Today’s interview is with Bill Bayless who is the co-founder and CEO of the only publicly traded student housing company, American Campus Communities (ACC). Bill co-founded the company in 1993, literally just down the hall from Michael Dell who founded Dell Computers—that’s right, two of Austin’s biggest companies founded just a few dorm rooms apart from each other.This company is one of the true pioneers in the student housing business. ACC’s initial mission revolves around a deep and long term commitment to excellence and service—be it to employees, customers, investors—focusing on more than just a transactional goal.To learn more about Bill and American Campus Communities visit:https://www.linkedin.com/in/bill-bayless-1235b62a/https://www.americancampus.com/Also mentioned in this episode:Keith Oden – Creating the Ultimate Company Culture (podcast)

Today’s interview is with Ed Walter, who was named Global CEO for the Urban Land Institute (ULI) in June of 2018. Ed has had a 35-year career in the industry prior to joining ULI, the headline of which was his 20 years at Host Hotels & Resorts, formerly known as Host Marriott, of which the last 9 years he spent as its CEO. Now as the leader of ULI, Ed discusses the changes and challenges that the organization faces, as well as its mission in representing the voice of thoughtful development out in the world. The real estate industry is all about helping create sustainable and vibrant cities and places to live, work, and play. ULI plays a crucial role in articulating and promoting that message and aspiration.Find out more about Ed Walter:Renowned Real Estate Industry Leader W. Edward Walter Is ULI’s New Global CEOQ+A with ULI’s New Global CEO, Ed Walter

In this episode of Leading Voices in Real Estate, Matt Slepin interviews Gilda Perez-Alvarado. Gilda was recently, in September 2018, named the CEO for JLL’s Hotels and Hospitality Group, Americas. In the interview, Gilda shares her career story — from growing up in Costa Rica, to hotel school at Cornell, then working across the globe on hotel transactions, and now her leadership in the business. She shares her wisdom both about the ever-changing hotel business and its ever-deepening engagement with its guests as well as the global nature and appeal of investing in the sector.This is the first part of back-to-back episodes on the hospitality business. Our conversation with Gilda will be followed up with a conversation with Ed Walter, formerly head of Host Hotels and Resorts, and now the Global CEO of the Urban Land Institute.Find out more about Gilda Perez-Alvarado:Gilda on LinkedInGilda & JLLGilda & Cornell

Cedric Bobo is the Co-Founder of Project Destined, a 501c3 that educates both inner city kids and military veterans in financial literacy and community development by their investing, shark tank style, in real real estate deals in their communities. Project Destined brings in the kids and the vets alongside major real estate investment firms like Brookfield in the Bronx and Cortland Partners in Atlanta, with sponsorship and participation from the NBA and celebs like A-Rod, J Lo, and Mariano Rivera. The mission of Project Destined is to transform minority youth into owners and stakeholders in the communities in which they live, work and play. Cedric tells his career story — from growing up in Memphis, to Harvard Business School, to investment banking and private equity at DLJ and The Carlyle Group, to founding Project Destined.

In this special edition showcasing a panel discussion from the 2019 National Multifamily Housing Council Meeting, we explore the centerpiece topic of recruiting and managing talent in today’s industry with four leaders in the apartment business: Bill Bayless, CEO of American Campus Communities; Chris Payne, President of SARES-REGIS Group; Cindy Scharringhausen, Senior Vice President of Human Resources at Camden Property Trust; and Julie Smith, Chief Administrative Officer at The Bozzuto Group. They are generous in sharing their honest challenges, valuable wisdom, innovative strategies, and time-tested tactics for success.Related LinksArticle on NMHC.org

You might say that innovation, passion, and real estate are in Lucy Billingsley’s blood. As the only daughter of real estate legend Trammell Crow, Lucy wanted to make her own name for herself and co-founded the Billingsley Company with her husband. The firm has been developing and creating spaces full of dynamic energy in the Dallas area for years.

