Kristy Simonette — From leasing associate to Camden Property Trust CIO

Kristy Simonette, one of the best-known and most respected names in multifamily, is the Senior Vice President — Strategic Services and Chief Information Officer at Camden Property Trust, a public REIT with more than 58,300 units in their portfolio with a market cap of $10.58 billion as of March 2023. 

We sat down with her at Camden’s HQ in Houston to learn about her career journey from leasing associate to CIO as well as her perspective on the past, present, and future of multifamily technology. 

Learn how far multifamily tech has come, the opportunities that are available within multifamily, the problems yet to be solved, how far we have yet to go: we tackled everything from call centers before they were run by software to the future of EV charging. Listen to the episode on Apple podcasts, Spotify, and anywhere you listen to podcasts. Or read the interview below. 

Tyler Christiansen, Funnel Leasing 

Hi, I’m Tyler. I’m the CEO of Funnel Leasing. Almost everything that I’ve learned about being a CEO, I found by simply being curious, listening to podcasts, reading books, and asking questions of everybody who will talk to me. As I’ve done that, as our industry has grown, I’ve realized that there’s not a great place to go and find information about multifamily technology. To that end, we created Multifamily Unpacked. For our first episode, we are honored to have Kristy Simonette joining us, Kristy is the SVP of Strategic Services and CIO at Camden Property Trust. And while that’s a lofty title, and she has a name that many folks know, Kristy does not go out seeking attention. And so this is our opportunity to ask the questions that others are dying to know of what the industry was like and Kristy joined, what are the challenges that she’s been facing? And where does she see the industry going? It was an honor to have this conversation and look forward to diving in with all of you in our first episode of Multifamily Unpacked. All right, Kristy, I am so excited to be here. Thank you for taking time to talk with me.

Kristy Simonette, Camden Property Trust 

Thank you, I’m happy to be here.

Tyler Christiansen, Funnel Leasing 

Very cool. So this is our first episode of this podcast, and you know, a lot of us in our lives have met celebrities, and it’s always really disappointing when you meet that celebrity, and they are kind of a jerk. You, for me, have always been a multifamily celebrity, since I first came into the industry. But I’m happy to report you or anything but a jerk. 

Kristy Simonette, Camden Property Trust 

Thank you. I appreciate that.

Tyler Christiansen, Funnel Leasing 

You’ve become a really good friend and mentor to me. So the opportunity to talk about multifamily technology with you just seemed like the right place to start this conversation. So to get into that, why don’t you tell us how you came into the world of multifamily technology?

Kristy Simonette, Camden Property Trust 

All right, I’m happy to. So, of course, I fell into multifamily because nobody ever, you know, grows up saying I’m going to be a property manager. I had graduated from college, and I was planning to go to law school, and I was working for Four Seasons Hotels. I happen to have a friend whose dad was a controller for a multifamily company. And he was like, “Hey, you should go lease apartments,” (this was about April timeframe) “You should go lease apartments until you go to law school in the fall, because you make a ton of money and you get a free place to live.” I was like, “Hey, that sounds kind of cool.” So I go and interview, and I lease apartments, and I made a ton of a ton of money, you know, whatever. It’s all relative, right? And so I was like, wow, this is a good gig. I loved it, it was so much fun. I was like this is not even work. This is easy. So lo and behold, I decided not to go to law school, and I stayed in multifamily. And I stayed with that company for nine years, and they were sold. When they were sold, I had the option to move to Dallas. Now if you know anything about Texas, nobody in Houston is going to move to Dallas and nobody else is gonna move to Houston. It’s just the, you know, the age old rivalry. So I set out to find my next venture. While I was at that multifamily company, I had the opportunity to not only work on site, but I also became a technical trainer and then moved into internal audit, which was an absolutely awful two years of my life, however, I learned a tremendous amount. I’m thankful for that. But then I ended up managing all of the technology for the property management software system at that time, and all the support and training. I really liked technology, right? I was a business person, I had a business degree, but I really kind of got bit by the technology bug because I saw what it could do to accelerate business. So, I decided I would venture out into the hardcore technology world and I went to work for a company called BFI, the trash company. I was part of the SAP team where I did configuration and ultimately ended up training 40,000 trashmen on how to use SAP. And so once we finished the implementation of SAP, then I managed all the support. Then BFI got sold. We’re seeing kind of a trend here. And I was going to have to move to Philly, and I was not interested in that, or excuse me into Arizona, way too hot. So then I rode the .com bubble, thought I would get rich and never work again. But you see where that landed me, but all along the way, I kept in contact with a couple of people I had worked with at the property management company before, namely Laurie Baker, and a few others that Camden and I ended up at Camden. I always said, I’ll never go back to property management because it’s so boring. We didn’t need technology, right? Our customers didn’t require us to have technology then. So when I came to Camden, goodness in 2003, a long time ago, technology was starting to be demanded by our customers. And so I felt like I came back at the right time. Camden was positioned at that moment to really accelerate the business with technology because they had made a significant amount in tech investments. And they were really on the forefront back then.

