Angela Kleiman

Essex Property Trust has found a decisive leader in Angela Kleiman, who has positioned the firm to bank on some of the biggest trends happening in California.

Kleiman joined the firm from J.P. Morgan Chase in 2009 to lead Essex Property’s private equity platform, and she climbed the ranks all the way up to chief operating officer in 2021. It was an intentional effort to prepare her for the role of CEO, which she assumed in 2023.

In the past year, Kleiman and her senior team were able to predict a major turnaround in the California housing market and went on a buying spree of properties, with about 80 percent of them being within five miles of each other.

“We purchased a little over $2 billion in assets, mostly in Northern California, before the rent pop. We timed it perfectly so it added a lot of shareholder value,” Kleiman said. “Over the past five years since I took the helm as COO, we’ve been transforming the company and centralizing our business to the point that we are now quite successful.”

Essex has been one of the top performers among apartment-owning real estate investment trusts, running eight to 10 properties at a time as one business unit as opposed to taking a more individualized approach for each complex.

The sales teams are centralized within those units, cutting down on the costs of sales and offering more variety to residents as well as streamlining maintenance staffing.

When it comes to predicting how things will shape up in California, Kleiman has it down to a science.

“We looked at a couple things: Where the rent level was three years ago compared to pre-COVID, it was still down,” she explained. “Once you layer on that, income growth has continued at 6 percent, people are returning to the office, and then the fact that very little supply got built. Little supply means pricing power. Lastly, there’s growth ahead because artificial intelligence is just in its infancy, so this is a perfect storm of growth opportunity for the sector.”