“What would you say... ya do here?”
If you’ve seen Office Space, you just heard that in exactly the right voice. And I get some version of that question all the time. At school pickup, in my DMs, at dinner parties, usually right after someone has watched me talk about plaster for twenty minutes. So wait, are you a designer? A builder? A realtor?
Yes.
Which, it turns out, confuses people. Every so often someone implies that doing three things means we can’t really be doing any of them. That we’re not “primarily” realtors, because we design. Not primarily builders, because we sell houses. Not primarily designers, because, well, you see where this is going.
They’re right about one thing. We are not primarily anything. We are all three.
(My parents raised me never to use the word “hate,” so I’ll just say I strongly despise that framing.) The question was never “How could you possibly be all three?”
The question is how could you not be?
KC and I did not build three businesses because we’re two people who find extreme stress relaxing and love trading dinner with friends for emails at midnight.
We did it because it needed doing.
The only reason our own projects have been as successful as they are is that we have always been our own one-stop shop. The same people who found the house knew what it needed before the offer, designed it, and oversaw every step of the build. Nothing got lost in a handoff between the realtor and the designer and the builder.
So maybe this explains why, today, we have all three on staff, in-house. There are agents. There are designers. There are builders. Because handoffs are where budgets (and timelines) go to die.
We are not generalists.
We are specialists.
And we’re the only one-stop shop dealing in old homes, new construction with character and luxury development at this scale.
If you’re looking to restore a historic home, build a new one from the ground up, or design, develop and sell 48 condos and four new custom homes using our showroom as a sales center, that’s us.
Three hats, one niche, on purpose.
Here’s the part people forget: I was a real estate agent first. Before the design. Before the build. Fifteen years in, when I’m buying a house, I’m still my own agent, which means the agent walking me through it is the one on the other side of the deal.
Their job, God love them, is to sell it to me.
You haven’t truly lived until someone stands directly under a water stain the size of Lake Michigan and calls the house “a rare opportunity.”
I say this with love, because I’ve written plenty of these listings myself, but listing agent is its own language, and after three generations I’m fluent. “Charming” means small. “Good bones” means everything you can see has to go, but the frame is probably fine. “Original details throughout” means the original wiring, too. “Lovingly maintained” means nobody has touched it since 1974, lovingly. “Bring your vision” means bring your contractor, your architect, and a very patient lender. And “sold as is” means whatever you find after closing is yours to keep, which, for the record, is usually right around when my phone rings. (More on that later.)
The listing agent isn’t doing anything wrong. It’s their job to love that house out loud. It’s just not their job to tell you how much it needs.
So I’ve stood in a lot of front halls, nodding politely through the speech. They’re talking about the natural light, and I’m looking at the ceiling under the upstairs bathroom. They’re saying “tons of potential,” and I’m tapping the plaster, peeking into the electrical panel, counting radiators, and quietly running a number in my head.
Not the list price.
The other number.
The one that tells you what this house is really going to take.
That’s the number that matters, and here’s what nobody tells you: when you walk through an old house, there are usually only two people in that front hall who could run it for you. One of them is paid to sell you the house.
The other one had better be your agent.
Which brings me to your cousin. Everyone has a cousin who’s a realtor. Or your old college roommate, or your neighbor’s husband who is so excited about his new career. Let’s call him Joe. And Joe is wonderful.
Joe finds beautiful, finished homes for lovely people all day long. He knows which streets have the best trick-or-treating and which builders use the good windows. If you want a white kitchen you can move into on Saturday, he’s exactly who you should call.
But Joe is a McCallister house agent.
Stay with me…
If you’ve been here a while, you know we bought Old Man Marley’s house. Yes, that Marley. The scary neighbor from Home Alone with the shovel and the reputation, the one every kid on the block was sure had a dark secret.
It sits right next door to the McCallister house, the red brick one half the country drives by every December to take a picture of.
And people do pull over to photograph the McCallister house, constantly.
Which, fair. It’s gorgeous. It’s perfect.
It’s the house you picture when someone says “a beautiful house,” and now that the current owners are finishing their restoration it’ll soon be the very definition of move-in ready, as long as you remember to bring all your children.
Nobody pulls over to photograph ours. Yet.
But here’s the thing about Marley. In the movie, the whole neighborhood has him figured out. Scary. Dangerous. Avoid at all costs. And then it turns out he isn’t scary at all. He’s just misunderstood. He’s the best guy on the block, and he’s been waiting for someone to sit down next to him and actually get to know him.
That’s every old house I’ve ever loved. It’s Halloween week, so it feels like the right time to say it out loud: the scary house is almost never as scary as everyone thinks. It just needs someone who knows what they’re looking at.
