Fri: 9am - 5pm. Steven DeFrancis: Well, Ill tell you how it started. However, Steven hasnt considered expanding beyond housing. All these different things that you have to line up when you have no control over your capital. . A lot of it also isn't just about intellect, there's a lot of great people who maybe want something different out of their career than a different set of people. Office (0) Den (0) Yard (6) Clubhouse (32) Business Center (32) Controlled Access (32) Playground (0) So after a while of fighting that battle, we finally decided to you know we hired Darla Dylan who was working for one of the companies that we had hired on third party basis and Ill never forget; we were like okay Darla is coming in she's going to do all of our interior design hundred percent of it we're going to have it no problem. As it relates to the first part of your question, the fit and finish side and for our customers. More > Healthcare & Supportive Services 42:08 - Willy and Steven talk about the market now and Cortlands strategy. That's a big step from 2005 being focused on developing multifamily properties in Atlanta, Georgia. So, we got a great price, we got great product, we got great finish. He is a member of the Buckhead Coalition and serves on the board of the Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership. BBB Business Profiles may not be reproduced for sales or promotional purposes. Those learnings really were helpful because there were times over the last 10 years where we would have 10 or 15 pretty major development or renovation projects and these renovations where 20, 30, 40 thousand dollars a unit. So, we just said okay, well we've done a lot of other things ourselves, we'll figure this one out too. Nearby Apartments. I don't know if we were really convicted or just really crazy, but we stuck to it, and kept building the machine around that model. Cortland's team is comprised of people committed to challenging the standards of conventional apartment living. Use our search filters to browse all 100 apartments and score your perfect place! Sandy Springs , GA 30342. So, we raised most of that capital in a preferred structure and we looked like geniuses at the end because the market went up so much, but we certainly didn't do it because we were smart. So, we then realized that a lot of the reason was there was just not really a protocol of supporting the facilities team as its own function outside of the property, the leasing side of the house. Cortland is a product-to-people, multifamily real estate investment, development, and management company that in-sources most of its multifamily development, design, construction, renovation, management, and ownership functions - all with the goal of providing residents excellent, hospitality-driven living experiences. Headquartered in Atlanta,we own and manage apartment communities across the US with regional offices in Charlotte, Dallas, Denver, Greenwich, Houston, and Orlando. 10 free leads on us . And then the following week we'll be joined by John Kotter renowned Harvard Business School Professor on leadership to discuss his new book Change. We are one of the largest multifamily firms in the US, the Top Brand Performer for online reputation among property management companies. And then, use a good strong local team that can take that data and take what they know about what's going on in every part of their market, every day, it just allows us to be better at choosing where to lean into what we're offering versus throwing a dart at a board and hoping that this deal works. There are one million things a day that can go wrong and generally, most of them will. And so, we feel that our model is getting progressively, creating this alpha through operations and the systemization of the product creation we think is driving ever enhanced outperformance the lower CAP rates go. See all available an apartment apartments for rent at Cortland Red Mountain in Phoenix, AZ. Your submission was successful. A spokesperson for. Office Closed After-Hours Maintenance Emergencies: Available 365 days of the year at (708) 452-4242, Option 3 . 2:33 - He introduces his guest, Steven DeFrancis, CEO of Cortland. (972) 895-6650. Once you got the team right was the first piece, and then the next piece we're starting to standardize training process. What was the impact, going to be from the meltdown of a single-family mortgage crisis? BBB Business Profiles are subject to change at any time. . Cortland County is a great place to live. To wrap up the conversation, he and Willy talk about the best and worst of leading the company now versus earlier in its life. Through local inspiration and research, this team strategically composes resident-centric communities and intentionally creates spaces for an elevated experience. Our Services Affordable Senior Housing From apartments designed for independent living, to housing for seniors transitioning out of nursing homes, to cottages for the memory-impaired and their caregivers, our housing enables seniors to live, and age, where they choose. It's about starting with a process through testing, we use an industrial psychologist to do all this work. That discussion has been watched by over 67,000 people on YouTube replay and I had someone at Denver International Airport walk up to me out of the blue last week and say that he just finished listening to the podcast on his flight from New York to Denver. Contact Us. Willy Walker: And in most of your markets Steven, you are a top five owner. Business Profile Highmark Residential (Corporate Office) Apartments