Build-to-Rent in a Brave New World
Global Real Estate Services Combines Personal Services and Technology for Investing Success from Start to Finish By Carole Vansickle Ellis Mike McMullen, founder and CEO of Birmingham-based Global Real Estate Services, started investing in real estate in 2002 at the behest of his accountant. “He asked me why I had so much money in the stock market when I knew nothing about it and suggested I work in what I know: real estate,” McMullen laughed. “So I started buying and managing investment properties.” While the humble beginnings of Global Real Estate Services, a family of companies that today covers all aspects of single-family residential real estate investing from building to renting to selling, sound relatively simple, McMullen’s operation did not stay simple or small for long. “When I got started, I was working with my wife on our own properties, but we eventually opened a rental management company, started selling to investors, and used the same formula we had used personally to build all of the companies in the Global Real Estate Services family,” McMullen explained. “We are the original build-to-rent company. We have been building a build-to-rent machine for nearly two decades at this point.” Global Real Estate Services consists of three companies: Prominence Homes, which specializes in “build-to-rent” single-family homes that both individual and institutional investors purchase as long-term rentals, America’s Rental Managers, which operates throughout the southeast and manages more than 1,500 doors for more than 1,000 real estate investors, and Mike McMullen & Associates, a real estate brokerage with clients in 24 states and across 17 countries. Despite its size, the company maintains a highly personalized relationship with every client. “We treat every property as if it is our own, so when you become a client, you are coming into a family,” McMullen explained. “We are very intent on listening to what the goals of the investor really are.” That close attention to investor goals has paid off, with some of McMullen’s earlier clients already achieving goals like retirement in their early 60s. “All they do is travel all the time and count their money – and that was their goal,” McMullen said proudly. “They wanted to be in a position to really enjoy retirement, and it was fun to be a part of that and know we helped make it happen.” A Southern Approach to Real Estate Perhaps one of the first things investors learn from McMullen about his operations is that he is intensely proud of his southern company and its southern heritage. Global Real Estate Services was founded in Birmingham, Alabama, and is actively building, acquiring, managing, and selling properties throughout the highly attractive southeastern region of the country. It is more than just location for McMullen, however. His “southern company” is a way of doing business. “We will travel the world for our investors,” he said, noting that he has flown more than 3 million miles in order to meet investors face-to-face and make sure he understands their financial goals. “We are southern people, so we want to see who you are. We want to enjoy working with you and for you to enjoy working with us,” he said. That determination to keep interactions personal was challenged in 2020 during the COVID-19 pandemic when many businesses like McMullen’s drew back, laid off workers, and did their best to take things “virtual” as the world shut down. McMullen, typically, went in the opposite direction with the full support of his executive team: Terri Nava, COO of America’s Rental Managers, Misty Glass, CFO of Prominence Homes, and Scott Underwood, chief development officer for Prominence Homes. “I pointed out to them we have never won by following what everybody else is doing and we decided to not change one thing [from a production standpoint],” McMullen said proudly. “We increased production 50 percent. We never changed our hours, and we never laid people off. It kept us all sane.” While Global Real Estate Services was willing to meet remotely with clients who wished to do so, no one who wanted a face-to-face meeting with McMullen was denied. That dedication and clarity of purpose paid off, and McMullen and his partners invested in a private jet so the team could travel without uncertainty about flights, changeable health policies, and the increasingly controversial hygiene theater that was taking over the country at that time. “It was a great decision because it enabled us to go into three more markets much more quickly than would have otherwise been possible because now I can get to those markets in a matter of 45 minutes on the plane. Everything comes with opportunity,” McMullen said. He added proudly, “Because we remained open and doubled down, we were able to meet client needs in terms of inventory and services while providing stability to our employees. There was no confusion or uncertainty about our companies. We were open and ready to meet investor needs. People always need a place to live – even in a pandemic.” Seizing Opportunities with Nerves of Steel One of the most important characteristics of the entire Global Real Estate Services family is a willingness to identify opportunities and then act expeditiously and decisively. In the wake of the housing crash in the mid-2000s, McMullen and Glass, who is his sister in addition to co-heading up Prominence Homes, began actively accumulating land. This enabled the company to ultimately get a huge head start on the build-to-rent trend – “We were build-to-rent before it even existed,” McMullen likes to say – and has also given them a huge advantage in today’s land-starved market. “We have a whole division headed by Scott Underwood, the third principal in Prominence Homes, dedicated to going out and finding land, so we are able to have between 200 and 400 lots in front of us every month,” McMCullen said. Glass noted that even as acquiring land has become more difficult, the company’s established relationships with bankers, developers, and other real estate and finance professionals enables
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