Designing Dreams: How Trilogy Partners Builds Mountain Homes That Last

🔊 Episode Description:

In this episode of Mountain Real Estate, host Candice De sits down with longtime Summit County builder and designer Michael Rath of Trilogy Partners. With 25 years of experience and roots in both the film and construction industries, Michael shares how his background in production management helped him build a unique business model that blends creativity, technology, and transparency.

From 3D modeling and collaborative design to the deep client relationships that last well beyond project completion, Michael opens up about what makes his custom homebuilding process different — and why it matters. We also explore building trends in Summit County, the shift toward smarter and more efficient homes, and what future homeowners should know before taking the leap.

Whether you’re dreaming of a mountain getaway or preparing for a major investment, this episode offers valuable insight into building in the high country.

📍 Topics Covered:

• Michael’s journey from New York’s film industry to mountain homebuilding
• How technology like 3D design improves budget control and client experience
• The importance of trust and compatibility in builder-client relationships
• Current trends in mountain real estate and home design
• Advice for families planning a new build in Summit County

🔔 Subscribe for more real estate insights from Denver to Summit County!
📩 Contact Candice De: candice@amynakos.com| 📞 303-870-9300 | 🌐 candicede.com | amynakos.com

#MountainRealEstate #NewBuild #SummitCountyRealEstate #FriscoColorado #FamilyInvestments #RealEstatePodcast #ColoradoHomes

Transcript

Welcome to Mountain Real Estate, where we bring you the latest insights on real estate from Denver to Summit County, Colorado. I'm your host, Candice De, a realtor, investor, engineer, mom, and Colorado native. 

All right, welcome to Mountain Real Estate. Today we are going to have a conversation with Michael Rath. So welcome, Michael. 

I'm very happy to be here. 

Awesome. Michael, why don't you tell us about yourself? 

I've been a resident of Summit County for 25 years, and I like to play outside as much as everybody else does up here. And I also have a business, actually two businesses. One of them is Trilogy Partners. It's a construction management company. I specialize in single family homes. And then I also have a design company which does interior design and all sorts of high-tech modeling and stuff like that for the same market. We have some cool toys and you get to actually see them. You get to design them and see them come to life.  I love that. It's you know, lots of builders, they're not part of the design process and a lot of designers aren't part of the build process. And, you know, we're basically nose to tail. We're there at the birth and we're there when we give the house finally over to the parents that are going to raise it for the rest of its life. So that's one of the ways we think of it. 

That's a good way of putting it because it's like coming from coming home from the hospital, but you still got to raise it and make sure it turns out all right at the end of the day. 

Yeah, I’m the parent until I give it up to the final parents. There's a lot of different steps and stages where something gets passed along again and again and again to new people. 

Yeah, that’s great. So tell us a little bit more about Trilogy. How did it start and what is your specialty? 

Well, my brother and I were living in New York City and we were both involved in the motion picture business.  And that's a very stressful business.  And so we were, you know, long time visitors of Colorado and our mother actually lived out here. And so we decided to take some time off.  And so after a couple of weeks out here, we started to get a little bit bored and antsy because we were used to working so much. So we thought, well, why don't we look for a house to flip? So we looked around for a house to remodel. We couldn't find one. And then. We happened upon this company that provided timber frames for new construction. We started talking to them before we knew it, we bought a lot and we were digging a hole in the ground and building our first house.  And what happened was we learned a heck of a lot, but we were farm boys. So we're used to a lot of having to know a lot of different, you know, we know how to swing a hammer and we also know how to do a budget. We finished the first house and it sold immediately and we thought, well, maybe we're pretty good at this. And then we decided to put off going back to New York City for a while and we built a second house.  And it was bigger and fancier than the first one and that sold right away. And we had entered the second house in the Parade of Homes and suddenly we had people calling us saying, “will you build our house for us?” And by that time we were...  you know, so in love with the Colorado lifestyle and we're starting to forget about our film career. So that's kind of how it started. We just went from the first house to the second to the third, and then it became a real business. And here I am 25 years later. 

