"Over the past year, we've bought more assets," Paneral comments. "With that expansion in our portfolio, we thought it would be better to bring operations in house."

Paneral came to Concierge a year ago from Alliance Residential. Her job since then involved building the appropriate software infrastructure and platform to efficiently manage Concierge's portfolio, which contains properties in California and Texas. "With third-party management, you don't necessarily have the policies and procedures or software in place to run things in house," Paneral comments.

Concierge, headquartered jointly in Tiburon, CA and Houston recently bought the 320-unit El Dorado Ranch in Webster, TX. In an interview with GlobeSt.com at the time, company CEO Ted Kerr indicated the current environment is a good one for Concierge to continue acquiring and repositioning class B and C distressed assets.

"We're seeing some great rent growth in our repositioning strategies," Paneral adds. She says repositioning of an asset involves evaluating the current resident base and trying to improve the clientele both by revising qualifying criteria for applicants and rent increases. Physical upgrades can also be involved, such as improving on-site amenities.

"We've worked with some wonderful management companies, but Concierge has its own vision of service and hospitality," Paneral comments. "By bringing this in house, and with our own software, we can really watch what's happening and respond to on a day-to-day basis." Concierge's property management division includes property supervisors Paula Daniels, Shelly Price-Zepeda and Melanie Traster, and Beth Ackerman-Orenals, director of education.