Multifamily giant Mid-America Apartment Communities said its CEO will step down next year and its current chief investment officer will take his place, a shift in leadership at one of the nation's largest apartment owners at a time of improving prospects for the industry.
Following three decades with the company and 23 years as its chief executive, Eric Bolton is expected to retire at the start of next year’s second quarter. MAA’s board of directors said it will nominate Brad Hill as CEO at the company’s annual meeting of shareholders. Bolton, 68, will continue to provide strategic support as executive chairman. He will also serve as board chair.
Hill will come to the helm as MAA looks to ride the next wave of recovery in multifamily real estate. After record numbers of new unit openings throughout 2023 and much of 2024 that held down rent growth and suppressed property values, the pipeline of construction projects has slowed to a halt.
“We have closely observed Brad's growth, capabilities, character and leadership style over the past several years,” Alan Graf Jr., lead director on the board, said in a statement. He added that MAA is “confident in Brad's ability to lead our team in continuing to create value for our investors, residents, associates and communities.”
Hill, who is 20 years Bolton’s junior, joined MAA in 2010 and rose from a director of development to become the firm’s chief investment officer in December 2023. He brings more than two decades of real estate experience to the chief executive role after previously holding positions in development at Loeb Properties and as portfolio manager at First Tennessee Bank.
As chief investment officer, Hill has overseen MAA’s transaction activity, new development efforts and property operations. He holds a bachelor’s degree in management from Tulane University and a Master of Business Administration from Southern Methodist University’s Cox School of Business.
“Brad's experience, capabilities and ambition for the business ideally position him to lead MAA forward through the next era of opportunity,” Bolton said in the statement.
Navigating market recovery
With steady demand expected to persist — driven by wage and job growth, positive household formation, and the significant cost of homeownership relative to renting — some apartment owners believe new supply will be taken up quickly and sense a coming turnaround in rent growth.
"As Brad takes control on April 1, he is looking out the windows of the bridge to an ocean of oversupply that is winding down, with the prospect of new starts further constrained as permits fall and construction lending limited," Alexander Goldfarb, managing director at the bank Piper Sandler, said in an email. "We believe MAA is well positioned over the next several years."
Based in Germantown, Tennessee, MAA has grown under Bolton's leadership from a regional real estate investment trust into one of the largest apartment owners in the United States. The firm, which is a member of the S&P 500, consistently outperforms its peers with total returns more than double the overall index. MAA currently ranks second on the National Multifamily Housing Council’s most recent list of the country’s biggest apartment owners by unit count, a demotion for a firm that held the top spot for six of the past seven years.
As of the end of 2023, MAA’s portfolio spanned 100,894 units after adding 1,200 that year. Like many large apartment companies, MAA spent the first quarter of 2024 on the sidelines, but Hill has been leading a surge in transaction activity and development over recent months as companies looks to position themselves to take advantage of growing property values.
“Our plan from a capital allocation perspective is to certainly continue to allocate both to acquisition and development,” Hill said on the company's second-quarter earnings call. "We would like to lean a little bit more into the acquisition area given just the immediacy of earnings associated with that. But honestly, given the returns that we've been able to achieve, where our yields are 6% and the market was substantially less than that, we've been a little bit slower in the acquisition market.”
In a third-quarter earnings statement, the company said it acquired two multifamily properties totaling nearly 700 units for a combined $190 million in Dallas and Orlando, Florida. The deals followed an $81 million acquisition of a 306-unit property in Raleigh, North Carolina, during the second quarter.
In addition, MAA is expanding its pipeline of construction projects to total $1 billion in investments that could add nearly 3,000 units to its portfolio. The pipeline’s value is more than double the firm’s development investments in 2022 that reached $450 million.
Hill is also a CFA charter holder as well as a member of the Urban Land Institute and the National Multifamily Housing Council.