Cortland turned to insourcing, too, to control all touchpoints with customers. It's going to be a real kick for me to have Dr. Kotter on the webcast as he was my leadership Professor back at HBS in 1994 which is dating both Dr. Kotter as well as myself. So, part of it is the intellect testing, that's more of the straightforward part, and part of it is the personality and making sure that we're getting folks with the right personality to meet the job that they're going to do. 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. 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. Listings. And then create a better living experience which would create more demand at our assets and eventually lead to better returns for our investors. 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. By progressively cutting out middlemen, standardization became easier and costs lower. But we also knew those better returns we had to give up in the early days and pay more for the capital, most of the investors thought what we're doing in the early part of the cycle didn't make a lot of sense. And began to build that team, which has been a great add to the organization. They were all broken in some manner, and so, as you can imagine, they were extremely inconsistent from a product and location standpoint, and so you could not build a brand around this hodgepodge of assets. 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. I have strong belief that if we continue to perform for the capital, they're going to find us. So as an industry we put all the focus on the within the office, the talent in the office that's leasing and bringing in new customers. So, Cortland decided to provide consistently high-quality living spaces at affordable costs. It's just not something people want to deal with, but it's necessary. So that's really where we have put most of our resource allocation building into the platform and want to continue to be out to be able to outperform. 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. Like one or two percent of the total supply. In part, the Cortland brand developed naturally through the companys consistency of assets; however, the company has also intentionally worked on its brand in order to create passion among human capital and help with marketing. 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. BBB Business Profiles may not be reproduced for sales or promotional purposes. See All 79 interviews. . That part didn't take a lot to bite off on that it was largely just math. BBB reports on known marketplace practices. 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. We are definitely being impacted by those supply chain issue so Im not going to say that are not happening. 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. Addison, TX. 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. What was it that you either saw as a macro market opportunity or something that you saw inside of Cortland that made you shift strategy? 54:41 - What is the best and worst leading today versus earlier in the companys life? In a couple, obviously the ones that you're just entering, you are not a top five owner. The best way to keep your customers happy is for them to not have the air go out in August; not for it to go out and fix it really fast. As the conversation gets underway, Willy looks back to the founding of Cortland as a small development firm focused locally on Atlanta, noting that the company shifted its approach during the financial crisis of the 2000s. So, we felt that it was going to be important, really that we control all of those touch points with the customer. Fri: 9am - 5pm. 3424 Peachtree Rd NE Ste 300. Then the second piece is once they get in you've created a culture at Cortland that is very unique. 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. Website Take me there. 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 Information. Cortland was founded in 2005 with a focus on multifamily development in Atlanta. He is a member of the Buckhead Coalition and serves on the board of the Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership. Mon: 9am - 5pm. 3.7 (114 reviews) Verified Listing. In general, I always feel appreciated, I always feel I can speak my mind, and I always feel like I am growing. How could you grow the business in a way that you wouldn't fall victim of growing too fast and then, while also maintaining that ability to really be best in class from a customer experience standpoint? But we do believe that all the value we bring to the table to create alpha is good if returns are in the 20s. We then were able to start investing in those folks, training them better, creating better career pathways so they didn't feel like they were just going to be the service manager of location 22 forever which then creates more energy, as you can imagine, within that group. View jobs Senior Lifestyle Corporation Careers and Employment Work happiness Scores based on about 385 responses to Indeed's survey on work happiness About work happiness 55 Work Happiness Score But I would argue that almost everybody has pride in where they live, and really wants to live in a nice place. Steven DeFrancis: I will never say Id rather leave here to go there, but I do miss the closeness. Steven DeFrancis: Luckily, Im not solely depending on my fantastic leadership. And so, we felt that if that did manifest and we did find ourselves in a market that was going to be tilting towards a clientele that had more disposable income, higher education, was older on average, that would lead to a market really where the previous environment of really commoditized multifamily housing would likely transition to much more of a consumer product and really today a consumer service. Check out . Steven DeFrancis is the founder and CEO of Cortland. BBB asks third parties who publish complaints, reviews and/or responses on this website to affirm that the information provided is accurate. And then, in the middle of September Im going to do my first live Walker Webcast interviewing with Eric Resnick CEO of KSL Partners to discuss the hospitality and leisure industries as KSL owns lots of hotels, resorts, and ski areas. Need to file a complaint? 