Episode 113 - From London with Lessons: A Global Perspective on Building & Design
#113 | Julia Starzyk | Star Projects | From London with Lessons: A Global Perspective on Building & Design
In this international episode, Mark welcomes Julia Starzyk of Star Projects London—his first overseas guest! They explore the differences between UK and US construction, how Julia saves overbudget projects, and why “soon” is never a real deadline. From licensing to luxury builds, this episode offers a fascinating global view of building.
Listen to the full episode:
About Julia Starzyk
Julia is founder and managing director of Star Projects, boutique Cost and Project Management Consultancy, based in London, specializing in guiding private clients through the refurbishment of their Listed Building and period properties into dream homes with a budget of £1M+.
Star Projects, operates within private, high end residential market of London guiding homeowners with a budget of £1M+ through the process of achieving their dream home.
She’s seen a lot of projects go well, and she’s also seen things go terribly wrong. She’s worked with tradesman laying tiles or checking cables, but has also chaired and hosted important meetings with publicly known affluent people. And to be totally honest, she’s enjoyed the process every single time so far!
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Find Star Projects’s Website Here
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Julia Starzyk 00:04
You have a very interesting license structure in terms of, in order to be a builder, you need to have a license. You need to prove that you're actually competent in what you're doing. We don't have that system. So, you know, I can register tomorrow a construction company, and there you go. As long as I find clients I'm trading today,
Mark D. Williams 00:31
on the computer podcast, we had Julia Starz on from Star projects London, and Julia is our first guest from overseas. So it was really fun to talk and contrast some of the differences in style to businesses and construction in America, as well as what her experience is in the UK. So without further ado, here is Julia starzak. All right. Welcome to the curious builder Podcast. I'm Mark Williams, your host. Today we are joined by a very special guest, our first international guest, all the way across the pond in the UK, we've got Julia starzak from Star projects London. Welcome Julia.
01:03
Well, hello, hello.
Mark D. Williams 01:09
Yeah, I was, I was excited. So my daughter, she's nine, she's sick this morning, and so I brought her into the studio. It's 8:30am our time, and it's obviously early afternoon, I would assume your time. And I told my daughter, because she does the podcast stuff with me, just we do some kids stuff together. And she goes, Oh, you have a guest coming in from the UK. And I said, Yeah. And she's like, well, what time does her flight come? I'm like, Oh no, no, she's not. She's not flying here. I was very flattered that she thought you were flying here. But anyway, I thought that was kind of amusing.
Julia Starzyk 01:36
Yeah, totally. I mean, you know, I've never been to stay yet.
Mark D. Williams 01:42
Okay, what? Out of curiosity. What did so? How did you hear about the curious builder? Out of curiosity,
Julia Starzyk 01:48
I think there was a one of these episodes back in the day that you posted that I found quite, quite an interesting one. It was going about, oh god. I think it was talking about, like, personal branding and builders and how they market themselves and stuff. And obviously, I have a bit of a builder's background as well. I used to be a commercial director in a construction company down here for seven years, so I picked up on a lot of the points there, and I found it really fascinating how different it is down here as well. Yeah,
Mark D. Williams 02:19
that's so funny down here. I like that because I would, we would refer to Minnesota, like over there. That's it. Anyway. Essentially, you do client representation, which we do have here, especially in the higher end homes. My friend Brad, down in Arizona, he runs into that a lot because their vacation homes or clients aren't there. But I'd love to contrast and compare. You know, the type of clientele that you work with, what similarities are between the US market and obviously, the UK market. I really know nothing about building overseas a little bit in Europe, just because I've traveled there a little bit, and I've had some other podcasts builder friends of mine that have been there, and I've heard them talk about it. So that'd just be find it really interesting to hear your perspective with your clients. So why don't you give us a little intro about basically how you got into your job. Sounds like you're in construction prior to what you're doing now, and tell us a little bit about what your services are now and how you work with your clients.
