Empowered Teams

TriArc has a culture that cultivates team engagement. We believe empowerment starts at the bottom and you can only achieve maximum success when all members feel personally connected to the community and free to express their ideas.

Many companies say they have empowered leaders but do not truly invite input or recommendations from the teams charged with running their community. We’ve built our company on the strengths and experience of our teams, and we expect them to know more about their community’s needs than anyone else in our organization. Because each community has its own strengths and weakness, cookie cutter solutions don’t work. To formulate a winning strategy, we must engage everyone responsible for making a property a success. Having a say in the solution has made our teams even more proactive in mitigating downturns. Our culture not only invites but expects our teams to know more about what their community needs than anyone in our organization.

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TriArc Real Estate Partners

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2855 Mangum Rd, Suite 459
Houston, TX 77092.

rich

A small river named Duden flows by their place and supplies it with the necessary

Richard Zigler (VP | Acquisitions)

Richard Zigler, Vice President of Acquisitions at TriArc Real Estate Partners, has over 20 years of experience in multifamily and commercial real estate. His significant expertise in acquisitions, finance, underwriting, market analysis, and asset management has enabled him to contribute extensively to the success of multifamily partners, investors, and clients. Throughout his career, Richard has facilitated over $2 billion in real estate acquisitions, development, and recapitalization.

Before joining TriArc, Richard served as Principal and directed multifamily acquisition activities at Cypress brook Company. Among his many achievements there was helping to turn around a struggling property which lacked sufficient cash flow to pay vendors. After taking over asset management, he boosted occupancy and reduced expenses, allowing investors to realize an IRR of over 12%. He directed a $2.5M renovation of a 330-unit asset and achieved an 18% rent growth in the first year. He also achieved a 20% and 21% rent growth over three years following renovations on 184-unit and 60-unit multifamily properties, respectively.

Richard grew up in Chesterfield, Missouri, a suburb of St. Louis. He first came to Houston to tour Rice University. It was March, and the weather in Houston was beautiful. Back in Chesterfield, when his plane touched down, it was snowing. Richard said, “That’s it. I’m going to Houston.” After earning a Bachelor of Arts degree at Rice, he continued his education in Atlanta and received a Juris Doctorate from Emory University School of Law. Richard quickly realized he didn’t want to be an attorney. Real estate was an interest, and when he returned to Houston, a position helping clients make better real estate investment decisions at O’Connor & Associates caught his eye. Richard rose to head of O’Connor’s research and consulting arm and served as the primary feasibility consultant for real estate projects totaling over $1.2 billion. His team collected and analyzed data on 16,000 multifamily and commercial properties throughout Texas, but Richard discovered his passion was for real estate, not for data.

The Kaplan Companies, a regional multifamily developer, was a client, and Richard conducted several market studies on their behalf. In 2006, Kaplan said, “You’re always telling us why we shouldn’t do a deal. Why don’t you come work with us and help us find the right properties to acquire?” As President of Kaplan Acquisitions, Richard headed acquisition efforts and limited the company’s exposure during the market downturn in 2008 by applying rigorous analysis to potential development opportunities.

In 2009, Richard accepted another opportunity with a former O’Connor client. As Director at LMI Capital, he brokered 200 loans totaling over $1 billion in debt and helped increase annual revenue by over 330%, but he missed the developer/owner side of multifamily. He joined The Barvin Group as an asset manager for a 2,300-unit multifamily portfolio. A year later, Cypress brook, a former LMI client, invited Richard to head their acquisition operations as a partner.

The relationships Richard has formed with clients and associates mean the world to him and have contributed significantly to his success. He’s a man of his word, and that matters. Those who know him value his exceptional analytical skills and strong sense of integrity. A colleague once told him, “Remember the 60 Minutes Rule. In every situation, ask yourself: If your mother saw this on 60 Minutes, would she be proud of you?” It made an impression and continues to guide his career.

Robert Mitchell (VP | Construction)

Robert Mitchell is vice president of Construction, TriArc Real Estate Partners’ inhouse construction team, which was formed in December 2019 to increase the value of investor-owned multifamily properties through renovations and physical improvements. Robert’s diverse background includes over ten years of onsite property management, seven years as a multifamily construction vendor, and 15 years as a small business owner. Raised by grandparents who never threw anything away, Robert finds it incredibly satisfying to transform neglected properties into really nice homes for residents while also bringing significant financial benefit to owners. His team recently rehabbed a class C property to a class A, increasing the average value per unit by over $400 per month.

