CAS Partners Rebrands its Real Estate Services Cos.

By Erika Schnitzer, Associate EditorDallas—CAS Partners has introduced new branding to support its expansion into client-focused multifamily real estate services. “I think that continuing to do things the way we have always done them and expect different results is not going to serve us well in these turbulent times,” Toni Portmann (pictured), CEO of CAS Partners, tells MHN. “I think that our company, and everyone in the industry, needs to reinvent themselves around what the client needs and wants.”She explains that in these economic times, property owners looking for higher levels of profitability must reconsider how they manage their properties, rather than viewing them simply as real estate transactions. “What we’ve tried to do is think about what the owners, financial institutions and developers worry about,” she says.CAS Partners is the parent company of seven property services companies, including Riverstone Residential—its flagship brand—CAS Financial Advisory Services, CAS Insurance Services, CAS Construction Management Services, CAS Utility Services, CAS Credit Services and CAS Purchasing. “We like to think of [CAS Partners] as a one-stop shop, to have everything from the asset management side of how you should manage your property all the way through taking care of the residents,” explains Portmann. “We try to surround our property management piece with auxiliary business services that complement it.” Portmann explains that, because CAS bought six disparate companies, each with their own name and logo, the company as a whole felt disjointed. The new brand is an effort to create something new and fresh that will resonate with Generation Y residents. “We are really trying to transform the brand and the industry into being more than third-party property management,” she says. “It’s an integrated set of outsourced business services.”The branding campaign includes a new corporate identity and complementary brand identities for each of its individual service offerings. The CAS Partners logo of a skyline is designed to reflect the company’s strength and stability, its experience and capabilities, its trend line for growth and success and its competitive edge. The company is also debuting a new Website.While Riverstone Residential retains its name under the new branding initiative, it has been given a new look consistent with the parent brand. The site promotes the company’s property management offerings, as well as its portfolio of more than 760 managed apartment communities across the United States. “As everyone is looking at real estate as a market, the real key is to seek out increased levels of profit and lower costs so your NOI is maximized. It’s not going to be a time for a lot of turnover or new development, so the properties that are out there have got to stay occupied,” Portmann tells MHN. “We see this as a perfect time to have an increased focus to outsource things that are not [our clients’] core competency.”