In today’s round table discussion, Co-head of JLL’s Multifamily Capital Market’s platform, Christine Espenshade; CEO of Holland Partner Group, Clyde Holland; and Executive Director of Up for Growth National Coalition, Mike Kingsella explore the future of the Multifamily Housing Market and the policies shaping its trajectory.The FutureWhile Clyde, Christine, and Mike agree that the outlook is positive and the economy is picking up, the supply is already a problem for the increasing demand in the market.Clyde advises developers and builders to get start building now to get ahead of the projected buying challenges, with the knowledge that it may be slow in the beginning but will pay off as demand increases.Christine emphasizes that institutional investors are already interested and willing to support these long-term projects because they know that the investment promises steady, safe returns. The shift from home ownership to long-term apartment occupancy is also a clear marker that multifamily housing is a crucial option the market needs to focus on.Policies Slow ProgressionMike sees the issue of supply stemming from the exclusionary policies that are suppressing growth. At Up For Growth National Coalition, their mission is to advocate for a new approach to housing development, focusing on how growth benefits everyone in the community.Clyde, an original founder of Up for Growth, feels the push back from the city council against development regularly.“Even though there is a housing crisis my building housing is considered a negative… Cities have responded to housing not being affordable by introducing policies that made it more expensive.”He adds that developer’s voices are often not valued because people think their motives and projects are all about making money, not about improving their community. Up for Growth acts as the voice for this cause, advocating for more affordable housing close to jobs and transportation so employees can spend more time with their families.“If you have to commute for two hours each way in order to gain a job in the SF Bay Area, the breadwinner doesn’t have an opportunity to spend time with their spouse and their kids,” said Mike.Mike and Clyde see a combination of tax-exempt bond financing for affordable housing at the federal level combined with state-regulated opportunities for development as the solution to both traffic congestion and housing challenges.Christine also concludes that we need to think about housing as a holistic approach to growing our economy and mixing these government partnerships with private investments for a positive long-term plan.

Bill Stein, CEO of Digital Realty, one of the largest data center real estate companies in the world, entered the data center space just as the cloud was born.“We are fortunately right at the middle of all of this, we are at the heart of this revolution.”Pennsylvania and PrincetonBill grew up in Pittsburgh, PA, where relationships, friendship, family, and sports (specifically football) mattered above all else. He attended boarding school in Philadelphia, Princeton for his B.A. in the classics, and the University of Pittsburgh for law school.After working for his father’s law firm as an insurance defense litigator, he joined Duquesne Light Company as a lawyer and then Assistant Treasurer, and then Westinghouse Credit and Westinghouse Electric where he tackled deals before and during the S&L crisis.In 1994, Bill moved to San Francisco to work with one of his previous clients at Westinghouse, TriNet Corporate Realty Trust which was soon sold to iStar Financial Inc. He went on to serve as co-head of Venture Bank @PNC (a technology lending business) at PNC Bank in Pittsburgh with a satellite office in San Francisco.Building Digital RealtyBill joined GI Partners (Digital Realty’s predecessor private equity fund) in 2004 as the CFO and Chief Investment Officer of Digital Realty Trust and helped GI’s data center portfolio go public as Digital Realty.First, Digital Realty began expanding globally, acquiring properties in Europe and Asia. Their business was mainly leasing large chunks of space to financial institutions and technology companies until they bought Telex, an interconnection business which is crucial for data centers.Balancing Tech and Real EstateIn the beginning, Digital Realty was an asset-focused business, but now it is much more customer-focused. There are a lot of real estate details in their relationships with their customers, however, the service level obligations they offer would not be found in a typical real estate firm.“What we provide is a secure space, and we provide access to power. We provide connectivity. We provide power redundancy. So if power lines go down… we have initially batteries in our data centers that kick on to keep the servers running until the generators kick in.”Bill explains that their tenants, including Amazon and Microsoft, are quite loyal and secure because it’s an expensive proposition to leave. Digital Realty’s global footprint, trust, and certainty of delivery give them a tremendous competitive advantage as their customers are confident knowing they can expand their current campus if necessary.The FutureThe Internet of Things, sensors in your home, an Amazon device that controls your lights or searches the internet for you, motion detectors, autonomous driving, virtual reality, artificial intelligence… Data centers are crucial to the ecosystem of the technological advances happening now and in the future.“Innovation here is trying to figure out where the puck is headed, and get there before the puck gets there.”AdviceDon’t be afraid to take educated risks, be open to new opportunities, and value transparency, integrity, ethics, and relationships. You never know when a friendship might matter.