Julia Starzyk 03:09
So funny enough. My business, I've set up my business five years ago. It's going to be five in July. I never really planned on starting my own business, but it was the big boom of COVID back then, and for various reasons. I actually, I used to work for a construction company. I used to do a lot of operations, and what my official title was commercial director, but I was always involved in like the project management and Cost Management and making sure we're making money and making profits. I was going in a bit of a different direction, where I really wanted to work with private clients, and I found this issue that a lot of the homeowners and people who are doing their own homes for their own benefits, they don't really understand what it is they're actually getting themselves into and on the market is very specific in terms of, we have a lot of high value projects. And what I mean by high value, it's probably around 500,000 and plus, let alone that. These days, a million pounds doesn't really buy you much in building works. So it takes a lot of work to have a million pounds available in your bank account. And those people tend to be very good in something, whatever it is they're doing, whether it's finance, accountancy, lawyers, whoever, they're not necessarily good and understanding the construction processes in the same way. And quite often they have absolutely zero desire of learning those processes. They just want to hand over the keys make sure everything is done to what they expect at the end, and that's it be done with it. And as far as I believe in us, this is usually dealt by the contractor as. Far as I understand. And they've got their own project managers. They have their own Qs or cost managers in here. We have two sides. So we always say there's a contractor side and there's the client side as well. Need to make sure both of them are benefiting from whatever it is that is being delivered. And yeah, I started to shift from working on that contractor side back onto the client side. And then probably about a couple of years in, I've realized that I actually miss the construction sites and working with the builders and getting that insight from sides of what's happening, what's actually happening on the market, what are the live issues and the world going? I decided to restructure the business a little bit, and we now have those two arms, which is pretty much what I just said, one of the one of the arms is the client side that I run, and it's always going to be just me, perhaps one more person that we can replace each other when needed. And the other arm is the contractors arm, and we tend to narrow those services quite significantly in terms of we support contractors with tendering, which is bidding for work, getting the price together, putting together a plan of how they foresee the project being done as well as any. I call it emergency works. So let's say the project is starting to go sour because something's happened, something failed, someone's running out of money, something's over running. We tend to step in shape the team a little bit help out in terms of organizing a way forward, and then we leave them to it. So a
Mark D. Williams 06:49
couple questions here. One is when the first of all, I think it's a really a credit, because you're right a lot to the homeowners that hire you from the get go, because realizing that you're not good at everything is probably the first step, either in humility or services, and both are fine. Both would actually be welcome. I'd love it if we had a humble client enough to realize that, hey, this isn't something I either want to do or have the skill set to do. And you're right. I've been in client situations where it would have been nice to have a client representative, because sometimes they sometimes a client, when they don't have the knowledge, and let's say, I'll just, we'll pick on the lawyer field. This example I have is not a lawyer. Their gloves go on and they try to pick a fight because they feel like if they don't show strength, that they're gonna that they're showing weakness to, let's say, an adversary. But as a builder, who I've been doing this for two decades, we want to create a win, win scenario. And so the goal sometimes is to remind the client that, hey, we're on your team. We're trying to get this the word this is should not be an adversarial relationship. And I talk all the time about how important relationships are, and you can it doesn't mean that there's not troubled waters. It doesn't mean that there's not difficult times, but you do both have to respect each other to get through it. But then there's the time aspect. Some people are just like, really busy. They're like, I just don't want to prior. We have a client right now, and they're delightful people, but basically that she just wants a turnkey home, and which is fine, we could certainly deliver that. And I think the size of the project sometimes is daunting to people, because they're like, Oh man, this is six months in design, a year or two building. It's just easier to go buy something. And so like, sometimes you have to navigate what is the why do they want to do this? And to make it easier, sometimes I've had, I've only worked on one project with a client rep, and it went great because there was a couple times the homeowner was a business owner. And it's kind of like this old adage that when you're a hammer, everything's a nail. And so he was looking at me like I was a nail. And I said, no, no. And actually, the owner's rep, several times came sort of to my defense, and said, No, this is actually what the builders telling you is accurate and right, and is actually is the in the is the best situation for you. And because they trusted, you know, in this case, you Julia, it made the project go much, much, much better. And I think where sometimes you get into trouble, like, if a builder feels threatened, I think you first of all have to be confident in what you do. But if people are asking questions to seek knowledge, I think it's fine. If you're asking questions to sow doubt, like, that's a totally different avenue. And like, I can see how that would be a very tricky team chemistry to sort of navigate. Yeah. So anyway, that's kind of my perspective on I
Julia Starzyk 09:27
couldn't agree more interestingly, I find Americans very easy people to work with, because your culture is very different to the British culture. So down here, and it happens with all the trades, even project managers, builders, client reps, everybody. There's a lot of these meetings that are around meetings, the meetings that could be an email. I call them. You hear those sentences, we're going to need the answer from you soon. And then a regular person. How do you define in the number a word soon? It can be coupled. Base, it can be couple of weeks. It can be couple months, right? It's very hard to actually put a date and stamp on it. And then, often, people who buy houses and then refurb them, they don't understand the priorities, because they don't understand the process. So they can't really, you know, logically, place where exactly you know that information has to be decided on. So
Mark D. Williams 10:23
let's dive in on the culture thing. So I would almost turn that as passive aggressive, like they don't bring clarity, like people are just saying hey. Everyone says soon, but nobody can quantify what soon is. And then you say, No, we need an actual date. Is this? You basically come off, basically a little bit more forward, I guess. And you would say, No, we have two weeks to decide this. Are you who's asking about this timing? The builders telling the client they need timing, or the designers, or who's the one kind of leading the ship here? It
Julia Starzyk 10:49
varies. To be fair. I specialize in projects that are over budget and already delayed. So then,
Mark D. Williams 10:56
so they're bringing you on when things have already gone bad. Yeah, so pretty much. Then
Julia Starzyk 10:59
they call me, and there's a fire everywhere, and everybody's starting to put the little smokes and stuff, and then I go and pick up on the beds that are hugely important on many levels, and unfortunately, not 100% British. I've been in UK for 15 years, but I was born in Poland, so my thinking process is very much down to earth and strategic in a way that I don't really, I don't really accept soon as an answer. So I even have a client right now where we've got a full design team. We've got deadlines for them to deliver their pieces of information. We know that some of those are delayed, but we're missing those key milestones in terms of, when are we choosing the contractor? When are we going to grant the work? When is the work going to start? Like, literally just noting down these days, so everybody can get their head around in terms of, how does it actually align with everybody's deliverables? I think
Mark D. Williams 11:59
on your website I said you've had about over 100 clients. Or is that accurate? Or is that 100 projects you've been on? There's
Julia Starzyk 12:04
been 100 projects I've worked on and completed, probably more than that. Now, some of the projects were with the same clients. I would have to count the clients, you know. So
Mark D. Williams 12:14
my question is this, how many? Let's just call it 150 whatever the number is, it doesn't matter. But what percentage of the projects have you starting from day one? So you're part of assembling the architect, the interior designer and the builder. And how often are you coming in after construction has already begun?
