While some firms are jettisoning property management because they lack sufficient scale, others have jumped into the sector.
Count T2 Capital Management among those deciding to operate apartments. On Sept. 21, the Wheaton, Illinois-based private equity real estate investment firm with more than $1.6 billion in assets under management announced it was launching a property operations platform called Base Living, according to a press release.
T2 has continued to grow to become a fully integrated private equity real estate company, principal Aaron Tink told Multifamily Dive. “And this is the next step of that evolution for us.”
At launch, Base Living manages more than 850 apartment units across three properties in Florida and a 1 million-square-foot industrial property.
“We chose these in Florida because we felt that these three were best suited for us to increase capacity, increase and maximize revenue and increase performance,” Tink said. “These were three that we felt were struggling and that we've owned for a while. We wanted to come in and really get our hands dirty and make a difference.”
Over time, Base Living plans to expand across T2’s portfolio, including into student housing, where the private equity firm has a track record.
“T2 has been opportunistic in terms of asset class, and what we've been targeting,” Tink said. “We have had a lot of success in the student housing space historically, and really want to keep that as a focus and pursue that.”
In conjunction with the Base Living launch, the firm hired Tyler Yates as director of property management, responsible for the operational and financial performance of the firm’s property portfolio, per the release. He manages 24 new associates across Illinois, Indiana and Florida and is supported by eight members of T2's corporate team.
Yates, who reports to Tink, has more than a decade of residential operating experience across student housing and multifamily. Most recently, he was vice president of central operations and asset management at Kairos Living, where he oversaw a national portfolio of 5,000-plus homes and 125-plus full-time employees, per the release.
“From sourcing deals to due diligence and underwriting to closing deals to executing a business plan, and now down to the day-to-day operations and day-to-day management of our properties, we'll be able to get into the weeds and be hands-on and proactive and really do our best to control everything that we can control for our assets,” Tink said. “So we're really excited about it.”
T2 is using artificial intelligence to handle the resident journey from prospect engagement and tour scheduling to maintenance coordination and lease renewals, per the release.
“Our goal is to make that work [property management] as efficient and clean and as quick as possible,” Tink said. “We're not trying to replace humans by any stretch of the imagination, but to help on-site staff use their time more efficiently.”
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