Crazy. That's awesome. I do want to go back before we go forward. Were you a movie star in New York or what were you doing? 

I went to New York because I wrote a short film, but once they found out that I'd been to business school. They were more interested in whether I was good with spreadsheets than whether I was a good writer. And that's kind how it goes in Hollywood. There's lots of people who want to write something and there's not many people who want to manage projects. So that's how I got into film as a production manager and production auditor. I basically control the purse strings of the projects. They were mostly in lower budget independent films when they were all the rage back in New York City in the 90s and early  2000s. 

Nice. So if you can handle movie production management, then you can definitely handle construction crews.  

It's actually very funny because the first house we budgeted, we used a budgeting program that we use for film.  And we just changed the names, but they are very, very similar. And I think that's one of the reasons we've been successful. Part of the reason to successful as builders is because, you know, the financial management part of it is absolutely critical. And also the planning before you start building is absolutely critical. And in movie production, we have long pre-production periods where we make sure that everything is planned down to the smallest detail. Because once you start shooting, you can't waste any time and everybody has to be in the right place at the right time, you know, for every single day. Organization is key. 

That's awesome. So you took what you learned in the theater business and you and your brother built a couple houses and then you decided to keep going. And you're managing the projects is one of your tools or one of your niches.  What tools do you use to do that? And I think you have a special tool, right? 

Well, we have, we have, there's a number of different ways to manage a project, you know, on the, on the financial end of course, there's, there's budgeting and,  you know, knowing what things are going to cost before you start a project. We use a project management platform. We, you know, we've gone from spreadsheets to very organized platform. That's also an interface for all of the subcontractors and the owners. So it's a very transparent system. The other thing we do is if we're involved during architecture and the design period, we use  3D modeling to manage our projects. And that may sound a little bit strange, but we have a process called project management modeling because as we build the house in the computer, we uncover, you know, whatever difficulties we're going to have during construction. And some of those are errors and omissions caused by, you know, different design partners that we have not being in sync with one another. But so it's a kind of a  twofold process with project management platforms and then also the 3D modeling process. We say we’re gonna build it several times in the computer before we build it in the real world. And that's one of the things that makes us very, very different and why our projects are usually right on budget and on time. There's also the experience that the owner has. They get to live in the house before we've even started to build it and they get to uncover the problems and explore possibilities that they wouldn't otherwise be able to see with 2D drawings. That's basically our organizational processes. It  is the modeling process and then the project management platform. 

I come from an engineering background and it's civil engineering where we do transportation and inevitably, they get in the field and they find a utility, and it's the same as new home construction. You get out there and you discover,  oh,  actually, well, this actually happened today. We built in the setback. That's a whole other issue. Or your plumbing is interacting with your electrical in a way that you don't want. What I've learned in the engineering world is those are expensive and harder to mitigate when you do them in the field.  But if you can look at them, overlay them together upfront, it's a lot easier to mitigate and a lot less expensive. 

Yeah, real world problems are real world problems, but problems in the computer are very, usually very cheap and easy to fix. That's in a way, you know, I think of most houses are built, most of the houses we're building, which are, you know, custom homes are only built once. So imagine if somebody came  to you and said, just designed this car  and there's only been one of them ever made and do you want to buy it? And you would be like,  I probably don’t because  nobody's tested it.  You don't know what's going to happen when you're 500 miles from home, right?  But most people are willing to do that with a custom home. And what we thought is, well, maybe our process can put some mileage on the house before the people even move in.  Solving a problem in design is very inexpensive, solving it during construction is not. And a lot of it is stuff that no one really thought was going to happen, or they would have fixed it earlier. You're in something, and then you discover a problem. Like you can't vent a fireplace. You have a fireplace in a room and there's code requirements and suddenly that fireplace can't be a fireplace because there's no way to get the vent out of the room.  And  you know, we've discovered all sorts of problems like that and we're like, hey, stop. You know, we're not ready to go. Let's spend a little bit more time on design and figure it out before we start spending the clients’ money. 

