“We are not special” is not a phrase you expect to hear coming out of the mouth of any business owner, especially within the crowded and competitive urban infill and custom home building sector. But that is precisely how sisters Monique Short and Erica Emery chose to describe their six-year-old construction company, Monarch Properties.

“I think the thing that makes us special is that we don’t think we’re special,” Emery says. “You talk to other people and they think, ‘I can do it and no one else can.’ But we look at it as providing an avenue for people to have the home they want. I don’t think that we’re special in any kind of way because we build houses. Other people build houses. I think that people enjoy working with us because they enjoy the process of working with us.”

With residences such as The Baldwin, The Robinson, The Marshall, The Wheatley and King’s Court under their belts, it’s hard to argue with their logic. Construction was not a field the two had grown up in or ever thought to turn into a career. Emery owned a business with her husband, while Short was in outside sales before they founded the company. The only experience they had was gutting and remodeling their own homes.

Short and Emery, who also have two brothers, had been kicking around an idea of a project they could do as a group to start planning for retirement. One of the ideas that came to the forefront was rental properties, but the idea of buying run-down residences and flipping houses didn’t appeal to them. “We talked about just building new homes,” Short says. “Then, by the time all of us were ready for retirement in 15 to 20 years, we could have the mortgages paid off on whatever rental properties we built. Then we would have the cash flow for retirement purposes. So that started us down the path of doing construction.”

One of the first decisions Short and Emery made was to partner with Todd Ehlers, who became a mentor to them, on their first project: two sets of townhouses in Northeast Oklahoma City. Since then, Monarch Properties has grown and become a rising star in the custom home market, and specifically urban infill.

Emery described their style as soft modern. It’s a thoughtful approach, incorporating comfortable living, up-to-date styling, wood, warmth and natural light. “We are very conscious of building and designing things the way we would want to live,” Emery says.

Even with the growth Monarch Properties has experienced, Emery and Short consider themselves a boutique firm. They are not looking to “crank out” 120 homes a year, nor do they aspire to become the biggest home builders in Oklahoma City.

“The nice thing about the size that we are, it allows us to be more flexible. If a commercial project comes along that is interesting to us or that we would like to be part of, it allows us to say yes to that type of project,” Short says. “And to not feel like we have to take on work that we don’t want to do. That is also a big part of our business model with our custom homes. We don’t build custom homes for every person that comes by. We feel like it needs to be a really good fit for us and the client, because building somebody’s house is a really personal thing. The size that we are allows us to have that flexibility.”

PHOTOGRAPHY BY SARAH STRUNK