’s not worth it to take a home that needs a ton of work.

Jennifer-Lee

So we have to, we can’t take them all. So you can’t be super nice. I’d be like, that’d be too hard to be like, but you’re cute on the exterior.

20:06

Glyn

Yeah, yeah, totally, totally.

Mike

I’ve got so many more questions for you me. Hold on. But we also have to take a couple of moments to thank our awesome sponsors. So we’re going to take a couple of moments to thank our sponsors. We’ll be right back after the break. And we’re going to keep talking about some projects, specifically in the Sunshine Coast and Alert Bay and dive in a little bit deeper.

Jennifer-Lee

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21:58

Mike

All right, we’re back with Glyn from Renewal Development. And earlier, prior to our break, you alluded to a project that you’d worked on with one of our fellow HAVAN members, Wesgroup, and that involved 10 homes. Can we go in a little bit about that? Because it’s not just the fact that you took 10 homes off a piece of property and moved them, it’s how you moved them, where you moved them, and why that matters. So I’d love to dig in a little bit deeper to that part of the conversation.

Glyn

Yeah, happy to. Well, I have to start by saying how great Wesgroup was to work with fantastic individuals over there, great leadership.

22:29

So, what happened was, Wesgroup did western Canada’s largest land assembly. It was 59 single family homes in Port Moody. Imagine a land assembly that big. And it took them years to put all those homes together to get all the homeowners to agree to sell their homes and all that kind of stuff. And it was contentious as a lot of land assemblies can be, especially at that scale, right? And what happened was that they needed to demolish all 59 of these homes to make space for the towers in their community that they were planning. And somehow, through a friend Got connected to Wesgroup and I went into their boardroom. This is about two, almost three years ago now. And I said, listen, you’ve got 59 single family homes out there in Port Moody. I had already done a few projects. I had moved a schoolhouse from Vancouver School Board in Kitsilano to the Squamish Nation where we repurposed it.

23:14

That was a huge story. If you remember that a couple of summers ago, we moved it through Kits Beach on a barge around Stanley Park under the bridge. People were, it was news It was news for like three or four days. So we had done some projects and Wesgroup had a little bit of a sense of who we were as a company, our Renewal Development. And so they were open to having the meeting and having the conversation about what we could do with those homes in Port Moody. So we sat down in the boardroom with them and we just explained the model.

23:40

We said, Listen, you’ve got 59 homes here. There’s 10 really good ones that really shouldn’t be demolished and we’ll take them off your hands. ” The model was a little bit different at that point. Today I would go and take the entire site. That one stop solution. That one stop site clearing solution, demo abatement, everything will take care of the whole thing. You’ve got one contractor to deal with. And so but that in that case. We were there were two contractors. There was a demo company and there was us. And that was actually one of the learning lessons of like that’s not an efficient way of doing this. Glyn. So Renewal’s shifted after that project. So we took the 10 best ones. Wesgroup was fantastic to work with. They showed vision and leadership to go down this path with us.

24:22

And then at the same time, I was negotiating with a coastal nation that needed housing. So I got connected to the shíshálh Nation on the Sunshine Coast, who they have land and they had the resources and they had the planning to do a below market rental housing project in their community. And they had seen the schoolhouse project. They’d seen a couple other projects that we had done. And they said, Glyn, we’re really interested. And I said, Well, great, because I’ve got 10 really beautiful Wesgroup homes from Port Moody. Would you be interested? And I brokered the whole deal. And I brought Wesgroup to the table. I brought the shíshálh Nation to the table. Renewal Development acted as a general contractor for the whole thing. And we made it happen. So, about April, I guess it was two years ago now, we started moving these homes three at a time. JL

Oh, so not all 10 at the time? A little parade?

Glyn

Yeah, no.

