"I love the development business," said Michael Garcia-Carrillo. "I love the headaches, I love everything about it."

Michael Garcia-Carrillo is shown at the site of one of his luxury homes under construction in Pinecrest.

Garcia is just 24 years old, yet he already heads up his own construction company, GC Homes, and says he has eight residential building projects either under way or pending in various parts of South Florida.

A native Miamian, Garcia admits that his road to success may have been a little easier than others since his father already was an established builder when he joined the family business after graduating Gulliver High School in 1992.

"After I got out of high school, I went directly into building homes for my father," he said. "I was a superintendent for my dad.

"The family business was operating, so I just went into it," Garcia continued. "I mean, it would have been dumb for me to go to school to basically learn how to make money. I figured I might as well do it here, on the job. I had all the tools to do it and I was fortunate. It cost my dad a couple of bucks, but we finally got it all down pat and now we're a pretty good running company."

Garcia remembers the first good idea he sold his father on, one that is still paying dividends today.

"I asked him to put signs on the construction properties that said 'Will custom-build our homes on your lots,'" Garcia recalled. "From that, I got several clients that had their own property and we put several of our models on their lots."

In his short career, Garcia says he has put up 15 homes at SW 152nd Street and 78th Avenue, built 19 more residences at SW 98th Street and 73rd Avenue, and has a $600,000 home under construction on Sunset Drive just off the Palmetto Expressway. He is building 95 homes in the $140,000-$200,000 range on SW 122nd Avenue and 124th Street, 80 of which he says are sold. What's more, he's working on a 180-unit townhome project in Pembroke Pines.
But, the apple of his entrepreneurial eye is the project he has under construction in Pinecrest at SW 101st Street and 72nd Avenue, where two sprawling luxury homes are nearing completion. One of them already has sold for $900,000, Garcia said. The other will top out at just over $1 million and awaits a buyer.

The rambling house with soaring cathedral ceilings has numerous extras, like fountains in the front and rear courtyards, expensive marble in all of the bathrooms, wooden-framed windows throughout, different designs for each room, arched doorways, a cobblestone walkway and a two-sided marble fireplace with a wood mantle on one side, to mention just a few.

"I'm trying to get into a real high-end bracket of over a million dollars," said Garcia. "We've never built homes for over a million dollars before. We're going over and beyond what we normally do with our homes and we're definitely putting a lot more into this house. Everything that I'm doing in this house is high-end."