That's awesome. I feel like that's what clients like to hear.  They like controlled risk and not spending too much money. 

Yeah, I should have used an analogy of a plane. No one would ever get in a plane that's never flow.  Uou know what I'm saying.  

Yeah. So you've obviously been doing this for a long time. You've helped a lot of different people. You started with your brother as a farm boy coming from New York. What is your why? What makes you continue to do this 25 years later? 

That's a good question. Well, I, I love their creative process and I actually, when I first got into this business, you know, you discover things about yourself when you take on a different role. And I discovered that I have a head for design and you know, I didn't know that. So I love creating things. I love taking something that's just an idea and then being able to drive by it five years later and it went from an idea to a real thing. And people are living there and enjoying their lives.  But I think the biggest part is the collaboration with my clients. You know, most of my clients have a dream, they have families, and this dream has been long standing and I'm the one that gets to help them deliver it. And it's a very big, important dream. I mean, it's one of the biggest decisions they're ever gonna make, and they've saved for that dream and they've hoped for that dream and they never thought it would become real. And then you're there the day that you hand the keys to them and their dream is a reality. And it's a wonderful  feeling to be able to  provide that. So that relationship, part of it is super important to me.  I love collaboration. That's one of the things about film I love too. It was a whole bunch of really smart people getting together and doing something that hadn't been done before. I also love working with most of my subcontractors. We have  a few tough ones here and there, but most of those guys, you know, you're a part of helping them provide for their families. Most of them have children.  And, you know,  it's nice to be part of a community that's actually  making good things in this world, right?  And leaving a legacy behind.  I was yesterday in a home. and a guy who was a hardwood flooring installer walked in and I recognized him, but not completely. And he came up to me and he said, Mike, how you been? And I realized he was now a guy in his mid, maybe 40. And when I first met him, he was like 18 years old, just starting out in the business. So he remembered me a little better than I did him because he looked completely different. But that was so cool. And we spent some time talking about projects we'd done together, and it was really a nice moment. So I like that part of it, too. People, I guess. Collaborating with people, meeting new people. I really enjoy that. 

That's awesome. And that's good to hear that it's on both sides, like the client side and working with them, but also your teams and the community and the people that we... live by and work by and play with are also part of your teams. 

Exactly. 

That's awesome. What would your clients say about you? 

I think it depends. You know, my, my clients going back 25 years, you know, they're, they're in my life forever. I'm in their life forever. That's one of the great things about this business. When you build somebody a home, you're going to be with each other forever.  I think that some of them would say, well, you know, I'm a super creative guy because we work together creatively. A lot of times when I'm working with a husband and a wife, and so one of those partners will have different responsibilities than the other. So, and it's not necessarily the guy is the money and the woman is the creative, you know, that's a stereotype. But I think that the people who are the creative side of that relationship would say, oh, he's so creative and he can draw anything and it's just amazing. And I would never do anything without 3D modeling. And  I think the financial person  in that relationship with me would say, well, he's super organized and he really cares about the money. And I know he lays asleep at night trying to figure out how to make something work for us that we really want but maybe can't afford. And it is true.  We all take this very seriously. Even my employees will care. I'm going to get a text at like two in the morning. Like, what do you think about this? They're worried about something. There's a problem that they need to  solve. We're always very, very concerned about the project, but also how the clients, about making the clients feel as good as we can make them feel during a process that also often has a lot of ups and downs. But I think I would like to think that any project and any client I've ever had that they know how much we really care about them and the project and their happiness. I think, it's, you know, you can call that integrity, you know, honesty, whatever. We just want to do the right thing because if we don't do the right thing, we don't sleep well. So we continue to do the right thing. So they would probably say that about me. I'm a persistent warrior.  I'm a persistent  warrior and worrier.  

If you run out of things to worry about, we've got lots of  unsolvable problems here in the De household that we can share with you if you're getting too much sleep. 

