For decades, much of the conversation around housing affordability has focused on what it costs to build.

Land. Materials. Labor. Financing. Permitting.

Those costs matter. But there is another side of the housing equation that receives far less attention: what a property costs to operate after construction is finished.

Every apartment community creates an operating model through its design. The number of entrances, location of mechanical systems, materials used in units, configuration of common spaces, maintenance access, technology infrastructure, and even the distance employees travel across a property can influence how many people and how much time it takes to operate the building.

Those decisions can remain embedded in the property for decades.

That raises an important question for developers trying to create more attainable housing:

Can we design buildings that are less expensive to manage?

Increasingly, we believe the answer is yes.

And that idea is becoming an important part of how Green Harvest Capital thinks about Hospitality Integrated Residential, or HIR.

Property Management Costs Begin Before a Property Opens

Property management is typically treated as something that begins after construction.

In reality, many operating costs are determined much earlier.

The National Multifamily Housing Council includes routine maintenance and staffing among the ongoing costs of operating apartment communities. Once a property opens, operators have to work within the physical environment the development team created.

A complicated building requires complicated operations.

A property with numerous mechanical systems requires more systems to inspect and maintain. A large collection of specialized finishes requires more replacement materials. Amenities scattered throughout a development require additional cleaning and oversight. Poorly located maintenance rooms increase the amount of time technicians spend moving between tasks.

Individually, those decisions can seem minor.

Across hundreds of units and decades of operation, they can become meaningful expenses.

Better design asks developers to consider those costs before they become permanent.

What Does Operations-Focused Multifamily Design Look Like?

Designing for operational efficiency does not necessarily mean eliminating amenities or reducing the resident experience.

Often, it means removing unnecessary complexity.

Consider something as simple as unit finishes.

If every apartment uses different flooring, fixtures, appliances, paint, or hardware, maintenance teams need to stock more replacement products. Procurement becomes more complicated. Unit turns may take longer when a particular material is unavailable.

Standardization changes that equation.

A smaller set of durable materials can allow operators to purchase products at greater scale, maintain a more predictable inventory of replacement parts, train teams around consistent systems, and simplify apartment turns.

The same principle can apply throughout a development.

Mechanical systems can be designed for easier access. Storage can be positioned closer to where supplies are actually needed. Technology infrastructure can support remote monitoring and centralized operations. Common areas can be located where one team can oversee several functions.

The goal is straightforward:

Design the property around the way people will actually operate it.

Why Unit Turns Are a Design Issue

Few moments expose the connection between design and operations as clearly as a unit turn.

When one resident moves out and another moves in, teams may need to repair walls, replace flooring, service appliances, change hardware, paint, clean, inspect, and prepare the apartment for its next occupant.

The more complicated the unit, the more complicated that process becomes.

Industry research increasingly emphasizes standardization as a way to make turns more efficient. Standardized paint, hardware, flooring, appliances, and supply kits can reduce sourcing complexity and make maintenance processes more repeatable.

Design can take that thinking further.

• What if apartments were designed from the beginning around components that are durable, replaceable, widely available, and familiar to maintenance teams?
• What if developers evaluated finishes based on lifecycle cost rather than installation cost alone?

A product that costs slightly more during construction may be less expensive if it lasts longer, requires fewer repairs, or can be replaced faster.

That changes the design question from:

What does this cost to install?

to:

What will this cost to own?

Shared Spaces Can Create Shared Operating Efficiency

This idea becomes particularly important in Hospitality Integrated Residential.

HIR brings extended-stay hospitality and long-term residential housing together through a coordinated operating platform.

Traditional mixed-use development may place apartments and a hotel next to one another while operating each as a separate business.

HIR is designed around greater operational integration.

That creates opportunities to rethink the physical property itself.

Instead of building two completely independent operating infrastructures, certain functions may be able to serve multiple uses.

A shared management area could support hospitality employees and residential property teams. Common maintenance infrastructure could support both sides of the property. Technology, security, access control, storage, receiving, and certain resident or guest services could potentially be coordinated across the development.

The exact operating model will vary by project, but the underlying principle remains the same:

Shared operations work better when the real estate is designed to support them.

That is one reason HIR has to begin at the design table rather than after construction.

Better Design Can Also Support Centralized Property Management

Across multifamily, operators are increasingly exploring centralized property management.