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. Because it gives us less volatility on the outcome of the return. Brand and associated SEO realities in the market today drive traffic, and they tie into the customer-centrism of the business. BBB Business Profiles are subject to change at any time. 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? So, it was a combination of having product on hand, rushing product into manufacturer soon as the plants reopened in Asia. And like a lot of things that worked great until it didn't. But the amount of value you created with your team by entrusting them with an unlimited checkbook to make people happy, you can't even put a value on that and that continues to this day. They want to work for a brand that really means something and stands for something premium in the marketplace, and it also really pays huge dividends on the marketing side. It doesn't have to be brand new. A lot of effort on the front end around considering talent before bringing them in and then a lot of focus on supporting our talent once they're here. 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. So, Steven first of all welcome and thank you for joining me. 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. Thank you for such a fantastic and thorough review of our community! Instead of saying Okay, I also have these other 30 locations in this market, let's talk about how we can find the right spot for you, if it's not right here. It just makes us so much better at the execution side of our business because we're not having to go line up 10,000 moving parts, whether it's a committee approval for this external LP or a contractor or a construction and bonding agent. Through our integrated business model, our enterprising team, and our commitment to placing the resident at the center of our decisions, were aiming to set a new experience standard for the apartment industry one community at a time. 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. Find company research, competitor information, contact details & financial data for Cortland Partners, LLC of Atlanta, GA. Get the latest business insights from Dun & Bradstreet. 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. By 2011, we owned and managed 5,000 apartment homes and meaningfully accelerated our plans to build a company that could deliver unique value to both our residents and partners. This is a multi-location business. We are looking at other product types within housing. I have witnesses to confirm these actions. Steven and his team manage a portfolio of multifamily assets located in 11 states primarily throughout the Southeast, Midwest, and Texas. The market today is as white hot as we've ever seen it Steven you know that very well. 5470 Glenridge Dr NE. Use our search filters to browse all 100 apartments and score your perfect place! 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. Additionally the **** system outside her window (was not disclosed to her the **** noise at time move in) disrupts sleep. Again, we were trying to figure out how to build this machine to create really high-quality product, very affordable price, very little volatility in the delivery schedule, etc. . Then all the investment you put into that lead, your associate is like well, thank you very much for your interest, but we cant help you and call us next year when you need an apartment again. What's your view on the overall market right now as it relates to sort of supply and demand and where pricing is and the ability to continue to get the returns that Cortland has been so successful at producing? Choose the option that best fits your needs below and then let us know how we can help. Our ability in markets where we have 20 or 30 assets in a given market, the way SEO and search works just having everything branded with a similar name really helps drive search straight to our website and straight to our product, our locations. Willy Walker: You talked at the top of the discussion about capital and about when Cortland had 1,000 units and how hard it was to get LPs to invest in the vision and in what you were building. As it relates to the first part of your question, the fit and finish side and for our customers. There were a lot of nights where I thought maybe theyre right. If you think about the way most products or most developments are done or acquisitions or value add projects, they are really managed in a very bespoke basis with an internal acquisitions person or a developer and then external execution, whether it's design, architecture, construction, or construction management. We are probably a 50 some odd people on the investment team, and they are spread out across the markets where we are operating in the US. Founded in 2005 and headquartered in Atlanta, Georgia, Cortland Partners is a global, multifamily real estate investment firm. You've got a number of open-end funds so you're raising a lot of capital. 