No, that's really ok.

I feel like that's very compelling. That’s type of relationship is what we strive for in the real estate side of the business. I think the builder, the builder side of real estate, we don't hear that as often. And I think some of that is builders are building to scale or they're building large developments. And that's, that's obviously a different business model than what you have. So yours is very high touch and very personal. And the fact that you said you build these lifelong relationships with your clients and you're in the same community as them,  many years later is a very different builder-client relationship than is my typical perspective of new build developers. And that's refreshing to hear. 

Yeah, I think, you know, there's a downside to being a pleaser and that you're always trying to make other people happy and sometimes that's not possible. But, you know, if I was going to advise someone on who to partner with for you know, a new home construction, single family, custom home construction. I would say you definitely want somebody, first of all, with supreme organizational skills and then somebody who's a pleaser and, you know, has a lot of experience. The creative part of it is super important too. But, you know, I mean, if your builder is not a quote unquote, pleaser and is not well organized, keep looking. 

Yeah. Yeah, that's great advice.  So we've talked a little bit about what your client's perspective is of you. Who is the ideal client for your type of work? 

That's a really good question because I want to do a good job for anybody and everybody, but I also believe in the  psychological pairing. It's kind of like you’re going  to be in a partnership with these people. There's a contract involved and there's money involved and all this kind of stuff. So you're basically going into business with somebody for a couple of years. For me, when I was describing what I love about the business, I love the creative side of it, but I also love the business side of it. So I would like, my favorite clients, you know, one of my clients is a, a CEO  and of a pretty large 5,000 person company. He was a dream to work with because the business side of it, and he knows about the ups and downs of business and that every sub that walks in the door is not going to be perfection.  And, you know, he knows how to roll with the punches and he likes to get into the numbers and figure out ways to make things happen. You know, that's one of my favorite clients, highly organized, experienced business person. And then I love people that are hyper creative  and will sit with me while we're designing. I mean, it's like being in a dream state. Three or four or five hours go by and suddenly you go, what happened? And then you're looking at what you created on the screen and it's like, wow, how did we even get there? I mean, that  was nothing. And then look at this, this is going to be so great. So that side of it is great. I also like clients who trust me, who've done their research and know that I have the experience that I have and have done a deep dive on me. I had some celebrity clients, fairly famous people that I did a couple of houses with. And at one point I said to them, you guys placed an awful lot of trust in me. How is it you don't know me that well. And they're like, dude, we did the deep dive.  We know how it is when a producer is standing over our backs telling us how to make a movie.  That drives us crazy. So there's no way we want to be the producer standing over your back telling you how to build a house.  And so I like it when people let me kind of do my thing too. That freedom is, you know, it's inspiring.  When somebody trusts you like that, you just go the distance and then you go even further for them. 

Yeah, that's awesome. It's hard to let go sometimes, but trusting the experts feel like it always pans out better than not trusting them. I'm a control freak, so I have a hard time letting go, but I'm sure your clients are better. 

Yeah, I'm not running a bungee jumping company. I like it when they can just sort of relax into the process. And it's funny. I'll tell them that this should not be. Stressful.  I have their back, try to enjoy it. I think they enjoy it in retrospect. They're like, remember when we were doing this? Remember how this came to be? And this is so cool. They don't remember the bad moments. So I try to tell them to look forward  and enjoy the process. It may be a once in a lifetime journey that we're all on together, so you might as well make the most of it. 

Yeah. And I love what you said earlier about, this is a dream for a lot of people and they've worked really hard and saved a lot of money and planned for it. And you're just helping those dreams come to fruition. That's very rewarding to see. I think a lot of times people are like, oh, well, they're just really rich and they are lucky that they can do this. But there's a lot of people that have worked very hard and this is really the culmination of a lot of hard work. So, it's cool to see how you work with them and bring that dream to life. 

