What If Everyone Was a Property Developer?
For decades, we’ve been taught that housing is something you buy, not something you shape.
You scan listings, compare prices, make compromises, and hope the place works for your life longer than the mortgage does. Development is framed as a specialized activity, reserved for insiders with spreadsheets, lawyers, and hard hats.
But what if that weren’t true?
Not professional developers. Informed ones.
Here’s what I think would change.
We’d add supply without waiting for permission
One of the biggest constraints on housing supply isn’t land or capital. It’s confidence.
Most people don’t build because the process feels opaque and risky. If more individuals understood how development actually works, we’d see thousands of small, incremental projects move forward. Backyard ADUs. Modest starter homes. Phased additions. Multi-generational compounds that grow over time.
Instead of waiting for a single 200-unit project to get approved, supply would come from everywhere, in smaller, more context-sensitive pieces. Housing would increase not through megaprojects alone, but through accumulation.
Housing typologies would diversify overnight
Big developers optimize for repetition because repetition reduces risk. The result is a narrow band of housing types that pencil well at scale but fit real lives poorly.
If individuals were the developers, we’d see a much richer mix of homes. Starter homes designed to expand. Hybrid homes that blend primary living with rental income. Small clusters of cabins for friends or extended family. Homes that anticipate aging, caregiving, seasonal use, or remote work from day one.
These typologies already exist in theory. They’re just underbuilt because they don’t map cleanly onto a big box pro forma.
Homes would be designed for users, not exit strategies
Spec housing is designed for resale first and living second. That’s not a moral failure, it’s a financial one. When your profit depends on speed and volume, you design for the median buyer and move on.
Owner-developers design differently. They care about daylight, circulation, storage, adaptability, and operating costs. They think about how the house will feel in ten years, not just how it will photograph next month.
If more people were developers of their own homes, housing would become more durable, more flexible, and more humane.
Neighborhood character would strengthen, not homogenize
Uniformity isn’t inevitable. It’s a byproduct of centralized decision-making.
When many people are making small, thoughtful decisions, taste stays local. Materials reflect climate. Forms respond to landscape. Homes evolve over time instead of arriving fully formed and frozen.
You’d still see patterns and vernaculars emerge, but they’d be rooted in place and use rather than national trend cycles. The built environment would feel more like an ecosystem and less like a catalog.
We’d treat housing as a long-term asset, not a one-time bet
Development thinking encourages long horizons. You plan in phases. You consider optionality. You leave room for change.
If more people thought this way, fewer homes would be torn down prematurely or renovated repeatedly to fix decisions that were never aligned with how people actually live. We’d build less, better, and with more foresight.
The industry would become more transparent and accountable
When only a small group understands how housing gets made, the rest are forced to trust the system. When more people understand it, the system has to explain itself.
Costs become clearer. Tradeoffs become visible. Regulations are debated more intelligently. Builders, designers, and municipalities are held to higher standards because the client is informed, not intimidated.
This isn’t a fantasy where everyone suddenly wants to manage construction schedules.
It’s a future where more people understand the rules of the game well enough to participate meaningfully in one of the most consequential markets of their lives.
That’s the bet we’re making.
