BELL RINGERS: FOCUSING ON APARTMENTS FOR MORE THAN AO YEARS HAS PUT A GREENSBORO-BASED BUSINESS IN A SWEET SPOT AS DEMAND FOR RENTAL PROPERTY SOARS.

• Author: Dykes, David
• Position: NC TREND: Money talk: North Carolina's financial set

Few, if any, North Carolinians have owned more apartments over the last 40 years than Steve Bell. Now, with apartment living enjoying near unprecedented popularity, the Greensboro investor's company has the capacity to buy more than $1.7 billion in rental properties. That involves leveraging a $600 million fund completed in June, marking the company's sixth such pool.

All of the institutional investors involved in the previous Bell Partners fund, and more than 80% of participating high net-worth individuals, agreed to put money into the latest round, says Lili Dunn, the company's president. A willingness to reinvest is typically a sign of satisfaction. "Along with them, we added five new institutional investors into the fund," she says. "So we are thrilled with the successful finish for [the fund] and we are working hard to deploy it carefully and successfully."

Investors salivate about apartments for good reason: A decade after the housing bust, more U.S. households are headed by renters than at any time since at least 1965, according to the Pew Research Center. While the number of households in the U.S. grew by 7.6 million from 2006-16, homeownership remained relatively flat. About 65% of households headed by people under 35 were rentals, up from 57% in 2006.

That's sweet music for Bell, 72, who started his business in 1976 with eight small apartment complexes and shopping centers. Privately held Bell Partners is now among the 15 largest U.S. apartment operators with more than 60,000 units across 13 states and the District of Columbia. While it renovates many apartments, it doesn't develop or build new complexes. It now has 1,500 employees.

"I knew as a college kid that I wanted to go into the investment real-estate business," says Bell, a UNC Chapel Hill graduate whose father was a Raleigh oral surgeon. After serving in the Army Reserve, Bell took a mortgage banking job and later sold investment properties for a small Greensboro firm.

Bell initially approached doctor and lawyer friends of his father--"my friends didn't have a lot of money"--and convinced 10 to 15 to put up a combined $2 million to buy older apartment properties with fewer than 100 units in smaller towns such as Elkin, Hickory, Lenoir and Fort Valley, Ga. He also put his own money in each deal.

Over the years, the company branched out to buy shopping centers, including Charlotte's Cotswold Village, which it owned between 2002 and 2009. It also developed and bought several...