Yeah, you know, we're not an Aspen where you have that generational wealth. You know, a lot of my clients are doctors.  I mean, I can't even think right now of any of my clients who came in with this sort of entitlement that you sometimes see from people who have a lot of money, but didn't necessarily earn it.  All the people I've built for worked really, really hard and they raised kids and, you know, it's, it is kind of funny because I built for a doctor and his family about six or seven years ago. And they had kids that were still in high school, but they were already imagining grandkids. So you're planning for the next couple of decades. And that's really amazing to be thinking that far ahead. And yeah, it's a special place to be. 

It is.  I did a podcast recently with some friends that have a house with their parents and they have kids. I have other friends that have a multi-generation house and it's really like everybody has said, it's not the fancy kitchen or that you have 10 beds that can actually sleep everyone. It's the fact that you have a place that people want to be together and you can like create those memories and that's where your grandkids play, and you get to spend the most time with your kids and grandkids. And it becomes more than just a house. It's really like a home. 

Yeah, a lot of the times the houses in Summit are kind of  a honey pot or a gathering spot where, the kids that are now all over the country come back for the holidays. And, most people love coming to the mountains and Summit county.  It’s a gathering place that you're creating for them.  But I  don't want anyone to think that I don't want to design and build for people who don't have really nice, big, big budgets because that’s where we get super creative and that's where some of our tools really have their biggest impact, being able to manage larger projects that are more complex, that have more pieces and parts to them, managing bigger budgets. You know, when I worked in film, I was managing some pretty large budgets. So we know how to do that too. 

So your tools can be scaled up or down. 

It's really interesting because a lot of what we're doing now and we're ahead of the curve, is we're adopting more of a commercial management, project management scenario than most home builders. It just like we were early to jump on a lot of the high-tech stuff, which is 3D design and rendering and being able to build a house in the computer first.  Our management practices are very commercial, a lot of it's about money management. And so we looked at the Burj Khalifa in Dubai, the biggest building, tallest building in the world, how do you build something like that? Well, it's an incredible undertaking and there's so much organization and technology involved in developing a building like that and so many skill sets.  And what we've been able to do because of technology, it's really expensive at first and it's very unaffordable, but it gradually becomes less and less expensive. We grabbed for that technology about 10 years ago and we started pulling it all into what we do. So we're using the same, a lot of the same process and the procedures that you would use on a building, billion dollar building because they became affordable. It also meant we had to spend a lot of weekends learning how to do new things, right? They say, you can't teach an old dog new tricks. Well, we don't believe that, and we're learning every single day here. We're very competitive and one of the things that we try to do is stay ahead of the technology firms and do it from what companies, you know, 50, 100 times larger than us would do. And, so we've gotten the reputation for being very tech savvy and employ that technology to the fullest. And, even on our team, everybody has an iPad these days, but we're going to have that 3D home that we built in the office, we're going to have that 3D home with us on a job site so we can answer questions readily with an iPad. The same thing goes with our communication with our subcontractors. It's all done in a very sophisticated and efficient way so that if there's ever an issue that we can backtrack and find where the problem lies and solve it.  We're small, but we're very large. 

Small but mighty. 

Small but mighty, right. Yeah.  

Well, that's really cool. I feel like there's a lot more that we could tap into with kind of your technology. But I want to take us kind of macro level. So for some of our listeners that are maybe thinking about buying a house in the mountains or maybe building, I know we're in a  volatile time with the macroeconomics. How do you think that affects our next few years of construction? And then like, what are you seeing in Summit County specifically with challenges or opportunities? 

