Bobby Fijan: Building Multi-Family Apartments for Families with Simple Adjustments

Austin Tunnell

So I see the kinds of product that's being built and mainly I see that it is for one very narrow demographic, high income singles and some couples. That lack of ability to put down roots enhances underlying low links. If you wanted to try and make the two more family friendly, then I would say what that involves is

Austin Tunnell

Today I had the pleasure to talk with Bobby Fionn who calls himself the Bill James of floor plans and he's really focused on apartment buildings, family oriented apartment buildings. So we get into some of those practical things about what makes an apartment building not very functional for families, what kind of amenities, and then also what nuances, what kind of things, what can you do if you're an architect, if you're a developer, if you're even a policymaker or something who cares about these kinds of things to make more family friendly apartment buildings, which Bobby and I both believe is important because today we largely have isolated subdivisions. And then if you want to live downtown, it's in condo buildings or multifamily buildings. And none of those are really designed for families or people with young kids. And we think there could be a much more dynamic environment and people could stay in the same place for longer and put down bigger routes. And from the developer perspective, it's also a way to have more stable rents and and good tenants and people there for a longer period of time. So hope you enjoy the conversation. Welcome to the Build a Culture podcast. I'm your host, Austin Tennell, and now Bobby Fionn. I'd like to take a moment to thank our sponsors of the podcast. Sierra Pacific Windows, who when they reached out to me recently, I was glad to say yes, because we at Building Culture use their windows on about 90 % of our projects. The whole team loves them and really thankful to have them sponsoring the podcast. I also want to thank One Source Windows, who if you are in the state of Oklahoma, it doesn't just matter about the window manufacturer. but also about the distributor and the installer and the people you're working with. And we've used one source Windows who sells Sierra Pacific and several other great lines for also about 90 % of our projects. All right, onto the podcast. Bobby, it's great to have you on the podcast. It's so great to be here. Thank you so much. Well, thanks. I'd love to start with, you you've got an interesting history and I'd love to start with before we kind of break into multifamily and all this kind of stuff is

Austin Tunnell

How did you find your way into what you're doing now? Being involved, I'd say, in every part of Realistic. So the thing that I've enjoyed the most about being a real estate developer, although that is not as much what I do now, is that you start by having to do everything. I mean, there were days where I put on a suit and tie and raised capital and then was looking at Excel models at night. and then we'd get a call and had to clean apartments or then lease something. And so I'd the way that I found my way to the place that I have is through interest, through being good at something, but also through seeing how all of real estate development and management worked, mostly through making mistakes, which I think is how... most sticky lessons actually like get their way like into your brain and heart. So my, was in school studying applied math and where I was particularly interested in sports statistics. And then I ended up meeting up with a few other guys and we started a real estate development company. Because I was more organized, I ended up like in charge of our development and construction. And then in starting to think about how and why we designed units the ways we did, because I ended up working on some historic conversion projects where you have more floor plans than others, I realized that there wasn't good data on why we designed floor plans the way that we do. And then I guess I've been on a journey since then, partly through helping build out a real estate development company, through a real estate technology company. And then finally now to where I am, which is, you know, helping apartment developers like optimize floor plans and, and investing in projects that are product oriented, particularly for families. So that's, don't know, it's a long way. I don't think that my journey is complete. But it's anyway, it's where I've ended up now in, in the work that I love doing. That's great.

Austin Tunnell

Yeah. mean, I hope I've had a winding journey as well. I hope it's certainly not over. It's always kind of evolving and developing. But cool. Actually, a little bit before we helped on, happened to see your Twitter post about you were connecting loneliness to the idea of people moving around. regularly and I'm actually want to tie this back to kind of like multifamily and families in urban areas. But can you talk about that, that post you just made? Well, it's something that I felt and experienced for a while. So living in downtown Philadelphia, a city that has a lot of students and graduate students in particular, you see a lot of people churn through. And some of that's just natural in the city. When our church, right, you just always have a new people come through. But living in a large apartment building and going to an urban church and living in a city like that right downtown, it was impossible not to, I guess, experience the... I like seeing how disconnected certain people were. And I think there is so much data that has shown, I guess, like how loneliness is increasing. And I cannot help but connect that to the built environment that we have. Everything I believe is just, if most things are chicken and egg, and I look at buildings full of studio apartments and one bedrooms, I look at like amenities that are designed for dogs rather than children, more as things that increase certain desires and then create them while at the same time responding to them too. So it's it's, it's the idea around loneliness and units and the built environment is one that I'd say I particularly sensitive to as a new apartment developer. And so I see the kinds of product that's being built and mainly I see that it is for one very narrow demographic, which is high income singles.

