Who is going to build the finer-grained Missing Middle housing, the small workspaces, the two and three story mixed use buildings that Municipalities and neighborhoods are looking for?  Will it be large development firms that see a 10,000 SF single story commercial building or 100 apartment units as a "small deal"?  Doubtful.  Very Doubtful, for the simple reason that large scale developers need large scale deals to support their operations.  They can't execute small deals effectively and they see a lot of opportunity cost in small deals.  "Why would I take on a 4 unit project when I can build 40 units or maybe even 400 units with about the same amount of brain damage?"

Monte Anderson keeps hearing from folks who want him to move to their town and develop there.  To his credit, Monte is determined to focus on the communities in the Southern Dallas Metro that he knows and cares about.  His advice for the people that want him to come to their town is that they need to find someone who is committed to their town and help that person develop --or become a developer themselves.

This is actually very pragmatic advice, because the big outfits are not coming.  Monte Anderson is a great guy, but he's not coming to your town either.  Who does that leave?  You (or someone a lot like you). Start small.  Learn the business.  Build a reliable team that cares about the place.  There is a growing network of support for small developers, some of them are just a few years ahead of you on the learning curve, but they will do whatever it takes to keep you from having to repeat their mistakes.

Consider what a small enterprise could accomplish in your town, not just he buildings you might renovate or build, but the local wealth you could create that stays in your neighborhood.  Think about the jobs that you could create in the trades, and in property management.  Think of the other folks in your neighborhood you could mentor, paying it forward once you have learned the business.  Real capacity for local and lasting economic development is hard to come by, but building the everyday buildings that people need, in a place that you care about will raise up more than walls and a roof.

There is a relationship between how woefully uninformed people are about parking and how epically they lose their shit over parking problems.  I am really tired of explaining the basics of modern parking management to people who seem incapable of using the Internet.  Here are the highpoints from Donald Shoup's fine book The High Cost of Free Parking:

• Recognize that all public parking is not equal.  Some spaces more convenient than others, so price them accordingly.  The spot at the curb in front of the coffee joint should not cost the same as the top floor of the seven level parking structure.
• For retail areas, price the parking at the curb for a 15% clearance rate. Raise the prices for curb parking until you reach the point where when 15% of the spaces are available.  Reduce the price of parking in a rational gradient, the further away from high demand the cheaper the space.
• Make it easy to pay with a credit or debit card or with a phone app.  Phone apps that message you to ask if you want to add another hours are particularly handy.
• Folks that live in residential neighborhoods close to areas with high parking demand like universities, hospitals or retail areas get bent out of shape when the public parking spaces at the curb in front of their house gets a lot of spill-over parking.  This can be solved through the use of resident parking permits and the sale of parking permits in that area for daytime hours.  Proceeds from the sale of the permit can be used for public works and parks within the neighborhood by setting up a Parking Benefit District.

Folks that don't care enough about solving their parking issues to use these proven tools need to get a real problem.  How much sympathy or patience fan you have for difficulties born from sloth and inattention?

Disclosure;  Many of my Architect and Developer colleagues disagree with me on the subject of building condominium ownership.  They think the risk can be handled with the right insurance and the right attorneys.  My question for them; "As long as there are other non-condo projects to be built, why bother with this insurance/lawyer critical mess?

The Construction Defects Plaintiffs' Bar is a very good reason to stay the hell away from for-sale condominium projects. The General Liability insurance policies for builders and developers are more expensive than for fee simple for-sale or for rent project. For Architects and Engineers Professional Errors and Omissions insurance coverage gets really expensive once you start doing any significant portion of your work on condo projects. The result is that Architects either do a _lot_ of condo work, or they do very little. There is a statute of limitations for construction defects, typically 10 years in most states. In year 9 the staffers of the big construction defect law firms start to send "trolling" letters to owners of the condominium units hoping to hook a couple people interested in suing. The addresses are easy to find, since they are required to be recorded with the State Board of Real Estate or the State Attorney General's office. The letter tells the condo owner that the law firm is currently representing other owners in the condominium association in a lawsuit against the Developer, the builder, and the architect. The lawsuit is being handled on a contingency basis, so there will be no up front cost for the condo owner to join the lawsuit. The law firm gets 40% of any settlement or judgement if they win. The insurance companies for the developer, the builder and the architect, and maybe a few of the mechanical trades often just settle with the firm. Then they jack up the rates of their customers or just cancel their policies. So without any actual construction defects the tidy little extortion scam just ends up making the insurance needed to build condo's more expensive. There are actual defects in some of these lawsuits, but the deals cut between the insurance companies to spread the paid of settlement around are sleazy at best. A hugely bad structure for managing risk. This is why we advise Small Developer/Builders to avoid condominium projects whenever possible and to keep the scale of your projects small and your project LLC separate to mitigate your risk of bullshit litigation.