Some administrative work can already be handled across multiple properties. Leasing inquiries, resident communication, accounting, procurement, and maintenance triage do not necessarily require separate teams at every individual community.

Maintenance is beginning to follow a similar model.

Multifamily Dive has reported on operators creating centralized maintenance teams that serve clusters of nearby properties. Service requests can be triaged centrally and routed to technicians based on location and expertise, allowing operators to use specialized employees across several communities.

But centralized operations become easier when properties share similar systems.

Imagine a portfolio where technicians encounter the same appliances, fixtures, access systems, flooring, mechanical equipment, and maintenance procedures from property to property.

• Training becomes more repeatable.
• Inventory becomes simpler.
• Procurement becomes more scalable.
• Technicians become more familiar with the problems they are likely to encounter.

In that sense, standardized design can create an operating platform that extends beyond a single building.

Hospitality Offers a Useful Operating Model

Hospitality has spent decades thinking about many of these questions.

Hotel brands operate properties across different markets while maintaining recognizable design standards, procurement systems, technology platforms, operating procedures, and service expectations.

That standardization allows operators to create repeatable systems.

Residential development has historically been more fragmented.

Every property can become its own collection of materials, vendors, systems, and operating processes.

HIR creates an opportunity to borrow some of the operational discipline of hospitality and apply it to housing.

The objective is not to make an apartment feel like a hotel room.

It is to ask whether the systems behind hospitality can help residential properties operate more efficiently.

That distinction matters.

Residents still want homes that feel comfortable, personal, and permanent. Operational standardization should happen largely behind the scenes, where it can reduce complexity without reducing the quality of the living experience.

Can Lower Property Management Costs Make Housing More Attainable?

Operating efficiency alone will not solve the housing affordability challenge.

Land, construction, financing, taxes, insurance, and regulatory costs remain significant parts of the equation.

But operating costs are one of the areas where owners have some ability to influence the economics over time.

If a property requires fewer duplicated functions, experiences less maintenance complexity, uses durable materials, completes unit turns faster, consumes less energy, and allows employees to work more efficiently, those savings can improve the long-term economics of the asset.

For workforce housing, that matters.

The challenge with attainable housing has always been that rents have to remain within reach of middle-income households while the property still has to generate enough revenue to cover its costs.

Reducing operating complexity can help narrow that gap.

Rather than beginning with the question, “How little can we spend to build this property?” developers may need to ask a broader question:

How efficiently can we design this property to operate for the next 30 years?

Designing the Operating Model Alongside the Building

The next generation of housing may require developers, architects, contractors, and operators to collaborate much earlier.

• Property managers understand which materials fail most often.
• Maintenance teams know which systems are difficult to access.
• Housekeeping teams understand which layouts take longer to clean.
• Procurement teams know which products create unnecessary supply-chain complexity.
• Hospitality operators understand how staffing patterns change based on building layout.

Those insights should influence design before drawings are finalized.

That is especially important for HIR.

If hospitality and residential uses are going to share infrastructure, services, technology, and operations, those efficiencies cannot simply be added after the property opens.

They have to be designed into the project.

The Future of Affordable Housing May Be Operational

The housing industry will continue searching for ways to reduce construction costs.

Modular construction, prefabrication, standardized building systems, financing innovation, and regulatory reform all have roles to play.

But affordability does not end when construction does.

A building will be operated for far longer than it will be built.

That means some of the most consequential decisions affecting housing costs may happen years before the first maintenance request, apartment turn, or lease renewal.

At Green Harvest Capital, that is one of the ideas we are exploring through Hospitality Integrated Residential.

If we can design housing that requires fewer duplicated resources, creates simpler maintenance systems, supports shared services, and allows teams to operate more efficiently, we may be able to improve the economics of housing without sacrificing the resident experience.

The building and the operating model should not be designed separately.

They are two parts of the same system.

And if we want to make housing more attainable, designing that system better may be one of the most overlooked places to start.

Sources

• National Multifamily Housing Council, Housing Affordability Toolkit
• National Multifamily Housing Council, Student Housing Income and Expense Survey
• Multifamily Dive, “The Pros, Cons of Centralized Maintenance,” Aug. 20, 2024
• Green Harvest Capital, “How Hospitality Integrated Residential Could Expand Workforce Housing in Ohio”
• Method Co., ROOST Apartment Hotel, residential hospitality platform overview