Tyler Christiansen, Funnel Leasing 

Perfect. Okay. So that’s a really great foundation for both your career again, from leasing agent to CIO and in between helping bring new technology to the industry. And I love the context of making the changes, like going to a cloud-based system that enabled more innovation, right? I think that’s a pattern I’ve seen with Camden. Another innovation that is in vogue right now that Camden did many years ago was, and I know you put it into a role in this, bringing call centers leasing in-house, right? We know a lot of folks that have made the trek here to Houston, which is where we sit today to learn how do you do it? So tell me about what was the problem that Camden was trying to solve, when you thought about moving leasing strictly from today’s models still onsite or offshore, outsourcing it to doing more remote or centralized leasing?

Kristy Simonette, Camden Property Trust 

Okay, so let’s rewind just a little bit immediately before coming to Camden, I ran a one-hundred-seat call center for ashford.com. That was my .com bubble. Scratch that. That was my.com adventure. How about that? I think that I always saw the application there. But contact centers were kind of taboo, if you will, right. I mean, it’s like, ooh, contact center if you think of like, some dingy place where, you know, it’s just a horrible environment. And that’s not what it was at the .com it was really a cool environment where it was very energizing to work in the contact center. So I interviewed with, I don’t know, 10, or 20 people here at Camden, because that’s what the way we do it, they have to make sure that I’m the right fit. And I have to make sure that Camden is the right fit. But when I interviewed I remember talking to so many people about, you know, how could you apply what you know about contact centers to multifamily? We talked a lot about it, but at the time, that was an expensive proposition, because you had to invest in a switch, you had to invest a lot of capital dollars to get the infrastructure in place to have a contact center. Today, contact centers run software, so it’s just a people business. But before it used to be a lot of infrastructure costs that had to be considered. And you know, if it didn’t work, then that was just sunk cost. So lo and behold, I was here for a couple of years, and Camden was gracious enough to sponsor me in an executive challenge course. And this executive challenge course I took was a year long, and you came up with a business plan, much like a graduate program, a capstone program, you came up with a with an idea, a concept that’s big, and audacious, and then you took that year to go through the steps to prove it out. So I ultimately got to have the idea of a contact center applied to multifamily. I piloted it. And I learned some really compelling evidence. First of all, we miss 80% of the calls that come into our offices. Okay, well, the people that knew I was piloting tried everything they could to answer those phones, and they couldn’t. 80% of phone calls were missed and 50% of sales calls were missed. So I’m paying to drive traffic to a property where there’s only a 50% chance they’re going to be able to answer the call. So long story short, those are really compelling numbers. And so at the end of my program, I got to make the pitch to our executive team, and got approval for moving forward the context center. So strangely enough, I was subsequently promoted to CIO, like, almost immediately on the heels of that. It was kind of bittersweet, I got to hand this off to someone else to execute, but still got to play a pivotal part of it and then they all came back to me a few years ago. So I have responsibility for the contact center today. It’s seriously the best and brightest. This is where we hire great people to come into Camden. And when you work in the contact center, you know everything about our company. So you’re very marketable within our organization, a lot of people move up and out of the contact center, and they have new opportunities that they might not have had before.