At the age of 19, Robert entered the multifamily industry as an onsite leasing agent with Reliance Management in Austin, Texas. He was first introduced to construction when the company assigned him oversight of the punch list for a property under development. Three weeks later, Reliance promoted him to assistant manager. After managing construction from the ground up on another property in Round Rock, Robert accepted a position at Lincoln Property Company in 2000. A year later, Lincoln transferred him to Houston, where he rehabbed about 1000 units which had to be gutted and completely rebuilt due to serial flooding in 2001, 2003, and 2004. Robert won Business Manager of the Year, Assistant Manager of the year, and Lincoln’s coveted Gold Medallion award before reaching age 25. When Lincoln sold the portfolio he’d been managing, Robert left property management to pursue his own enterprises in 2005.

Driven by a car addiction which grew out of a childhood working at several family-owned car businesses, Robert co-founded Elite Auto Sales and Service in 2003 while still at Lincoln. (He’s restored about 60 automobiles since the age of 14 and currently owns 11 classic models including a 1955 Pontiac.) Robert also founded Fast Forward Freight in 2004. Once the businesses were firmly established, he returned to construction part-time doing business as Mitchell Renovations in 2007. The “side job” led him back to multifamily when Harris County Flood Control began pressing properties to restore their retention ponds to “as-built” conditions. His revenue grew from $800,000 in the first four months to about $2M the following year and 25% annually ever since. The construction company, renamed Fast Forward Services in 2012, now has a full office staff, around 35 employees, and over 200 subcontractors. After Hurricane Harvey in 2017, Fast Forward Services rehabbed about 65 single-family houses and 100 multifamily units. Helping people return to their homes and some semblance of normalcy after the disaster was an incredible experience. Robert also founded Texas Property Evolutions, Elevated Development and Construction, and H&S Investors.

Whether cars, companies, or multifamily residences, Robert has always wanted to build things, and succeeding in business is what makes him most proud. In addition to a lot of hard work and a natural aptitude for math and all things mechanical, he credits his uncle for giving him an early start. Uncle put him in charge of payroll administration when Robert was only 13, and by 17, Robert was managing the family muffler shop. In one year, he grew the business by 60% through marketing and advertising in the Green Sheet (a free newspaper). Now at a place in his career where 16-hour-long workdays are no longer required, Robert still enjoys waking up at 4:30 am and arriving at the yard by 6:00 am to work with his team.

Danny Martin (Regional Director)

As regional director for TriArc Real Estate Partners, Danny Martin oversees the day-to-day operations of properties in Houston and Lufkin. His passion for multifamily management stems from the belief that our business isn’t about apartments; it’s about people. When you’re in the people business, building trust with employees, residents, and contractors makes all the difference. The exceptional resident care provided by him and his team helps set TriArc properties apart from our competitors.

Joining TriArc has been somewhat of a reunion for Danny. He trained Cindy Cannon when she first joined the industry, and Carrie Brenneman is the one who first introduced him to the business. In 1996, she hired him as a bookkeeper for the Houston apartment community where he lived, and for a student struggling to put himself through college by waiting tables and cutting lawns, it was a pretty sweet deal. After six months at United Dominion Realty Trust, Danny was promoted to community director.

Danny came to TriArc from Francis Property Management, a Francis Investment Group company specializing in luxury class A properties, where he was business manager. Over the course of his career, Danny has served in management and senior management roles, supervising up to 24 employees at a time and managing over 2300 units for various property management firms. As regional supervisor for Q10 Property Advisors, he directed three multimillion-dollar renovations and oversaw operations for five Houston properties totaling 455 units. When Houston was hit with the Tax Day Flood of 2016, Danny was a senior property manager at Sheng Raamco Management. His property became a military helicopter drop-off for displaced residents. Coordinating with the Red Cross and the nearby church, Danny provided food and supplies and established a shelter using the property’s community center and vacant units while also tending to the needs of first responders and helping to set-up an additional shelter in the church gym. Sheng Raamco recognized him as Manager of the Year for his contributions. Danny was also twice nominated by the Houston Apartment Association for Manager of the Year,

In 2004, Danny took a hiatus from multifamily to start his own company, Sun City Landscape, where he was owner and COO. His crew of four quickly grew to 20 as he added home builders to his client base of about 50 residential and commercial accounts. Danny signed weekly landscape service agreements for around 150 model homes with numerous home builders including Perry Homes, Lennar Homes, Legend Homes, David Weekly, and KB Homes. When he returned to the multifamily industry five years later, Danny brought back valuable expertise in customer service, employee relations, purchasing, inventory, quality control, and production.

Danny enjoys showing others how to do something new and loves it when employees are recognized and advance in their careers. His management style evolved over years of coaching and athletic involvement. (Having played soccer himself since high school, Danny couldn’t wait to coach his own two sons in the sport. He has coached his oldest, now in high school, since he was eight.) Whether working with players or property managers, the principles are the same. Danny strives to actively encourage, consistently motivate, and always lead by example. His managers tend to laugh whenever Danny mentions his stint as a wedding/party DJ back in college.

