Sounds like this particular project is just a shitty one. You can have apartments larger than 250 square feet. And you can have full amenities with more work put into it.
Seems like CNBC chose the cheapest possible mall apartments to explore.
It depends on how much lawn you have, too. If you’re sitting on a quarter acre (1000 square meters), then just mow it. You don’t want bug habitats literally on top of your house.
If you have five acres, you can probably leave a good chunk of it as natural. Mow the stuff closer to your house, and whatever you want to be able to use, and leave the rest. Maybe take a scythe to it every once in awhile.
Which can be fine in this particular instance, but this isn’t the general model we had in mind.