Tyler Christiansen, Funnel Leasing 

Love that. Yeah. And I want to come back to that in the, again, the theme here of the investments you’ve made in technology and processes platforms to build on, because I do think right now, there’s a lot of companies that are interested in what you’re doing to get ahead based on those decisions many years ago. But looking backward, is there any advice you would give to a young multifamily professional who’s coming into the industry for the first or second time on how they could advance their career things that you learn through trial and error?

Kristy Simonette, Camden Property Trust 

First of all, I think you have to be bold, and you have to take risks, smart risks, of course, but I think you have to put yourself out there and not color inside the lines and make sure you find a company that is open to letting you try new things. So the first property management company I worked for was small, good, and bad. Right. You get a lot of opportunities to do a lot of different things. And you figure out where your niches, but you’ve got to dig in and learn things, you have to be the best at what you do in order to move up. And I’ve always thought that, of course, at Camden, we always say never stop learning. And I think that’s critical for multifamily because this industry has changed so much, we were so so much the same for so long, and really the last decade things have really moved quickly, things are changing. So if you like change, and you know, you’d like to be a change agent, I think that you can make your mark and multifamily. When you think about this, Tyler, if you’re new coming into this industry, you may start at leasing apartments, but ultimately, you’re going to manage an asset. You’re a general manager, a business manager of $100 million or $200 million business. That’s phenomenal. There aren’t a lot of people that can say that. So it really is a cool career path.

Tyler Christiansen, Funnel Leasing 

Agreed. Yeah, I love and we find on our side that actually the intersection of technology and real estate, which both of us are in, is a very attractive field for people that are just starting their career, they want to understand both sides of that coin, right. And I also like what you said there right now, it’s a fun time to come in, because everything’s changing. I always tell people, it’s a great time to be a CEO, because the rules from five years ago don’t apply. So I’m graded on a curve here, which is great for me. So I want to come back to where we are today. So obviously, we kind of talked about a few of the innovations and others more than Camden, some but a few that have led to where we are today. So speaking more broadly than as you look at the multifamily landscape, I’m literally looking out over Houston and I see multifamily properties everywhere. So you look out over the industry, what are some of the big challenges that are facing the industry today, either those that are the Camden’s actively working on solving or some that you’re you’re still thinking through,

Kristy Simonette, Camden Property Trust 

If I back up a little bit to a couple of years ago, I think that, you know, I had this vision that, you know, I sell everybody on my visions here, I said this vision that self-service would be a true option for our customers, because I think you have to meet your customers where they are. However they want to communicate with us, that’s how we need to communicate with them. We need to accommodate whatever their shopping patterns are and what have you. So, you know, really looking at a couple years ago and going alright, self-guided tours, we’ve got to get there. Because it’s a reality, people want to self-service, I know I do. I’m not even that demographic, and I still want to be self-service, I don’t need to talk to people. But then we ran up against the immediate challenge of access, like, alright, we’ve got the systems that will allow you to come in and guide yourself that you know, and figure out where to go and look at a property even you know, beyond the great websites we have today. But we couldn’t get them into the building and we couldn’t get them into the unit. So then we set out to solve access and nothing was out there at the time. So we ended up spinning up a company to solve access — a company called Chirp. Solving access was probably the biggest barrier that I personally had to immerse myself, and I’m like, we’ve got to figure this out, because we can’t do the next thing, which is that true self-service model. Even beyond self-serving for our customers, it’s also for deliveries, and in-home deliveries, and dog walking, and housekeeping, and all the things that people want to do when they live in your apartments. So, um, you know, I feel like we’ve gotten past the access component. So what’s the next thing I think is really figuring out how we can leverage automation, and maybe not so much automation in the unit, but automation of the way we do business. With platforms like you have that you provided us Funnel, shameless plug here, you revolutionize the way we do business, because April 2nd of 2022, we were able to make a huge shift in the way we operate our properties because Funnel has enabled us really to leverage a platform where you can effectively manage across a portfolio of properties. So this opens up so many opportunities for our great salespeople because now they don’t just have to be attached to one property, they can effectively sell across our entire portfolio. So it’s made it a powerful platform that we’ve implemented, from the marketing automation component to the virtual leasing agent. It’s all those little things, those incremental changes that are making a change and a difference in the way we do business. So what’s the biggest thing coming out I think is AI. What do we continue to iterate on and remove these mind-numbing processes off people that they don’t need to waste their time doing so we freed them up to do the valuable things and be there for our customers and take care of our assets and manage our portfolio. I think we’re just scratching the surface on automation.

