Catawba County

No ball, no wrestling.

I'm sorry you were sheltered as a kid out in Catawba County in the '90s.

I apologize for that and that alone.

Everything else, not.

Joining me are Robert Hosford, USDA Director of State Operations for Rural Development for the entire United States, and he is also the state director for North Carolina.

Reginald Spate is Assistant Secretary of Rural Economic Development at the North Carolina Department of Commerce, and Scott Millar is President of the Catawba County Economic Development Corporation.

Gentlemen, thank you for joining me today.

Thanks for having me, Scott.

Yeah, very true.

Scott, you get to see a lot of this from the local economic development perspective, and you also get to see how all of these economic development assets come together from a county or even a regional perspective.

So when you're talking with companies considering Catawba County, what are they looking for beyond available buildings or an industrial site? And really, what does the county or a region need to do to demonstrate that it can support that company really for the long term, not just to get them to the announcement, but how do we support them after that announcement and after the building goes up and as workers start going through the doors?

That's a big question.

We've done things around new construction that has really focused on my market.

I'm in the Catawba Valley market right now and there's tons of new construction.

I think you'd be a fool not to be somehow driving a new construction business for a variety of reasons if you're an agent out there because there's all kinds of bonuses that are being offered and incentives to get into the process and not just for you the agent but also for your clients right i jokingly was on his call like two weeks ago and i said hey i go you know when i started this i said it would be a great problem to have if i was getting so many needs that i was doing and converting both on the loan side but on the real estate side that i couldn't keep up with them that i actually needed to go ahead and refer them out and so i actually gave a testimonial about what that looked like so i had ran a cash offer campaign and initially i don't even know how this guy came into my pipeline because it was really focused on north carolina everybody was north carolina except for this one and he was happened to be up in connecticut and had like two houses to sell in connecticut so it was such an awesome opportunity because i was able to offer him a cash offer directly through our express offers campaign but through exp but i was not able to break i wasn't going to be able to list that home so i needed a partner with another agent in exp to list it so once we offered and closed him there would be a second piece to listing that property

This is what I love about eXp, right? So it

...

if I'm in Caldwell County, Catawba County-

Yeah

... that's where she lives and works.

I know that he's disappointed that he didn't play better on Sunday, but nonetheless, he finishes in a tie for third.

J.T. Poston from Catawba County, North Carolina.

Goes up to Arden, North Carolina.

He top fives.