Welcome to the Walk & Talk series presented by Dishon Lutz from Real Estate of the Summit and Jon Diurba from Two Moose Home Inspections. This series will walk you through Summit County, which is the place we are lucky enough to call home. Join us on our adventures as we talk about the Real Estate market and Home Inspections. We will be bringing along special guests that are leaders in their fields to help you learn more about the home buying process.

Today's adventure takes place at the Old Dillon Reservoir and we will be discussing how we got started and how we are dealing with the global COVID-19 pandemic.

Transcript

Hey, I am Dishon Lutz I'm a realtor in Breckenridge Colorado and I'm with Jon Diurba, I'm an owner of a home inspection company that is located in Silverthorne Colorado servicing all of Summit County and we're here on the walk and talk.

So the walk and talk is all about different places around seven County which we've chosen to live for good reason Jon we're at a pretty cool place, yeah, tell us a little bit about it alright so where we're at right now is you can see right over here is the old Dillon reservoir so the old Dillon reservoir is what used to provide water to all the residents of Dillon which is currently under water, so what happened? In the 1930s the old Dillon reservoir was basically, oh there's an osprey with a fish in its talons, take a look at that, Wow, in its claws right there I mean timing is everything my gosh

In the 1930s what happened was this used to be the water supply for everything but then because of the Great Depression Denver Water started buying up a whole bunch of land and whenever Denver Water bought up all that land what ended up happening is they said okay, residents of Dillon, we're moving you this way and we're now going to build a reservoir here.

So, in 1956 they notified all the businesses you're gone so what this is, is a beautiful trail that shows us our heritage of the 1930s the reservoir that used to give us water and now the brand-new reservoir over here that gives all the water to the Front Range. It does make for beautiful views off to the left the old off to the right the new this is a 1.7 mile out and back trail and this 1.7 mile out and back trail allows you to have dogs on it and it's available for all skill levels so no matter what your ability this is a trail for you and I got to tell you this is one of the most beautiful views that you can get.

I want to point out a few things that we can actually see here, what do we have right over this direction? So we have Mt Royal and Peak One stretching down the Ten Mile Range. You see that paraglider yeah there's a paraglider right there ,yes. Lake Dillon, I mean you just you can views of the Continental Divide which is amazing, I mean you really have 365 degree views Buffalo Mountain, Red Mountain. But what is the Continental Divide, like what does that do for us?

So where we're located is such a unique place that right over here is the Continental Divide so what does the Continental Divide mean that means if rainwater falls on this side it goes all the way out to the Pacific Ocean if rainwater falls on that side it takes its way all the way down to the Mississippi. So, there is a caveat to that because all of this water, it actually goes to the Front Range so despite the theory modern man has made some exceptions to the rule but yes that is 100% true.

You want to talk about our business? You want to talk about how we started well I think you know it's pretty cool like how we met I guess and then how we've evolved into running our own businesses and kind of mastering our own trades. So what's your trade then? So I'm a realtor based out of Breckenridge Colorado. I you know, focus on helping people buy and sell homes and so it's a pretty general term but the cool thing is the people that I get to work with which is kind of where you came into play. Let me take a step back as well because I actually helped Jon buy his first house and while we were doing the home inspection I was thinking,  if there's any person that could be an amazing home inspector is Jon Diurba his attention to detail his understanding for the engineer side of a home and lo and behold what do you know.

So, give me a little tidbit of what you do. All right, on the day to day, so as a home inspector I basically just take a look at a person's house and make sure they don't get in over their heads. I mean every house has something and my goal is to make sure that's something on the day of the inspection is not more than you can handle. The main thing you have to understand is the context of; every house is built by man and therefore we can fix anything that's wrong with the house. So when we find an issue it doesn't mean it's a deal breaker it's just, it just is what it is, and what's cool about that is then you get a little bit of ability that you can use your realtor such as Dishon over here and you can say hey I want you guys to maybe cut off a little bit of this or that or I want you to install a radon mitigation or I want you to do a whole bunch of other things and then you if your contracts are able to do that. So, I think I started back in 2018 with my business and I have now gotten to the point where I have multiple employees that work for me because now, I'm W-2 which is cool. To start off with I didn’t know what to name the company and my wife says well there's two moose in the yard so let's just name it Two Moose Home Inspections and then the rest is history, so I think that that's one point or one topic for today. I mean is there anything else you want to say about your business. I mean you're located in Breckenridge.