Tyler Christiansen, Funnel Leasing 

I couldn’t agree more. And I think that’s one of the many reasons I’m excited to have this conversation is I’ve said before to others that Camden was the best positioned when the change came because nobody could have predicted the pandemic. I remember sitting here in your office in spring of 2020 when we had lots of plans. 

Kristy Simonette, Camden Property Trust 

A week before. A week before the shutdown. 

Tyler Christiansen, Funnel Leasing 

Yeah, we had to cancel a lot of meetings after that, but the speed at which Camden was able to implement the technology was a result of the cloud-based decision, the in-house call center decision. But then I remember sitting in a subsequent meeting with you where you said, we can’t do any of the other things we want to do self-service, access, unless we really build a system around the renter. 

Kristy Simonette, Camden Property Trust 

Right. 

Tyler Christiansen, Funnel Leasing 

I agree with you now, the next opportunity is how do we continue to automate? And I love what you said, which is self-service is there for those who want it, but we’re also creating a better sales system. If I’m a talented sales individual, I have more inventory to sell now. 

Kristy Simonette, Camden Property Trust 

That’s right. 

Tyler Christiansen, Funnel Leasing 

And so, you know, this is not sponsored by Funnel segment, but you know, what are the opportunities when you think about the broader tech ecosystem? So Funnel is for Camden, that platform that allows you to cross-sell, and to do automation, but is the overall tech ecosystem when you bring your team together? And you all look at? Okay, here are our initiatives, is the overall tech ecosystem better today in multifamily than it was 5-10 years ago, in terms of the ability to innovate with new technology, the number of options that are there for you? I know that Camden is a little unique in that both historically and now today, you still invest directly or through funds. So talk to me about the overall tech ecosystem and your ability to find solutions that fit all these needs.

Kristy Simonette, Camden Property Trust 

Hands down, so much better today. So much better. And I think that our big players have gotten better at breaking down some of the barriers being a little more open and maybe they’re not perfect, but they certainly enable us to pick best-of-breed when it makes sense. For us, that’s super important. You know, 10 years ago, even it was very difficult to integrate. Anything. Small players, or big paper, big players are just very difficult to integrate. I think that barrier has gone away today. I think that the options that are out there are vast, I mean, I know because they’re emailing me every day. You know, the new thing is they hit reply on their own email, so they bubble it back up to the top, you know, 35 times a day. There are a lot of options out there. And I think that when you set out to solve a problem, we can talk about our Innovation Council if you want to how we bring problems to the forefront. But when you set out to solve a problem, that’s like ground zero, you’ve got to start with the problem. I get a lot of tech pitches, that they’re trying to solve something that’s not my problem. I’m still trying to figure out where these problems exist. If they even do I love the ideas, but it’s like, “yeah, I don’t I don’t know if that’s really a problem.” Where we are today in the technology ecosystem is we’re looking for things that move the needle. So these little nice-to-haves, they’re probably not going to make our radar because you just can only stomach so much disruption. Right? And so we have to have things that move the needle to differentiate our brand, or make us more money, or save us in expenses, or bring value in a different way. It’s not going to be the little nice-to-haves anymore. I think it’s gonna be the big things, the big shifts.

