Lindus Construction traces its history back to the late 1970s, when company founders Kevin and Emily Lindus made the transition from raising farm animals to improving homes.
“He was raising pigs,” said Andy Lindus, a second generation owner of the Baldwin, Wisconsin-based business, which serves the Twin Cities area. “We had I think 140 head at one point. My earliest memory is my dad giving mouth-to-mouth to a piglet, because if that piglet survived that was money on the table.”
When he wasn’t tending to his animals, the elder Lindus was making money on the side doing home improvement projects. In the meantime, Andy Lindus said, pork prices were fluctuating. The construction industry emerged as a better path forward.
“He got a good deal, sold all of his pork … to another guy in the area and just went all in on construction,” Lindus said.
Following in the footsteps of his father, Lindus owns and operates the family business along with brothers Adam and Alex. The company offers services ranging from roofing remodeling to windows and decks, according to its website.
Since its early days, Lindus Construction has grown from two employees to more than 150. And as the host of a home improvement radio show and podcast, Andy Lindus has established himself as a prominent voice of the industry.
In the following interview, Andy Lindus talks about the state of residential construction and the impact of COVID-19 on the supply chain, among other topics. The interview has been edited for length and clarity.
Q: Talk a little bit about your company. How long have you been in business and what do you specialize in?
A: We build a home or two every five years or so, but our core business is in replacement contracting: interior remodeling and exterior remodeling, roofing, siding, windows, kitchens, bathrooms, leaf-guard gutters.
In the Twin Cities office we have just a little bit over 150 employees. We’re all second generation and we’ve been running the day-to-day operations for about 10 years. We’ve expanded to nine other markets with key employees that eventually bought us out in those areas: in Cincinnati, Omaha, Des Moines, Madison, Milwaukee, Green Bay, and Grand Rapids, Michigan.
Q: What are some of the remodeling trends you’ve seen amid the pandemic?
A: What we’ve noticed is three-season porches getting turned into four-season porches, kitchen remodels, room additions, even little things like windows, gutters, crawl spaces that seem musty. We’ve gone into all corners of our houses. As we try to find our space to work or whatever, we’re noticing a lot more things about our home.
Q: Homebuilding and remodeling were surprisingly strong in 2020. At the same time, the industry has faced supply chain disruptions, higher material prices and other challenges. The National Association of Homebuilders said the rising cost of softwood lumber during the pandemic has added $16,000 on average to the cost of a new home.
What are you seeing on the ground in the Twin Cities when it comes to the supply chain? How are supply chain disruptions affecting prices and schedules locally?
A: In the last two weeks, the amount of price increase letters that we’ve received from manufacturers is unlike almost any year that I’ve experienced. So I don’t think I was really hopeful that it was going to come back to earth.
Any petroleum-based product seems to be going up now. I think the wood products are going to come back to earth a little bit, but they’re talking $16,000 more in just lumber prices. Now you factor in the plumbing costs, electrical costs, the window costs, the roofing costs. Roofing prices are going up anywhere from 5% to 25% in shingle manufacturing.
This is what was explained to me on a conference call last night by the shingle manufacturers. The [Keystone XL] pipeline was a big deal and our supply chain with Canada is a big deal when it comes to petroleum products. And so if that continues to go up, roofing is going to go up, any vinyl product is going to go up, any of the plastic products are going to go up. All of those products are going to start to increase.
I know some people are putting the brakes on building houses. But I’m still looking at it wondering if it’s going to be cheaper at this point next year. I really don’t think it’s going to be. I think we might be here for a little bit longer than we anticipated.
Now, I do know an awful lot of people that had some foresight and did some pre-buying and some purchasing agreements in 2020 to ensure that there aren’t price increases put onto consumers. So the manufacturers and the supply chain have really worked together to look at what we have and what we can do to best help the consumer without hurting the supply.
One of the biggest problems in the fourth quarter for a lot of contractors was just getting material to install. We all had work to do. But some of them couldn’t get roofing, windows, garage doors, flooring, plumbing, parts, countertops, you name it. There were some things that you couldn’t get. And I know some builders right now are not locking in pricing until a month before the project. They just can’t tell the homeowner because they don’t know. The unknown is what scares everyone.
But trust me, there’s plenty of contractors that are doing their due diligence upfront that it’s not going to hurt as much as it could. But there’s risk there involved as well. I signed a purchasing agreement that I have to live up to and so if the bottom falls out, I might be stuck holding the bag, but we’ll see. I’d rather take that risk than have to pay 25% more for my materials in August.
Q: What impacts are you seeing on scheduling?
A: We were pretty lucky that the longest delay we saw materials was like 14 weeks. And we had a big enough backlog that we could kind of work within that and just make sure that every week we had material to install.
Q: What do you see as some of the long-term industry trends?
A: Technology is going to be a bigger and bigger factor in everything that we do. You’re going to see a lot more people using things like solar, which in Minnesota still isn’t a very viable option. But those Tesla [home solar] roofs are finally getting installed. And I’m working with a company right now out of Florida that’s having really good results. I think that might actually be an option at some point in the Twin Cities.
And you’re going to see people staying in their existing homes and retrofitting them to be smart homes and retrofitting them to have solar and adding things on. You’re going to see more living well spaces: workout rooms, steam rooms. They’re going to design bathrooms that are going to be more spa-like. Their kitchens are going to be designed around prepping food. It seems like they’re all looking for things to improve on their homes that are going to make them not only live longer, but make their life better.
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