Oleg Foksha clued me in to what it’s like to be a Salem builder

As I said in a post a few days ago about the 2023 Tour of Homes for the Salem area, I had an enjoyable conversation with Oleg Foksha when my wife and I visited a beautiful Foksha Homes house in southeast Salem.

Before too much time passes, I wanted to share what I remember from that conversation. Foksha is the president of the Home Builders Association of Marion & Polk Counties and an experienced builder himself obviously.

My wife and I started talking with Foksha when we asked some questions about the Tour of Homes house, and mentioned how we appreciated the large trees on the property. I then said that it irked me when builders in Salem cut down most, or all, of the existing trees in the course of developing a property.

That led Foksha to explain to me the hurdles builders face these days. I can't remember everything he said, but here's a few highlights.

His main point was that it's tough for a builder devoted to quality to make a decent profit. Foksha decried large national or regional firms who build "cookie cutter" houses in the Salem area. He said that Foksha Homes is small and family-owned.

I was told that Foksha Homes needs to price a house at about $700,000, I think it was, in order to make a profit of $65,000. Out of that he has to pay his employees and the owners of Foksha Homes a decent wage.

There are so many rules and regulations that have to be complied with by a builder, Foksha said. He noted that in older parts of town with fairly large lots and back yards, there's now an ability to build several story apartments or condos — which can irk the people living in a neighborhood who thought its character would remain the same after they bought a house there.

Anyway, I came away from our conversation with a better appreciation of what it is like to be a builder in Salem. Because the Home Builders Association leans decidedly conservative in its political stance, and I'm a progressive, I've tended to look at builders through that lens.

But being able to hear Foksha describe his life as a builder opened my eyes to the difficulties he and his fellow builders face. And that's a good thing, given how many divisions there already are in our country between people who judge each other without really understanding what it's like to be the other person.