DEBORAH NEWSOME (Co-founder and VP | Operations)

TriArc Real Estate Partners co-founder and vice president of operations Deborah Newsome is known for being a straight-shooter. In addition to overseeing all aspects of third-party-owned property operations, Deborah is responsible for overseeing and growing the company’s portfolio in Corpus Christi. Dedicated to personally directing new business, she relocated to the city in January 2019. Most of Deborah’s clients are real estate investors with full-time jobs seeking to best position themselves for retirement. Each has unique property management goals, and the diverse expectations can be a real challenge. The due diligence process is an excellent tool to help clients understand property performance issues. By analyzing local market trends, comparable sales, and actions taken by the previous management company, Deborah can assess a property’s true potential and generate a plan to increase net operating income. It’s a skill that’s enabled her to routinely improve performance on challenging properties.

She’s been in the industry since 1990. El Campo, the small town where she grew up, offered limited opportunities after high school. Uncertain about what she wanted to do with her life, Deborah followed a friend to Austin. The friend worked as a part-time leasing consultant at the residential community where they lived, and Deborah took over the position after she changed jobs. In less than a year, a full-time position opened at her employer’s second property, located in Houston, and Deborah transferred to be closer to family.

Looking back, “leasing agent” was one of Deborah’s favorite roles. Residents were so excited when they picked up their keys and helping people find a home was immensely satisfying. Everyone had a story – single moms, college students — and Deborah loved making sure all were well-cared for.

Before co-founding Kindred Residential in 2012 and TriArc in 2016, Deborah advanced her career accepting positions of increasing responsibility at top real estate firms including Lincoln Property Company, Fairfield Residential, Sentinel Real Estate, and Gables Residential. She has completed numerous large renovations and new construction lease ups. As a senior business manager at Lincoln, she simultaneously directed a $3.5M renovation on a 168-unit class A property and $1.5m renovation on a 96-unit townhome community, gutting each unit, executing improvements, and completing what would typically be a two- or three-year project in only 18 months. She increased overall monthly rent by $350/unit and was recognized with the prestigious Golden Medallion award for her achievement. Deborah’s diverse background and experience spans property classes (A++ to D-) and styles (garden to high-rise).

Deborah is a member of both the Houston and Corpus Christi Apartment Associations. She holds a Texas real estate license and is an Institute of Real Estate Management (IREM) Certified Property Manager (CPM) candidate.

CARRIE BRENEMAN (Co-founder and VP | Asset Management)

Carrie Breneman, president of operations and co-founder of TriArc Real Estate Partners, boasts an impressive career with over 30 years of experience in the multifamily real estate industry. While involved in all aspects of the business, her primary focus is the day-to-day operations of apartment communities, both owned and third-party. Among her many contributions, Carrie has been instrumental in the success of TriArc’s portfolio from providing critical input on underwriting to masterfully executing the business plan to producing accurate and detailed reporting throughout operations. Having lived in Houston most of her life, Carrie understands the local market better than most. Her vast experience and knowledge make her a vital resource ensuring company targets are met during the underwriting and acquisition of new properties.

Carrie’s career began as a part-time leasing consultant for the Dallas apartment community where she once lived. After moving to Houston, she stuck with the business learning everything she could about property management “boots on the ground” (before the internet) with a little help from the Dewey Decimal System and the Encyclopedia Britannica. She progressed through the ranks from assistant manager to regional vice-president over operations managing 5,000- to 11,000-unit portfolios along the way. In her first management position at Southwest Property Trust, Carrie received the prestigious President’s Award for exceptional property performance in three consecutive years.

The industry has been a great fit, supplying endless opportunity to use her gift of service, which brings Carrie great joy. As the senior regional manager at Lincoln Property Company, one of her most memorable projects was working with sponsors Archon and Goldman Sachs on the 15-property repositioning project in Greenspoint. In addition to managing the day-to-day operations of 5,000 units, she oversaw renovations, spending $5,000 – $25,000 per unit while working with a PR firm to change the reputation of the entire submarket. In 2001, Tropical Storm Allison flooded 2,000 units in the portfolio she managed, and Carrie and her colleagues worked countless hours to rapidly relocate residents, rebuild, and lease the units back up, achieving stabilized occupancy in record time.

Over the course of her career, Carrie has navigated the industry through periods of prosperity and economic downturn. When the housing market collapsed in 2008, she worked with lenders, servicing agents, and venders to mitigate financial impacts. After Hurricanes Ike and Katrina and numerous floods in the Houston area, she collaborated with officials on disaster recovery. Positions at multiple property management companies created diverse opportunities for Carrie to develop expertise in repositioning properties, new construction lease up, and renovations from minor interior upgrades to complete exterior and interior rehabilitations. She’s managed as many as 15 properties at a time from all classes, A to D, in both primary and tertiary markets while directing over 60 employees. She’s also able to see a deal from multiple points of view: resident, employee, and investor. All this adds up to an unparalleled versatility to address almost any multi-family issue and a unique perspective from which to assess new opportunities for TriArc and third-party owners.