Julia Starzyk 12:31
I That's a big jump there. So I don't think I've ever came on board where the design team was being assembled. Usually the clients here, they pick a designer first, so whether it's the architect or interior designer, they already went with someone visually approved by them, and then essentially what tends to happen is the team is being collated from there, and at some point they make the decision whether they want to go the client website, or they want to do it themselves. But, yeah, I've never really done like a project from scratch where the team was being assembled. We've got something like a planning process here, which means you have to ask the Council for permission to do whatever work you want to do every
Mark D. Williams 13:17
single time on every project. Yeah, and how long does that process take? Like
Julia Starzyk 13:22
every single one, it's mainly if you, if you apply planning major works to anything or alterations visible from outside, or if it's to historically relevant properties which could be listed or within conservation areas, if you refurbishing your own flat. You don't have to do that. But, you know, London is quite an old city altogether, so a lot of properties are either listed or within conservation areas. And
Mark D. Williams 13:49
yeah, and that makes sense that historical preservation, I get why they would want to do that. Out of curiosity, how much of what is the building scene like in terms of building new homes versus remodeling? I would imagine in London proper, like any Cindy, is probably mostly renovation, and then are, is there new developments, or is there new building and tear downs outside, in the suburbs? Or is tear downs and rebuilding not really a thing in England?
Julia Starzyk 14:13
In England in general, new builds are quite common, and we call it sell builds as well. So essentially, the clients who have the money, they buy the land, and then they outsource the packages to various contractors subcontractors to deal with that's called self build, new build properties in general, whether it's on the suburbs, whether it's outside of London, whether it's North England, wherever, that's quite common. Developers work in terms of a big developer coming onto a site and building 300 properties, that's also quite common. It's not so common in London, per se. Now the the areas are expanding massively, with loads of developments happening as well, but strictly like the prime central from the typical Joe. Blog Joe blogs from zone one. London is divided into zones. So like the strict central area is zone one, then you've got zone two, probably the less precious areas, if we call it, zone three, four, etc. I think there's up to seven of them. So essentially, somebody who just bought a house in central London, it's probably going to be either renovation, alteration, maybe basement extension, maybe, like a kitchen extension, a loft, some sort of add on something. Everybody's scrambling for space here, always, the more they can gain from it, the better. But typically it's some form of existing building being in place, or part of an existing building being in place. Like sometimes we have to keep a facade of the building, and then everything else is built new, and then, essentially, that's what happens there good
Mark D. Williams 15:54
drilling back on the business platform. How did you know that there was a need for this? Because it's a little it's a little different than what I see here, the client representatives that I see here, it seems like they start in the very beginning, like in my situation that I've worked with one individual, the client that we ended up building for. They did the architecture work themselves. They had the land, and they designed the home, and then they bid it out with two builders. I was one of them. We are awarded the project, and then big part of it was just everything we do is cost, plus just open book, you see all the bills, and it's really just going through that. And Project Coordinator, or sorry, the client representative is saying, Hey, that looks high, that looks low, that seems like a good deal. And it's really they'll ask those questions just so that the builder, because it's not or, sorry, the client, they don't know what they're looking at. They don't know what lumber should be. Should it be 300,000 should it be 200,000 let's tile 30 grand, 500 grand. They don't know because they're not used to seeing it every day. And I get, I think a good project, our client representative, can actually bring a lot of value to the project, but I think sometimes builders might feel threatened by it, but honestly, I think it's a good thing, especially if that client empowers them to help make decisions, and they also the cooks in the kitchen. We wanted to make sure that the meal is served really good. Sometimes you might break some eggs in the back when you serve your dinner. It's a very nice presentation. And so I think it can lead to a better experience for the client, but a lot of it is client driven, and so in your so they're starting here. I've not heard of a situation, not that it doesn't exist where people come on later, but you're almost like a firefighter. They're calling you Julia because something has gone wrong. You're over budget by 2030, 40% or whatever. So walk us through like, how did you start your business? How did you know you it was going to be in demand? And how do clients find you? Let's walk through the how you acquire clients. Usually,
Julia Starzyk 17:39
when I get appointed, there's no builder on the scene. So we have a very different contracting method. Cost Plus is becoming more and more popular, but it's still more on a basis of this whole team, the client gets a lot of certainty in terms of what the final figure is going to be, or where they would like the figure to be. And when I say project team, we have a bit of a different team here. So it would be an architect or someone dealing with the actual shell of the building, if you like. We might have an interior designer who's going to deal with everything, all of the finishes and all of that stuff. Then we tend to have structural engineers. They do all of the beams calculations, foundations, all of that fun stuff. And then we tend to have people like project managers, who are independent project managers working out, how do we actually get this project forward? Because we have that process of planning that tends to be quite a lot of time from the actual Okay, we're ready to for the project to start, but we just need permissions for it. And that planning process at best, it can be eight weeks. And some councils it can be 12 weeks in I've got a project now that's been back and forward in planning for a year now. So it all varies huge.
