Richard Campo

Richard Campo and his Camden Property Trust The REIT have fared far better than many of its peers in Texas, where distress is hitting numerous multifamily investors. While the class of syndicators who rose across Sunbelt markets during the pandemic was left struggling in recent years as interest rates rose from historic lows, Camden Property Trust has generally outpaced the market. Its revenue rose on a same-property basis last year, and an effective blend of lease rates drew favor with analysts even as higher interest rates added to cost and affected the pace of growth on funds from operations, a commonly considered metric for REITs. 

Campo made the move from California to Texas before it was trendy, relocating to Houston in 1976 after growing up in Southern California. He followed his father, who was opening a restaurant in Houston at the time. He started a predecessor company with partner D. Keith Oden in 1982 and took operations public under Camden banner in 1993. It’s grown from its Houston base to 170 or so properties accounting for nearly 60,000 units in 15 major markets, with significant concentrations in the Houston, Dallas-Fort Worth and Washington, D.C. metro areas. 

He was appointed to the board of the Federal Reserve Bank of Dallas’ Houston branch in 2023, shortly after the interest rates started to rise after an historically low run tracing back to the Great Financial Crisis.