Cindy Clare
Cindy Clare

In December 2017, Cindy Clare joined multifamily owner–operator Bell Partners as its new COO, responsible for overseeing the management of more than 60,000 apartment units across the country.

Clare came to Bell with 30 years of multifamily experience, including 12 as president of McLean, Va.–based KETTLER Management, where she was instrumental in developing the company’s platform and third-party business initiatives. Clare was honored by MFE among “10 of the Most Influential Women in Real Estate” in 2015, and she was recently chosen as chairman of the National Apartment Association.

During the first seven months of Clare's tenure, Greensboro, N.C.–based Bell Partners has focused its acquisition efforts on a new market: California. The firm acquired Avaire South Bay (now Bell South Bay) in Los Angeles, for $123 million, in February, followed by Bell Pasadena in Pasadena, for $97.3 million, in April and Bell Uptown District in Oakland, Calif., in June. Each of the properties is managed from Bell’s new San Francisco office, which will oversee the company’s ongoing West Coast expansion.

We spoke to Clare about her first months at Bell Partners, her goals and achievements, and the company’s strategy as it expands into California’s major markets.

How would you describe your first months as COO at Bell Partners? What's your most important accomplishment so far, and what's another goal you have in the short term?

They’re both one and the same. I think the most important thing I've done is to get out and meet our teams and visit our properties. I spent a lot of the first six months doing that, and my goal is to finish getting to the vast majority of our properties by the end of the year. Which is a big pull, since we have 150 properties in 16 states.

I’ve made it to most of our major markets at this point, and I’m trying now to get all of the other markets. And I think that’s important, because I need to know the teams and know our product, as in my role we’re looking for the big picture and strategy for Bell on the operations side.

How do you plan to shape Bell over the next few years?

One of the reasons I joined Bell is that it’s a great company and a growing company with a really strong foundation. So I hope what I can do is continue that growth and take what’s already a great company to another level, from both a property and a marketing standpoint, just looking at all of the operations and building on what we already have.

Bell Partners is focusing on expanding into California this year. How does the company plan to operate there? What opportunities do you see?

Obviously, California is a strong market with tremendous rent growth, particularly when you look at San Francisco and L.A. And from an investment standpoint, we want to be able to be a diversified investment as well as management company. So going into California was a natural step for us.

One of the things we’ve done is made sure to hire a strong team that knows California well. So we have an SVP of operations who stays in California. We also have an EVP of investment who moved from the East Coast to California so that we could have a strong presence there. We think, if we’re going to be there, we need to invest in the people and the team. We just recently hired a director of marketing who'll be based in California as well.

Have you made any modifications to your strategy to fit this market?

I think you have to adjust to the market you’re in. So the way we operate in Boston … while the baseline for all of our properties is the same, you have to recognize the nuances of the market you’re in, and the same is true in California. Obviously, from a regulatory standpoint having people who know California is important, [as is] having boots on the ground there, because the regulatory environment is much more stringent than in other parts of the country. So, we're making sure we understand that and use the resources we have. And that includes [that] we’re members of the National Apartment Association and the NMHC, so [we're] relying on some of the industry associations that can help us with that. But, really, it’s making sure we have the right people and that we're focused on understanding what the requirements are in California.

What changes and improvements does Bell plan to make to these new properties?

We do a lot of renovation, so when we’re buying we look at what we can do to recondition. In the case of California, all three properties that we’ve purchased there are fairly new properties, but a lot of them are in emerging areas or recently emerged areas. And our goal there, in those cases, is to make sure the property’s stabilized and that we continue to improve both occupancy and rent growth at those properties.