Mark D. Williams 18:56
And so you're basically coordinating all this between all the different parties. Are you presenting to the city or what is your involvement? Essentially,
Julia Starzyk 19:03
everybody from that team has some form of responsibility, right? And if you now imagine Joe Bloggs walking into that room, there's probably 10 people around, and he doesn't really understand what these people are supposed to be doing, my job is to actually make sure that we've got everything we need to have covered, and make sure that it's actually delivered to the standard so that we can do the work that the aims of the project. We call it brief of the project is met. Whether it's on brief can be on any standards. It can be sustainability standards. It could be financially making as much profit as possible. It could be the highest quality possible. There's loads of aims people can have within the brief, and we kind of plunk ideas into that mix as well and challenge all of the whether it's the architects or Qs. We try to always optimize the cost to be as comfortable for every. In the room, there's loads of things or opportunities for us to chip in. But the way I always explain it within my niche, because I don't really tend to work with developers much. I don't really work within commercial projects at all. I mainly focus on working with private clients, doing their own homes, and having those priorities there to make it as easy as comfortable for them to live in. I always everybody gets excited about paint collars and wallpapers in picking and choosing furniture and bathroom tiles and those things, and nobody wants to talk about pouring concrete or doing the brickwork and choosing windows. Somehow. These are the fun things for people. So what I tend to do for many clients is essentially we guide them through this process in terms of how precious are you about these things? Would you like me to make your decisions for you, because you don't want to waste time or care? Or would you like to be involved in picking the actual brick we're going to use. Would you like to be involved in terms of this? That in the other there's usually something we called ve exercise, which means Value Engineering. Oh
Mark D. Williams 21:10
yeah, it's every builder's least favorite acronym.
Julia Starzyk 21:14
We tend to not get builders involved in the whole value engineering process. Yet. We usually do this with the actual project team, if
Mark D. Williams 21:23
you don't have the builders involved, how are you figuring out? How are you verifying pricing?
Julia Starzyk 21:27
So that's what the QS do. So we've got this profession of a quantity surveyor, and they're essentially cost consultants. It's the people who put together a full cost plan and cost report, and they price up based on the market movements and everything that happens, how much the project should cost.
Mark D. Williams 21:52
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22:59
It depends what is the project, if we Yeah,
Mark D. Williams 23:01
that's good point. I'm thinking new homes in a situation. So, yeah, that might be difficult.
Julia Starzyk 23:06
No, so that's probably 10% I would say is probably going to be there, or there about, if we're saying about listed property with however much of history and whatever alterations, and let's say negotiation with the English Heritage in terms of what we can and can't do, it's probably going to be more towards 1520,
Mark D. Williams 23:26
for the architect. Wow. What about interior design that's is that usually captured within the same architecture firm? Or is usually the interior designer a complete separate company?
Julia Starzyk 23:36
They're usually a completely separate company, and I can't tell you their fees, because it's like comparing arts people have so many Yeah, I agree. And choices,
Mark D. Williams 23:48
most of them here do hourly. I mean, are your architects and designers actually doing a fixed percentage, or they just guiding you, saying, Hey, we think we're going to be between 18 and 20% but we're charging you 200 or 300 or 400 pounds an hour. How do you how do they actually charge for their services?
Julia Starzyk 24:06
So you'll be surprised, but most of the people actually charge a fixed fee regardless. No, they will give you a quote.
Mark D. Williams 24:15
But what's it? What's it based on? Is it based on time? Is it based on? What is it based on what
Julia Starzyk 24:21
we've got here for. Well, let's, let's do it on a, on a, on an architect's example. So we've got something called Reba, which is the Royal Institute of British architects. And they pub, they publish, however, after every three years or something, something called stages of work, of building works. And stage one is brief. Stage two is whatever it might be, the initial concept or design. Stage three, yeah, stage three is design development. Stage four is tender, so they price per stages. So
Mark D. Williams 24:57
this institute is kind. Coming up with their fee structure. So all architects charge the same amount. No,
Julia Starzyk 25:04
they don't charge the same amount, but they charge based on this structure. So if you say stage one, which is the brief that includes initial set of drawings with initial ideas, it might have some pictures of what the property could look like.
Mark D. Williams 25:19
So they've defined the spec so that all if you have three architects bidding, and they're doing just phase one, then they're all bidding, at least the same thing is included. So that's transparent, but I could be, but I could be, let's call it 40,000 and the other architect could be 35,000 for the same services. So they're okay. That helps a little bit. Interior What about interior designers? What are they charging hourly? Are they doing fixed rates as well? So
Julia Starzyk 25:46
again, in terms of the architects, it's very similar with interior designers. To be fair, this staging of like one to seven. Stage one to seven is basically, what's the what's the Rebus stages of building, of architectural design work and every every trade, usually, or you'd like interior designers, or me designers, whoever is a designer within the team, they usually try to stick to it, because it's widely understandable. If you say we're on stage three, meaning we're doing design development, but we're not yet ready for the full tender, so we don't have time life.
Mark D. Williams 26:20
Are they bill? Are they billing then on a like a percent of completion, or are they billing monthly? So let's just say phase one takes two months. Are they billing 50% at the start and 50% at the end? Or the company? It
Julia Starzyk 26:34
depends on the company. So you'll have people doing that. You'll have people breaking down the fee monthly. It varies in terms of how they want to be paid. That's very different. Within that they usually say within, let's say stage three, just for the sake of an example. So a stage three, they're going to design the they're going to do the design development, which means they're going to include full general arrangements, all of the elevations, all the bathroom elevations, exterior works, interior works, basic specifications, schedule of Cemetery, where kitchen, whatever it might be, Ian mongery, doors, windows, everything, and it's the price allows for two revisions, meaning that the client can come back up to two times with their comments. And there's,
Mark D. Williams 27:19
there's a part of that I like I most built. Most clients would appreciate a fixed price. I just don't know how you do it fixed, because I guess they're doing they're saying what the scope is, and they're saying, but what's interesting about that? Let's say one is a 10,000 square foot house and one is a 2000 square foot house, like obviously that rate is going to be a lot different, but I guess you're comparing it. So each architect would then come down in their fees to accommodate that they're estimating their time. So if they're taking the risk, which I understand, like, essentially, there's really two models, right? There's fixed bid, and then there's cost plus. And I've just been educated that if you do a fixed bid, regardless of who you are, you as the professional, whether you're the architect, designer, consultant or builder, are taking some amount of risk because you are, and so you have to capture that risk. The benefit to the client is they know exactly what they're going to pay and their list of services, the professional is taking the risk. If it goes up, they're eating that out of their pocket. If it goes down, they make more margin. I think it's a little bit like insurance. I don't know what insurance models you guys use over there, but like a high and low deductible. So one of my questions I ask when I meet with clients, because I'll do either contract, but I'll only do a fixed bid if architecture is 100% done into your design is 100% done, because I can't effectively tell you what it's going to cost if you can't tell me what's included, because how could anybody do that? You can't go to a car manufacturer and say, I want a car with four wheels. What's the cost? I could be anything.
