What We Do
Our Model
Too often, builders create a housing complex the standard way: one company develops and designs the plans, a construction company actually builds it, and a different management company handles day-to-day operations once the building is finished. Each one of those companies needs to make a profit and charges accordingly; those markups end up being reflected in the final price of rent – which prices lots of lower-income families out of good housing complexes.
We know affordable workforce housing is becoming a flashpoint issue across the Midwest, so we decided to solve the problem by collecting all three companies – development, construction and management – under one roof.
Vertical Integration
Defined: “the combination in one company of two or more stages of production normally operated by separate companies.”
In practice: the strategy that sets us apart.
Our Services
Development
Our approach to housing development is grounded in the strength of our relationships. Every project starts with an opportunity. Thanks to enduring connections from previous projects, many of Stencil Group’s opportunities come to our executive team directly.
Years of experience and relationship building in the communities we serve have led to multiple successful housing development projects in each. From land acquisition to tax increment financing and zoning, Stencil Group’s straight-forward, honest approach has earned sturdy links with city groups, planners, architects, and contractors.
After ten years of experience in housing development, processes like determining viability, creating design, and financing are familiar to our executive team. We know what needs to happen and who we need to do it, as efficiently as possible. An example: Our buildings often take the bones of older projects and fine tune the designs to new geographic locations – a practice that ensures dependability and spreads the cost of development over multiple projects.
Construction
As a commercial builder, Stencil Group has built over 28 buildings and counting. Each one is still standing, serving as homes to numerous families and individuals. Those homes were built with the hard work of our trusted subcontractors. While all active projects always have a Stencil Group superintendent on site, the rest of the tradespeople are subcontractors – subcontractors who we have built strong and enduring relationships with.
We like to say that no one does ‘just one’ building with Stencil. For as long as we have been a commercial builder, we have been cultivating strong bonds with the tradespeople who build our projects. Our superintendents are our first point of contact with our builders, so we hire construction industry veterans, with the work ethic, communication skills, and logistical minds necessary for a successful build. In recent years, labor and material shortages have stressed timelines and budgets. Our longstanding relationships with our subcontractors have allowed us to overcome any logistical surprise with strength.
Management
Our buildings are investments, and we protect them with our in-house property management team, Elation Property Management. Elation is a high performance, full service property management company with over 10 years of experience in the rental environment. Our team of hand-picked professionals is beyond trustworthy with properties and investments.
We hire managers who are strong, reliable, and kind. They are also hands-on, responsive, and attentive to details. Every building we manage receives regular check-ins from corporate property management team members, ensuring that conditions are kept to our exacting standards.
Our stellar staff is complimented by state-of-the art property management software, which allows tenants to complete an application online, make a maintenance request online, examine their rent and payment history, and pay their rent online.
Investment
Our vertically-integrated approach to commercial development, building, and property management is a testament to the full support we put behind projects we take on. We continue working long after a building is finished to ensure that the community investment continues to be viable and protected. The longer a building stands and thrives, the longer the community investment brings returns.
Funding these projects means working with investors around the nation. The consistent reliability of a Stencil Group project attracts repeat shareholders. It has also started to attract community investment; as we develop more mixed-income projects, the ability to provide value for the community, tenants, and our investors continues to grow. Our reliable, honest, and repeatedly successful approach to financing, development, construction, and management is full spectrum.
What sets us apart is the relationships we have cultivated with everyone along the construction continuum; relationships built from the simple idea that partners should know what to expect at each step of the journey and have their investment protected.