25:11

We don’t have trucks for that. So, we, or manpower. So, we did three each night. And over, I think it was like, you know, one happened one week, and then three weeks later, we did another three, We took them across Coquitlam down to the Fraser River, we put them on a barge. We took them all the way up to the Sunshine Coast and then once they got to the Sunshine Coast, we general contracted them to be repurposed. So what we ended up doing is we modernized the upper levels for energy efficiency. I was just listening to what you were saying there about energy efficient appliances and energy efficient windows and all that kind of stuff. Right? Because all of these homes are snowflakes and each home needs different things, right? Maybe this home has perfect double pane windows but this one has some double pane windows and some single pane windows right or maybe this this roof is perfect.

25:55

But that room needs some work. So you have to look at each home as a bit of a snowflake and we did some modifications and especially for energy efficiency upgrades to the homes when they were on the Sunshine Coast and then we build basement suites below. So we turned all ten of those homes into duplexes with garden suites three of them say to single family homes. And so now we just finished this project where we provided seventeen units of a affordable below market rental housing that was more cost efficient than doing modular or new construction. This is important. Right? It was more cost efficient to do it this way by about 20 to 40 and they got great houses and they’re proud. And this project got international recognition and acclaim. I took Wesgroup to Venice, Italy for this huge award that we got for circularity in the built environment. We were in the Monocle, we were in the Guardian.

26:44

We were in Forbes. Like it’s incredible how something so small, but something so innovative that showed leadership has caught the attention of architects and builders and developers, not just here in Canada, but around the world. And now our mission as a company is to scale that, is to replicate and scale this model with more developers here in Metro Vancouver who have good single family homes. But also for coastal nations that need good climate resilient housing.

Jennifer-Lee

What I was going to say, too, something else I read about it is that you were also able to use a lot of local trades as well, which gives a lot more people employment in those areas that maybe like. I used to live up in a rural town, and there’s not always that many jobs for everybody. As well, either.

Glyn

Huge. It’s a huge point, right? Because when they receive modular homes, whether just receiving modular homes and ensure that there’s some site prep work to all that kind of stuff. But we made, we worked with the shíshálh Nation very closely and they, we both made it a priority that we would engage and empower and hire as many shíshálh Nation members as possible. Carpenters, plumbers.

27:50

Electricians, painters, all of it. 70% of the trades who worked on that project for a year, year and a half, were from the shíshálh Nation, right? And we, our team of project managers and site supervisors and health safety officers, we were very intentional about not everybody had, you know, let’s say lots of years of experience. Some people who we were working with were still learning the trades. But we worked with them, right? So it took a little bit longer. And there were some mistakes, you know, I have to go back and fix something or help point something out all that kind of stuff. But the nation wanted that. Because it was an economic development opportunity for the community. It was a skill development opportunity for the community. And also now there’s pride and ownership of the homes, right? And we were proud to work with them to make all of that happen.

Jennifer-Lee

It’s amazing. That’s such a great story, but now I want to know a bit of the gossip because when you’re moving with homes, have you ever, and maybe you can’t tell us, have you ever had an incident while moving homes.

28:46

Like someone not happy with it on the street, maybe some horn honking, anything when you’ve been moving homes?

Glyn

Yeah. So 99% of the time, people are ecstatic to see this happen, right? I mentioned the schoolhouse project that we did out of Kitsilano that came out of Cornwall, Maple, went down through Kits Beach. I was there, it was like one o’clock in the morning. Two o’clock in the morning. And there were hundreds, it was a beautiful summer night. There were hundreds of people lining the street watching this thing move, right? And it’s wild to see something that big move next to you. It feels kind of surreal. People in their windows, like looking down and all that kind of stuff. And so there’s. And I had a couple of people when we did that project, there’s this couple of older folks, I don’t know how they figured out that I was part of the project and that I was leading the project, but they came to me and they were like, Glyn, I went to school here 50 years ago because that thing had been there since 1912. Wow. And they’re like, Glyn.

29:35

I remember going to this little schoolhouse. I took my daughter here, I took my granddaughter here. And I can’t thank you enough for what you’re doing because I was really sad when I heard that this thing was going to be demolished. And it’s a charming building and it’s a building that’s been a huge part of our community. And she was quite emotional. And I felt really proud the fact that we were doing something not only that was made in environmental sense, but it made a lot of community sense and social sense. So 99% of the time people are really proud and happy of what we do. Every so often people are like, Oh, you know, there’s, some traffic coming down my road at one o’clock in the morning. But most of the people are out there anyways watching it happen. So for the most part, people are really excited.

