Cindy Clare
Tracy Boulian
President, Kettler Management
In her 10 years at Kettler Management, Cindy Clare has led an enormous amount of growth for the firm.
Kettler started out as a small, Washington, D.C. area–based firm and when Clare joined the team, it only had 8,667 units in 37 communities. Today, the firm has over 24,000 units in 103 properties spread across the Mid-Atlantic from Massachusetts to North Carolina.
Like many people in this industry, Clare sort of fell into property management after taking a temporary position the summer after she graduated. When she decided it was a field she wanted to pursue, she turned to education.
“I was an administrative assistant for the head of the residential group at that time, and so I took some accounting classes. I took the RPA [Real Property Adminstrator]program. I went and worked on a property on my own time to learn the business so that I understood it. Then, I was promoted into a regional role,” says Clare.
Now that she’s made it to the top, she’s paying back the favor by educating other students in property management. Clare currently serves as a faculty member for The Institute of Real Estate Management and sits on the Advisory Board of the Virginia Tech Program in Real Estate, which includes course work in residential property management.
“I like to see people be successful,” says Clare.
Her next focus, beyond continuing her company’s expansion, is the technological growth of the industry.
“The technology is there; it’s not going away,” she says. “But we need to control it versus it controlling us.”
