It&#x27;s one of the largest apartment owners in the U.S., yet still often suffers from a case of mistaken identity: Berkshire. As in Berkshire Residential Investments, not Berkshire Hathaway. The two are not related, yet both companies track back 60+ years with names originating from the same part of the country. Rental housing economist Jay Parsons shares the story of the &quot;other&quot; Berkshire, and then talks with Berkshire&#x27;s managing director and head of property operators, Alan King, about the state of the apartment market across the country. Berkshire operates all over the country, and Alan shares which markets are seeing market conditions improving fastest and how he sees the year progressing for multifamily operators. Additionally, with spring now in the books, Jay shares the latest on apartment rent and occupancy trends. Did the spring leasing play out as expected? Also in this episode, Jay breaks down a busy week of news headlines — including a lengthy article critical of the Low Income Housing Tax Credit, plus three major news releases from apartment REITs.

EP#88 Alan King | The "Other" Berkshire

The Rent Roll with Jay Parsons

# Full Transcript

**Podcast:** The Rent Roll with Jay Parsons

## Participants

- **Jay Parsons** (Berkshire)
- **Alan King** (Berkshire)

## Transcript

Welcome! It's The Rent Roll, your podcast on all things rental housing, apartments, sing-a-film rentals, and build to rent. It's episode number 88, the number of many great Dallas Cowboy wide receivers, Drew Pearson, Michael Irvin, Des Bryant, C.D. Lamb.

So for episode number 88, here's the plan. We're going to start by closing the books on the spring leasing season for apartments with a quick update on the spring occupancy and rent trends. Then we're going to cover a busy week of headlines, including a big hit piece on affordable housing development, plus several headlines coming from the apartment REITs.

And then later in the program, we're going to dive into a company that ranks among the nation's largest apartment owners, yet, in kind of the words of Rodney Dangerfield, can't get much respect. And that's just because, obviously, it's a very respected company, but it unfortunately shares a name with one of the most respected companies in the world. And that, of course, I'm talking about Berkshire, the apartment ownership company, versus Berkshire Hathaway, the very famous investment company that happens to be Warren Buffett's company.

And so we'll be talking to Berkshire, the owner of apartments, not to be confused with Berkshire Hathaway. They are unrelated. And so we've got with us today the great Alan King, a partner managing director and head of property operations at Berkshire. So we'll talk some of the Berkshire history as well as dive in with Alan on what he's seeing playing out across the country right now. And Alan's a good guy to talk to because he's got apartments all over the country, coast to coast, a lot in the Sunbelt, and has a very good pulse on the market.

They've got about 37,000 units across the country, which ranks them as the 26th largest apartment owner in the U.S. So here's the thing. Let me get into this briefly. This Berkshire, Berkshire Residential Investments, it was founded back in 1966 by two brothers, George and Douglas Krupp. And they wanted to improve the apartment living experience. Obviously, this is way before the institutional days of apartments.

And they named the company Berkshire after a mountain range or a hill range of hills, man, what you want to call it in the northeast. It was a popular vacation area. Some people also call it the Berkshires. And what they may not have fully recognized or appreciated at the time is that just one year prior to this, in 1965, a guy from Omaha named Warren Buffett took over a textile manufacturer named Berkshire Hathaway.

And Berkshire Hathaway, by the way, that name originated 10 years earlier when two textile companies merged together. That being Hathaway Manufacturing Company and Berkshire Fine Spinning Associates. So the combined Berkshire Hathaway was a publicly traded company and obviously still is. And Bu...

EP#88 Alan King | The "Other" Berkshire

Transcript

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EP#88 Alan King | The "Other" Berkshire

Transcript

Built for investment professionals

Every day you wait, your competitors are findingedge in conversations you're not hearing.

Every day you wait, your competitors are finding
edge in conversations you're not hearing.