The Human Side of Home Building

While most of the investment world is distracted by artificial intelligence and ‘Big Tech’ financial wizardry, Metropolitan Development is still extremely bullish on humans and their continued desire to live in great places. This sociological paradigm greatly informs our investment thesis at Metropolitan Development. If we select objectively superior locations and build quality buildings, “they will come.”

While this strategy has remained unchanged in real estate for as long as real estate has been a “thing”, what has changed over the past several years is the definition of a “superior location.” With the ability to work more remotely than ever before, people are leaving densely populated big-city downtown areas and migrating outward toward well-kept, historical towns that offer more traditional values, better access to daily necessities and recreational opportunities, better schooling and importantly, a much more favorable cost of living.

At MDC our thesis is simple:

• People are moving to Texas.
• People need quality shelter that they can afford.
• People most certainly prefer to own their home.
• People prefer some level of amenitization.

Our answer? We believe residential condos are the perfect solution for several reasons:

• They allow for smaller, infill projects closer to town centers where there is greater access to services, shopping, recreation, and transportation, unlike large housing developments that need to be located much further out of town due to land and pricing constraints.
• They allow for homeownership for a first-time homebuyer to purchase a studio or one-bedroom condo, a convenient size generally unavailable in the traditional housing market.
• They facilitate the sharing of the cost of first class amenities and lifestyle enhancements.

While fantastic geography and homeownership are self-explanatory, the idea of a human-centric, hospitality-centric experience may not be. The MDC version of a “hospitality centric” experience involves a number of things:

• First, people want quality finishes, not the “mayonnaise sandwich” typically seen in apartments and starter homes, with white walls, white ceilings, white trim and white countertops. At Metropolitan, all units have actual European millwork packages with matching cabinets, doors, trim, fixtures and closet systems, for a warm, cozy high-end atmosphere.
• Second, all of our properties offer first-class property management with different levels of services depending on the location and market. These services can include concierge services, coworking opportunities, preset maintenance packages, remote unit management and so on. Neither traditional single family homes nor most rental communities feature this suite of services.
• Third, at some locations, we provide hands-off short term rental services for investor owners, taking the hospitality / hotel like experience quite literally.
• And fourth, we spend months on each project, tracking the eventual HOA budget that will be the responsibility of the building and the residents to maintain and fund. We painstakingly pore over each line to ensure it is something that future homeowners will use and be willing to pay for. It is always our goal to offer the lowest HOA fees in the market.

Another important aspect of human-centric development is parking. Urban planners dream about the day when there are no more cars and everyone walks or rides public transit to their destination, but that day is not yet upon us.

While Texans like walkability as much as the next person, the truth is Texas is desert hot and there are some things that people like to walk to and some they do not. For example, they enjoy walking to dinner. They enjoy walking to entertainment events, but they do not enjoy walking to Walmart. Thus, projects in Texas still need to be designed to accommodate vehicles, and large ones at that.

The final piece is the design. At MDC, we believe fundamentally in humans designing for humans. In the future, if ‘Big Tech’ has its way, it is likely that most building design will be done by AI, but it will likely be easy to notice based on associated utilitarian attributes and processes. There will come a time when structures that have been thoughtfully designed by actual people instead of a high powered computer will be viewed as unique and sold at a premium.

Our design process always begins with walking the site and neighborhood during the day, at night and over the weekend to understand the ebbs and flows of the community. We research the history of the area and most importantly, we build personal relationships with residents, municipal staff and officials. These relationships help us understand what a municipality needs, what it wants and most importantly, what current residents do not want. All this research plays into our in-house debates over unit counts, architecture, building heights and site layouts, hopefully and eventually creating a well-crafted and placed building that feels very much like it has always been part of the community. That’s our goal — every time.

The world is changing faster with each passing day. People often want to live away from very large city centers but still desire an urban experience, ripe with community and all the traditional comforts of home. At MDC, we believe that an intelligent, human-centric approach, is still the best way to deliver what people really want, a high quality dwelling in a wonderful location that simply feels like home.