Bell makes list of top apartment managers
A flurry of acquisitions during 2006 helped push Greensboro's Steven D. Bell & Co. onto a recent list of the top 50 apartment managers in the country.
Bell, which increased the number of units it manages by 66 percent last year, ranked 38th on the National Multi Housing Council's list of the top 50 for 2007. Only two other North Carolina companies - Wachovia, in 9th place, and Raleigh-based Drucker & Falk, in 46th - made the list.
This is Bell's first appearance on the top 50 list. The local real-estate investment and management company ran 29,754 apartments at the end of last year - up 11,823 units from the end of 2005. In recent months, though, Bell has sold some apartment properties from a portfolio of acquisitions including Triad-area complexes.
Tracking larger trends, the NMHC list indicates that apartments might be trending the way of retail - increasingly, it's the larger firms that hold all the cards.
Just as, locally, we're seeing hometown companies selling out (Koury Corp. handing the mall to Chicago-based General Growth Properties a couple years ago; Starmount Co. placing its entire commercial portfolio on the auction block), major firms are taking hold of multi-family projects on the national level.
NHMC reports that the top 50 management firms ran 2.6 million apartments last year, up a record 8.3 percent over the prior year. Those 50 companies now manage 14.7 percent of the nation's total apartments.