Matt sits down this week with Mark Parrell, President & CEO of Equity Residential, one of the largest and most respected public companies in the real estate world and one of the long term leaders in the apartment space. Their conversation is a deep-dive through the different aspects of what is truly one of the best-run long-term hold real estate businesses in the country.

Mark homes in on themes that are familiar on Leading Voices that merit repetition: Great operations, efficient technology, customer service, investment savvy, disciplined capital strategy, transparency, and the impact of political risk on the business. Mark emphasizes political risk in the business goes beyond rent control to assess whether jurisdictions are proactively investing in infrastructure or general pro-business policies. With EQR’s target affluent renter profile, their business needs to be in high functioning, exciting urban environments.

Mark dives deeply into the operational aspects of the business, including using EQR’s size and scale and business platform to build long term career paths in the apartment business for site level workers, the importance of technology implementation on the resident experience, and comparing the advantages of the REIT model to the private equity model in the new market cycle.

Resources

Equity Residential’s website