Austin Tunnell

and some couples, and then some boomers too, but primarily for the first cohort. And what I can just see and see moving forward is that if we build these buildings that are for this one demographic, we will see inevitably is even for those people, people are gonna have to leave And I just know personally and from seeing other people that lack of ability to put down roots is what causes I believe or enhances underlying loneliness. and the lack of connection to police. think people inherently want that. Or what they really want is at minimum they want the ability to think that they could step. And that I think is what's really missing in the built-in environment, particularly in the newly built rental environment. So that's, I guess, my heart comes from on that with some data too. No, I think that's a really good observation. I think the Statistic you use with something like 79 percent of percent of people between 18 and 24 experience or report like high levels of loneliness and you know connecting that to the idea of moving a lot and You sometimes people think oh, and I know you weren't even talking about this in Philadelphia But like people are thinking well if I'm staying in the same city that doesn't really feel like I'm moving But the problem is in a city whether it's Dallas where you're at now, or I'm in Oklahoma City You know like you're saying if you're a single whatever right of the college if you went to college you might be living in a multifamily in Midtown or something and then As you move, you move around to these different places. And then when you need a two bedroom house or three bedroom house, you're here. And then when you can afford 35 and a square feet, you're over here or whatever. But proximity really matters. know, when you get older and people are busy and kids are going to soccer games and you're not at the same schools and you're not going to the same entertainment things. And so even if you're like staying in the same city and you feel like, oh, I'm rooted to Oklahoma City or I'm rooted to Dallas because I've been here. It really isn't the same thing as being able to move within kind of a district or a neighborhood to different housing needs that meet your needs at different stages in life? Oh, a hundred percent. Like, so we lived in three different parts of down, uh, or two different parts of center city, Philadelphia, one 17th, the Walnut and the other one at 10th and Lombard, right? It's 10 blocks apart, completely different places. We didn't even like go to any of the same places again, once we moved from one to the other, we moved to 10th, the Lombard because it happened to be across the street from the playground and a dog park. And that was just, and

Austin Tunnell

also the Whole Foods, it ended up being a perfect place for our family. But we had to learn entirely new places, even though we had been in the city for many years before making that move, was just learning a new thing that was incredibly stressed. And we're even a family that's accustomed to less space. I I think that those things compound, believe, as you mentioned, for people in other life stages. And I think that having to move even between neighborhoods, causes someone to... Well, anyway, I'm certain that that to me is the main cost of apprehension and the dislike of moving. Again, it's certainly annoying to find a new place to hire movers, but that's solvable. The thing that isn't solvable that can only be done... Again, even if you live in the city for a decade, you have to find your new routine. Where's your coffee shop? Do you find other people? How do your paths overlap? Even in highly dense... like city. And so again, you expand that out to other cities that are slightly less walkable. And I think the problem remains and possibly magnifies. Absolutely. One of the statistics that I always repeat is from the, how belonging barometer or something was a study last year and 74 % of Americans report a sense of non belonging in their own community. And it's like so terrible and sad. And you might be like, how in the world is that possible? Some people might think that, but it's kind of like, yeah, I when you move every five years or six years or seven years and this to a new place, once again, new neighborhood, new area of town, whatever, it's really, really, you never really get to create those little connections that actually make you feel rooted. And I do think so much of it's about the built environment and how we build. So on that, was just, I thinking about how long it takes you to get used to like, a new grocery store, right? Just like knowing where things are. It takes like at least like twice as long. If you walk into a grocery store, even at the same grand where you just like don't know where things are. like, I don't know, after like a dozen times you figure it out, you know, like, okay, I go get the milk and I get the eggs and I get like the different sorts of things that you want. mean, a neighborhood is that with four or five like exponents on top, like on top of that of like other things that need to be figured out. Just a routine. I work out here, I go here. This is the place that I like.

Austin Tunnell

these are the happy, happy hour specials that I enjoy. This is the place that my kids, you know, et cetera, et cetera. And so I think it's that, that cannot, that cannot help, but cause a sense of placelessness. You know, one of the reasons you really popped out to me on Twitter, cause that's how I, how I met you is on Twitter, which is an amazing place for meeting other real estate people and stuff. You know, I think about how, we have isolated suburban subdivisions. So if you want to live for anyone that wants a yard and kind of space and stuff like that, you've got that kind of like out there, know, 20 minutes, 30 minutes from town, whatever. But then if you want to be in an urban environment, suddenly it's condos and multifamily buildings. And neither one of those are built for families. And generally speaking, you know, and that's also a big kind of like transition, like, Hey, single-family detached suburb and then suddenly you're in like a condo structured parking elevator type thing. And then I've always thought of multifamily as for singles and couples. And it was actually you kind of talking about, well, that's just the way we build them. And that's just the way we do floor plans that we make them not for families. And it was immediate like, well, that's obvious. I don't know why I wasn't really thinking about that. So can you talk about how... You actually mentioned it earlier, how what we build today is not really geared towards family. Like what about the buildings, whether it's floor plans, whether it's amenities, whether it's about the location or whatever it is that makes it really not conducive for families? Well, first of all, I'd say I think it's really important to narrow in like what all of us mean by families. I'd say that when I think about apartments being suitable for families, As a real estate developer, as an entrepreneur, I'm primarily, I'd say, trying to do, how can I make something as good as possible given the proper things? There are some people, and again, whether it's on Twitter or whether it's reading things, appreciate reading, who imagine what the world could be like if we made changes X, Y, or Z, whether it's changing building code or whether it's improving schools or whether it's making this huge broad scale change. So I'd say, first, when I say that I apartments can be good for families and are not,

