Some people catch the real estate bug early in life. Maybe their fathers or aunts or grandfathers were in the business. Or maybe they got a chance to work in construction or apartment management in college. For others, it's something they fall into after school or even further along in their career. Regardless, it's obvious that's there's no one path to success in the multifamily business.
For proof, take a look at this year's list of up and comers under age 40 in the apartment business. A couple of them began charting their path into real estate when they were in college. Others found their way into the multifamily business after starting out in other careers. Regardless of their path, all of these people have found success in the business–and they're just getting started.
Leadership Track
Grimes moves up Mid-America's ladder.
It seems like all of the big players in the apartment industry talk about their management trainee programs. Their goal: to recruit young talent and nurture them so they become leaders. Mid-America Apartment Communities in Memphis had this in mind when it started its management trainee program 12 years ago. Little did the designers of the program realize that the very first person through the program, Tom Grimes, would go on to achieve great success at the REIT.
In the early '90s, Grimes, now 37 and senior vice president and director of property management operations at Mid-America, was working for JM Tull Metals Co., a steel company in Tampa, Fla. It was a solid, steady job–maybe a little too steady. "It was a good company, but there wasn't a lot of room for advancement, which is the way some good, stable companies are," says Grimes.
Ready for more, Grimes wanted to grow his career with an up-and-coming firm, and he saw that with the Kates Co. in Memphis. The company was about to go public and become Mid-America. "I offered to mop, wash bottles, and whatever they needed me to do," he says. "In the multifamily world, that means picking up cigarette butts, punching apartments, and doing that sort of thing."
Mid-America hired Grimes as a management trainee, giving him the opportunity to learn the business by working at a Memphis apartment community. He worked his way up the REIT's tall ladder, managing a property in Chattanooga and then taking over several complexes in the area. In 1996, as the company expanded its presence in Florida, Grimes moved to Jacksonville to lead a group of nine properties, which soon grew to 22 communities through developments and acquisitions. Over the years, his job took him from property management to financial pursuits and back again.
These days, Grimes is responsible for the day-to-day operation of the company's 135 communities. Not only does he support all of Mid America's 39,140 units, but he also is part of the team that must communicate the company's accomplishments to the outside world, including investors and analysts.
It's a job Mid-America CEO Eric Bolton thinks Grimes is well equipped to handle. "Multifamily real estate requires a competent leader who is very dependent on the on-site people at the property," Bolton says. "It takes somebody who has an appreciation for the folks on site, an ability to relate to them, and has a service-oriented leadership style. Tom has that."
Grimes' reach extends beyond Mid-America. He's also active with the National Apartment Association, advising it on what its national lease program should look like. "He's been instrumental in helping us develop a lease product that covers a good portion of the country," says W. Michael Semko, counsel and director of the National Lease Program for the NAA. "It provides a template that people can take to the bank as to how the industry should be doing things. He's provided a lot of insight from an operations standpoint. He's giving us a lot of time, which is good for the industry."
Urban Builder
Choppin follows the road to infill.
Duncan Osborne distinctly remembers the chats he used to have with Scott Choppin when the future managing partner of Urban Pacific Builders was a student at California Polytechnic State University at San Luis Obispo. Over the summer, Choppin would do maintenance work on Osborne's properties and talk about how he wanted to be in the real estate business. Osborne, an independent apartment owner in San Luis Obispo, took it with a grain of salt. After all, how often do school-age dreams become grown-up reality?
"We all thought we knew what we were going to do when we were in college," Osborne says. "Lots of people have ideas. Some of them get followed through on and some don't."
Choppin, now 38, was one of those who did follow through on his dreams. He charted a course in real estate and meticulously stuck to his plan. After graduating from school, he hounded Los Angeles-based Kaufman and Broad (which eventually became KB Home) until he got a job there. There, he mastered tax credit financing. He wanted to move into the market-rate sector, so he took a job with Sares-Regis Group in Irvine, Calif., to do land acquisition.
After a year at Sares-Regis, he found even more challenges. "I figured that the biggest thing I was missing was getting out there and raising money in the capital markets," he recalls. "I needed to raise equity for deals and get myself financed by the banks. A little less than a year after I went to Sares-Regis, I decided it was time for me to start my own company."