Well, you know, building in Summit County is always a challenge in terms of  what it costs to build here. You know, it's, there's a lot of reasons for that. That's not going to change. I'm a big believer in sustainable construction and all of that, but you're gonna see even more of that.  So that’s adding also to the price of the house.  People worry a lot about what things are gonna cost. And I think sometimes they worry more about that than how those costs are gonna be managed. And we've actually become better at managing the cost of these homes through our management systems. Well, the cost of our homes hasn't gone up since, you know, even COVID. So that's because you become better at managing money and you get better subs and you have fewer problems. So I would say we all have concerns about the economy, seems like that's never ending, especially in Summit County or, or any of the mountain regions.  I'm not hyper concerned about that. Interest rates are higher than they used to be, but I can't predict the future, but I'm not saying that houses are gonna become twice as expensive as they were before. It's just more important that you find somebody that knows how to manage your money well. Other trends… we don't have as much vacant land in Summit County as we used to. So people are looking over to Park County and other adjacent counties where they can have an equivalent mountain lifestyle. In Summit County, we have a lot of old inventory out there, a lot of houses that were built in the, some in the 70s, 80s, 90s that are functionally a little bit obsolete, depending on how well they were maintained, but from an energy standpoint. You know, all of them are not nearly as efficient as what we're building today. The other trend we're seeing is, and I'm a big proponent of,  is smaller. We're often able to scale the size of a house down so the clients can, can do more with less. And that's a great way to save money too, right? Just to have as great a house, but there's no wasted space in it. And 3d design is incredible for that. So that's what I'm seeing is houses just not being quite as large as they used to be. An eight or nine or 10,000 foot monster is, I guess for some people it'll always be necessary, but for the vast majority of people, that's not necessary. So I think in general,  what used to be a 5,000 square foot house is probably gonna be more like a 4,200 square foot house. We're seeing that.  What I'm saying is don’t be discouraged. Just find the right team that can get you want what you want, maybe for less money than you thought, even with prices, prices rising. 

Yeah, that's definitely inspiring to hear that there's a lot of big mainstream media, but then there's boots on the ground and there are still people that are able to fulfill their dreams and there might be changes, but they're not as drastic as what we're hearing. 

We survived through adaptation and sometimes that adaptation, we thought it was going to be a hardship, but it ends up being a blessing. 

That's good. I feel like we should just stop right there.  I have one more question, but that was really good. And I really loved what you said about space is getting more efficient and smaller. I just had a client the other day that was like, well, there's two living spaces, which might be nice for some, but I actually want all of my family to be together in the living space. So I think you're right that we went through this phase of like bigger and more, and I think we're in this contraction phase where it's quality over quantity in a sense. 

Yeah, well, we had that whole van life thing going on. People were willing to live small. And then we had tiny homes. So we're not we're not going to those extremes. But no,  I mean,  ultimately, your happiness is not measured in square feet. 

So that's a good point. And anyone who's lived in a van or tiny home or in our case, a camper for 40 days together will say that's a short term solution. It's definitely not a long term solution.  All right, so final question here, Michael. I think this has been awesome and you've had a lot of good words of wisdom. What advice would you have for somebody who's thinking about, I've finally made it, I've got the finances in order, my kids are maybe done with college or whatever it might be, they're planning for their grandkids and they're ready to make that leap for a lifestyle investment in the mountains. They're thinking about a new build, what advice would you have for them?  

Not to sound self-serving, but give me a call. 

Call Michael first.  

And we'll see if the relationship thing is  there. And  I'm joking. I just think that people really need to put as much... You know, I go back to the whole thing about partnership. You choose your partners and friends in life, choose wisely. You know, do your research, spend, be patient upfront. Cause a lot of times people want to get going. And even though a house, from the time we designed it to build it, it's going to take a couple of years, still be patient. The house will take less time to build if you put more time preparing upfront.  It's a journey. You don't fly to another country and just walk up to somebody on  the street and say,  you take me across the country and show me. You do your research and you follow and find or you find a good guide and you follow that person and you actually  trust them because you've done your research.  I just think, and the other thing is there. The best builder or the best designer, the best architect, maybe doesn't have the largest marketing platform. It’s the same thing. Don't necessarily fall for something that's  just loud and shiny and all of those kinds of stuff when you're hiring somebody in our profession. You know, just do your due diligence and rely on your common sense.  

Thanks for joining us today on Mountain Real Estate.  I'm Candice De. If the mountains are calling you, reach out to me.  See you next time.