The story of Cross Companies goes back several generations. Scotty McMichael, a Houston-born California transplant, worked diligently at Firestone Corporation making tires. When the first check from his ‘part-time’ job (real estate sales) yielded several months’ worth of Firestone checks, he knew something had to change. He saw the writing on the wall and took his 7th-grade education into real estate. He jumped fully into sales, development, and management, and began a family legacy that would continue four generations into the future.

When he was grown, Bob Cross (Scotty’s son in law) carried the baton for the next generation. He returned the family business back to the great state of Texas to continue the vision. Richard Cross (Bob’s son) has continued the tradition of building and real estate development here in Fort Worth. Betty Cross (Richard’s daughter), represents the 4th generation of our family business. Today, Bob and Richard consult, develop and invest, and oversee Betty’s management of the properties.

Over the last 40 years, we have developed property for single-family, multi-family, commercial and industrial uses. While many of these projects were sold off, several have been retained as ongoing property management projects.

We like to say that our residential and commercial management protocols are structured with technology, and executed with a personal touch. Some of our tenants have been with us for over 15 years, and we’re proud to continue the tradition of quality management for generations to come. 

Through incentives, instructional emails, and personal visits, we’ve been able to convert over 80% of our tenants to EFT payments on some properties, and the number grows bigger every month. Our leasing operations are purely electronic, and all of our maintenance tasks and tenant records are updated and tracked via cloud-based software. The efficiency we’ve reached with such measures has given us more time to focus on different avenues of marketing, creative solutions for tenants with growing businesses, and, of course, future projects.