He didn't set out to start just any old company, though. "Our full intent was to pursue urban infill and downtown core, mixed-use, and high-density residential," Choppin says. "That excited me. I like the energy of city and urban infill. I'm a Generation Xer. It was from a personal knowledge that I thought people would be attracted to that product."
At first, though, he had trouble selling this plan to institutions. But the New Urbanism movement and some successful products helped out–and so did his ability to take on difficult projects. "He's unique," says William Jenkins, a principal with the Laramie Co., a broker in Denver. "He takes on hard projects–ones that take a lot more time and you just can't slap up."
Choppin, who mainly builds condos, is most proud of the 89-unit Bank Lofts at San Pedro that helped rejuvenate a rundown area of San Pedro, Calif., and Axis, a 750-unit project that's under development in Westminster, Calif. Jenkins sold the site to Choppin. "When I assessed the site with Scott, I knew it had challenges," Jenkins says. "But when we got into it, it had more challenges. He's patient, persistent, and thorough in attacking a site. What you'll get at the end of the day is a unique product."
This relentless determination is the reason Osborne sees his one-time employee growing his business to even bigger heights. "The sky is the limit," he says. "He has the attitude and savvy to make Urban Pacific another KB Home."
Tech Whiz
Fortinberry builds AIMCO's resident pay system.
When it comes to apartment operations, we're in an era of automation and making things more user-friendly. Apartment firms that can offer flexibility in payment options gain a huge competitive advantage. First, however, they have to hammer out agreements with vendors, and then they have to get the system up and keep the property staff in the loop. It's a challenge.
If you don't believe that, just ask Mike Fortinberry, 37, vice president of resident services for AIMCO, a REIT based in Denver. Fortinberry and his team have the monumental task of bringing all of AIMCO's 140,000 conventional units online. "Rent payment will no longer be transacted on site," he says. "It allows payments across many platforms, such as online, over the phone, and [by] PayPal."
Not only does the system give residents more ways to pay, but it frees AIMCO site-level personnel to spend more time interacting with residents. The key is to keep the staff in the loop. AIMCO's system will do that. "It gives the staff all the information that would be available to them as if they got the payment on site," Fortinberry says. "The problem in the industry is the lack of information that goes to the community manager about who has paid, who didn't, and how much they paid. By solving those pieces of the puzzle, we kept the information where it needed to be."
The system is scheduled to be finished up by the end of the year. So far, the project is ahead of schedule and budget, according to Thorn Landers, vice president of sales and marketing for AIMCO and Fortinberry's supervisor. The two go way back: They've known each other for six years and were partners in a business that provided telecom to single-family builders.
When Landers needed someone with telecom expertise at AIMCO, he immediately turned to his old partner. "He has drive, focus, and determination," Landers says. "He is incredibly determined. I don't know of many people that can deliver what they'll say they can deliver as well as Mike does." So for him, it's no surprise that Fortinberry is guiding AIMCO through upgrading its payment process.
Fortinberry's fortitude was put to the test as he approached banks and other companies for the AIMCO plan. Part of his determination may come from his military background. He served nine years in the Army before leaving to major in chemistry and political science at Florida State.
"His background gives him a good idea of what it takes to work on a team," says Ryan Gilbert, the CEO of Property-Bridge, an Oakland, Calif.-based company that has worked with Fortinberry on the AIMCO project. "He's gutsy, but he realizes that to scale the peak, you need a good bunch of people with you."
Fast Growth
Kittle pushes an Indianapolis builder's pipeline.
When Tom Herman, owner of Herman Associates in Indianapolis, was seeking a development and finance manager for the company that his father had started, he received a promising resume. The candidate had an undergraduate degree in history and political science, plus an MBA in finance and real estate from Indiana University. He also had internships and financial experience at the Indiana Housing Finance Authority, a quasi-governmental organization.
Herman wasn't so sure about hiring someone who worked for the government. But after talking to the candidate, Jeffrey Kittle, he felt better. "After getting to know Jeff through the interview process and working with him, I thought, 'This is a very intelligent, competent, able individual,'" he recalls.
