See if Cortland is hiring near you. This long-term vision, in turn, drove all areas of the business, from hiring to design. Willy Walker: As you think back over the last decade, take yourself back to 2010, the amount of scale that you've created, which is the along with scale success, the decisions you get to make today are very different decisions you made a decade ago. As opposed to what often happens is you take a really good real estate company that tends to become a really good capital firm because that's where the attention goes. Steven and his team manage a portfolio of multifamily assets located in 11 states, primarily in the Southeast, Midwest, and Texas. Once you got the team right was the first piece, and then the next piece we're starting to standardize training process. So, lot of room to grow in the business that we're doing. But also, to where all those teams now were working internally, that all know our expectations, our systems, our processes, and trust me we still made half the mistakes that the external groups would have made but at least we were doing it together. I personally would not live there. Weve created the capital structure and built the infrastructure to where now we're not relying on all these external parties for every project. Steven DeFrancis: I will never say Id rather leave here to go there, but I do miss the closeness. 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. It doesn't have to be perfect, but everybody wants to have pride in the place that they live. Company Overview. A focus on stripping out costs to be vertically integrated to allow you to scale from 5,000 units up to today over 65,000 units. So, Cortland decided to provide consistently high-quality living spaces at affordable costs. Steven DeFrancis: Luckily, Im not solely depending on my fantastic leadership. Anyway, two things came out of that; one was just the sheer volume of under supply that we were going to be met with when the economy recovered or began to recover. 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? As you know, Willy, we started a brand for 55 plus which we call the Tiva a number of years ago. Please fill out the form under the Residents tab or call our Resident Services team. You go through a talent selection process that is, I would put forth, more rigorous and more focused than many companies that I interact with on a consistent basis. Cortland | 42,444 followers on LinkedIn. Cortland is the largest owner and operator in the cities of Atlanta and Dallas, as well as in the entire state of Texas. I loved it 10 years ago, it was fun every day. What we've learned is, the value you get out of being scaled in a market, you can't beat it in any other way, centralized services, etc. There are, of course, opportunities that Cortland could take to move into other asset classes within multifamily housing, or even different commercial real estate classes. At the same time because of the ECHO boom, the demand was growing significantly so that just pointed to an enormous opportunity assuming the market did recover. 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 are provided solely to assist you in exercising your own best judgment. 54:41 - What is the best and worst leading today versus earlier in the companys life? 270 S Watters Rd. That's extremely inefficient, building buildings, renovating buildings, especially renovating buildings that are full of customers, it's fraught with peril. So much of it is about putting people in the right seat on the bus. 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. Willy Walker: One of the things that you talked about standardization in the sense of the experience from a client standpoint. Steven DeFrancis: We do have a great capital team, Ned, you mentioned Chris Lennon. Competitors. Sandy Springs , GA 30342. One of the things we knew early on, if we were going to be best in class at creating a living experience and customer delight, what we had to do first was make this a best place to work. Monthly Rent. The really important thing that was cut out was the volatility of delivery and timing and product quality. 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. It's about starting with a process through testing, we use an industrial psychologist to do all this work. 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. We're a company comprised of people who thoughtfully challenge the status quo of the conventional multifamily industry in pursuit of a resident-centric approach to apartment living. - 8/28/2019 Hey Hannah! Steven DeFrancis: Well first, it's not about being top five or top 10, it's really about having the right asset base to operate with a scaled organization. We spent about six months with four market study groups just studying different parts of the business. As a top 50 apartment owner and operator, Cortland has a brand and reputation of success and customer service. As a result as an industry we didn't have a lot of investment in doing it better, we had a product, system and people, etc., but we did see that that clientele was likely going to be changing coming out of the GFC. So that definitely has paid dividends, the real value on the brand more than anything else is the passion that it creates amongst the human capital. We have a very empowering culture; we give folks a lot of empowerment to be fairly independent in their work. Five years ago, I knew every single person who worked here and could walk up and have a conversation and whatnot and knew them. Cortland turned to insourcing, too, to control all touchpoints with customers. On the latest Walker Webcast, CEO Steven DeFrancis joined us to discuss his strategic approach to systemization, his focus on building a stellar team, and his approach to growth. Find Related Places. Steven DeFrancis: Sure, and you make a good point, especially back then. Cortland is the largest owner operator in Atlanta and Dallas as well as all of the State of Texas. That team, by the way, is now about 40 people and we're still always struggling to stay current to keep up. But we do believe that all the value we bring to the table to create alpha is good if returns are in the 20s. As you know, Willy, from your business you've done a great job with this. Now I do try to get out as much as I can and meet all the folks across the system, but I do miss the that small family feel where you got to know everybody and that was a big part of the excitement of coming to work every day. Willy Walker: Thank you Susan and good morning everyone and welcome to another Walker Webcast. Where others see a square foot, we see a story. Willy Walker: And anything on the downside, as it relates to anything from the small company touch and feel that you miss or anything that sort of says man, I wish I could go back to doing that, but my job today just didn't, allow me to do it? Apartment Services. So, as long as Im here, thats where the focus on the operations. Then the second piece is once they get in you've created a culture at Cortland that is very unique. Thank you for such a fantastic and thorough review of our community! 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. Find company research, competitor information, contact details & financial data for Cortland Partners, LLC of Atlanta, GA. Get the latest business insights from Dun & Bradstreet. Email Formats. Cortland Red Mountain has rental units ranging from 804-1295 sq ft starting at $1515. My team is showing your team, your team has underwritten, I think Altman said to me in the last three years, the acquisitions team at Cortland is underwritten something over 2,500 assets. 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. Before I introduce Steven and dive into our discussion, I want to thank Mike Altman, David Dixon, Brad Brown, Ned Stiker and the other members of the Cortland team for all they have done to make Cortland the amazing company and partner it is. Through local inspiration and research, this team strategically composes resident-centric communities and intentionally creates spaces for an elevated experience. 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. 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. Contact Us. 4:42 - What led Cortland to shift? However, Steven hasnt considered expanding beyond housing. 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. staff definitely needs a to be looked at thoroughly. What's the worst part of that? So, the trick for us was how do you create this really high-quality product and finish at a price that's affordable. It took us a while to really start rolling out the brand. 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. Contact Information. That part didn't take a lot to bite off on that it was largely just math. See all available an apartment apartments for rent at Cortland Red Mountain in Phoenix, AZ. So, I won't say we won't ever do something different, but we're not looking at something today. 10 free leads on us . Steven DeFrancis: At this time, we haven't thought about expanding beyond housing. Willy Walker: If you're only successful, and by only, it's a very relative term, on 4% of the deals that you underwrite. (855) 231-0937. I have strong belief that if we continue to perform for the capital, they're going to find us. The deal pushes Cortland's portfolio of owned and managed apartments to more than 60,000 nationwide and makes it the largest apartment owner in DFW, the company said. This was not the same type of profile we are working on today and, as you can imagine if you were an interior design professional getting the Cortland project to renovate a property that they had just paid $10,000 a unit to buy and we're going to spend $15,000 a year it wasn't the high glamour project. So, it's really two pieces; it's maintaining that ability to be the best to your customer, but also the ability to create the infrastructure to process a lot of throughput, and whether it's development or acquisitions or value add renovations, the whole process of creating product before you then manage and operate the product. Willy Walker: So, your brand, your customer experience, and your cost of renovation, are all competitive advantages that allow Cortland to pay higher for an asset, lower your cost of rehab and then be able to make up for it in the rents, you can charge, because the combination of lower cost on the rehab and then also the brand on the rents allows you to have a unique competitive positioning as it relates to acquisitions. 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. 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