TLC Property Management LLC was a 2010 honoree at Springfield Business Journal's 2010 Dynamic Dozen awards. Information was accurate at the time of the honor. Click here for information about this year's event.For TLC Properties, a company that mainly focuses on property development, one of the major achievements of 2009 is that the company is still in business, according to Chief Operating Officer Sam Coryell.
“Our doors are open. That’s pretty amazing right now,” he said.
The apartment development and management company was able to increase its gross revenue by 32 percent – from $908,000 in 2008 to $1.2 million in 2009 – primarily by adding 160 units.
Founded in 1988 by Coryell’s parents, Sam Sr. and Carol Coryell, TLC began with a few rental houses and small apartment communities. The company now owns and operates almost 2,600 units at properties that include Coryell Courts, Coryell Crossing, Orchard Park and The Abbey in Springfield, and Cedar Place in Republic.
In late 2008, Coryell said, he and his parents saw that things were going to get difficult.
“We didn’t know exactly the gravity of it, the magnitude; it was much bigger, deeper and larger than we thought it was, but we knew something was coming,” he said. “We could see from our conversations with bankers even at that time that things were not good.”
With the lending market frozen and development virtually at a standstill, Coryell said TLC used 2009 as an opportunity to retool, examining its policies and processes, and making operations as lean and efficient as possible. As a result, the company maintained is net income, even without raising rental rates as it normally would.
TLC usually budgets rent increases between 3 percent and 5 percent each year, but it couldn’t do that in 2009.
“In fact, we had to cut rental rates in a lot of areas just because our demographic, in a recession, is the hardest hit,” Coryell said, noting that TLC’s target client base of 18- to 34-year-olds includes young professionals whose jobs are first on the chopping block when the economy contracts.
Competition also exerted downward pressure on rents, effectively creating a renter’s market, Coryell said.
“Customers would come into our offices and say, ‘Hey, the guy down the street is offering this; can you match it or beat it?’ and we were forced to decide, ‘OK, do we cut our rates or let the customer walk?’” Coryell said. The company chose to keep customers and developed policies on negotiating rents and empowering its property managers.
While 2009 will be remembered at TLC as a challenging year, it also brought rewards, such as the 2009 W. Curtis Strube Small Business of the Year honor from the Springfield Area Chamber of Commerce.
Coryell also points out that TLC has some significant market advantages, namely, its unit volume.
“When a customer comes to one of our offices, they have access to every one of those 2,600 units,” he said, noting that TLC’s size creates buying power for special promotions that smaller outfits might not be able to afford.
TLC also uses innovative technology to its advantage, said Jacob Harvey, TLC director of marketing and public relations. He points to TLC’s iPhone application, launched in 2009 and allowing residents to pay rent or conduct real-time apartment hunts via cell phone.
TLC also launched a shuttle service that residents of most properties can use to travel to and from Missouri State University and Ozarks Technical Community College.
“Our residents don’t have to fight for a parking spot to go to school. They can just hop on the shuttle, which is equipped with mobile Wi-Fi, and they can get to school,” Harvey said.
