Bell’s Building Blocks
Much like his oldest son, Steven Bell had a keen interest in real estate in his youth. “I knew as a teenager that I wanted to go own and operate investment properties,” he says.
Steven wanted to own real estate, but first he went to Raleigh, N.C.–based Cameron Brown Co. to understand the mortgage business and Greensboro-based Richardson Corp. to understand the brokerage business. In 1976, he started Steven D. Bell & Co. with what he says were “a few employees and a few properties.” Since the company didn’t have the money to chase trophy deals, it focused on smaller, older properties.
Bringing Assets Online: A Primer
Bell’s experience buying units from UDR helps it integrate properties quickly.
When Bell Partners bought 25,684 units from UDR in 2008, the Greensboro, N.C.–based company learned a lot of lessons about how to bring new properties online. That served Bell well in late 2009 and 2010, when it added an additional 11 properties (totaling 3,069 units). Here are Bell’s senior vice president and director of multifamily Erin Ditto’s tips for absorbing new properties seamlessly.
1. Listen to the Staff. Whether the company is adding a property under management or buying it, Ditto always starts with a conference call between all key departments. “That way, everyone knows their responsibilities, and a regional manager is assigned early on,” she says.
2. Get the Materials There. The company makes sure its signage is on site when a deal goes down. “We go onto Bell’s marketing site and click for transitioning boxes, and everything is shipped,” Ditto says. “We have a very regimented approach with all of the propaganda. It just comes in one click of a button. Everyone knows what to do [when that button is clicked].”
3. Deploy on the Ground. Once the sale is inevitable, Bell has teams on the ground that move quickly to make sure the property management team is assimilated in the Bell culture. “We have the systems up within 24 hours,” Ditto says. “We make sure they’re ready for business the day we take over.”
4. Stay Connected. When an acquisition occurs, Bell wants the systems at the property to be online and ready to go. “At any given time, we can see who is connected and who is not,” Ditto says. “If you don’t have access all the time, you lose business. We have business-class service at every apartment community.”
5. Expect Results. Ditto says Bell works so quickly that she expects to show strong results at the properties pretty quickly. “You can’t lose three months,” she says. “You have to be ready on the ground to run. For the most part, we have a really good process in place, and you get pretty good at it when you do it quite often.”
By the time the RTC (Resolution Trust Corp.) meltdown hit in the early ’90s, Bell had generated a strong investor following and began to secure larger properties in larger markets, such as the 300-unit Townpark Crossing in Atlanta. His sons—Jon and younger brother, Durant—were interested in the business, but Steven didn’t just hand them jobs. “We all agreed that it was important to develop skills on their own before they joined the company,” Steven says.
In 1994, during his senior year of college, Jon met his real estate icon, Faison, and “fought his way” into a job at the company. Seven years later, after doing everything from being an investment analyst to representing clients in the sales process for Faison, Jon received a call from Steven asking him to come to Bell. “Before I joined the company, I wanted to prove to [my father] and others that I was worthy and capable of doing it on my own,” Jon says.
Meanwhile, Durant spent his post-college years at Atlanta-based Wood Partners, becoming the youngest development partner in the history of the company and helping Wood open its Washington, D.C., office. Durant then came to Bell in 2006. His father felt he had a future in operations and had him handle that section of the company. “I spent my first year and a half being immersed in operations,” Durant says. “[My father] referred to this 18-month period as my MBA. It was really learning from the ground up, because 95 percent of our employees are in the field.”