Julia Starzyk 28:44
We do quite a lot of that pre getting contractors involved, the scope we do to give them that certainty is quite, quite high in terms of the architecture fees. Of course, they've got, like, their hourly rates and however much they will charge for, I don't know, site visits, etc, on top of the fixed fee, if we go beyond the scope agreed, it tends to be on a fixed fee basis. And then any add ons are a variation. It's detailed written so it's down for the client to decide. And then that first stage, which is the brief, that somewhat would decide whether the architect is the right person for you, whether it gives them quite a lot of insight in terms of where they need to be price wise with their services, because some know that if somebody's asking you to do planning drawings, which means it's going to be up to stage four for A kitchen extension somewhere down in zone two or three. The cost of this project is not going to be multiple millions of pounds. It's probably going to be two max at the very top. So it guides the architect as well, unless the first day on the job, and they just set up a company last week. You
Mark D. Williams 29:58
had mentioned before we started. Recording right before, when we first introduced ourselves, was the UK is obviously, at least from what I think you can tell me, if it's true, is a very transient area. A lot of people move there. They're coming through. What percentage of your clients are English? What how many of them would be American? How many would be from Europe or other Chinese or other parts of the world, or because I could see, in particular, if you're building or, let's say, your job takes you there, and maybe you're not even like, how many of your clients are even actually living in England that you're working with? London
Julia Starzyk 30:29
is a very specific place in England. I would say we can probably count on fingers of one hand in terms of the actual British origin, British people living within London, usually it's some form of mix of cultures and stuff. It's like me. I've been here 15 years, so I don't think I can claim my original nationality anymore. I've never really lived my adult life down there. So it's, am I British? Am I not? But generally, there's a lot of Americans. There's a very big community of Americans down in West London. It's like those areas are very nice, but probably since the beginning of the year as well, we've seen, like a quite a big influx of Americans coming over. I can go with estate agents quite a bit, and we hear a lot from them, in terms of, there's more and more properties required and purchased by the Americans. I also think you're always surprised by the profit, the margins of the actual purchase sale that we have here in comparison to us.
Mark D. Williams 31:28
I'm sorry, I'm not sure. What do you mean by that, in the
Julia Starzyk 31:32
state, you've got an estate agent on the buying side, and, oh
Mark D. Williams 31:36
yeah, a real estate agent, correct? Yep, so that the average is between five and 6% for both of them.
Julia Starzyk 31:42
And here the average is between one and three. And we don't really have a buying one nobody. I mean nobody, that people not don't tend to have a buying an agent on the side. It's usually just the seller. Do
Mark D. Williams 31:57
you know how long it's been like that rate
Julia Starzyk 32:00
always. I mean, last 15 years for sure.
Mark D. Williams 32:04
Wow. You're this is, this is gonna catch fire that? Well, yeah, minute 35 you're about to set the US on a real estate market on fire. Because that is not normal here at all. Why do you think that is?
Julia Starzyk 32:15
I do. I mean, honestly, I don't know. I think from a very high level, especially within London, properties are extremely expensive. Here, a typical four, five bedroom townhouse somewhere in zone five, it's probably going to cost you about a minimum of 10 million. Whoa, yeah. Okay,
Mark D. Williams 32:37
that's a lot. So yeah, 1% you've got $100,000 Real Estate Commission for the selling agent. But even there, the homes here, typically there's some negotiation. I've seen, but I didn't, they don't, obviously publicly disclose it, but I've been a part of a few bigger ones, and usually that rate comes down a little bit, but I've never really, yeah, anyway, everything's negotiable in real estate agents. But, and there's been a huge law change here recently, in the US, there's a big lawsuit against just the real estate community in general in terms of being open and financially disclose things, and so you don't have to pay somebody. But it's still so ingrained in like how we buy and sell properties, that even though the law dictates something else, the practice is something totally different. And obviously those that have power, or those that have a higher margin aren't, don't want to have that decreased. It's going to take quite a while culturally before that to change as well. That's Wow. That's really interesting. Is that similar in continental Europe? Would that be similar as well?