In 2012, Carrie opened her own a third-party property management company, Kindred Residential with Deborah Newsome and Cindy Cannon, and together, they grew it to over 2,000 units in two years. Kindred filled a void in an industry where most third-party property management companies offered only a fixed set of services whether multifamily owners needed them or not. In its first year of business, Joseph Bramante hired the company to manage his 26-unit property, and four years and many deals later, when Carrie and Joseph merged their two companies to form TriArc, Carrie brought with her the same core value: the business should work for the client, and not the other way around.

After hours, Carrie serves the community through her church and other ministries. She was a preschool coordinator at Champion Forest Baptist Church for five years and is on the board of directors and the building committee of one not-for-profit and the prayer team of another. Carrie is also a member of the Houston Apartment Association, as well as the Corpus Christi Apartment Association.

JOSEPH BRAMANTE (C.E.O)

As CEO of TriArc Real Estate Partners, the best part of Joseph Bramante’s day is showing investors how to create more time to enjoy life by building passive income streams which can fund unpaid vacations and accelerate retirement. The metric by which he measures his success is the number of people he’s helped achieve early retirement.

Joseph came from a family of modest means, but with academic scholarships, student loans, and income earned as a tow boat deckhand during summer and holiday breaks, he managed to put himself through college. He graduated Cum Laude from Louisiana Tech University with a bachelor’s degree in Civil Engineering. After college, Joseph was a business team lead at ExxonMobil on the company’s highest profile project where he managed cost for $1B in material logistics, housing, and infrastructure contracts for the over $22B initiative. He received the Project Recognition Award for exceptional performance in two consecutive years, and while highly paid, he never had time to enjoy the financial rewards of the job. He worked 60+ hours a week, as did all his managers, and he could see the wear and tear on their faces. Vacation seemed an unattainable goal although he could certainly afford one.

He landed in the multifamily real estate industry by accident. ExxonMobil transferred Joseph from Houston to Papua New Guinea where his project was based. Living in a compound with his managers and little to do besides work, he learned many of them were investing in real estate. It was 2010, just two years after the US housing market collapsed, and foreclosures were everywhere. Joseph’s interest was piqued. With a 4.0 college GPA in mathematics, he had always been a numbers guy. He developed a spreadsheet and estimated he would need a loan for $3M to buy 80 rental houses over a two-year period. Bank after bank laughed as he tried to secure a loan from the other side of the world to finance the acquisitions, but one lender said, “Why don’t you buy an 80-unit apartment complex instead?” Joseph knew nothing about multifamily real estate, so to learn, he read numerous best sellers on multifamily investing. The potential to rapidly increase a property’s value independent of its neighbors was attractive, and in 2011, he purchased his first multifamily property, sight unseen, while still living in Papua New Guinea. It was supposed to be a private investment, but it morphed into a business.

Six months later, he was back in Houston with his property at 25% vacancy and four units under renovation when he was notified the insurance he’d purchased was a scam, his property had asbestos, and his job at ExxonMobil was being eliminated. The next day, he paid for a membership at a local real estate education club where he met his partners, Carrie Breneman and Deborah Newsome. The club advised Joseph to sell his property and take a loss. Instead, he and his partners leased it down to zero, executed a massive $30k/unit renovation, and then leased it back up. It was the most stressful nine months of Joseph’s life, but it was the right decision, as it paid out over a 200% return. In 2013, they partnered and acquired three more multifamily properties, spent $5K to $30k per unit on renovations, and increased net operating income (NOI) across all by over 80%. In 2016, they rebranded under the name TriArc, establishing the foundation on which to build a wholly integrated multifamily investment company with the goal of acquiring over 20,000 units in the next 10 years.

Joseph loves working with the amazing TriArc team to breathe new life into flailing communities. He’s currently working toward a Certified Commercial Investment Member designation (held by less than 1% of commercial real estate professionals) through CCIM Institute, and he’s also a member of the Houston Apartment Association (HAA) and the Urban Land Institute (ULI).

Growing up in a single parent household with a mom struggling to support the family as a waitress, Joseph was no stranger to low-income housing. His family moved from apartment to apartment throughout southern Louisiana, and Joseph counts it a miracle he survived childhood given the safety issues in the run-down properties where he once lived. By providing affordable housing that’s clean, safe, and well-maintained while helping investors grow their wealth, Joseph is helping to improve the circumstances of people from all walks of life.