Let me tell you a short story.
In 2002, the Oakland As baseball team won the same number of games as the NY Yankees (103 wins). But the Yankees paid $125 million to their players and the As paid only $40 million.
Billy Bean, the general manager of the Oakland As, built his team based on new insights that were rejected by everyone else in baseball. He was ridiculed by those inside the baseball establishment that thought that they had figured out everything there is to know about a 100-year-old game.
Eventually, Billy Bean and Sabermetrics revolutionized sports, despite the naysayers.
The apartment development industry today is as inefficient as baseball was at figuring out what creates wins. What creates profitable, winning, apartment projects?
We’ve rethought that question from the ground up and come to some surprising conclusions. What creates profitable projects? A great architect? A great site in a great location? LEED Platinum certification? The answers aren’t what we expected.
Strategy
Apartment specialist.
We are an apartment development specialist. We focus on being the best at one niche.
Align incentives.
Get people who execute a project to invest their money in that project. This extends to people beyond our company.
Geographic focus.
We focus all of our attention on the Portland, OR MSA. We strive to be the best in our market.
Maintain discipline.
Discipline means doing what we know is best regardless of whether it is easy or hard. Grow consistently and profitably without sacrificing the quality of our work.
First principles analysis.
Analyze each project by starting with the constraints: physical and legal limits for a site. From there, decide on building components by analyzing each one’s cost and value. When the value is significantly higher than the cost, add that component to the building design.
Search for new knowledge.
There is always new knowledge to be discovered that can make us better at what we do.