Julia Starzyk 33:34
I'm not too sure on the percentages, but what I know for sure is the process is very different. Like down here, you have to have a lawyer, or at least somebody representing you, to to change the ownership in the land registry. You have to have it. You can't avoid this cost. Whereas in Central Europe, you can do it on your own. It might be a cultural thing, but it's something common right in here. It's almost, it's very rare, and I'd say again, it's mainly been driven by those cultures who are used to having somebody represent them. But I've been in a couple of meetings as well where somebody purchases a property down in London. They've been in London maybe three times, if ever, and they're just purchasing a property because they need a family member to stay over for a summer or something. And it happens they still have somebody else on the ground, boots on the ground, looking around for a property on them. But then coming back to the construction element as well, you have a very interesting license structure in terms of, in order to be a builder, you need to have a license. You need to prove that you're actually competent in what you're doing. We don't have that system. I can register tomorrow a construction company, and there you go. As long as I find clients I'm trading. I
Mark D. Williams 34:55
know in Minnesota, you need a license, but it's not like it's super rigorous. I think it's, you know, I don't. Remember now it's been 21 years, maybe it's changed. But, and I think the bar is pretty low. I honestly, I think the bar is pretty low for a lot of service, the real estate license to get your to be a real estate agent a couple days and you've got your license. You know, just because you have a license doesn't mean you're awesome either. It just means you have it's like having a driver's license. Just because you have a driver's license doesn't make you a good driver. It's not like you're a Formula One race car driver, but you just, you have the state says you are allowed to drive. Just doesn't make you good and so I think at least when you have a license, the state or the government, or whoever the governing body is of the licenses have some recourse to either put your license in jeopardy if you do bad work, or obviously, if you're, if you like, we have, obviously building codes. I assume you'd have building codes there too, talking about structural stuff. So each city, each co each state, has different codes. Minnesota, we're in the northern climate, so it's cold. We have high humidity in the summer, and it's minus 25 and so there are certain different parts of the climate that obviously you have to build differently just because your climate dictates it, and sometimes the state will have certain performance guidelines. So anyway, that's no but
Julia Starzyk 36:09
we're the same. And to be fair, I mean, there's those big plans in terms of sustainability and green homes and net zero in terms of UK that's like a big subject in the last couple of years or so, but yeah, in terms of the delivery of those, especially that we have so many old buildings and lifted buildings and conservation places, it's very hard to deliver within existing architecture.
Mark D. Williams 36:32
I think the clients that are now, I think people that are in their mid 20s to 35 I think they're going to be asking more questions because they've heard the green message and the energy conservation message at that point for a couple decades. I think my my I have two clientele. One clientele is like 55 plus. They're empty nesters. Their kids are gone to high school or college, and they they're certainly aware of it, but unless they're passionate about it, like they're not going to spend money on it. Why would they? They might build a smaller home that's well appointed, which does fit in the ethos of less is more, but they're not going to invest in solar and geothermal and some of these other technologies. And then the younger generation, I don't know, we'll see, and check back in 10 years, we'll see if I'm right about this, because right now, my clients haven't been willing to pay for it, even as much as the messages out there and the clientele and London, are they willing to pay for that type of of home, or is it being mandated by the city or the government? So
Julia Starzyk 37:32
the actual new build properties, it's mandated so they have to fit certain criteria,
Mark D. Williams 37:38
like, what? Like, how far are they going? Like, give me some examples. What do they have to do? There's
Julia Starzyk 37:43
loads of requirements. Again, the project I'm working on now, we're not allowed to have a gas in the properties. It all needs to be electric powered, so it's clean.
Mark D. Williams 37:53
What happens when the power goes out? They've
Julia Starzyk 37:55
got solid panels on the roofs as well. So that's one of the sources. There's a lot of like, material debates in terms of the choice of installations and actual brickwork, the materials that go into the buildings, as well, in terms of like, how sustainable they are, carbon. Carbon footprint is being counted left, right and center. Even contractors have to put together reports in terms of their carbon neutral aspirations, and how do we achieve that within a certain development and stuff? But it's very hard to regulate that or require any of that within existing properties, and my experience is the exact opposite of what you just said. So usually the empty nesters. So like people 55 plus, they would like to have that self sufficient, self contained home that's somewhat sustainable, that they don't really have to spend a lot of money on heating or cooling it in the summer, but they still want it to look somewhat modern. And you know, they can actually go a bit crazy in terms of the money they will spend, because, like you said, the kids are already in college. Luckily for us, we've got colleges free. The education down here is mainly free. Yeah, that's part of the cost that people can higher education is probably paid for, but it's still nothing in comparison to the US costs. I think last time I checked, I think the base undergrad degree was within a region of six to 10 grand. I think yours are much higher. Oh,
Mark D. Williams 39:29
yeah, we're a lot higher. That'd be like per semester. So you're saying they could go through four years of college for six to 10 grand?
Julia Starzyk 39:36
Yeah, I've done my master's degree in construction project management, and that cost me eight grand. It's
Mark D. Williams 39:44
been a long time since I've been in school, but I see it all the time. I think when you're at state universities, it's less. But this is gonna be a whole nother podcast. We're gonna go down the road of we tackle, although that would be interesting, the curious builder tackles healthcare and higher education with Julia, but we'll stay on construction, since I know that. Better anyway. This episode is brought to you by adaptive. If you're still chasing checks and juggling spreadsheets, it's time to upgrade. Adaptive is revolutionizing how builders get paid with AI powered bill pay, automated draws, one click payments and built in lien waivers, Faster Payments, fewer headaches and total visibility. Adaptive takes care of the back end chaos, so you can focus on what you do best. Building. We've used adaptive for two and a half years, and trust them to keep our projects moving and payments flowing. Learn more at Adaptive dot build and simplify the Pay Process today. For more information, you can also listen to episode 10 and episode 15. So the project hits a standstill that there, there's cost overruns. Are they googling you? Are they word of mouth? Is the architects or builders or people working on the quality costs saying, hey, you need to reach out to Julia, she can help bring us home. Or how are you getting introduced to your clients.
