TOM TOOMEY
CEO, UDR
Years in the Industry: 20
When the decade started, Tom Toomey was chief operating officer for Denver-based AIMCO. By the end of the decade, he had been at the helm of Denver-based UDR for eight years and had pushed the company to become of the technological pacesetter of the industry. When Toomey took over UDR, the REIT was struggling, but the financial expert engineered an impressive turnaround. He has restructured debt, improved operations, built a more effective team, and relocated the corporate office from Richmond, Va., to Denver. He pruned his portfolio, highlighted by the disposition of an 86-property portfolio in 2008, and added billions of dollars of new assets in California, Florida, and Washington, D.C.
In the past couple of years, the firm has also taken the lead in technology. It was one of the first companies in the industry to launch an iPhone-compatible Web site that, along with the company’s WAP Web site, is the only mobile Web site in the world that has an online apartment reservations/hold mechanism. And, its Spanish Web site won a 2009 Multifamily Executive Award in the category Best Use of Technology.
