Developing communities and homes that foster a vibrant lifestyle takes time and patience—something Brookfield Residential Properties and Adrian Foley have in abundance.
The leading home builder and land developer has perfected patience while creating special places, which is why Foley and Brookfield are being recognized with the 2024 Legends Award, an annual recognition for exceptional contributions to the planned-community sector.
As president and CEO of the development group, Foley says, “A key to our success is we have really grown slowly over time and that we have maintained this patient commitment. We are well positioned today for the next 10 years, and more, because we have learned how values compound over a 10-year or 20-year period. There is a whole string of value that comes behind it.”
Brookfield strategically develops its master-planned communities to include a combination of single-family homes, luxury housing, multifamily, commercial spaces, and mixed-use areas.
Ted McKibbin, Brookfield’s U.S. land and housing president of development, says, “A great master plan is designed and carefully planned to provide a broad range of housing opportunities for all levels of buyers and can serve the diverse population in the areas we target. The community should provide great amenities for the future residents, not just a recreation center but also parks and trails for a diverse offering of programmed recreation.”
Considering a master plan as a mixture of uses that are residentially anchored, Foley says Brookfield has roughly 35 to 40 in development with some winding down and others just starting. In addition to its Canadian markets, Brookfield spans the United States from coast to coast with land operations and integrated land and housing operations.
Brookfield has a presence in Arizona, California, Colorado, Florida, Georgia, Hawaii, North Carolina, Oregon, South Carolina, Texas, Washington, and Washington, D.C. The firm owns more than 19,000 lots and manages more than 34,000 in the Central and Eastern regions and owns nearly 21,000 lots and manages over 31,000 on the West Coast.
In Texas alone—where Foley and the team will be honored at Future Place on Oct. 9—Brookfield has eight master-planned communities in various stages of development. “Those communities consist of approximately 17,000 future single-family and multifamily homes,” says Brookfield Residential’s Texas president Brad Chelton.
The Art of Curation
To develop award-winning communities and see the financial benefits, Foley says curation is key. “We like to think of it as builder curation,” he says. “Our builder lineup of who we pick and how we select them to really complement each other makes a difference.”
Tapping into Brookfield’s host of developers across its organization boosts the outcome of each master plan. From retail developers to industrial developers, the company is well suited to craft communities that bring in a variety of home builders, businesses, and residents in different seasons of life.
“We have been in the business a long time and have a unique position in the market as a fully integrated investor and operator. While there are lots of capital providers in the space and lots of home builders and developers, there are very few who do both and do it at the scale that we can,” says Warren Krug, executive vice president and chief investment officer of development at Brookfield Properties.
Looping in the existing community, McKibbin adds, “We work closely with jurisdictional agencies to ensure our planned development has all the necessary services for the future residences, including fire, police, and proper transportation improvements, to ensure there is a pleasant living experience upon move-in.”
It Takes a Team
To develop future-driven communities, Brookfield is centered around the people it will serve as well as the people behind the work. Chelton says, “Brookfield Residential, and Adrian specifically, pursue a people-first, relationship-orientated approach to our business. We cannot control many of the factors that influence our industry, but we can control who we partner with in pursuit of our shared objectives and how we work together over long periods of time. That is the most rewarding aspect of what we do each day.”
McKibbin says, “One of the most important phrases that we live by at Brookfield is that ‘we work with each other, not for each other.’”
“A fundamental quality across Brookfield team members is humility. We know we’re all a work in progress, including our business and our services to our customers and partners. Understanding that helps people new to working with us, that we don’t just believe in teamwork, but value working as a team,” says Margaret Wu, executive vice president and head of corporate operations at Brookfield Properties’ development group.
Huddling with various segments across the organization, Foley and the leadership team strongly believe that what Brookfield accomplishes on a daily and annual basis could not happen without everyone on board as equals. “It is a not about ‘you,’ it's an about ‘we’ organization,” Foley says.
The Leader Behind the Team
Hailing from just outside of London, Foley found his way to California in 1990 with his now-wife of 33 years, Lisa, who is originally from Connecticut. The two bumped into each other in London where they dated for a few years before Lisa suggested moving to the states.
A decision that led to Foley being one of the original team members of a Los Angeles startup in 1996 that would eventually become part of Brookfield Residential Properties, which had $5.2 billion in land and housing assets for the first quarter of 2024.
Foley’s deep love of old buildings and architecture is what landed him in his eventual lifelong career. Following a stint in professional sports in London, Foley pursued real estate and worked for the Greater London Council on old buildings and new and refurbished buildings.
“My emotional attachment to housing became much more of a critical drive for me once I started seeing people living in the places that we built, and that’s even back to when I was in my junior days in London,” he says. “There's so much personal satisfaction that comes from seeing people live in the spaces that you provide.”
While infused with passion for housing and its inhabitants, Foley does not lose sight of the real economic value land and housing can produce. Transitioning from project management to regional roles and eventually his current position, Foley has honed his awareness of the financial side of development and the assets.
Noting that he “followed the path of whatever was in front of him,” Foley says today he enjoys the diversity of his role. “I like meeting new people and interacting across a broader spectrum, but I really do miss working on the assets and understanding everything from the macros to the micro of the real estate.”
Keeping With Change
However, as Foley’s role at Brookfield and the organization’s offerings have evolved, he says the culture is very similar to its start. “We are really driven for tomorrow as opposed to patting ourselves on the back for today, and that hasn’t changed,” he says.
Its future-focused culture is what keeps Brookfield moving forward while embracing the many changes that growth entails. Foley says, “It is the secret sauce. Of course, there are changes that make certain things a little more complicated than they used to be. I can remember thinking, ‘we didn’t use to do that and now we’re doing that,’ but I tend to be a little bit of a glass three-quarters full than a glass half empty guy. I view those things as necessary trade-offs to all the things you get to work on that you have never gotten to work on if you were the old organization.”
This progress includes Brookfield’s further push into land development. “As an industry we have underbuilt for many years, and today the No. 1 issue facing all the large public builders is access to developed land. We think that, coupled with the builders all moving to land-light business models, has created a unique opportunity for somebody like Brookfield to step into the land development space at scale,” Krug says.
McKibbin says Brookfield Residential is focused on securing 2024 home sales to meet their home deliveries plan. He says, “Looking forward we are positioning Brookfield Residential to scale to 4,000 home deliveries by 2028.”
As for operations, Wu says, “The current and near future are focused on data and overall modernizing how we work so we are efficient, effective, and focused on the right things for us, our customers, and our partners.”
No matter how Brookfield advances, its core of producing value in the land it holds and building community for the people who will live there will remain. Foley says, “Whether that is lots for somebody else to deliver a great community or our own community that spans over a 15- or 20-year frame, there’s huge excitement in our organization to deliver so that when you show up, you feel it is a special place.”