Austin Tunnell

I mean today with very few changes, changes just based on like the building sign, something that a developer could on their own change. No real estate developer does not matter how many zeros they have on, they could fix like public schools, right? Like unless they'd run for office and just become a politician, but no individual project can change like large societal things, parks, infrastructure, et cetera, but they can make a change. So with that. Broke clearing aside, I would say that where apartments are lacking for families is for young couples who already live in buildings, our apartments are uniquely ill-suited for someone to stay if and when they decide to have children, whether it's you're thinking about getting pregnant or if you find out you're pregnant. I would say like, the buildings are designed such that they nearly force people to move. And that has to do with, I think, the way that we make decisions around how we allocate space. I I poised out quite a bit, but we have chosen walk-in closets over home offices or a space that could be a nursery. There's no reason why it's not particularly more expensive to set aside space for one use or the other. It's volume that's already going to be built, but we've chosen to store clothes instead of baits. or black, some people still put babies in the closet. My sister lives in the Upper West Side of New York. I know people who have put babies in bathrooms, so people do figure things out. But by and large, they are not designed for that. So I would say one, that's how floor plans are chosen. If you looked at the, I think you would see, how I put this, like who something is designed for. And that is that demo. That's on unit side. And then on the overall building side, I would say that The amenities are clearly not built to accommodate that demographic. And this isn't to chide other developers per se, but I would say that design, even core design, necessarily discriminates. It is clear for some people and it's not for others. If you build dogwash stations,

Austin Tunnell

in an apartment building amenities and you do not build a toddler room, you've clearly made a choice on who the demographic is. Right. And I'd say, I don't know of an apartment building, a new construction apartment building in one of these instill moderate to high right areas that does, that is not friendly and probably has some level of pedigree. Right. That's basically table stakes. There are like maybe a dozen apartment buildings of this type. in the Dallas Metro that have like child-focused amenities, something even as miniscule as like a toddler room, which does not need to be very large, right? It could be a room. Yeah. How would you incorporate that? how, like actually, could you describe what you by toddler room? Is that like down the lobby where there's like a room and some glass you can see through and you can sit outside of it and kind of like chat or like, what is that exactly? So, I mean, I think like, So we lived in downtown, we lived in downtown Philadelphia, 17th of Walnut and a high rise, so lived on the 22nd floor in a, first and up, thousand square foot, two bedroom apartment with our first child and then a 1200 square foot, three bedroom, two back for our next two kids. All three of our kids are born in the city. And we lived in that building because we liked the city, but also because we loved our church. And our church was about four blocks away. And my wife ended up starting a mom's group there. But the main thing that was a draw, or a moms group, why people came was, like in the upper room of our church, it wasn't particularly fancy. was a frankly old rundown carpet area. It was a place where kids could go and just run around in a space that had no defining characteristics. There might've been some toys that people brought in later, but mainly it was just a place that was conditioned. So in the winter, in the city, it was a place for kids to run around. And that literally didn't exist anywhere else in the city. So that's how it got started. And then suddenly it turns out a few dozen moms came. And then they had enough families. said, like, we should start a preschool. So like I would say when someone actually decided to like design something purpose built for a toddler room, like new construction with the kind of budget we have and FF &E, I guess I wouldn't want to trample on anyone's toes who's an actual designer or like, or architect to say like, go do something really well. Again, I'm, I'm not an architect. I'm not a designer. can know what some, can be a consumer of it.