1 Week Ago. I continue to receive emails and texts about my discussion with James Kerr author of Legacy from two weeks ago. Houston, Texas Office. So much of it is about putting people in the right seat on the bus. But we felt that there was an enormous opportunity that we could capitalize on if we really pivoted the whole business to focus on our customer as the true client. So, lot of room to grow in the business that we're doing. Please select one of the markets below to refine your search. Since its founding in 2005, Cortland has expanded into a global, vertically-integrated multifamily real estate investment, development, and asset management company. We're moving now into sensors and putting sensors in the equipment, so we can start to get proactive messaging when things are going to fail, instead of waiting until they fail. So, what we began to do is say okay let's take those learnings and really pivot the platform to focus on this new environment where the client or our customer needs to be at the center of everything we do. International Association of Better Business Bureaus. Steven DeFrancis: Best part, I will say the best part is, if you believe the idea that the industry is moving to more of a long term, more of an operating cadence that creates return as opposed to something more typical to what it has been; where it's buying asset, sell it, its more of a portfolio churn that creates return. Our Offices +1 (888) 525-8488 cortland@cortlandcompany.com USA Anacortes, WA 1012 Second Street Anacortes WA 98221 +1 (360) 293-8488 USA Houston, TX 10633 West Airport Blvd Ste 300 Stafford TX 77477 +1 (832) 833-8000 EU The Netherlands Galvanistraat 115 6716 AE Ede The Netherlands +31 682 101 602 He is also a member of the Real Estate Roundtable, the Urban Land Institute, and the National Multifamily Housing Council. Website. Thanks, and have a great day. staff definitely needs a to be looked at thoroughly. Find Related Places. The more our brand grows in a given market, so the more locations that we have in a given market, we can see incrementally how it drives search and drives traffic to all of the other markets, all the other assets as well. Pay Online. It also allows us to systemize or centralize within a given market; things like maintenance and purchasing etc. 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. A lot of folks at the time even internally we're all very concerned, there were a lot but not all of us, but a number of folks were concerned that this could lead to us blowing up our budgets and spend way too much money and all these things. 4:42 - What led Cortland to shift? So, having built the capital infrastructure to get capital that we then have control over at the same time of building the execution infrastructure to perform for that capital. 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. Willy as you're aware, based upon a lot of the work we've done together, in those early years we were raising almost all of the LP capital through a preferred structure, because frankly the LPs thought what we were doing made no sense. 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. Steven himself holds a BA in Real Estate from the University of Georgias Terry College of Business, and he is a member of the Buckhead Coalition, the board of the Atlanta Neighborhood Development Partnership,The Real Estate Roundtable, the Urban Land Institute, and the National Multifamily Housing Council. We sort of felt like we had to assume the market would recover, because if that didn't happen, we had a much bigger problem. Cortland Build is a global, concept-to-completion construction delivery firm specializing in multifamily new build, commercial construction (amenities), and renovation. And you have standardized on lock systems, you standardize on HVAC systems that have allowed you to have property managers who typically let's just say it was a property manager lived in Atlanta had done their stint being a property manager on a Cortland asset they typically would then graduate either to come to corporate or go to some other company to find a new job experience. Cons. Sincerely, Mary S. Community Manager. Team Members. 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. So first of all, was product design quality, second was product quality, how long that product will last, third, was the ability to now control schedules. Tenant cannot sleep do to quiet enjoyment disruptions from next door tenant at 2-3-4AM fighting. Links. Willy Walker: It makes two of us, it makes two of us. What's the best part of that? That's a big step from 2005 being focused on developing multifamily properties in Atlanta, Georgia. Within 50 Miles of Cortland 5550. See all available an apartment apartments for rent at Cortland Red Mountain in Phoenix, AZ. You have to set up the infrastructure and the culture of being an associate first organization if you're ever going to be best in class in customer service or customer experience. BBB Business Profiles are provided solely to assist you in exercising your own best judgment. They are then sent to a warehouse where the products are broken down and rearranged by project and unit. As a matter of policy, BBB does not endorse any product, service or business. With a resident-first mentality, we're setting a new standard for the apartment industry - one community at a time. Senior Lifestyle Corporation 55 2.8 Write a review Snapshot Why Join Us 558 Reviews 143 Jobs 1.4K Salaries 104 Q&A Interviews 14 Photos Want to work here? And we put almost no focus on the team that actually keeps our existing customers there, which is you know in business is the exact opposite way to maximize your bottom line. Wed: 9am - 5pm. 2714-20 N. Mildred. View 1813 W Cortland St, Apt 1, Chicago, IL 60622 property records for FREE including property ownership, deeds, mortgages, titles & sales history, current & historic tax assessments, legal, parcel & structure description, land use, zoning & more. But because we're so much closer to what's going on, we're much closer to the head of the line so as things are moving around and expectations are moving around, we can adjust on our side, so it doesn't slow us down and what we're doing over here. Steven DeFrancis: Well, we had a lot of learnings along the way. Historically in our business, groups would generally try to outsource as much of the business as possible. , Georgia, Cortland Partners is a global, multifamily real estate investment firm just,. Kerr author of Legacy from two weeks ago makes two of us, it two! Filters to browse all 100 apartments and score your perfect place there were lot... 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