Gary Holloway Jr. - GMH Communities

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As Chief Executive Officer & President of GMH Communities, Gary Holloway Jr. draws on over 25 years of acquisition, property management, asset management, and development experience to lead the second generation of the family business. Gary focuses on optimizing GMH’s current portfolio of real estate assets, valued at $3.6 billion, while researching and investing in new niche-related multifamily housing opportunities nationwide. With a total transactional experience of $5 billion, Gary sets company goals to meet the ever-changing market trends in the multifamily space, making sure that GMH is at the forefront of the industry.

Episode Transcript

(00:00):
I'm Lorraine Ballad Borrow with CEOs youshould know, brought to you by Comcast
Business. My name is Gary Holloway, Junior. I am the CEO of
GMAH Communities and we're right here inDelaware County, New Town Square. And
what is the mission of GMH Communities. The mission of GMAHE Communities is to
provide housing and we do that throughthree verticals. We have a student housing

(00:20):
vertical, a conventional multi family vertical, and something called innovative Living, which
I'll happy to talk to as weget through the interview. Your website states
that GMH Communities is more than justemployees. So how do you create a
culture of inclusion and belonging in yourcompany? Yep. So we're built on
four pillars. I'd say the biggestout of those four is family. So

(00:41):
I'm second generation in the business andfamily means everything to us. And I
think one of the ways you knowthat we're succeeding is just the tenure of
our employees. So we have multiemployees now that are over twenty five years.
We have a dozen that are overtwenty years, and we have a
whole slew of folks that have beenwith this ten years and you don't really
find that Lorraine anymore in the space. So I know that you look at

(01:04):
a business and for us, businessmeans family. We also focus on innovation,
which I'm happy to talk about todayand just how our portfolios evolved over
time. So that's one of ourother key pillars that we focus on day
to day. Well, speaking ofinnovation, these days, housing can be
more than just a place to restyour head on a bed. So tell

(01:26):
us how GMH Communities includes innovation inits mission and how you express the work
that you do. Yeah. Somy dad was an early innovator during the
savings and loan crisis in eighty five, he stumbled upon a student housing asset
and penn State so another local story, but realized that students were an underserved

(01:47):
community. Everybody had this image ofstudents being animal House thanks to the film,
and what he realized was they werejust underserved and needed to have amenities
that spoke to them. So hetook this asset and stee College Pennsylvania and
really branded it his own, andour first iteration student housing was called College
Park Communities. And today I thinkwe foster innovation. We're always looking for

(02:10):
that next niche product and the onethat we're focused on today is innovative living,
and we've branded those properties at Nova. So our flagship of Nova is
right here in the city of Philadelphia, which is really exciting. It's just
off a pen and Drexel's campus,and it's the culmination of our conventional portfolio
and our student portfolio, but focusedon life science folks, so mainly graduate

(02:32):
students, but young professionals and emptynesters. And it's the collision of all
those things that make it such agreat asset and the people that are there.
What is the innovation aspect of it? What makes it innovative housing.
It's innovative in the approach, sowe're able to offer shorter term leases,
we're able to offer furniture. Butwhat I say is it's the amenities.

(02:54):
And if I took you there,it wouldn't be any one amenity that you'd
say, oh, I haven't seeingthat. It's the culmination of all them
together. So the studio reminds meof one of the amenities. We have
the booths, the sound boosts,the private sound booth, So this is
a place where you can come doyour studies, get out of your apartment.

(03:14):
So we like to preach that youcan live small but have all these
amenities at your disposal. People havebusiness meetings there. We want researchers to
meet their next student that's going tohelp them in their research. We want
them to meet folks that'll fund themon the venture capital side. And we
foster this collision of all those differentthings in basically our lobby, which is
really exciting. That's very cool.So tell us about your very first job,

(03:38):
the job that's not on your resume, and what did you learn from
that experience? All right, sofull disclosure. It lasted about an hour.
My first job was Hill's Seafood inDelaware County, and I lasted about
an hour. I realized that Ihad horrible stomach and the job was largely
cleaning fish and cleaning up all thespoils of cleaning fish, and I couldn't

(04:01):
I couldn't make it. I mean, the odor and everything else about it
was just horrific to me. AndI'm married today to someone in healthcare and
I don't know how she does that, because I'm one of those folks that
when you watch Gray's Anatomy or oneof those shows, I get the week's
stomach to this day. So myfirst job was Hill's Seafood. And what
did you learn from that experience?I learned what I didn't want to do

(04:23):
in life. No. I mean, there's so many things you can take
from all the jobs you've had overthe years, and you realize that in
society it takes different people to getthrough day to day experiences. Right,
So if you eat fish, there'ssomeone cleaning the fish on the other end,
and it's important to keep that inmind in the service industry, right.

(04:44):
So in our business, we're fullyintegrated, so we have a full
vertical, which means we do themaintenance from the leasing all the way up
through the corporate duties. And youhave to value each one of those positions
because without them, you wouldn't havethe community. It seems like housing is
one of the key issues that facesour communities these days, finding affordable housing,

(05:08):
finding housing that is quality housing.And I wonder if you can talk
about what home means to you,I'd love to. I think that as
apartment developers, we get a badname sometimes when you come into a community
and it's rental housing. And wejust developed a property that my grandfather had
owned in the nineteen seventies, andI will tell you that is as much

(05:30):
home as any home you would purchase. And I think that what people need
to understand is we're short two tothree million housing units in this country and
it's not going to be all homebuyers. And that's what got us in
trouble as a country not that longago, right with the seven crash and
Oe crash. And I think peopleneed to embrace multifamily in the right environment

(05:55):
and be accepting of it because itis a path to affordability. Multifamily units,
by their nature make housing affordable,and that's something we need in this
country, especially today when you lookaround where interest rates have gone, it's
even that much more important. Andyou can carry that out through our three
verticals. Students need housing, Conventionalfolks that are in their first career or

(06:15):
winding down their career need housing.And these innovators in these life science communities
need housing. So it's everywhere.It's an essential part of our life,
right. Housing is so important,right, In fact, it's really part
of the concept of the American dreamis to have a home. It really
is. And the reality is youdon't have to own a home in terms

(06:35):
of home ownership, to make itat home. And there's many people that
are renters by choice today, andrenners by choice don't want all those responsibilities
of home ownership. I mean Ican put my hand up and say I'd
sign up for that. You thinkabout when you own a home, you
got to pay taxes, you haveto do all your law and care,

(06:57):
you have to do all the homemaintenance. We take care of all that
for our residents. And I thinkthat's really the key, right is you
can be a renner by choice too. It's not always by necessity. You're
not forced to live there. Andthere's a spectrum of rental communities for everyone
from affordable all the way up toluxury apartments. If people would like more

(07:18):
information about GMH Communities, how dothey find out more? Best way to
find out more about GMH would beon the web at Gmhcommunities dot com and
we're also on all the major socialmedia platforms CEOs you should know. Brought
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(07:39):
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