Austin Tunnell

But I would say the bar is so low, particularly in some of these markets for a space for children that sometimes it can just be a room with walls. And I've seen that work and I've seen that be an incredible hub of community. I'd say it is incredibly lonely to raise children by yourself. It is unfortunately the case that there are not that many children in places like downtown. And these spaces can draw, can and do draw like every person who lives in a certain area who happens to have children under the age of two, just because it's a place to meet other parents and just let your kid run around in relative safety. I guess I'd say I would leave it to the imagination and the ability of someone incredibly talented to come up with something amazing. But I know that it doesn't need to be that. It could be a room. And again, I've seen my kids use that. The other funny example is Indian building where we lived, which actually was one of the first projects that I worked on. was an office to residential conversion. We designed a movie theater room as one does because every apartment building needs to have a movie theater room. And then when my family and my kids lived there, they ended up just turning it into a playroom. They would just run around there, right? So they pushed the couches out of the way and would run and jump and dive and just use that room. And we didn't turn on the TV and just started something that they ended up having the birthday party in that room. and kids make things work. So I guess I'd say kids are incredibly creative. Families are extremely willing to work with unusual spaces because there's so little things that are allocated to them that it doesn't have to be amazing, but should be. If you've been enjoying the Build and Culture podcast and are listening on Apple or Spotify, could you pause for just a moment and leave a five star review? My goal is to get to a hundred reviews. And if you do, take a screenshot and email it to playbook at building culture.com playbook P L A Y B O O K at building culture.com. And when we hit a hundred, I'll randomly pick five winners and send them a building culture hat that looks just like this. I appreciate it. And back to the show. Yeah. I think about, you know, not just a room, but you know, so many apartments have almost like courtyard style where there's, you know, a building wrapping around a pool.

Austin Tunnell

And it's almost always a pool it seems like that I see. And I just think, man, what if that was a playground or something for kids? Because there are so many, just statistically nowadays, single parent families with one or two kids and how hard that is if you work, heck if you don't work, just where are you going to go? if you're kind of stuck out in the suburbs somewhere, if you're just stuck in a building off the street, it's really hard, like you said, to meet people, to just kind of let your cud run around. And to have an apartment building that was actually designed to facilitate that a little bit better could be really great. Have you seen the examples of new apartments that are catering to that? Like say even in their marketing, that's like, hey, multifamily, know, build this, this is for families or at least is a good fit for families. Not saying only for families. Do you see, are there any examples out there? Well, I'm, I mean, I'm working on a few or I'm trying to push a few in that direction, you know, both with some, both with some capital and some data. But I would say that there are precious few, there are precious few. And I can't think of any that exists right now that I think that are, that have done it well. I've, I've, I've designed some projects and built a few that ended up having slightly more children than the average apartment building. That was partly because the unit size was a little bit larger. The bedrooms are a little bit smaller. So the unit mix tended to be like more two and three bedrooms. I would say that that counts as being family friendlier, but honestly, like I don't think that any of them, again, including anything that I built has yet really gone after that well in the way that I think we could point to many buildings that would say, wow, you have really built something great for 26 year old single women. And I think there's many buildings that have done a great job of building for those kinds of people. Well, that has not yet been done well for apartment buildings. Other than, wait, I guess I'd say the one example where I do think I was talking primarily about new construction. I think there are lots of buildings that

Austin Tunnell

have become family friendly that are like older, right? So like on the Upper West Side where my sister lives, there are lots of co-op buildings that have become family friendly because they have like developed the culture of, it's just a lot of kids who live here. The doorman just knows everybody. And so you develop a sense of place, personality in certain kinds of building. But in terms of new purpose, a new purpose of construction, there are no large scale apartment buildings. that have yet been delivered that I'd say meet that criteria. If you were talking to developers or architects or say even, I don't know, city politicians or something, kind of making suggestions about what could be done. so kids are in place for kids. And then you talk a lot about floor plans. sounds like kind of a funny thing for people listening, but it's like, how do you design a floor? Like, what do you do differently about your floor plans to make them, to tweak them, to serve? potential for families rather than just singles. Well, so I think that the biggest indicator that apartment design for roommates rather than for families is when you see, bedrooms that are equal sized and with equal sized closets and both either have a private ensuite bath or maybe one of the baths is is both has dual access, right? Public and, and, also access directly from the bedroom. If you look at the floor plans of any two and three bedroom, what you will see, just looking at the specific, but you will see something that is basically designed for the rent to be split by like one over N where like N is the number of bedrooms, right? And so anyone who has children, knows that like there should be one bedroom that's larger than the others. And what you also need with children is more spaces, right? So I think like the current like layout of the two bedroom apartment, thousand square feet, the dominant form is the double of the corridor. So it probably has windows only on one side. It might be a corner, so it might have windows on two sides. But what you generally see is equal sized bedrooms. Again, large walk-in closets.