Tyler Christiansen, Funnel Leasing 

So I love that you’re taking this to a different place than I thought we would, but I like it because this tech, this podcast is for people that really love multifamily technology. And I expect that a lot of folks like myself who sell multifamily tools are gonna want to listen, I was going to ask you bad pitches, and I heard a bit of it which is, you know, coming at a solution without understanding the problem. 

Kristy Simonette, Camden Property Trust 

Correct. 

Tyler Christiansen, Funnel Leasing 

Right. And I want to come back to your Innovation Council, but tell me when you think about the ability to deliver a solution you talked about, it needs to have a demonstrable, quantifiable, impact to your business. I’m sure you get on a weekly basis 100 pitches, emails and meetings. How can a vendor demonstrate to you the lift? I see the same thing everyone says 5% NOI 20% NOI, and I roll my eyes like sure. So how are you kind of sorting through all of these various claims when you hear a Funnel and you hear 100 others to really tie it to an impact or problem that you have? How are you all going about this? Determining the problems that are worth solving. 

Kristy Simonette, Camden Property Trust 

Now, if I told you that I have to kill you. So I want to get back to Innovation Council because this is our main vehicle at Camden if you will, to bubble up problems and discuss them at a really integrated level, if you will. So we have an Innovation Council that consists of 20 members, and we meet every six weeks. During the Innovation Council, we have members from across the nation, across our operations groups, we have corporate support folks, we have vice presidents, we have senior vice presidents. We have everybody in the room. You are responsible for soliciting ideas from your constituents. So if you’re an ops regional manager, you have your ear to the ground, you know what’s happening, you know, what we’re trying to solve. And you know, what’s an issue. These are the kinds of conversations that start to bubble up. I mean, I remember Airbnb back in the day when it was brand new and we were all like awestruck with Airbnb, right? And we had months and months of conversations during the Innovation Council about how can we wrangle Airbnb? What should we do as a company to attach ourselves or remove ourselves from that philosophy and that approach? Innovation Council, the way we bubble up things, and that’s where we find the ideas or the problems to solve that we go after. It’s not the only, but it’s really a good place, a good platform for us to vet things because you have such diverse thought in there. And you have all the different people that are responsible for not only the dollars, but living with whatever solution we pick. So for example, fraud is a huge issue for us right now, especially as we move more and more into self-guided tours and contactless leasing. We know fraud is going up. So we’re very actively looking for the right solution to mitigate our fraud risk. That really came through the Innovation Council, because it’s like, what are we dealing with today that we need to solve?

Tyler Christiansen, Funnel Leasing 

Yeah, I love that. I love that you use the word constituents, because I think often, you know, we think about all the stakeholders in a given decision. What I know on the technology side, we often find is that even if we get the executive team bought in, usually when we get down to the property, they’re like: What is this? Why is it? Right? And I can say from experience that Camden team was completely aligned top to bottom on this is what we’re trying to solve for, this is the direction we’re going. So on that, we’re going to look ahead to the future a little bit. So you just talked about the Innovation Council. So this could be a pitch for Camden or this could be just kind of something that is a Kristy idea. If you were to start a new company today in multifamily tech, what problem would you go out to solve that’s not being solved today by the hundreds of pitches that you’re currently getting?

