 Let's go over to our guest today folks. Our guest today is Mark Hunter. Mark is the founder and president of Dock Living. Now Dock Living folks is a membership-based housing subscription business based around community connection, affordability, and convenience. They happen to be in St. Petersburg, Florida. Mark, welcome to TFNN. Hey, Tom, thanks so much. Happy to be here. Absolutely. So here, tell me, first off, tell me about Dock Living and how you operate. Sure. So we're a private social club. And one of the benefits of being a member of our social network is that we do offer housing. And housing would be something that is different than a traditional rental in that it's more of a subscription. It would include all the amenities. So fully furnished, all the utilities. It's really focused on convenience. And you're designed to address a lot of the issues that we have in community. Importantly, the lack of connection to each other, to neighbors, to the community, as well as to nature. And if you're looking for the website, folks, it's dockliving.com. Now I'm on the website right now, and I have Dock number two up. So let me ask you that what is the difference between this and a roomy house? Sure. Well, it's very different. One is that our job is to curate culture. And so what we're trying to do is help match people with like-minded folks. So if you're young and you're new to the city and you want to connect with people that are also into the same hobbies or the same profession as you, that's where we come in. We help connect you to that group of folks. And if you're looking for an affordable place to live, that fits exactly what we do, is we can connect people together. Whereas a roomy house, it has this connotation of like, oh, I have to find something affordable out of necessity, not out of desire. And so for us, we're really catering to the market that you want to live together by choice, not necessarily by necessity. Now, how does this work in the city of St. Petersburg? OK, so you're in a residential neighborhood, yet let's say you get five or seven bedrooms, and basically you're renting the bedrooms out. So how does it work zoning-wise? Sure. So the reason why housing is so expensive, not just here in St. Pete, but also nationwide, is because of government regulation, of course. There's not much we can do about demand, but there's a lot we can do about supply. And the government has decided in most municipalities to zone most areas, you're a single family. So some research has been done about three quarters of all available land, and most municipalities in America have been zoned for a single family housing. That's the reason why we can't build more. As developers, I know that you're interested in development, I'm interested in development. And the reason why we can't add more supply is because the land has been taken up through these zoning codes. And so our approach was, OK, first of all, can we do something about the zoning? So we lobbied city council. We say, hey, affordable housing is important. We've got to change some of the rules regarding density. We have to make it more available. We want to increase supply. It sounds great for us as developers. We understand how economics works. The government says, sounds great, but no. Our city council is actually, you know, publicly they'll say, we're in favor of affordable housing. But when it comes time to get something through the building department, the building department's not talking to city council. The building department just says, no, this is the rule. You can't do anything different. So what I started doing is like, this is such a big issue that I went deep into the analysis of why things are so expensive to the point where I started learning building code. And you realize that there is still room for innovation. And one of those ways that we can do that is by creating more density within single family zoned areas without changing zoning laws. So can we conform with the existing rules as they exist by right and build places that are designed to house more people? And that's exactly what we do. It's a way to get the total cost down. So the houses that you have right now, how are they zoned? What is the zoning in them? Yep, we exclusively focus on single family zoned areas. And we've just raised a bunch of money to take this model and expand elsewhere to other municipalities. Some municipalities view it as one of many innovations. They can help address the housing crisis. Some municipalities are saying, hey, we don't really understand this. We don't like it. It's weird. Maybe you look like a house, a rooming house. Maybe you're a dormitory. We don't really want you in our city. Fine, we'll go where we're wanted. We'll go where it's easy to build. So in St. Pete right now, that when you have these, is it a different zoning that you actually got? Are we basically still under the radar at this point? No, I mean, every one of our sets of architectural plans that we submit, they're submitted and stamped as single family houses. And so what it came down to is a basic question is, does the city regulate the number of unrelated people that live in one house? I see, OK, right. And black and white, the question, absolutely, the city does not regulate that. Does the city regulate the number of bathrooms you're allowed to have in a single family house? No, they don't regulate that. And so the question then becomes, well, what is a family? And does the government have the right to tell me what my family is? It's a great point. Yeah, right. Are they going to come and take in a samples and determine that I'm not blood-related, at least in one generation, to the person I'm living with? I don't think the government has the right to do that. And I think that it's very intrusive for them to even inquire how big my family is. They shouldn't tell me how many babies I'm allowed to have. That's not fair. No, no, I can understand that. Now, here, talk to me about the financing, because it's pretty cool how you got the financing from this. So the community, is it the community financing? Tell me about how you got this financed. Sure, so we decided, because this is such a new concept, because we're the only group that we know of in the nation that's trying to use co-living as a way to solve the housing crisis, and we have to kind of do our own experiments, and as a result, I invested the first $3 million of cash myself. So we did all of our deals just with cash, because it's easy. We did that just to see what the track record would be, see what type of demand there would be. Demand is off the charts, to a point where we've had to go to invite only, because there's too many people interested in trying to. Well, you have some beautiful places. I mean, the places that you have online, there's no doubt they're beautiful places. I'm sorry, go ahead. Yeah, especially at the price point that we offer it, it's about half the cost of a traditional rental. And so there's no shortage of people lining up to live in this style. And so we thought, wow, this is something that can really be replicated, can be scaled. We could do this in 100 different municipalities throughout the US. And so we started looking, what are the best ways to source the lowest cost of capital possible? And we found what's known as community development finance institutions, which have a mandate to kind of support your community-based organizations. And one of those areas tends to be affordable housing. So we partnered with the Florida Community Loan Fund and was able to secure a $5 million line of credit to support our growth. Well, listen, congratulations. You got a big battle in front of you, man. And I like the battle.