The rest, as they say, is history. Kittle, now 35, worked for Herman for four years before becoming a partner in the firm, now called Herman & Kittle Properties. The company has gone through extraordinary growth the past five years, growing from 124 units in 2001 to an estimated 1,292 units in 2006. Kittle is responsible for much of that, says Herman. Now, the firm has stretched beyond just the Midwest and into the Gulf states, as part of the ongoing recovery effort following Hurricane Katrina.
In hindsight, however, Kittle's career went exactly as he planned it–despite how his education looks on paper. His grandfather was in real estate, and Kittle remembers peppering him with questions. When he was at the finance agency in Indiana, he routinely interrogated Pat O'Connor, director of acquisitions for House Invest-ments, a regional equity syndication firm in Indianapolis. "He sought me out and was very interested in learning about the business and asking questions about what we do to put deals together," O'Connor says. "He was very enthusiastic about it and asked good questions."
And when Kittle started working for Herman, that curiosity didn't go away. "Jeff hadn't done development," Herman says. "He worked with me to learn that. He had a desire to learn all phases of our company. Although he leads development and finance, he touches all departments."
But he drives development. In fact, he's steered the company onto the 2005 MFE Top 50 builders list, where it's No. 45. "He is the beginning of the pipeline," Herman says of his partner. "He was aggressive in getting deals in here that made financial sense. He was willing to do whatever it took to add more to our pipeline."
As the company has grown, Kittle has built its development department and added new associates. Still, there's a downside to the growth: He's no longer on the front lines. "I do kind of miss the hunt and chase of the deals, which I used to do myself," he says. "Other people here do it now."
That's not to say he's not happy with the way his career is unfolding, though. "I love what I do," Kittle says. "I thank God every morning that I love what I do. I have a passion for what I do. I'm working or thinking about work most of the time."
Developer With a Mission
Pollack's versatility helps nonprofits.
Many rising stars in the multifamily business have accomplished major feats. Working with cities and towns to build projects? Check. Building high-rise condos? Check. Managing numerous, geographically diverse units and properties? Check. Working with a convent of nuns to build affordable housing? Ch–wait. Maybe not, unless you're Melinda Pollack, director of strategic initiatives for Mercy Housing, a Denver-based nonprofit that develops, operates, and finances affordable, service-enriched housing.
Need proof? Look at a recent deal she worked on. "We helped a community in Pennsylvania to assess what they should do with their convent," Pollack says. "At the end of the day, we helped them get a low-income housing tax credit deal that had a high level of integrated support services."
Pollack, 30, leads an arm of Mercy Housing that partners with civic and religious communities to help them understand the housing needs and related service needs in their area; plans and develops capacity; and occasionally assists them in the development process. The group also helps the eight health systems it partners with to assess communities where they sense a need for a housing response and help develop a plan to address that void. In some cases, it will also bring its health-care partners together to do advocacy work.
Pollack's job requires both real estate expertise and policy and advocacy acumen. She certainly has the policy background. After graduating from George Washington University in Washington, D.C., she worked at the University of Pennsylvania doing student programming. A year later, she moved back to the nation's capital and directed an AmeriCorps program in the Shaw and Columbia Heights area of the city. She started at Mercy six years ago as an intern. As she moved through the ranks, she impressed her colleagues, including her current boss, Chuck Wehrwein, a senior vice president at the organization.
When Wehrwein needed someone to go with him to a meeting with Sen. Ben Nighthorse Campbell (R-Colo.), he asked Pollack's then-boss to come along. But Pollack came instead–and Wehrwein was pleasantly surprised. "I watched this young woman work and I thought, 'Wow, I wish she worked for me,'" he says.
That wish soon came true. "A couple of years later, we had a job open and she applied for it," Wehrwein says. "I had someone who worked for me in D.C. in mind for it, but when Melinda applied, I knew she was the right person. I had to call the other individual and apologize. I told them I found someone better."
Though Pollack had a background in policy, she got a hands-on real estate education at Mercy's Colorado Business Center, doing complicated tax-credit deals, HUD 202 deals, and even for-sale transactions. Add that to Pollack's policy background, and she's up to the challenges of all types of situations.
"She's a very bright woman and able to bring together various elements of real estate development so that it's not just bricks and mortar," says Mary Anderies, a Denver-based housing consultant who has worked with Pollack. "She also brings in the people piece [of the puzzle] and the social services piece so that they make sense."