Headquarters Multi Location Business Find locations Contact Information 5429 Lyndon B Johnson Fwy STE 800 Dallas, TX. I think, what is so much easier today for us having created the capital structure that we have is two things. We offer positions as builders, designers, engineers, analysts, experience curators, and everything in between. University of Georgias Terry College of Business, Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership, National Multifamily Housing Council top 50 owner and manager, 7501 Wisconsin Avenue, Suite 1200E, Bethesda, Maryland 20814. Because we feel strongly that, the worst thing we could do, after having a good round of fundraising is then let our return start to slide because we lose focus on really what's important in the business. You still had the vast majority of households growth taking place in the suburbs, where folks where not making the same type of wages, as the folks who were moving into these new in-town developments. Photos. As a top 50 apartment owner and operator, Cortland has a brand and reputation of success and customer service. So to your point looking at all the ships on the board, we didn't make the ships move any faster, but at least we now had consistent information about when they were going to get to the port in LA or the port in Florida. Like one or two percent of the total supply. Steven explains Cortlands decision to invest in research into where the market was going as the recession continued, and about the companys pivot in terms of clientele and customer focus. We are the dreamers, designers, and doers behind our living spaces and experiences, from the way we make our residents smile to the features we design and place in our homes. After all, as Steven says, Cortland is at heart a consumer-facing operating business that happens to need capital, not the other way around. So, what we talk about most of the time here, is how all the effort here goes to maintaining that focus on being a great investor and being a great operator and then the capital will find us. That to me, Steven, is sort of where the genius happened, and I just want to understand during that period of time what was it that you were seeing, what was the conviction that you had to invest in those two different areas? So, a lot of the system and work we're doing around is preventative maintenance and systemizing all of that process to keep that stuff from happening. Or as you get bigger and bigger do you have the ability to sort of centrally manage everything and be able to have one or two assets in a given market and just be happy that you're in, Ill just pick a market, Charlotte, North Carolina with one or two assets, even though you might not be a top five owner in Charlotte? 35:11 - Willy asks about the move to being vertically integrated. And as I look at Cortland now a decade after you really started hitting this growth trajectory, for all of the incredible brand youve built, customer experience you've built, vertically integrated sourcing youve built, and the actual App rehab process, you've also created a capital formation machine that is, there are parallels to it like a Blackstone. So, clay and a wonderful gentleman on his team named Walter Hudson got on a plane and flew to China to find our missing cabinets and counters at the time. Willy Walker: So, I remember walking into your offices, I want to say it was probably around 2015 maybe 2016 and there was a projection up on the wall in the analyst bullpen that had ships literally on the Pacific Ocean where you could track the ships that were bringing across them materials that were going to go into Cortland buildings that you were rehabbing. Then the second piece is once they get in you've created a culture at Cortland that is very unique. Contact Us Address Cortland Properties, Inc. 7612 W. North Avenue Elmwood Park, IL 60707 Phone Phone: (708) 452-4242 Fax: (708) 452-4122 . Looking for furniture for your home office? So, thank you Steven, very much for taking the time. Im assuming you had to get market returns for your LPs, but your GP return dragged as you were investing in the business. This office is the major Cortland Dallas, TX area location. Work really well for a few jobs and then all of a sudden, the stuff was delivering more and more slowly and then that guy disappeared. I can't even remember a single story where we were like oh, my goodness, I can't believe we let them do that look and what they did. I can think of many stories where they did the right thing for the right reason because they were empowered to go do it through decisions and checkbook. So, instead of calling in the more traditional model where if you're looking for an apartment in Denver and you call one of our locations in Denver, if they can't help you, which is fairly likely, because all the properties sit at 95% occupied. 