Kristy Simonette, Camden Property Trust 

All right. So looking into the future, what is there to solve if I was going to build in multifamily? Well, first of all, let me just tell you, I don’t know the answer to these things. Okay. So this is what I am wrangling with in my head right now. Absolutely, it is a quandary to understand how to build, and service, multi-generations in our buildings. So how do you appeal to every different age and every different stage of life? Right? Because historically, younger people lived in apartments, and that is not the case today. How do you build the right product for all generations? That’s a hard one to solve. So we’re, you know, these are things that keep me up at night. So that’s a big one. The second thing is, and this one’s mind blowing to me, with electric vehicles, and this is just starting to scratch the surface, but it really kind of brought it to the forefront. What in the world are we going to do if and when — I live in Houston, Texas, I’m not happy about this whole electric vehicle thing, right Oil and gas, land of Big Oil and Gas — what in the world are we going to do to our buildings, existing buildings? Future build, we’re probably okay. But the infrastructure doesn’t exist to support all the electrical needs, we’re going to have for every single unit. They’re projecting that we could use as much as four times as much electricity today, in 10 years. Okay. How are our buildings going to be retrofitted for this? I don’t even know how the grids will handle that. I mean, that is something that is alarming to me. And now I know, EV chargers, I know that, that they’re only going to get better and better and more efficient. But still, if 50% of our residents have electric vehicles, you can’t leave 50% on a charger overnight, because everybody has more than one vehicle, right? You have two people in our apartment. So these are the things that I kind of scratch my head and go, wow, we’re gonna have to solve for this because you have so much density and multifamily that you’re just compounding the need for electricity. And so, you know, I don’t know, is solar an option? I don’t know. Hydrogen, probably. So what are the next alternative energy things that are going to power our buildings? And how are we going to retrofit all the existing stock that we have?

Tyler Christiansen, Funnel Leasing 

It’s a great problem to be solved, and it’s interesting, because you know, you look at marketing as it kind of tells you what’s going on in the world. My kids think the only cool car in the world is a Tesla. So you’re right, we’ve got to think ahead. How are we going to start accommodating our stock to the new, as you said earlier, meet the consumer where they are there’s a big problem to be solved. And to double click on that for a minute, one thing that I think is really cool about Camden and aside from this culture of innovation that you all have, is you’ve partnered with a lot of firms that are doing that have their ear to the ground. I remember once I called you and you were driving to Austin, I said “What are you going to Austin for?” 

Kristy Simonette, Camden Property Trust 

That was cool. 

Tyler Christiansen, Funnel Leasing 

I’m going to see how they 3D print houses. Icon, there we go. So how are you all with problems like this, tell me a little bit about some of the various ways in which you all are keeping abreast of the latest and greatest in technology. How do you guys do that?

Kristy Simonette, Camden Property Trust 

So a couple of things, first of all, we’ve made strategic investments in a couple of funds. We invested with Modern Ventures and we use Modern as part of our staff, really, we get our money out of Modern Ventures. We use them to help us research and we take problems to them and say, “Who are you seeing out there that can provide a solution for this problem or that problem?” So we leveraged their portfolio of companies to help us solve problems, and they also bring things to us. So it’s been a very beneficial relationship. And with Modern, we use them for creative problem-solving for today. Then we made another investment in Fifth Wall’s climate fund, because we know that the whole energy, and the way we build in the future, we know we’re going to have to address this. So we look at that fund as a vehicle to help us understand how we build for the future. What did the designs look like? So we leverage all kinds of different areas, and of course, you know, we keep in touch with CEOs like you, that help us stay on the forefront of what you’re hearing because you work with a lot of customers. So we certainly don’t know it all, we have so much to learn, but we try to leverage all of our resources. And I hire great people. I mean, I hire great people and get out of their way. And they bring ideas every single day.

Tyler Christiansen, Funnel Leasing 

That’s the key. Right? Yeah, I agree. You have fantastic people. I also will say the reputation you’ve built in the industry have a lot of friends. So I’m sure I think that’s how you and I got connected was our friend Scott Moore at Cortland. That’s right. So yeah, I think another piece of being an innovative culture is finding good ideas from everywhere, and then matching them against the problems that you’ve identified in your own business. So this is, this is 101 tech solving here for anybody who’s listening. Alright, so one more future-looking question. When we look out three to five years, are there any technologies today that you think will be obsolete? Or more broadly? Is there anything that just people aren’t seeing coming? that you think is going to change the way, you know, you said access is clearly everyone is aware of that because of the pandemic. EV we talked about? That’s a problem to be solved. But is there anything that you think man, this is, like, whenever I check into a hotel, I laugh when they have the iPod charger next to the bed, the wide charger. And I’m like “That was a bad investment.”