Austin Tunnell

you've designed a unit where the right is going to be, you know, two times 80 % of whatever this studio rent is in a building. And that works with pencils. And again, I understand why people build that in certain markets, but if you wanted to try and make units be more family friendly, then I would say what that involves is smaller bedrooms, smaller closets, more space as a percentage allocated to living space and almost certainly an extra room probably won't have a window. could have the shared light or shared glass of some kind, but probably has an extra room, either as a nursery or as any parent who's ever been on a Zoom call knows, somewhere you can close the door so you can actually get some work done, right? There's nothing worse than trying to do a Zoom call or get some work done like on the kitchen aisle when your kid's running around. Will not happen, which means you'll either be in your bedroom or again, ideally some other space. So I think the general principle is gonna be additional spaces, additional rooms. And the existing room, the existing bedrooms, especially the second, the third ones will be smaller. Yeah. And do you, you know, you mentioned one of them might not have a window or something. Do you imagine that just like where you do one that because of egress that just doesn't have a door on it or something that could just have a curtain in front of it? Is that kind of how you think about it? Or I'd say that that depends on like on, on a district by district kind of requirements. There are plenty of places where you can have a door. really, I didn't know that. Yeah, I'd say that's one of the big differences between apartment zoning and residence. yes, you can certainly have... I guess one thing for people who listening who happen to follow my Twitter, if you see a floor plan that I've posted, it is only units that have been built. So it is taken from an existing project. I would never show a plan that doesn't exist in real life, which means it got approved somewhere by some city to get both a building permit and a CEO. So whatever the rules are, don't, I can't keep track of all of them everywhere, but I can say there are areas where that is allowed. There are some areas where they, where they do require to keep it open. And I do think that being, or being smart in design about how you treat that opening, whether you want to have translucent glass on it, whether you want it to be a barn door, whether it's pocket door, or you want it be a regular door.

Austin Tunnell

That I would say should, I would trust good architects and designers to treat that decision well. But that's how that would go. mean, again, I can't imagine anything more useless than a nursery without a Yeah, right. Noise-wise, you're right. It's just really pretty. I got a two-month-old and boy, when he starts screaming, man, it just fills up the whole house. And so... So, okay. So more space, know, an extra bedroom. And then I think I've heard you talk about like maybe a little less open floor plan. is that part of what you mean by more spaces, like more differentiations between spaces? Yeah. I would say.

Austin Tunnell

Yes. mean, it is, I am thinking about like giving a fixed space and 1000 square feet, or whatever it is, 750 to 800 square feet, it's like a one bedroom or one bedroom den, whatever those different ones are, I do think that one of the mistakes that has been overdone has been in keeping those spaces open possible. I frankly think that that is a design flaw that exists even for a single or a couple. And then again, that primarily comes to thinking about like how someone is going to use the space from a good product perspective, right? Like again, look at a 750 square foot, one bedroom, even one that like has a walk-in closet, should have a walk-in closet. Like it's for that single person. Where is someone going to work? Right? Like you walk into every apartment, there's the kitchen, there's an island. The living room is maybe large enough to probably about 12 feet wide, maybe, right? Could be under 11, which it's pretty annoying. can watch TV. So there's a couch, maybe a chair. and the TV and you have a bed. It means the only place to actually work from home would be your bedroom or the kitchen aisle. Now for a single person, that's doable. For a single occupant, that's doable. Even if you're a couple, that's annoying because either you're going to be taking up one of those two spaces because there's no additional room. So I guess that to me is where, whether it's adding that additional borrowed light or shared light area as a separate space for an office, or for something I think that we are missing is, I was talking with some recently about how there are no apartment building, there are no apartment floor plans now that have done that. That's basically gone. We've gotten rid of dining rooms, any apartment. And I think it's a similar thing. What we have shrunk and lost is these additional rooms. We've gained closets, and we've gained bedrooms that are frankly just a little bit too large. Given that they're for apartments and that space is dear. So that is where I think that those things are not quite done right. There's lot of ways to create differentiations between space without having to completely close it off to and stuff. We do all sorts of things with arches and you can do wood frame, right? Like it doesn't have to be brick and stuff like that we do where you're creating series of spaces where it might still have pocket doors in it, right? But it can also be open and really nice and a little bit bigger.

Austin Tunnell

You how big is that? I think there's a floor plan right on your profile. That's, you you say it's kind of a family and it's three bedrooms. I think two baths is a two bath. Yeah. It's like right. Yep. Okay. How many square feet is that floor plan? you know? I think that one. I'm pretty sure I chose that one to be six, to be 1300. I believe that one it is. Cause you even have a little dining room, I think, if I remember correctly.