Julia Starzyk 41:02
So there is essentially that stage four that we were talking about earlier. It's called tender. So that's when we get the builders involved, usually, or we're trying to find the best builder, because we don't really have the licensing system in any way, shape or form, we're the ones that have to do all of the background checks. So what tends to happen is, whether it's the architects, interior designers, whoever usually is the person that was first on the project, they usually say, We need somebody to help us find the builder that's going to drive us through this, this whole mess. And then usually I like how that's
Mark D. Williams 41:37
I like that time out. Like the first thing you're saying is we need a builder help us with the Smith we know it's going to be it's going to be a mess. Who's going to help us clean it up? I like to talk about setting it up for expectations.
Julia Starzyk 41:49
I'm yet to experience a project with a private client that goes exactly as expected from day one to completion. I've never experienced that in my life. My best projects, we've had target date, and we had the target budget, we hit the target within a 50 P Mark. I'm proud to say we still hit the budget, but I think we were like three months delayed and stuff. And there was a lot of changes as well. In the process the project where I had the most changes that I probably seen in my life, we had 327 variations. Whoa, yeah, going
Mark D. Williams 42:25
back to the earlier thing about fixed bid and who's taking the risk versus cost, plus, again, the more detailed you go down the road in terms of architecture, interior design selections, the more accurate you get on pricing. And I People often ask, What should I use for a variance number? And when we're all done, if we design it, have everything completely flushed out, priced out. I always tell my clients, if we can wait a few more months, on the front end with designing it'll go faster. On the back end, it'll also be more accurate. So the question is, do you want to go fast and build on the fly, which I don't know why this is such a common thing, and why building is subject to this. Most a lot of people want to do that. They think that faster is better. It's not better, unless you're willing to have an open checkbook and to understand that you're taking on some risk, because the builder can't tell you what it's going to be because they hasn't been specked out yet. And there's ways to do allowances. Hey, 90% of it's selected. 10% of it you put in placeholders. That's fine. Clients don't remember, you know, eight months or a year into the project that that the builder maybe offered them a chance early on to make more selections. All they remember is, man, I don't like all these change orders. Man, I don't like how expensive this is and, man, this is taking longer. Guess what? If you and again, it doesn't do me any good to tell the client like I told you, because that's not, that's not going to help you. And so it's, I think, a lot of it, at least, where I am. And the points of these podcasts is like, the more we can educate the client on the front end of what they're going to experience, the better we can give them advice. Honestly, it's no different than being a doctor for a successful outcome. This is what we'd recommend. You're still the client. You still have to decide what outcome you want. And a patient like surgery, you can get your knee replaced, but if they're not willing to do the physical therapy, I don't care how good the surgeon is, your knee is not going to operate. And so it does need. We don't, oftentimes talk about how, I guess we probably should, is how important the art the client and managing expectations, that's a big part of your job, obviously, is managing their expectations for all parties, and that's why I think I really we use a lot of the same architects, same designer, so we get really familiar with each other, and I think it breeds more continuity and a better chemistry for the client's experience. And you mentioned before, do these architects and designers not have go to builders? Are you always starting from scratch, trying to find it.
Julia Starzyk 44:42
It varies, to be fair, it's I tend to say it depends on the project, because a builder or a contractor has been very good for one job. It might not be the great choice for a different one. I've got the clients now who she's done her own home. It's a lovely terrace property down in Kensington, which. Just one of the precious areas in London. It's very Georgian, Victorian era. It's very traditional. And her interiors are kind of luxury, but match the actual theme of the building, and it's lovely. I think it cost her somewhere, about 1.51 point 6, million altogether. And she had a great team. She had a great experience overall, brilliant. But now, for whatever the reasons, she's trying to build a Wellness Center in a completely different part of England, which is in London, and she's saying these guys were so great, and they're willing to travel, and I really think that we should utilize them, etc, every single conversation I have with a client, it always starts with in construction, we have three variables, right? There's time, money and quality. Pick two, yeah,
Mark D. Williams 45:47
hey, that's true. I've heard that many times here. That's good to know. That's a universal world truth that is not that crosses boundaries for barriers and territorial lines, for sure,
Julia Starzyk 45:57
exactly. So when they pick two that are the most important for them, then we can take it from there. But the project she's trying to build is going to be over 10 million value, so this point, trying to put the contractor who's very comfortable doing jokes jobs between one and two, it's a great opportunity for them, but it's also a big risk, right? Because there's so many things that can go wrong there, and it's, I'd say it's somewhat unreasonable. There's this assessment process where we pick different contractors that we think could be suitable for the job. We ask them to fill in a questionnaire in terms of how they see themselves within that project environment, what they think they can bring to disable, and at that point, you decide which way you want to go, which contractor you want to price the job, etc. But I'd say the most we don't really have cost plus as the most popular way of going to be fair. And I'd say because people want to have that cost financial certainty at the start. And we either go the traditional contracting, which is going to be a fixed price for whatever the services, and then the client takes the risk of any changes or unforeseeable variations, etc, or we go the design and build through it, and then, depending how do we define that design element? So in here it tends to be, we've got an architect interior design that bring the project back to stage four, which is going to be ready for tender, and then the contractor would be responsible for doing all of the detailed design.
Mark D. Williams 47:36
Now I looked at your website. You list your services, but once you get past that initial I think you have set fees at different milestones, but then they basically keep you on a monthly retainer. Is that accurate?
Julia Starzyk 47:46
Correct? Yeah, I can really believe in the percentage fee for a very specific reason, that I always try to deliver the best value for the best price to my clients. So if I was trying to reduce the cost for them, I would be knocking my own fee, right? So yeah, in that sense, I prefer to go on a fixed fee basis. But yeah, it's a conversation for the whole another episode of how people price here and how people price the US.