Kristy Simonette, Camden Property Trust 

That’s a bad move. I’m not gonna say we didn’t do that. But, it was a bad move.

Tyler Christiansen, Funnel Leasing 

Anything, you look out and think this technology is going to just go away, or you know what someone doesn’t see, like when Airbnb came in, that kind of came out of nowhere, right? So any kind of predictions looking ahead in the future.

Kristy Simonette, Camden Property Trust 

I don’t, I don’t know if there’s anything I can pick up that I say is gonna go away. I think everything, we’re gonna continue to iterate. Like, social media, God, I wish would go away. It’s not going away. But it has changed. Right. It has changed. And I think that that will, and let’s get back to EV chargers. I think they’ll change, I think the ones we have today will be obsolete in three years, because you gotta get the whatever, speedy-quick lightning-fast whatever they call the fast charge. I mean, that’s the only way this is going to work. So I think there are things like that, that I’m not sure they’re gonna go away. But I think we’ll continue to iterate on them. 

Tyler Christiansen, Funnel Leasing 

You’ve got great answers. Alright, so we’re gonna do a speed round. I’m gonna ask you, we’re gonna call the Funnel Five, five questions that were asked — your questions are very specific to Kristy, we’re gonna say everyone needs one. So first question, any non-work apps that you regularly check first thing in the morning? Your favorite non-work apps? 

Kristy Simonette, Camden Property Trust 

Whomp whomp whomp, I’m so boring. 

Tyler Christiansen, Funnel Leasing 

Big TikTok user, Kristy?

Kristy Simonette, Camden Property Trust 

No, I’m not a TikTok user. I’m not gonna tell you what I really check every morning. No, I mean, news apps: Wall Street Journal, our local news apps, ABC, and Fox affiliates here.

Tyler Christiansen, Funnel Leasing 

I’m gonna, I’m gonna lean into that because I think your job is a little unique in that a lot of operators are just worried about their client, you know, the institutional owner group or whoever it may be. You’re a public company, right? So how does that influence the way you think about technology? And oh, I listen to your earnings calls and they ask about it. 

Kristy Simonette, Camden Property Trust 

You’re exactly right. And every one of us, every executive, every employee at Camden, we always ask ourselves, okay, could this decision impact the stock price? Because if it could, you really got to sit back and take heed and make sure you’re doing the right thing. 

Tyler Christiansen, Funnel Leasing 

Interesting. Okay. Well, I was just thinking that, well I’ve found myself that the news I consumers even changed being a vendor to a public company that I start thinking about well let me check came in stock prices. I mean, what’s going on? How’s this affecting you? Alright, so favorite book or podcast at the moment or broadly, favorite book?

Kristy Simonette, Camden Property Trust 

Um, right now I’m listening to Matthew McConaughey’s book, his Green Lights book, very entertaining, really good. He’s, he’s smarter than I thought. My favorite author right now is Jack Carr. I don’t know if you know who he is, but he’s kind of Vince Flynn, you know, CIA covert ops kind of thing. But I have to say that business-wise business books, we just, we have something our executive team does. Once a month, we work on a book. And well, not once a month, but over the course of a year we usually tackle a book or two and so we recently tackled Marcus Buckingham’s Nine Lies About Work. So if you haven’t read it, I highly recommend it. It transformed the, our, the way we do business, it transformed the way that we work with our talent and work with our folks to develop them and just really kind of set us on a different path. So it’s a great read.

Tyler Christiansen, Funnel Leasing 

Yeah, I’m gonna check that one out. I have not just saying this because I’m sitting with you, but huge admiration for the Camden Culture. So if you all feel it’s valuable, it’s good. Alright, so next question, then. If you could retire, although you told me you can’t retire, that’s in your contract, never retire because we need you. If you could retire and work on a philanthropic cause, what would that be?