Some people are McCallister house people. They want it finished, decorated, and ready for a holiday trip to Paris, and I love them. Half my favorite people are McCallister house people.
We are, proudly and unapologetically, Old Man Marley people.
Which is why our teams are built the way they are. The scary house usually isn’t a bad house, but it is a complicated one. Old houses lie. Not on purpose. They’ve just had a hundred years to get creative.
There’s the beam someone cut through in 1952 to run a duct. The bathroom floor that’s been held up by optimism since 1987. The addition that was “permitted,” depending on how you define permitted.
A move-in ready house shows you exactly what it is. An old house makes you go looking…
…but to do that, you have to know where to look.
You don’t learn that by doing a little of everything. Everyone who joins us, from our agents to our designers to our builders, arrives having already done something very hard, very well. We have people who have designed the Kimpton hotel in Denver, built homes on Lake Michigan, and set pricing records on development sales. You don’t get those lines on a resume by being a generalist.
Specialists find each other, and this is the work they gravitate to.
We knew that when we built this company. What we do is a niche service, and in plenty of cases, it’s more firepower than you need. And we built it that way on purpose.
Because every one of those houses starts with the same question: “How much does it need?”
That’s the other number from the front hall. You can’t get it from the listing photos, and you definitely can’t get it from the listing description (see: “bring your vision”).
The inspection report helps, but it tells you what’s broken, not what it’s going to take to make the house work.
So, for crying out loud, how do you get it?
I’ll tell you.
You get it by standing in the house before you close on it, next to someone who prices this work every day and can say, right there in the hallway, “This is a kitchen house. This one’s a kitchen, a roof, and a sewer line house. And this one, friend, is a whole-new-plan house, which can be wonderful, but you should know that before you open up a wall and find cloth wiring behind it.”
That’s what our agents do. They think about what’s behind the walls because they work alongside the designers and builders who open them up every day.
And the most expensive mistake I see isn’t the marble. It’s the six-figure kitchen in the wrong room, and the only way to avoid it is to do the thinking before you close.
So, back to Joe.
If you want a house you can move into on Saturday. If the word “renovation” makes your eye twitch. If you’re selling a lovely, finished home that requires zero prep and you just want it sold…
Please call Joe.
He’s going to do a wonderful job, and you don’t need to pay for a group of people who get visibly excited about knob and tube wiring.
And if you don’t have a Joe (or you do, but Thanksgiving is complicated), hit reply and tell me where you’re looking. I’ll refer you to an agent who specializes in move-in ready homes, one I’d trust with my own family, and I’ll keep checking in the whole way.
That part isn’t optional for me. And that isn’t a line. I mean it. Some of our best relationships in this business are with other agents, both at Compass and beyond, so much so that we opened our Workshoppe right next door to them.
We send them our move-in ready buyers and sellers, and they send us the clients who fall for the old house, or tap us in to price the job once their buyers are under contract on a project.
That’s what a specialist is: the best call for one very specific thing, and generous about everything else.
My dad used to say, “Do the right thing, and it all works out.” Sending you to the right person is the right thing, even when the right person isn’t us. Especially then.
But. (You knew there was a but.)
If there’s any chance at all that you’re buying a project, call us.
You know how Chip and Joanna would walk a couple through three houses and help them pick the one worth saving?
That’s what we do, minus the shiplap.
We’ll be your agents from the first showing and the people who design and build it after. And if Joe is already your agent, have Joe call us. Agents tap us in all the time, and we love a Joe.
Remember when I said “sold as is” is usually right around when my phone rings?
Here’s that call, and I love it every time:
“Hi! My clients just closed on a 1920s colonial, they’re SO excited, and I told them they need to meet you.”
Some of our favorite projects started exactly like that. After closing is when the fun begins: the plans, the samples, the moment someone realizes the dining room was always supposed to be the kitchen. There is no bad time to call us.
But there is an earlier one. If you’re under contract on a true project, bring us in during the inspection.
We’ll walk through with you and your agent, tap the plaster, and run the number while there’s still time to use it. Same flashlight. Same two cents. More leverage. That’s the difference between planning around a number and negotiating with it.
So no, working with us doesn’t mean you have to buy a fixer upper. But if you’re restoring, building, furnishing or developing, this is what we’re built for.
And I’ll say it plainly, because I’ve earned it one water stain at a time: we are best in class at it.
Some people want the McCallister house. Bless them. Call your cousin Joe.
Or better yet, call the agent who actually sold the McCallister house. She’s best in class, too, and we’re happy to connect you.
If you want Marley, you know where to find me.
Grace
P.S. Have a house you love that everyone keeps telling you not to want? Hit reply and tell me about it. Those are my favorite emails.
P.P.S. To the agents who send us your project clients, before closing or after: thank you. We adore you.