Mark D. Williams 48:16
How many projects will you take on at one time? So
Julia Starzyk 48:20
we tend to have two, sometimes three, contractors that we work with on that wing of the contractors side, where we support them. And then usually it's up to three projects that we do on the client side as well. But the sizes of those projects vary. It all depends on what's the stage of the job, where we are, where how much input is needed, etc,
Mark D. Williams 48:45
and how big is your team?
Julia Starzyk 48:49
So at the moment, there's me, and there is two annas. One, Anna is doing a lot of my cost analysis and dealing with all of the data and finances. And the other one, I believe she spoke to you, she's doing all of my initial admin. She does a lot of email dealing with emails, invoicing. She's project managing me, basically, to make sure I deliver what I have to deliver. And then we've got Suze, who's sleeping down here in the corner below, she's our head of happiness. And in the longer term, there's a potential for one more person that I'd like on the team, but we're always going to be that boutique, small size.
Mark D. Williams 49:33
Yeah. What is that? What is the economic climate over there right now? There's been a lot of turmoil in the last, I'd say, obviously, a year, but, man, the last four months have been wild here, which I assume, what's the state of building and what are you seeing? Obviously, the financial markets are being roiled quite a bit. What is the what's the attitude of people that are remodeling and looking to do things right now?
Julia Starzyk 49:55
There's been a very slow start to this year. Usually, at this point there's. A lot of projects starting and ongoing and somewhat being tendered or priced up. This year, it's been going very, very slowly, but at the same time, lots of people I speak to, it feels like the clients are waiting for something. There's lots of projects ready to go, but people are waiting to press that final button and put the money into the account and be like, let's go. But at the same time, there's still enough in terms of development work going on. There's still a lot, there's still a lot of work that is happening. It's just, I think, specifically for private clients, there's a lot of unknown happening around the world at the moment, yeah,
Mark D. Williams 50:42
for sure, what percentage of your clients are paying cash for their their builds versus financing it?
Julia Starzyk 50:52
I'd say probably 90% they either pay from their own equity on cash, or it's the banking of mom and dad paying for mom
Mark D. Williams 50:59
and dad. Yeah, I would say, I would say the same. Most of our clientele, Ian, I can't tell if that's just at the higher end. It's been that way for me for five or six years. So even when interest rates were low, that was still the case. Our higher income projects were still being paid cash. I was just curious what the appetite for financing is over there.
Julia Starzyk 51:20
Yeah, yeah, a lot. I don't really work on many projects where finance is required, because, like I said, I tend to work with those jobs, one to 2 million and stuff. And people have that type of money. They usually have it. They're ready to go. They're ready to just put the money in and go with it. It's mainly, I think, from my experience these it's those projects 5 million plus 10 million and plus where people will pay some sort of from their own equity, and then a percentage would be paid by the bank, because not many people keep 10 million in the current Right,
Mark D. Williams 51:55
right? Yeah, it's in, it's in the jar, in the garden shed. Do you have a lot of competition. I mean, is there is you, is your positioning and like, how you position your business? Is it common over there, or is it kind of unique?
Julia Starzyk 52:10
So in the way that my profession, as a profession, isn't nothing unknown here, it's quite common to have people do that kind of gatekeeping between the clients and the contractors and the design team and whoever else not. But I don't really look at it as competition, because I'm very aware that I have a very specific way of going about things, and not everybody likes that. And I'm also very highly driven by what is the project like, there's a lot of projects I don't take, not because I'm picky and choosy or I think more about myself, but it's, I don't think those projects need me. There are people who are much better geared up for certain things, or if somebody's doing commercial work, I work with a girl who's absolutely amazing, and we get along really well. So I'll just say she's better for the job. She's done it multiple times. I don't know a lot of the things. In terms of commercial building, regs, there's a lot of processes that differ speak to somebody else who's better geared up for it. But I find that it's a competition only on a certain level, because we have here either freelancers, who are Ian man band, people working per hour, etc, or we have a lot of these massive consultancies, having 20, 3050, people and being around for donkeys years, there's not many like in betweens. And that's why I want to keep my company that very personal and boutique style.
Mark D. Williams 53:44
Yeah, I like that a lot. I want to respect your time and for the listeners as well. Thank you very much for reaching out. Tell Anna, I think appreciate her, although I thought her name was Hello, because that was her email title. Just met. I think my, my, my Anna is named Leah, and her emails marketing at that's always funny when you have to introduce them that way. Thank you very much for coming out. Very much for coming around the podcast. We'll have everything in the show notes, and we'll stay in touch, and if I ever make it over to England, I'll look you up for a cup of tea.
Julia Starzyk 54:10
Brilliant. Thank you. Well, thank you for having me.
Mark D. Williams 54:16
We've had the podcast now for two and a half, almost three years now, and we have a consulting page, one to one consulting you can book my time for one hour. Perhaps you've heard a guess where you like one of the topics. Maybe you want an introduction to some of the guests that I've had on. Perhaps you want to talk about branding or marketing or anything that we've covered on the podcast over the last two and a half years. You can book a time at cures builder podcast.com. Thanks for tuning in to curious builder podcast. If you liked this episode, do us a favor. Share it with three other business owners. The best way that we can spread what we're doing is by word of mouth, and with your help, we can continue to help other curious builders expand their business. Please share it with your friends. Like and review online, and thanks again for tuning in. You.
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