He and his wife Terry Matias built this house together. A real estate investor from New York, he built and held a large apartment portfolio in Overtown and ran it for a working life. When he sold it he was in a position to stop. He did not want to stop. He wanted the one thing a portfolio never includes — a house of his own, built to a drawing he chose.
Specification
- Role
- Owner and owner-builder
- Before this
- Real estate investor from New York; built, owned and sold an apartment portfolio in Overtown, Miami
- The decision
- Sold the portfolio; chose to build rather than retire
- This project
- First ground-up house of his own
Leslie's account is his own, as told to the project team. The construction record elsewhere on this site is sourced separately.
From the build team
Leslie ran this site the way a general superintendent runs one — on it, on the subs, every day.
He was either in a very good mood or in a very bad mood; there was no third setting. It was always fair. What you did not do was try to BS Leslie. That got your ass yelled at early in the morning, and you only needed it once.
Academia Development Corp — general contractor
In his own words.
“My dream was to build my own house. I did not know it was going to be this difficult.”
Everyone who builds a house says a version of the second sentence. Almost nobody says it having gone through with it anyway. He was told what an infill lot between two buildings would cost him in time, in sequencing, in every delivery having to come through one gate, and he built it regardless.
“I wanted to leave my legacy.”
That is the whole reason the house is the way it is. A person building to sell does not put a swimming pool on the roof, or a stair turned in glass, or systems sized like a commercial building. Those decisions only make sense if you intend the thing to outlast you.
The punch walk
The owner, at the wall.
Leslie and Toshi at a corner, both looking at the same few inches of wall. An owner who sold a portfolio rather than retire does not hand the last ten percent to somebody else - he stands in the room and argues about a reveal. This is what owner-builder means when the drawings are finished and only the defects are left.
With the carpenters
Going over the specifics.
The owner and the carpenters, on the specifics. Not a walkthrough and not an inspection - the detail being settled in the room by the people who will build it and the man who has to live with it.
On site
The owner, on the job.
