The 10 Most Influential Executives of the Decade

The past decade has seen a number of apartment industry chieftains who have emerged to leave their mark on the multifamily sector. As a result, Multifamily Executive consulted its Linkedin and Twitter followers, as well as industry experts, for recommendations. Here are the 10 individuals that wielded the greatest influence in the 2000s:

Sam Zell, chairman, Equity Residential
Ron Terwilliger, former chairman, Trammell Crow Residential
Ric Campo, CEO, Camden Property Trust
Tom Bozzuto, CEO, The Bozzuto Group
Scot Sellers, CEO, Archstone
Mike May, senior vice president of multifamily, Freddie Mac
Doug Bibby, president, National Multi Housing Council
Tom Toomey, CEO, UDR
Phil Weber, former senior vice president of multifamily, Fannie Mae
Shaun Donovan, Secretary, HUD

SAM ZELL
Chairman, Equity Residential
Years in the Industry: 45+

Sam Zell is founder of Equity Residential, along with two other mega-REITs. Not only is Equity one of the biggest apartment owners in the country, but it’s widely hailed by apartment analysts as one of the best managed firms in the business, public or private. At a time when its competitors are saddled with debt, Equity has the dry powder to be force in the industry for years to come.

Zell’s influence is also shown through the leaders he groomed. Both Doug Crocker, who ran the company at the beginning of the decade, and David J. Neithercut, who has been at the helm since 2006, were both nominated as candidates for this list. The past decade hasn’t been all success for Zell, however. He recently resigned as CEO of The Tribune Cos.

Ronald Terwilliger is chairman and CEO of Atlanta-based Trammell Crow Residential, the country's largest builder of multifamily housing units.

Credit: Jason Nuttle/WPN

Terwilliger’s impact on the apartment industry has been felt in a number of ways over the past decade. For one thing, there’s the sheer number of units his firm has built. From 2006 through 2009, Trammell Crow was the No. 1 builder on Multifamily Executive’s list of Top 50 Builders. In 2004 and 2005, it was also in the top three. But that professional profile doesn’t tell the whole story about Terwilliger’s influence. There are also the great leaders that have been bred under Terwilliger's leadership, folks like Bryce Blair and Richard L. Michaux at AvalonBay Communities; Chris Wheeler at Gables Residential; Leonard Wood at Wood Partners; and Bruce Ward at Alliance Residential.

Terwilliger’s influence doesn’t stop there. He had a three-year stint as chairman of NAHB Multifamily and has also served as chairman of the Urban Land Institute. Terwilliger has donated $5 million to the organization to establish the J. Ronald Terwilliger Center for Workforce Housing; $100 million to Habitat for Humanity International; and $5 million to Enterprise Community Partners. The result so far: The development of more than $130 million worth of affordable housing throughout the country.

Ric Campo, CEO, Camden

While many of the CEOs that took their companies through IPOs in the early ’90s (after the last real estate crash) aren’t at the helm of their companies anymore, Ric Campo remains CEO of Houston-based Camden Property Trust. While Camden holds large stakes in some difficult markets, Campo gets high marks for maintaining a healthy balance sheet throughout this downturn. And, he’s poised to grow when things start improving.

When private equity was gobbling up REITs in the middle part of the last decade, Campo managed to pull off a deal for Summit Properties in 2005. He’s been on the leading edge of incorporating technology into his platform, adopting Rent.com, YieldStar, and Leasing Desk to improve business. And his leadership has put Camden on Fortune magazine’s “100 Best Companies to Work for” in America in 2008 and 2009. “Campo is on the leading edge on technology, is a real solid leader for Camden, and has their finances in strong shape,” says Doug Bibby, president of the Washington, D.C.-based National Multi Housing Council (NMHC).

Tom Bozzuto, President and CEO, The Bozzuto Group

TOM BOZZUTO
CEO, The Bozzuto Group
Years in the Industry: 30+

Compared to many of his national competitors that operate in the Washington, D.C. metro, Tom Bozzuto’s company, The Bozzuto Group, is small. Bozzuto proves that you don’t have to amass tremendous amounts of properties to cast a long shadow. Bozzuto, Multifamily Executive’s 2006 Executive of the Year, builds a wide variety of housing, including affordable properties, for residents in Maryland, Virginia, and Washington, D.C. He also takes a leadership role in the industry, serving on such groups as the Millennial Housing Commission, Harvard's Joint Center for Housing Studies, the Maryland Housing Commission, the National Association of Home Builders, and the NMHC. 

What's more, Bozzuto isn’t just known for its high-quality, diverse portfolio. The company has been named one of the best places to work in the Washington, D.C., region. “They have a great culture,” says Bibby of the NMHC. “People love working there. And they do top of the line work”

R. Scot Sellers, Chairman, CEO Archstone Communities

SCOT SELLERS
CEO, Archstone
Years in the Industry: 28

While rumors have been circulating about the future of Denver-based Archstone since Tishman Speyer and Lehman Bros. spent $22.2 billion to privatize the firm, there’s still a widespread feeling among industry watchers and analysts that investors would welcome the company back to the public markets back with open arms. A big part of that is the leadership of CEO Scot Sellers. In fact, while the company was still in the public domain, a longtime Wall Street analyst called Sellers "one of the most impressive CEOs in the REIT industry."