Austin Tunnell

I just pulled up 14 underscore feet. 14, okay. Yeah, I see you've got that other bedroom that really is an office, so you're not calling it a bedroom necessarily. then people, whatever they do with their offices. Yeah, exactly. Whatever they do with their office, again, I think that, I mean, I do think that it's undeniable that even someone who goes into the office every day is still going to take a Zoom call and help. again, in the demographic of new build apartment buildings, It's your knowledge worker generally, right? Like probably more likely to be a white collar, but like that person is going to take, is going to take zoom at home fairly regular. So I think like having a space for that, that is not your bedroom is a good design. So I always think in, which is the reasons why I had to think I had that fortune, her square foot one. And I think I've shown other examples that are between a thousand and 1,400 square feet too, it's because realistically when it comes to getting projects financed, you have to think about what is it that can make sense on maximizing rent per square foot, or at least achieving market rate per square foot on whatever floor plan type you do. Because if I design an amazing 1,500 square foot apartment, that is going to need to rent that, whatever it is to base on rent per square foot as you market, like in... in Washington, DC that'll be about 450. In Dallas, it'll be San Jose, Austin, maybe $5, Boston, similar in, I don't know what it is in Sharif or Raleigh or whatever it is, but everyone needs to be cognizant, like realistically cognizant that you're gonna have to achieve like close to the rent on Perseverance Footbaths of one bedroom or else the developer will build one bedroom. And that to me is why I realistically think that we are gonna have to build in order to be family friendly realistic. we're going to have to rely on some level of shared light rooms for people with kids. Like in that niche demographic of a couple who decides to have a baby. And I think, and this is one part that I think is, I might've mentioned before, but I guess even if I have, want to reiterate, because I think it's that important. apartment, I do not think, needs to be held to the standard of real estate being designed for children across like the entire lifestyle.

Austin Tunnell

Apartments to me are great for a young person, a couple to have their baby for a little while and then to find where they want to move next. Because where you're going to live when your kid reaches five is going to be schools, maybe one day near cousins. there's out like live near family. There's other like big decisions that again, like an apartment building can't stay. Schools is being schools being the biggest one. But I mean, you know, with a two month old, they don't take that much space. That doesn't need to inhibit. If you love a place, you live somewhere, there's no reason that in an 800 square foot one bedroom that has like a nursery space, you couldn't stay. So to me, like the pressure that I want to pull off people, especially for like families is going to be, don't have that added stress of moving, right? Like the number of people that I'm sure you knew this to, that are people who find that they get pregnant and they live in an apartment building, what's the first thing to do? Gotta move, right? We gotta find a place that we can't stay here. And again, that, One breaks my heart of people needing to move and leave their neighborhood, but feeling like they have to, right? When it's just like, look, just have your baby, right? And then figure out those other things later, right? Like there's no reason you don't have to do that now. If you have to move afterwards, great. Within those first six months, you'll do it. But the amount of stress of getting ready to have your first baby and moving, I mean, like, and then talk about, you know, The opposite of winning the lottery. At a time that shouldn't just be joyful, ends up being for so many people at that life stage, not. That to me is the kind of thing that a partner or four planned design can solve. That's doable. We can just like tell more people who are whatever age they are. You can have a baby and stay, right? And then what I would hope is that naturally there are just more people who have children around. And it happens to be one of the things that when you're around other people have children. you're more open to it because you see like, well, I see them, they're doing it somehow. I don't know how, but they figured it out, right? I mean, I'm sure you're in it too, right? Like Eddie's first time parent always wondered, always looks back after for six months and thinks, how the heck did I survive, right? Like I haven't slept more than four consecutive hours for six months and yet, and then you look back and then you did, right? And that's end up being freeing and it's something you can encourage other people on. So anyway, that's the way in which I think the lowest

Austin Tunnell

or the lowest activation energy is required to serve families of that very narrow choice. Find a year pregnant and stay. Yeah. Just, it's interesting that, yeah, one small bedroom can do that. And it doesn't like even 10 by 10 is actually big in some ways for that. Like just from my own experience as a parent, like I guess people always just assume minimum bedroom size, 10 by 10. And if you've got an infant and you know, through four or five years old, you can have a really small bedroom. I mean, it can basically be like a place for a bed and like a little bit of other stuff and close, and to be able to close the door. And it's not like you're, that's not like stuffing them in a closet. Like they're not spending all their time in the bedroom. They're sleeping in there and they might do like a quiet time in there. And then they're outside of the bedroom. And you're right that that can buy you five, five extra years of comfortably staying in the same place, which is a pretty big deal as you're talking about. It is. And to me, I think the big deal about that from the city's perspective is it allows people to think about that next life state. Like, I think there are too many people who they might make that decision. Too many people move out of the city or move from where they're living in anticipation of something being bad. They say, well, I don't think the schools are good, so we need to move now. It's like, you may need to move for whatever reason you might think, but that doesn't need to be today. And then turns out maybe you can figure it out. Right? Maybe it turns out that you've enough people going to like whatever local school or your friends start something or you're doing any share or whatever it is to figure things out and you make it work. But I think community people end up leaving because they feel like they have to, to make the eject button to then go somewhere they can stay. And I think that's causes a lot of people. I'd say the number one reason why we had friends who moved out of the city was, you know, just to move to the suburbs. Cause I said, well, if I move here, then I can stay, right? And we know like, you know where the kids are going to go to school. This is my job. This is where they go to high school. These are all those other things they can just sort of plan for that next stage. And I think that the city that's always getting harder in the city, it's expensive, you know, there's limitations, but it's not, anyway, it's not necessary. And then, and then I think by having more parents around, I think you build the right cohort of people who can advocate for something better, right? I mean, I'm more people in the city who