Mike

It was actually a lot of fun watching that house move. Like a lot of us were out there being social and hanging out. Oh yeah, it was it was super cool. So question for you. I mean.

30:27

Now we understand a lot of the methodology. I is this totally aside. How challenging is it to take a house from a trailer and put it onto a barge and then deal with like the weather and big waves like is that is that really  – is that like the most stressful part of your day?

Glyn

So we have like professionals who do this right engineers. People who really know their stuff, and knock on wood, you know We’ve got a great safety record. The contractors and the trades and the partners that we work with are all really good at what they do. And so we’re lucky like that. We have a high standard for the work. That we do. There’s never been any issues. Barging is typical. Things get moved on barges all the time. The tug and barge operators know what they do. If they hit incremental weather, they have to go duck into a cove. They wait for a bit and then they keep going. We’re looking to do some projects further afield right now.

31:20

Like even up to Haida Gwaii. And some of these other remote communities, Bella Bella, Bella Coola. So, you know, some of these homes are going to take quite a journey to go to where they need to go. But especially, if I could just add this point, for some of those remote communities, it is really complicated to build new housing, right? They don’t have a Home Depot. They don’t have skilled labor, you know. I’ve been to some communities where there’s no coffee shops, right? And so imagine trying to build 20 units of housing in a place that there’s not even a coffee shop, needless to say a Home Depot, or home hardware. So our model makes a lot of sense. Because we’re bringing in almost turnkey homes now. So. One of the differences when the shíshálh project, one of the things, if I can just riff off this for a second, we learned a lot with that shíshálh Wesgroup project. One of them is that we needed to become a one stop solution demolition service provider.

32:04

Which is what we’ve built that capacity internally. The other thing we learned is that it’s a lot more efficient to renovate the homes down here in Metro Vancouver, assembly line style, and then ship them up almost as a turnkey home. The Sunshine Coast isn’t that bad. But we still face a 30 cost escalation by doing the renovation on the Sunshine Coast versus had we done it down here because you’ve got the ferry to deal with, you’ve got the scheduling, you’ve got materials that aren’t always there, you don’t always have the skills, the trades. When you start looking at communities that are even further. Like Bella Bella or Bella Coola or Clemto or Kitsu or some really remote communities, that’s where we realized, Mike, that we have to do that renovation work on these homes down here. And that’s what we’re building the world’s first modernization facility of rescued repurposed homes where we can put 10, 20 homes next to each other, renovate them next to each other more efficiently.

32:55

And then ship them out.

Jennifer-Lee

I think it’s such a cool idea because my family has had a construction company for many years and we’ve approached to build different style homes on some of the Sunshine Coast and other like the Sunshine Coast and other places like that that don’t necessarily have all the workers or even smaller, like Saltspring. And that’s the big logistics of like, well. Now we have to have a camp for all the workers. How do we get all the workers over here? So I think the fact that you guys are able to fine tune the homes here and then like move them up is such a smart idea.

Glyn

And some of these coastal communities, remote, especially first Nation communities that we’re working with. We’re talking about building apprenticeship programs where they could send down a carpenter, electrician, someone who’s interested to work at the modernization facility that we’re building here in Metro Vancouver to build their skills, to work on the homes, and then go back to their communities or whatever they might do. So.

33:45

We’re also looking at those kind of opportunities as well.

Mike

You talked about the one on the Sunshine Coast. You had another one in Alert Bay as well. Can we chat about that one really quickly as well? Because that was kind of a cool one, right? We are. They’re all kind of cool. Thanks, Jennifer.

