SoCal Investor Takes Root in Dallas

"We started LLC Property Management because people liked the way we manage our buildings," explains company co-founder Joe Killinger. While the Learning Links Centers will be responsible for the acquisition side, LLC Property Management will manage its own properties, and provide third-party services as well. The companies will operate out of an office at 4514 Travis Walk.

Killinger and partner George Pino tell GlobeSt.com that opening a Dallas office had been the goal since 2008. At that time, Learning Links Centers bought a 71-unit complex at 14000 Maham Rd., refurbished it and added a Resource Room as part of a program to help lower-income students.

A year later, Learning Links acquired the 292-unit Ashley Apartments and renamed it the Madeline and is in the process of refurbishing it and adding another Resource Room. The goal of Learning Links Centers is the turnaround of underperforming and decaying assets through some investment, the Resource Rooms and quality tenants.

Pino and Killinger are on the hunt for viable properties, and have made a couple of offers. The partners have their eye on a large portfolio, and hope to build a small fund to buy it and perhaps other complexes as well.

While Learning Links Centers is looking for value-add assets, the goal of LLC Property Management is to increase value. "One of the reasons why owners come to us to manage is to create value for them," Pino says. "We have a budget-to-capital program that makes sense; it's a platform that has been successful in Los Angeles."

Though Pino and Killinger want to buy 1,200 units, they say their operation can manage all kinds of product type, in a variety of sizes. The Travis Walk office will have a field supervisor, property manager and staff, and will be ready to go on Sept. 1.

"In Los Angeles, we pretty much handle all types of properties," Killinger says. "We can do that in Dallas, too."