Apartment investment and management firm Bell Partners announced executive team transitions earlier this year as part of its long-planned leadership succession goals. Effective March 1, Lili Dunn has taken over the role of CEO from Jon D. Bell, who became executive chairman, in addition to her position as president. Dunn shares with Multifamily Executive her path into the industry, what her priorities will be as CEO, and her favorite recent moment.
MFE: What was your first job?
Dunn: I grew up in the real estate industry. My father was a developer and broker of residential real estate in upstate New York. As a very young child, I remember my dad taking detours on the way to dinner or a family event to visit properties. Most kids would be annoyed by this, but, from an early age, I loved the business and started helping in his office when I was 13 years old. In college, I sold houses, leased apartments, and then created my own market survey company, which I later sold when I graduated.
MFE: What was your path into the multifamily industry?
Dunn: Over the last 30-plus years, I have only had three jobs. After I graduated from University of Michigan, I joined Richard Ellis (who was then a pension fund advisor) just before the market collapsed in 1990. From there, I joined Trammell Crow Residential, which at the time was a decentralized development company and later evolved into the best-in-class apartment REIT, AvalonBay, and I was there for 20 years. I have now been with Bell Partners for over 11 years. Each experience was very different and helped me grow as a leader.
MFE: What are your priorities in your new role as CEO?
Dunn: First and foremost, I am focused on supporting our company’s purpose to create communities our residents are proud to call home as well as our mission to be the apartment company of choice by creating value and honoring commitments to our residents, partners, and associates. This includes helping our company to be sustainable and scalable so it can continue to outperform for our residents, partners, and clients.
- Fostering our special culture and focusing on talent management is critically important to me. I spend much of my time on initiatives related to attracting, developing, and retaining our teams as well as creating intentional acts to foster our culture of caring and results.
- I also am focused on ensuring our teams are aligned around our vision and priorities, as well as providing the platform and resources, including technology, needed to continue delivering superior results.
- Last, I spend a lot of time (albeit virtually these days) with our partners and clients to maintain our strong relationships, provide transparency into performance, and hear their insights.
MFE: What’s ahead for Bell Partners in 2022?
Dunn: First, we want to grow and deepen our presence in our chosen markets. This enables us to achieve operating efficiencies by having greater scale, which helps drive our outperformance. We can achieve this in several ways:
- We plan to complete about $2 billion in transaction activity this year, acquiring and selling properties to produce great returns so that investors continue to trust us to invest for them.
- We will also continue expanding our third-party management business in markets where we can leverage our local experience and extensive operating platform to continue delivering outperformance.
- For our residents, we plan to launch several innovative services this year around areas such as artificial intelligence, virtual leasing, and resident portals.
- We also continue focusing on our investment in technology and data analytics, leveraging these platforms with our extensive local market experience to make thoughtful decisions and adjustments as needed. These support services help our teams to be more efficient, which helps us continue our successful track record of outperformance.
MFE: What housing issue is keeping you up at night?
Dunn: The geopolitical environment, rising inflation, and the ongoing health situation are concerning, can cause a lot of volatility, and can all impact housing. We can navigate difficult times given the strength of our culture and relationships with our partners, associates, and residents as well as our local presence and sophisticated data analytics. As conditions change, we will adjust to minimize disruptions and secure opportunities.
MFE: What’s your top strategy for retaining and hiring employees?
Dunn: I have learned the importance of culture and relationships as well as defining and living your company’s purpose and core values. People are the key to success, and culture is the glue that retains them. We continue to be focused on developing a best-in-class team and fostering a culture where everyone, regardless of gender, race, or cultural differences, feels that they belong, can achieve their potential here, and are inspired to make a difference. To that end, we enhanced our talent management programs to include having more frequent discussions about each associate’s performance and aspirations throughout the year so that we can continue to attract, develop, and retain our incredible team.
MFE: Best recent moment?
Dunn: One of my favorite things to do is visit our communities across the country to meet and talk with our teammates. It’s so gratifying and rewarding to see them live our “We Care. We Deliver.” brand promise. Just this past New Year’s Eve, one of our communities was impacted by the wildfire that burned over 1,000 homes near Denver. Firefighters fortunately stopped the flames from damaging our community, but all of our residents had to be evacuated from their apartments. Incredibly, a snowstorm hit the area the next day, and many of our residents couldn’t return to their homes. Our people were there. They provided heated buses, served pizza, and made homemade chili to feed those who needed it, while our construction and maintenance teams worked feverishly to restore service to the apartments. It’s these unselfish acts of caring demonstrated by our teammates that inspire me and make me proud to be part of the Bell family.
MFE: What is the last book you read?
Dunn: To be honest, I have been on a huge video binge. Some of my favorite shows are “Breaking Bad,” “Ozark,” “The Queen’s Gambit,” “Outlander,” and “The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel.” However, I do need to devote time to return to reading a good book again!