Kristy Simonette, Camden Property Trust 

I have no clue. I’m not even. I’m not I’m not near retiring. So I can’t even think about those things yet.

Tyler Christiansen, Funnel Leasing 

Well, we’ve got one called H.O.M.E., we’ll work with you on that one. All right. What’s an opinion you hold so strongly to be multifamily-specific? Or not? That you would put it on a billboard you got a free billboard, Kristy’s billboard, what does it say? Louder for the people in the back real clear what’s that opinion?

Kristy Simonette, Camden Property Trust 

So it’s, it’s my creed that I live by, “Don’t let perfection stand in the way of progress.”

Tyler Christiansen, Funnel Leasing 

Love that. Love that. I think that I see that theme here with the initiatives you’ve taken on? They weren’t perfect. 

Kristy Simonette, Camden Property Trust 

Never. 

Tyler Christiansen, Funnel Leasing 

There were barriers, but you’re going to make progress. 

Kristy Simonette, Camden Property Trust 

But you’ve got to get out of the gate. 

Tyler Christiansen, Funnel Leasing 

Love it. Okay. So Camden has an initiative, where you talked about, you know, building a culture around the renter, when you think about, you know, we like to talk about being renter-centric. What does renter centric mean to you?

Kristy Simonette, Camden Property Trust 

Funnel. Mic drop.

Tyler Christiansen, Funnel Leasing 

20 bucks. 

Kristy Simonette, Camden Property Trust 

Yeah, there you go.

Tyler Christiansen, Funnel Leasing 

But in the Camden culture, which I mean, you were Camden was the first company when COVID happened, instead of just talking about all the bad, there was a lot of bad. Camden was immediately talking about the renter. And we weren’t even partners yet at that point, I remember thinking that to me, that was renter-centric, how do you keep the focus on your core customer, as you make decisions and solve problems,

Kristy Simonette, Camden Property Trust 

We do try to start with the customer, and work backward from that. I would say that being renter-centric, is really about meeting your customers where they are. You know, your renters will tell you everything, they’ll tell you what you need to do better. And so we have our ear to the ground with our customer sentiment score that we we live by, and we’ve had for 20 years, or 15 years, where it’s sort of like an NPS, but we really measure what our customer sentiment is and we really listen to him to understand: what they need, what they want, what we can do better. And, we actually make changes from it. So I think that, you know, this whole renter-centric idea, which I think that I first heard that term from you. It’s about meeting your customers where they are and listening to him.

Tyler Christiansen, Funnel Leasing 

Love it. Yeah, renter-centric is listening. Yeah, agreed. Well, Kristy, normally we had podcasts, and that’s one of the reasons I was so excited about this was I don’t think there’s a good place, when I was trying to sell to you, I was trying to find something like this that didn’t exist. Is there a social media channel people can follow you on? Are you active on LinkedIn? Twitter? You said not TikTok. Is there any handle that we can send people to? 

Kristy Simonette, Camden Property Trust 

I’m on LinkedIn. 

Tyler Christiansen, Funnel Leasing 

Okay. And you lurk on LinkedIn?

Kristy Simonette, Camden Property Trust 

I lurk. Occasionally. I’m terrible, though. I mean, we have so many channels coming at us now. Right. And so I know I’m a slacker. I’m not a big social media person, but I am on LinkedIn.

Tyler Christiansen, Funnel Leasing 

Okay. On LinkedIn. Well, Kristy, thank you so much for your time. This was amazing. It’s a pleasure first podcast. Appreciate it. 

Kristy Simonette, Camden Property Trust 

Thank you for everything that you do for our industry. Thank you. Great, and that’s a wrap.

Tyler Christiansen, Funnel Leasing 

Thanks for listening to Multifamily Unpacked, we wanted to ensure our podcast was interesting and not a product pitch. To stay up to date, follow us on LinkedIn or visit Funnelleasing.com. If you enjoyed this conversation, please subscribe wherever you listen to podcasts.