This week Chris sits down with Lucy Billingsley, Co-founder and Partner of Billingsley Company, the Dallas development firm she started with her husband Henry in 1978.

Lucy is the daughter of Trammell Crow, who built the largest real estate development company in America. She left the family business because she did not want to be a minority vote. She and Henry built their own firm instead, and today they run it with their kids.

Billingsley plays a longer game than almost anyone in real estate. They buy land 30 or 40 years before the growth arrives and hold it until the market is ready. Cypress Waters alone is 1,300 acres zoned for 10,000 apartments and over 12 million square feet of office.

They discuss:
• Why every building they develop goes in the kids' names from day one
• The rule that keeps siblings from ever voting on each other's deals
• The lake at Cypress Waters they bought for 50 cents a foot
• The difference between a park people look at and a park people actually use
• Why new office space now rents for more than Dallas has ever seen
• Where AI is already saving them real money in construction

Timestamps:
(00:00) Intro
(00:52) Building a Family Business and Putting Assets in the Kids' Names
(05:55) From the Dallas Market Center Into Development
(09:15) Picking Land and Staying Ahead of the Growth Wave
(14:33) Designing the Public Arena to Make a Place
(18:00) Zoning Is an Art, Not a Guarantee
(20:52) What Cities Want and What the State Took Away
(22:31) The Future of Office and Why Amenities Win
(28:44) How They Decide What to Build and Where to Buy Next
(33:15) The Events Business and Public-Private Partnerships
(36:52) Buying a Lake for 50 Cents a Foot and Draining It
(37:54) Construction Costs and the Frozen Single Family Market
(42:07) Reinventing Herself and the Cypress Waters Trail
(46:37) Going All In on AI

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