Sellers played a huge role in nursing the massive deal, cited as the biggest multifamily real estate deal of the decade, to the finish line. But well before that time, he’d already established his chops as a leading apartment executive. With more than 28 years of experience in the apartment industry, Sellers has been responsible for the development, acquisition and operation of more than $40 billion worth of apartment communities. He was one of the first large companies to purchase units overseas. In 2009, the company owned or had an ownership position in 446 communities located in the United States and Europe, representing 84,541 units.

Mike May, senior vice president of Freddie Mac's multifamily division

MIKE MAY
Senior Vice President of Multifamily, Freddie Mac
Years in the Industry: 26

In 2005, Mike May took over as senior vice president of multifamily for Freddie Mac. It’s hard to fathom that he knew how much the market would change. At the time, multifamily buyers were going to the CMBS markets and commercial banks for loans. But when the credit markets turned upside down, Freddie and Fannie became the only places to turn for liquidity. But as the former government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) have had to deal with the broadly changing needs of their customers, they’ve also had internal transitions—going into government conservatorship.

In comments last September, May said Freddie’s mortgage portfolio had jumped to $94 billion, up 75 percent over the past few years. What’s more, since Freddie Mac entered conservatorship, the GSE has funded more than $18 billion in multifamily loans. Freddie has been growing as much as six times faster than mortgage debt outstanding. And its share of the market is at an all-time high. One of the drivers of this growth is its flourishing Capital Markets Execution program. The CME funded $1.3 billion in loans and conducted a $1 billion issuance into the capital markets. Along with Fannie Mae, Freddie has been effectively the only thing out there propping up multifamily lending in the past few years.

Doug Bibby, president of the National Multi Housing Council

Credit: NMHC

DOUG BIBBY
President, National Multi Housing Council
Years in the Industry: 26 

Since moving from Fannie Mae to the helm of one the industry's leading trade associations, the National Multi Housing Council, in 2001, Doug Bibby has made a huge impact on the rental industry. Upon arrival in 2001, he announced his intention to become a “strategic business partner for its members.” And throughout the past decade, he’s accomplished just that, despite dozens of problems over the years (including an outbreak of mold hysteria; the labor market tightening; and insurance costs skyrocketing). Today, the association also wields its clout on Capitol Hill. The NMHC began the decade fighting a number of legislative initiatives that could hurt the rental market, while becoming a strong proponent for the industry during the for-sale housing boom.

Since the credit meltdown, the NMHC is stepping up its intensity. Among the accomplishments: retaining a federal liquidity backstop with Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac for the apartment sector; securing a federal liquidity backstop for the CMBS market; securing federal guidance easing apartment loan workouts; securing Treasury rules ease restructuring of CMBS loans; securing an FHA waiver making permanent financing more available for apartment firms; and bolstering the bewildered low-income housing tax credit program. 

Thomas Toomey

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.

Weber

PHIL WEBER
Former Senior Vice President of Multifamily, Fannie Mae
Now Executive Vice President of Real Estate, Forestar Group
Years in the Industry: 15

Much like Mike May at Freddie Mac, Phil Weber, who became senior vice president of multifamily for Fannie Mae in 2006, has been critical to providing liquidity to the apartment market as the credit world crumbled in the past couple of years. As sales ground to a halt in early 2009, Freddie provided $10.1 billion in debt financing for the multifamily rental housing market in the first half of 2009. Fannie is focused on stemming problems with existing troubled multifamily loans, while reinvigorating its MBS business and primarily providing liquidity to the multifamily market through MBS issuance. Approximately 71 percent of total production in the first half of 2009 was an MBS execution, compared to 17 percent in the first half of 2008. Though Weber left Fannie last September, he expects to continue to make his mark on the industry in his new role as executive vice president at Austin, Texas-based Forestar Group.

Shaun Donovan, Secretary, HUD

SHAUN DONOVAN
Secretary, U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD)
Years in the Industry: 11

It might seem premature to include recently appointed HUD secretary Shaun Donovan on a list of influential multifamily leaders of the decade. And they would have a point. But they forget his contributions before arriving in Washington, D.C.

As Commissioner of the New York City Department of Housing Preservation and Development (HPD), Donovan created and implemented HPD's New Housing Marketplace Plan to build and preserve 165,000 affordable homes, the largest municipal affordable housing plan in the nation's history. According to the HUD Web site, he also worked on the New York City Acquisition Fund, a collaboration with foundations and banks to finance affordable housing; an innovative inclusionary zoning program; an ambitious supportive housing plan; and the Center for New York City Neighborhoods, one of the earliest responses to the foreclosure crisis.

Now, at HUD, Donovan is tasked with running the FHA, which is providing a large amount of the financing for the multifamily industry (specifically with construction). With FHA’s reserves falling, Donovan’s focus will be on buyers putting more “skin in the game,” which could mean fewer buyers and more renters. In addition to modernizing FHA, Donovan is also focused on preserving public housing; supporting project-based rental housing; preventing homelessness; and addressing the affordable rental housing crisis.