Glyn

So, we’re building, like I mentioned. These are all demonstration projects right now. And we’re solving a lot of complicated problems. Know your move routes. We’re building proprietary software. We’re building relationships with developers and the construction companies to tell them about this responsible demolition service to tell them, hey, we can provide a really good onestop solution. We’re solving a lot of that thing right now, Mike. Because we’re building capacity to scale. And that’s ultimately what I want to do. I told you about that. Those 70 homes that get moved right now, but there’s actually 700. My goal is to scale through that and to start moving 100, 200.

34:35

300 homes a year because we can. They’re out there. These homes shouldn’t be demolished. It’s a tragedy to see a beautifully renovated midcentury home demolished. It happens every day. And so you know, we’re building up the capacity, we’re building up the systems, we’re building up the equipment. And one of the projects that we’re looking at right now is with the ‘Na̱mg̱is Nation in Alert Bay. Where they need a ton of homes. I’m not going to get into the numbers right now, but it’s a significant number of homes that they need. But they’re not the only nation that we’re talking to. There are dozens of nations up and down the coast of British Columbia that need good housing, that need good, cost effective housing. And so. If you think about this at a macro level, you’ve got real estate developers down here in Metro Vancouver paying good money to tear down really good homes. And then you’ve got communities up and down the coast of British Columbia that are in dire need of housing. And when I go and I talk to these nations about this, they’re like.

35:31

This makes no sense. And that’s where we’re the glue. We’re trying to put those two pieces together. Real estate developer in Vancouver, you have a beautiful home site for demolition. Alert Bay Nation, you’ve got A beautiful ‘Na̱mg̱is Nation. You’ve got a beautiful you’ve got a huge need for housing. Let’s put those two pieces together. And so the ‘Na̱mg̱is Nation of Alert Bay is only one of the communities that we’re talking to because this is all about scaling up this model now.

Jennifer-Lee

Well, I think people may be hesitant to it because they think the cost is very expensive. But I wanted to. Because I know you said you’re going to blow my mind about the cost thing.

Glyn

So this is, and this is why I’m having so much success with Wesgroup or with Bosa Properties, or with Anthem, or we’re having so much success with these companies, big, small, medium developers. Forget about the fact that community wants us. This. Forget about the fact that the city council, mayor.

36:19

And council want to see more of this happen. Forget about the fact that there’s the environmental benefits. Let’s talk about the economic benefits and the financial benefits of doing this. And this is why I really believe we’re going to disrupt things here in the next few years. You’ve got 10 homes. Let’s say you’re one of these real estate developers in Coquitlam. You’ve got 10 single family homes next to each other. You go to tender for a demolition quote, right? Abate, demolish all 10 of my homes, right? One company says $100000 I’m just making up numbers here. Another company says $110000 Let’s say plus or minus $100000 Completely made that number up. It’s more like 20. $30000 to demolish a home. But let’s just make this. We won’t hold you to it. Let’s just use this as a reference point. So I come along. And so when they quoted, they had to quote for the demolition, the abatement of all 10 homes, right? Because that’s the scope of the project 10 homes right? Abatement, demolition, state clearing. I come along and I say, well, actually.

37:17

Two of these homes are really nice. And we know we can move them. And we’ve got a purchase order from some coastal nation that needs two homes. The nation is going to pay to see those two homes leave. They’re paying for the extraction, the removal of those two homes. Right? What does that do? That means now I only have eight homes left to demolish. And so my scope of work is not 10 homes, it’s 8 homes. And this is how I can underbid the demo companies. Because the scope of work is lower because 2 of the homes were paid by someone else to leave.

Jennifer-Lee

And they’re going to a good place. And people are going to get homes.

Glyn

For sure. But when I go into a boardroom and I explain this to Wesgroup or Anthem or Bosa or whoever it is and I show it to them and we do it. On time and on budget and they save a little bit of money. It’s a nobrainer Well.