Daryl Carter is the Founder, Chairman, and CEO of Avanath Capital Management, LLC, a real estate investment firm that acquires, renovates, and operates affordable and workforce housing communities across the US. His dual focus on both investment returns and improving the communities where he invests is rare in this business, and we hear on this episode what drives Daryl to succeed in this balancing act.

John Stewart is the Founder and Chair of the John Stewart Company, a San Francisco-based owner, developer, and manager of affordable and mixed-income housing, founded in 1978 with three employees.Today, the Company has 1,400 employees in five offices in the state of California, managing 31,000 units with over 2000 units in its development pipeline.From Aerospace to Affordable HousingJohn grew up in California, graduating from Stanford in 1956 with a liberal arts degree and a focus on history and finance. When he was recruited by U.S. Steel, he moved from San Francisco to Los Angeles but found that the large corporate culture wasn’t a good fit for his entrepreneurial mindset. He switched to TRW as a young management trainee and moved in 1964 to Houston to join TRW’s new offices at the Johnson Space Center.“In careers, once in a while there’s sort of a choice point… we saw the astronauts and NASA up close and personal, but I was also interested in finding out about life in a Southern city.”John showed up as an out-of-towner at the Houston Council on Human Relations to see how he could help and get involved. He joined its low-income housing committee and soon became Chair. His activism quickly caught the Mayor’s attention, who requested that TRW fund a paid leave and lend John to the city for a year to chair the City’s Citizen’s Committee on Affordable Housing. TRW agreed.Founding John Stewart CompanyJohn became so interested in housing that when his year was up, that he headed back to Los Angeles with TRW and encouraged them to apply for HUD’s (the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development) Operation Breakthrough for manufactured housing.TRW was selected, and built nearly a thousand modular affordable housing units in Sacramento and New Mexico; however, manufactured housing was not profitable and John decided to make an offer to acquire 500 units of section 236 multi-family housing from TRW, and the John Stewart Company was born.“One of the few things I did right was plan for capital losses. Every start-up book I read said the dominant reason for failure in small businesses is undercapitalization, so I assumed two years of losses and that’s what it was.”John shares how he capitalized on other’s mistakes by buying and investing in properties that were about to go into assignment or foreclosure. In the process he built trust with HUD. When President Ronald Reagan implemented the low-income tax-credit program in 1984, he began using these credits as an alternative method of financing.“I’ve found that if you are just doing management, particularly low income, with a lot of challenging residents, you don’t last long… it helps to have another line of work, and that would be the development side, the acquisition, the rehab.”In the last 15 years, the company has gone beyond acquisition to also develop new construction projects. John shares that he especially likes working with non-profit corporations in joint ventures because they complement one another.And while he admits that he has had deals that go sideways – there is always a risk – everyone he works with wants to build products that are architecturally attractive and “pencil out.” This is what makes working in this industry fulfilling.After 25 years John sold his company to Southern California Edison. In another choice point, after 5 years he bought it back mainly due to differing views on the company mission. Now, John is proud to have partners that he works with who have been with him for years and who he trusts completely.Tackling HomelessnessWhile others may argue it’s a waste of money, John emphasizes the importance of creating good-looking, market quality housing for low-income people.“My argument is that form and function are connected. You build a schlock product, people will treat it like a schlock product. You build something elegant, they treat it well, with respect, and your turnover is less.”John has found this approach has also helped change the perspective of neighborhoods who are initially opposed to development. When they encounter this dynamic, they bring doubtful prospective tenants and neighbors inside other John Stewart Company Developments to give them a palpable sense of what the new residence will be. Once the tenants and surrounding residents talk to the management, see the quality of the space, the screenings of residents, and the security, it has a very positive effect.ChallengeIf you’re in the affordable housing business with a purely financial bent, then this isn’t your cup of tea. But if you’re comfortable with moderate, reasonable returns, and can accept the risk, this is for you. At the end of the day, you’ve created an attractive physical product that’s a difference-maker in society.