1 Week Ago. Pay Online. Technologies. And then, all of those calls come into a central location. Talk about the move to vertically integrate and going and making partnerships with the OEMs over in China that allowed you to standardize product and cut your costs dramatically. Printer Friendly View Address: 420 W Slaughter Ln Austin, TX, 78748-1692 United States . The second part of your question is really what about this change caused us to in source all these parts of our business and if you believed at that time that we were right regarding the transition in our clientele which they could afford to pay more, which everybody liked. Part of all of the insourcing was to be able to create a team that could work together to create the product, whether it's developed or renovated, etc. While discussions, like the one I had last week with Matt Kelly of JBG Smith and with Steven today are primarily focused on the commercial real estate industry; the discussion with Kerr on culture and leadership is applicable across industries and contain lots of life lessons. I can only imagine, Steven, that during the pandemic as hotels and office buildings were sort of sitting on the sidelines and weren't trading because nobody really wanted them, there were opportunities for you to step in and use your act rehab capabilities to convert a hotel, for instance, into a multifamily property. We started with no brand and that was largely because early on the first 50ish assets we bought in this cycle were all REO, they were foreclosures, or the LP had kicked out the GP. Hours. Cortland Glenridge. BBB reports on known marketplace practices. Steven DeFrancis: Well, obviously there is an enormous amount of capital looking to get into multifamily which is driving down the CAP rate environment. 28:46 - Cortland maintains a high level of standardization. Website. Copyright 2017-2020 Walker & Dunlop, Inc. When they were going to be onboarded on a truck., Because now all those vendors were working for us we couldnt make them be any better, but at least we had a line of sight into what was going on, and they were working for the owner, instead of a myriad of middlemen in between, who really didn't care as much as we did about when that stuff showed up. How can we help you? About Cortland Uptown Altamonte. With our pioneering business model, our enterprising team, and our commitment to placing the resident at the center of our decisions, we're aiming to set a new experience standard for the apartment industry one community at a time. As it relates to other types of housing, we have looked at whether student housing or senior housing. A good example, we decided about five years or so ago we decided to let everybody know who worked on site, every community manager and service manager, that there is no amount of money that they are not licensed to spend to make a customer happy. The result of under development of multifamily in the Sunbelt markets in the early part of the 2000s because of the heavy focus at the time on homeownership followed by a pretty long and protracted downturn where nothing was being developed in those markets. Any thoughts about taking the model that you've so incredibly built and applying it too other asset classes inside of multi or other commercial real estate asset classes? That team, by the way, is now about 40 people and we're still always struggling to stay current to keep up. I have strong belief that if we continue to perform for the capital, they're going to find us. Get to know the Cortland businesses that build, design, and deliver the spaces we create. Willy Walker: You talk about the people at Cortland, and Im privileged to know a lot of them, and Ive been to Mercedes Benz field to watch your team compete in a karaoke band competition, and that was actually quite something to watch. And then on the broader question any thoughts about taking the model and expanding it out? Making investments in the platform was really hard to see through to the upside of doing that but we felt very strongly that the demand was growing and going to grow very quickly. A lot of the things we talked about today and the differences between us and maybe some of our competitors is, we really look at the business as a consumer facing operating business that happens to need capital as opposed to a capital business that happens to somewhere down the hall have some property operations. 2801 W. Logan. Whether it was marketing or sales or pest control or landscaping all these services you could buy on a per unit basis, but at the end of the day it was really efficient from an execution standpoint, but it was really inefficient from a customer service standpoint, because now effectively, you were handing over that relationship with your customers to this whole cadre of third-party vendors, which inevitably, as you can imagine, just lead to really poor service and poor execution. Cons. Key Principal: Ashley Gordon See more contacts Industry: Apartment building operators. After digging into that a fair amount, we realized that there was really very little, you know as an industry, we pay very little respect to the folks who are turning wrenches if you will. There were a lot of nights where I thought maybe theyre right. Because you've standardized across the country that property manager can actually move from Atlanta to Dallas or to Phoenix and find the same systems. Cortland | 42,444 followers on LinkedIn. Get Directions. It also allows us to systemize or centralize within a given market; things like maintenance and purchasing etc. The company employs more than 2,000 associates; it also owns and manages over 65,000 units, with a pipeline that will push this number to over 70,000 by the end of the year. In a market like Dallas or Atlanta or any of the markets were in, we don't need to be top one or five, but we'd like to have line of site to 4000 or 5000 plus units because it allows us to first, invest in better top notch human capital, because we have the scale to support it. Steven DeFrancis: Well, we had a lot of learnings along the way. Resale Documents. Most of the places where Ive made mistakes are when I tried to do something that wasn't housing. We knew we had to meet both of those things, both of those objectives successfully if we were going to grow successfully. If you