Missing Middle Housing is a transformative concept that highlights the need for diverse, affordable housing choices in sustainable, walkable places.
Thinking Big and Building Small to Respond to Today's Housing Crisis
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We Help Private Developers Make Their Mark
We are the undisputed experts when it comes to Missing Middle Housing. We can help you expand your business model to include Missing Middle Housing types, including finding the right sites, securing funding and connecting with other builders and professionals doing similar work. Looking to target a specific city or neighborhood for strategic investing in MMH? We can help with that, too.
We Help Cities Implement Missing Middle Housing
We can help you bring Missing Middle Housing to your city or town. Perhaps you need an area plan or a specific plan that will remove barriers and spark development of MMH. Maybe you are hoping to integrate MMH into your strategic housing plan, a comprehensive plan or a zoning fix or rewrite. We can kick things off with a Missing Middle Housing Scan™ to better understand the barriers and opportunities, and then get started. We’re here to help!
“Opticos worked closely with us to design a beautiful, diverse neighborhood... It’s been a true pleasure working with them to fulfill my vision.”
— Jerry Reimer, Co-founder, Urban Village Development
We are the chief architects of the Missing Middle Housing movement.
Opticos principal Daniel Parolek coined the term Missing Middle Housing in 2010, transforming the national conversation about the need for more diverse housing choices at affordable prices. Since then, we’ve been driving a radical paradigm shift, urging architects, urban planners, and builders to fundamentally rethink the way they design, locate, regulate and develop homes. Americans want and need more diverse housing choices in walkable neighborhoods; homes that are attainable, sustainable and beautifully designed.
Missing Middle Housing Site Planning and Architecture
Meeting the Demand for Walkable Living
At Opticos, we design custom urban housing types that are different from anything else on the market. We don’t look at the housing types that have been built and sold in the recent past. Instead, we’ve studied a broad range of market segments and we design the kind of homes that people want today. Our designs are new and different, and they’re creating walkable, urban neighborhoods that people want to call home. In doing this, we deliver remarkable efficiencies for our clients while developing high-quality living environments for home buyers and renters. Everybody wins.
The Missing Middle Housing Collection™
Unique, Market-Ready Housing Solutions
Through our work designing Missing Middle Housing for clients across the country, we’ve developed The Missing Middle Housing Collection™ which consists of products ready to meet your needs. Features like 100% efficiencies, high quality private and shared outdoor spaces, and their ability to reinforce a strong sense of community make these attractive to both builders and buyers.
Missing Middle Neighborhoods
Redefining Multifamily Living
We can help you develop a new kind of neighborhood that will attract the growing number of people who prefer to rent, but who don’t want to live in a conventional apartment complex. Some of these folks are just choosing to rent longer, while others are re-entering the rental market in an effort to downsize. Either way, we can help you build a neighborhood composed entirely of Missing Middle Housing rentals, or a combination of rental and for sale units. Not your ordinary multifamily project or new neighborhood!
Featured Projects
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“Opticos' design of the Mews Homes was innovative and differentiated us from the market. It also enabled us to hit a price point near $200,000 that we had been unable to reach with our existing product types. Dan and the Opticos team have been a great partner, and we’re excited to work with them on new, creative projects in the future!"
— Spencer Holmes, Partner and Vice President, Holmes Homes
Bringing Missing Middle Back to Greenville, South Carolina
If you’ve ever been to Greenville, South Carolina, you can understand why so many people want to live there. It’s got a small-town feel, is only a short walk or bike ride into nature and has beautiful tree-lined streets with great physical character. But along with that appeal comes housing-related growing pains: higher housing costs with few choices, aside from detached houses and apartment developments. Recently, Greenville found themselves looking for an innovative approach to address their wide range of housing needs and interests.
How to Use Building Types in Zoning
Building types can be useful in form-based codes where the goal is to enable a fine–grained mix of buildings of varied density and type in walkable neighborhoods. The approach of using building types is also effective in situations where permit streamlining is required and discretionary review is not allowed or significantly limited. For example, in California, Senate Bill 35 requires that only a community’s ‘Objective Design and Development Standards’ apply to multi-family or mixed-use projects. This means that more rather than less clarity in the standards and the community’s expectations is needed. Building types when prepared well offer that needed clarity.
An Agile, Cost-Competitive, Alternative Approach to Class A Multifamily Living Using Missing Middle Housing, Part 2
This is the second part of a two part series, based on recent conversations with our current client, Gerald S. Reimer from Urban Waters based in Omaha, NE, to discuss the Missing Middle neighborhood we planned for him. The first post introduced the project and discussed the benefits of this Missing Middle approach to a multifamily including tiered financing, tiered occupancy, and reduced absorption risk. This post will cover yield to cost efficiencies, flexible programming, and what lies ahead for Missing Middle Housing, especially in our post-pandemic world.
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