So actually at the base of Peak 9, you want to talk about a Midwestern kid that thought that he was going to be a farmer at some point in time now I have a ski-lift it actually runs down into my office or the building that my office is located in and like I'm just living a dream and I think you know that is why we're here now advocating, not only what we do, because we want to help people make us a successful purchase and you know through Jon making sure that it's a quality purchase as well but not only that share that with so many people that are looking to move here, vacation here, what have you.

So let's talk about some current events then so everybody's aware of COVID-19 the Coronavirus 2019 and how that's affected our businesses and my business has been affected greatly so I'm just going to start with this one. So with me as a home inspector I touch everything if I can't touch it I don't know about it so obviously this is created a problem He is the ultimate grade school child. Jon has to touch it. So what does that mean for me well now I'm wearing gloves so whenever I'm testing for moisture now I'm relying so much more on the instruments that I use such as my thermal camera for my moisture meters and also just the feeling of humidity but I can't feel on my face because I have a face mask on and so anyway this this whole thing is just really made things difficult because 99% of my clients have never used me before have never met me before I'm just some guy on the internet that has a couple of reviews and that's about it so then what I'm asking you to do is go online, pay me a bunch of money, have me show up I'm not gonna shake your hand because of COVID right I'm wearing a mask you never see my face, yeah, so I'm just some guy that asks for a bunch of your money wearing gloves and a face mask and that's all that you know about me so that has made my job so much more difficult not only from the inspection standpoint but also from the standpoint of how is it that I can build a relationship with my clients in such a way that they feel that I'm giving them all the information that I possibly could and they're getting a valuable product

But I mean that's the basis of I guess both of our businesses right because you have so many people it's amazing how many people I show property to I've never even met yeah by showing them now because of COVID I'm going in to take video; here's a bathroom, here's the kitchen, here's the garage, you know all the cool features of the house but you're trusting me despite not shaking your hand meeting you, still wearing a face mask yeah so you know it's so amazing to hear everybody's story and in how COVID has impacted their life in what they classify as normal because we are in the new normal so you know to piggyback on what you're saying the same thing kind of goes on my side I get to be the teacher and say don't touch that whatever I'm walking through a house so it's pretty much face masks gloves oh and a big old can of Lysol spray you know I'm just spraying everything. Yeah you know it has really impacted everybody's walk of life and rightfully so I'm going in Jon's going into everybody's home where they classify themselves as safe.  We bring our own you know germs I guess yeah you know into other people’s homes, so we have to think consciously and in regards our practice so ok definitely mixing it up for both of us but you're surviving ok I think we're doing and we're surprisingly doing well.

This this county here Summit County is one of the most amazing counties as far as the 2008 recession, ha we didn't even bat an eye I mean like eventually we bat an eye but that wasn’t for many years later where we actually saw a huge hit at least from my understanding yeah 2011 is actually when we got to see the bottom yeah we started to climb out we're just more padded in this environment due to the amount of people that have interest from all over the world that come here to not only live here vacation train we have so many people that have Olympic teams that come here to Train like that's amazing as well yeah so the demand it's not like again you going back to my small little farm town in the Midwest there's so much diversification. Exactly.

Real quick the views, yeah okay let's just let's give a brief little summary right here so if I that's actually Keystone Ski Resort right there so you can see the tip of Keystone Ski Resort so we have the Continental Divide which brings you down to the town of Dillon which we can't see but we did see it at first, then we have Keystone all the way back there we move our way over we have Breckenridge and the Breckenridge Ski Resort then we come over and we take a look at Frisco we keep moving over. I don't know why I'm moving it's a 360 camera but we have all of Wildernest right here which is a part of Silverthorne that brings us into this valley right here which is just phenomenal.

I mean why would you want to live anywhere else I think that pretty much sums it up why would you. I mean it's just interesting because you know we live in one of the coolest places in my opinion on the planet so I am happy to be friends with you to live in such a cool place.

So I guess last thing I'll just wrap this up with is that our objective here is just to get you outside get you into this area let us show you the things that we love. In the winter time is that going to include some skiing and snowboarding? It most certainly is. In the summertime we're gonna have some more hikes and some more bikes. Most definitely and so basically what we want to do is just bring you on our adventures teach you about the area that we live in. We're gonna walk a couple neighborhoods and we're just gonna see a couple of things and have a couple interviews with some people that are also important in our industry as Roger the walkie-talkie says we'll see you on the next adventure. Ciao. Ciao, nice dude.