38:10

Mike

You can’t even quantify the value. The value of being a leader in an industry that thrives on innovation. So being one of the first people to realize these things, and we’ve seen this with other methodologies, with deconstruction companies and repurposing and some of these other really cool conversations we’re having. Now I want to cue in on something really interesting. You have said the word developer many. Many times. I use my own house as an example. It’s about 2000 square feet built in 1981. We were going to tear it down or deconstruct it because we wanted more space. So for me as a homeowner, what you’re saying to me is that it’s going to be cheaper for me to start this project out. And really what we should be doing as homeowners is driving the bus and going to our builder or developer going, Why aren’t we doing that instead?”

38:52

So it sounds like this is accessible to everyone for a development company, but for a smaller scale builder, some of the great builders we have in our organization who do several projects a year, or even us as homeowners, which is going to be really, powerful as we move forward as well.

Glyn

Well, and that’s a great point to raise, Mike. And like those homeowners are often even more motivated than the big developers, right? The big developers they want to do this as fast and as cheap as possible, right? They want to get it done, they just want to get it done. But you might have some emotional attachment to your home, right? You might have lived it, you might be your mom lived it, maybe your grandma lived it, or whatever else. And so, you might have a more of a connection. And when I say developer, you’re right, I don’t mean just the big developers, I mean, you know, even the homeowner who’s just doing one home, um, because this model works at scale for 10 homes, it works.

39:37

For just one single family home. Like we took a really beautiful single family home out of North Vancouver, we moved it down to the Squamish Nation. I did exactly what I just told you about for 10 homes, but we just did it for one home. So if you’re a builder, if you’re an architect, if you’re a homeowner and you need to demolish your home, call Renewal Development. Give us a call, look it up on our website because we can provide this service and this solution for you. And the beauty of it, and this is, and I just want to pick up on something else you just said about deconstruction. Deconstruction is innovative. And there’s a lot of great work that’s going to happen there. And I think policy from municipalities needs to shift to keep incentivizing deconstruction. But deconstruction is a little bit more expensive, and it takes a little bit longer, right? The beauty of what we do is that we’re cheaper than demolition because of that scope of work, because someone else is paying for it. So I actually have a systematic or structural advantage in my innovation because not only is it a feel good story, not only is it a good environmental story, but it’s more economical.

40:37

And in this marketplace where affordability and savings and interest rates being what they are, this is everybody’s thinking, how can I save even a buck? And here is a great solution.

Jennifer-Lee

I feel like you’re going to have to start doing like updates on the homes for people that like move them. And it’s like, this is where your home is now. And like, we do it. This is the story. Do you do it?

Glyn

We do it. I love that you brought that up, Jennifer. Because okay, so let’s come back to the Wesgroup project. That whole Wesgroup thing is like, there’s like kismet and stars all over this whole thing because those former homeowners, they came and watched. Oh, Their homes move that night, every night that we did that would email them or we’d call them. Someone on my team would say, Hey, your home’s moving on this night. If you’d like to come, it’s going to start at 10 o’clock at night. And they would come with their families. And then we, because on our website, we do blog post updates of our projects. And so they would see the reno happening on their home at the Sunshine Coast.

41:31

And on February 9th, I guess a week from now, we’re doing a huge opening of these 17 homes that we just finished. And the former owners from Port Moody, who now kind of live around different places because they’ve had to leave obviously right. A lot of them are going to come up and they’re going to see their former homes and they’re going to get to meet the new homeowners who are all shíshálh first Nation members and we’re going to do a ribbon cutting and it’s going to be a big celebratory event and obviously all the trades who worked on the project are going to be there. And that kind of stuff. So we invest in that story and in those relationships. Part of it because we just believe in it and it feels good. For us to know. How valued our work is. It’s hard what we do.

42:09

Is challenging. And we’re getting better at it and we’re making it more efficient. But it also helps us to know that there’s wins along the way. And it’s just, and it’s also good marketing because then people start talking about us and they’re like, hey, this is a great thing. You should talk, you should look at this more. So, from so many different perspectives, it’s nice to know the house that our kids grew up in.

Mike

Like you said, those hallways will be another group of kids running down them for another 50 years. And that’s a really, really powerful thing. Forget about the money. Forget about the environmental impact. I watch this, okay? Because they demolish houses where we’re in South Surrey. They demolish these little ranchers all the time. And there’s always a group of sad people outside that day because that was the house their grandparents were in.