Austin Tunnell

have a vested interest in the schools to being better. mean, it be great to have an army of parents who have two-year-olds in the city, right? Like people who are more than willing to pay taxes or raise money for the PTA or whatever it is they're going to do and advocate, you know, getting things cleaned up better or differently. So I think it's hard to make some of those changes before the people are there. And it's easier when you have, I always like to say just like, so many babies you don't know what to do with in the city. That to me is like, the vision I was like, I want there to be so many babies in the city that people start meaning to figure out what are we gonna do when they all need to go to school. That's cool. I'd like to take a moment to thank the sponsors of our podcast for Sierra Pacific Windows. We use their windows on the majority of our builds at Building Culture. one of our go-to products is their H3 Casement window. We love casements because they open sideways, they open all the way, they kind of have this classic window feel. And I really like that you don't have that horizontal bar when looking from the exterior. And to get really nerdy on you, we really love their 5'8' putty profile on the window, which kind of feels updated, but still a very classic detail. Also, Sierra Pacific Windows. If you are in the state of Oklahoma, Sierra Pacific has a showroom in Tulsa and Oklahoma City, and we actually purchase our Sierra Pacific Windows through them. Because it doesn't just matter the window manufacturer, it matters who you're buying your window from, who's putting that order together, who's installing it, who's warranting it. And we work with both of these people at Building Culture, and I was very happy to say yes when they asked to sponsor the podcast. All right, back to the show. you I know you're working on, so you've had background of, you know, doing ground up development and remodels of existing buildings and stuff. And now you're working on a technology company. is that Taylor Bird when you refer to that, which is pre-construction and floor plan advice? So, so who is that for and who would be coming to you for that? And really, what are you offering? So, Taylor Bird is a company that I, that I co-founded.

Austin Tunnell

a number of years ago, it is not what I'm doing day to day now. That is a venture-backed company. That company does pre-construction for value and multifamily. My partner Tim is still running that. It's great company and we work with some very large multifamily developers. What we can do is through the technology of dimensionalizing existing photos and floor plans, we can create for people good enough as-built construction drawings in order for them to do like for like construction places. That's that company. And what I do now is I'd say, helping through helping new construction apartment developers understand which attributes correlate to higher rent per square foot when they are making the decision what to build. So when they're going through the different floor plans and they say, I can build a 700 square foot one bedroom that looks like this or a 700 square foot bedroom that looks like that. I did was a similar technology of measuring a whole lot of images, converting floor plans into like a large data set. So then you can then compare and say, are the one bedrooms like in this market? What are the attributes that seem to tie to higher rents? So that's the core technology that I built. But what I do with that technology is, help people make better decisions and invest right now, invest in some. Are there any common attributes or is it really market dependent when you're talking about things that will command higher rent prices and stuff like that? Are there any common things that you see over and over again? I'd say...

Austin Tunnell

There are two that I'd say are the most common. The one is that the ratio of the living room width to the bedroom width is usually too high. Right? So, given you have a fixed space, you should set aside more space towards the litter room than towards the bedroom. And if you look at one bedroom, particularly two bedrooms, of lot of new constructed things, you'll see that essentially the living room has been de-emphasized. Right? What has been emphasized is then essentially creating these two private suites. But it is the case even Regardless, so I'd say my data on rent has nothing to do with who lives there. It's not something that I consider. I just look at what are the attributes inside the apartment of the floor plan and what are the rents. Is the case that if you put more space in the living room than the bedroom, in almost all, you will get higher rent because people spend more time living in the bedroom and the bedroom is room for sleeping. And so it doesn't need to be that large. And I think the other explanation for that is that if there is a demand for some budgets that are larger, that demand is oversupplied. So I think that is why there currently is positive ROI in increasing the size of your living room relative to your bedroom. And then the other one, which again, I talked about a bit on Twitter also, is that the market for one bedrooms, the walk-in closet is oversupplied. So it doesn't need to be a nursery. It doesn't necessarily need to be a home office, but it turns out that a walk-in closet is not positive, like increasing rent, given how you can other ways you could spend space. So a lot of it will depend on the size of the unit. And there are some different market market variations, but I would be 98 % positive that in looking at a project that I would be able to show some of the like based on purely just on the data on the comps, like in your area. like on the buildings that you think are competitive within your sub market, that we would be able to show that those two things were true. That you should have larger living rooms and less space in the closets. Again, now there are always things that are different. A lot of it depends, which I think is something that is a whole lot of bad apartment design, which is that most people don't design for anyone in particular. So there are certainly demographics that make sense.