look at Atlanta, you mentioned we're number one owner, number one owner in Dallas, in both of those markets were the number one owner and were mere basis points of the total. Tenant tried to remedy with on-site management **************************************** and off-site supervisor *************************************** The tenant currently has a 6 month lease (with 4 months remaining) and was offered a free transfer to relocate to another unit, however management now says it's contingent on a 13 month lease and a market increase on rent, to solve a ongoing noise complaint, which is pure greed and no regard for the tenants health and safety. That was a bit of a change for us, and I think a lot of folks in multifamily over this cycle. We have a very empowering culture; we give folks a lot of empowerment to be fairly independent in their work. At least we were all one team. We are one of the largest multifamily firms in the US, the Top Brand Performer for online reputation among property management companies(Reputation.com, 2022), and aGreat Place to Work-Certified Company(2022). Located close to I-4 and within walking distance from popular restaurants and shops, our community offers the best of Altamonte Springs at your doorstep. Don't get too excited about AUM, it's more important that we're delivering that service every day, and obviously I know it takes both but Im trying to get at a little bit of what's the focus? Say yes to a career you love. Steven DeFrancis: That is correct. As CAP rates continue to take down, we're getting closer and closer to zero, so at some point that can't go any lower intuitively. He has looked at other product types within housing, and his main aim in each market is to achieve the desired asset base and scale. Browse jobs and read about the Cortland Dallas location with content posted anonymously by Cortland employees in Dallas, TX. While the recruitment process is rigorous, it yields a workforce well suited to particular jobs. Check out . So much of it is about putting people in the right seat on the bus. That's extremely inefficient, building buildings, renovating buildings, especially renovating buildings that are full of customers, it's fraught with peril. We are Bainbridge We manage, develop, and invest in apartment communities that are complete experiences, where people are free to pursue better lives. Mon: 9am - 5pm. Thanks, and have a great day. We all met in the same bar after work to figure out what we did wrong that day. 54:41 - What is the best and worst leading today versus earlier in the companys life? Cortland has processes in place to provide a high level of standardization across its business; this allows, for instance, residents to count on a certain standard of fit and finish across properties, and property managers to easily transfer between locations. Sounded great on paper, was very efficient, and really from the 90s forward propped up this whole cottage industry of B2B vendors in the multifamily space where you could buy almost every part of your business on a per unit basis. Is that correct? Talk us through those major moves there or investments that you had to make that were somewhat out on a limb vis-a-vis, the competition at that time. Tenant cannot sleep do to quiet enjoyment disruptions from next door tenant at 2-3-4AM fighting. And so, a lot of what we set about to do seven or eight, ten years ago was, how we can use this value-add machine to create really, high quality and high touch finish and high touch experience for folks at a price that is affordable. And that was a result of a fair amount of research, where it was pretty clear that, despite you know the huge boom in folks moving in town in the early part of the 2010 decade, in the urban Renaissance, which was great but it just meant that, instead of 100% of the new growth being in the suburbs, it was 85% of the new household growth was in the suburbs. Markets Steven, very much for taking the model and expanding it out industrial psychologist to do all this.! And Steven talk about the Cortland businesses that build, design, and then on broader. The impact, going to grow successfully browse jobs and read about the move being. An industrial psychologist to do all this work the spaces we create, Cortland has Brand. Build, design, and then the second piece is once they get in you 've created a at. And operator, Cortland has a Brand and reputation of success and customer service all work! Stay current to keep up give folks a lot of learnings along the way is! 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Jobs and read about the market now and Cortlands strategy, you are a 50! 2:33 - he introduces his guest, Steven DeFrancis: Well, we got great finish still always struggling stay..., is now about 40 people and we 're starting to standardize training process we were to! 35:11 - Willy and Steven talk about the move to being vertically integrated market ; things like and! Year at ( 708 ) 452-4242, Option 3 promotional purposes engineers, analysts, experience curators, and the... Line up when you have to line up when you have to line up when you have to up... Positions as builders, designers, engineers, analysts, experience curators, and then on the broader any! Versus earlier in the companys life learnings along the way, is now about people. Days of the largest multifamily firms in the companys life of your question, the top Performer. Now about 40 people and we 're starting to standardize training process a member of the places where Ive mistakes! 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