42:57

That’s the house they visited people in. And those memories are gone. And I love that we are in an interesting time in this industry where we can preserve our memories and we can make environmentally intelligent decisions and there are so many different competing options and methodologies and none of them involve a dump truck in a landfill and I love that and I wish we had more time but we don’t. And this is the saddest part of every episode where we have to start thinking about ending our time together but this has been an amazing conversation and you know what we talked about today isn’t just about moving houses, it’s resetting housing How we expect those houses to be removed from a property so that the next house and the next story can be told.

43:40

So many different takeaways. I mean, the fact that we can save money doing this is huge. The fact that we can save, I mean, how many dump truckloads when I demolish my house, if I should choose to do that, how many dump truckloads am I saving? 20 plus? Well, I know from a weight perspective, it’s about 100 tons in the average 1500 square foot rancher. Okay. So we’re helping solve our housing crisis. We’re helping to solve housing crisis in areas that are less easily able to solve them themselves. So many takeaways. And we’re so grateful you took some time here to share the story and to share where you’re going with this and to share your leadership in this area as well. Very grateful for your time here.

44:27

Thank you for having me, Mike. And I think when the time comes,

Jennifer-Lee

Mike, you should just move your house. And we know who’s going to help you with that. If your house passed the checklist. What I’m thinking is, if we move my house, I’m not telling my family that week. All of a sudden, it’s out of here.

Glyn

And this is funny because we never say house moving, we say house relocation. Because when you Google house moving, you get the movers who are actually going to come in and take all your things out. So we always say home relocation. One of those things.

Jennifer-Lee

And it’s much more than tying a bunch of balloons onto your home to move it. There we go. You said so many great things today, but for someone that’s thinking, maybe approaching you to move their house, what is one piece of advice you’d give them?

45:10

Glyn

It might seem complicated, but we take care of that. And so, the key is that we provide a site clearing service. That’s it. That’s all you need to worry about on time and on budget,

Jenifer-Lee

which is rare.

Glyn

And that’s it right? And so that’s what a developer cares about, that’s what a homeowner cares about. Behind the scenes, we take care of everything out. Can it move? Is it worth moving? Don’t worry about that. Just engage us. If you’ve got a home slated for demolition, engage Renewal Development, come to our website, contact us, and we will do the assessment. And we’ll walk you through the process, we’ll come up with a proposal, and if you like the proposal, we’ll take care of everything.

Mike

And once your home’s been relocated, You’re probably going to sit down and figure it out stuff for your next version of your home. So you’re going to watch more episodes of Measure Twice, Cut Once. And while you’re doing so, you’re going to want to like and share these episodes, tell your family, tell your friends, heck, you see someone on the street who looks kind of interested in the topic, go up to them and tell them to watch Measure Twice, Cut Once as well.

46:06

If you do those things, you can actually win a beautiful Napoleon Prestige P500 stainless steel barbecue from FortisBC valued at 16000 hundred dollars a perfect accompaniment to your newly relocated home. All you really got to do it’s so simple you just go to measure twice cut once or www.HAVAN.ca/measuretwicecutonce fill out the information and boom you Fill out the information, and boom, you could be winning a barbecue just like we gave away last season.

Jennifer-Lee

And while you’re there, make sure you also hit the follow button so you can stay connected and never miss an episode like today’s.

46:38

And also, thanks again to our partners, Trail Appliances, Fortis BC, BC Housing, Rami Films, jPod Creations, and Ai Technology and Design.

Mike

Let’s talk about HAVAN very quickly, the organization we’re also proud to be members of, and the organization that brings to this podcast. We are, as an organization, proudly affiliated with CHBABC and CHBA National. So these are organizations at the provincial and federal level that help support stronger residential construction industries through education and advocacy. Thanks again and see you next time on Measure Twice, Cut Once.

Glyn

Thanks for having me.

Jennifer-Lee

Yeah, thank you.