Austin Tunnell

to design very large kitchens and very large closets. know, I'm here in Houston and there's a great project that was done in River Oaks, right? And there, since it was like a, and another project up in Dallas, like up in Turtle Creek, and those got incredibly high rents because they were essentially pulling people out of single family homes, very expensive single family homes. And those people had the money to demand those kinds of features. And so that is what you should build for that particular demographic. But for the millennial younger demographic, it is not necessary. If that is who you're targeting, it is not necessary to build large closets and it is not necessary to have big bedrooms. Is there any other features that are like high ROI in your opinion, just from like, you know, everything's that you have to make decisions. You can't spend money and make everything a luxury apartment, right? So, you know, like sometimes people upgrade to court's countertops or something like that or. you know, what are kind of, do you have a list of like, if you can do these things, are the top four, you know, few things to do with. It's more things to avoid. Okay. I would say. And, and I think this is an interesting one kind of for us to talk about because I do think that it is an area that is, has been improperly influenced from home design onto apartments. that is putting a sink on an island where the sink is centered on the island. Right. When you have a small space, the island, if you're going to put one in, is meant to replace the dining room table. But you see too many different units where they put in the island, they center it, and then it can't even function well as an actual dining room table. it kills two different things. I don't know why, there aren't that many young millennials who live downtown who are chefs anyway. They don't need to necessarily have a kitchen like that. If you are going to do an island and you must put a sink in the island, admit them off-center. I would say it is usually almost always better to take the sink out of the island, which saves money. And it's also often positive to put the island on casters or turning a piece of furniture. Has the added benefit of you're not restricted by the same circulation requirements.

Austin Tunnell

People can move it around and do something like with some of the other additional space. if if it's still gin, then, then you have to, you know, those ADA circulation. that's a good one. So that, that, that, that, that's the one that I would say that for apartments, a switch for small apartments ends up being something that happens quite a bit, ends up being a common. There frankly aren't that many partly because, the, the The one-bedroom apartment like lay out in the US is like surely limited. It's between 20 and 30 feet or 35 feet deep. And the width is gonna be, if you have a bedroom with window, then the unit's gonna be 22 to 24 feet wide. And if you decide to have a shared bedroom, then it's gonna be 15 to 18 feet wide. So those dimensions are pretty much can be set by your market, right? Because you need to build the one bedrooms to meet whatever it is the average rent is in your space. okay. Well, cool. So Bobby, how do people obviously follow you on Twitter? What's your handle? My name is Bobby Seum. Okay. And then so then there is TailorBird.com and then what's the other company where people could... Just form. Formdevelopers.com. So that's, so that's okay. I guess people can always reach out to you through DM. Cool. Anything else? Any other ways to get a touch with you or follow you or those are the best ways? Those are the best ways. Those are the best. Well, Bobby, thanks a ton for coming on. I really hope that, I would really like to try some, family based apartments here in Oklahoma city, honestly. So it's been good to talk to you and just get, pick your brain about some of those little nuances there that can make something more family friendly. because I do really think it's something that's important and could be improve people's lives in more dynamic neighborhoods and all those things. It absolutely could. And I think while there are ways where it can be made really perfect, think that, and again, I'd say I'm proud to have worked on a lot of projects where we just incrementally made things better. Some people could have children there and the amenities stayed about the same and might have changed a little bit. I think that even that

Austin Tunnell

I think makes a big difference because I think that, as I mentioned, that to me, that we talked about, I think like the, demographic siloing, I just think it's just like a bad, sad thing. and so just like creating more ability for some people to be able to say, think this, like having a few babies wander around like their carton filling, I think would be great for everybody. Absolutely. And, yeah, I just, that, that's, that's I would love to see happen. cool. All right. Well, I look forward to staying in touch and I'll talk to you again soon. So great to talk about this. It was great to have Bobby on. Be sure to follow him on Twitter, which I will put in the show notes and check out his other companies. His Taylor Bird one's pretty interesting when you scroll through the website. If you've been enjoying the Build a Culture podcast, please like, subscribe and share. And if you're on listening on Apple or Spotify. I'd love it if you leave a five-star review. If you do snap a picture of it, send it to playbook at buildingculture.com. I'll put that in the notes. And when we get to a hundred reviews on each respective platform, I'll select five winners from each one and send you a building culture hat to your address. I'll do it myself. Thanks so much and catch you on the next episode.