About the 2010 Speakers
Keith Oden
Camden Property Trust
Keith Oden
D. Keith Oden was co-founder of Camden's predecessor companies in 1982 and has served Camden as President and Trust Manager since 1993. As a Principal Executive Officer and Director, Oden drives Camden's strategic initiatives, leads the property operations and corporate support services, and promotes the company's culture.
After completing his Masters in Business Administration from the University of Texas at Austin, Oden began his career as a management consultant with the then-public accounting firm Deloitte, Haskins and Sells in 1979. He joined Century Development Corporation, one of the most active real estate development firms in the Southwest in 1981, and later became Director of Financial Planning.
For more than twenty years, Mr. Oden has been committed to developing one of the best multifamily companies in the industry. Under his purview, Camden successfully completed the mergers of three well-established real estate companies: Paragon, Oasis Residential, and Summit Properties in 1997, 1998 and 2005, respectively. Oden's work was instrumental to the assimilation of these three companies into Camden's culture. He facilitated a side-by-side comparison of Camden and the companies' practices and processes, leveraging a best-practices approach to maintain Camden's leadership position within the industry.
Under Oden's leadership, Camden formed a cross-functional team to design, develop, and execute a web-based property management system across the portfolio. The result: Oden's team implemented OneSite throughout the Camden portfolio nearly 200 communities in nine months. With the system in place, the team implemented a pricing engine called YieldStarTM shortly thereafter. YieldStarTM indiscriminately prices apartment homes to maximize revenue which creates a considerable competitive advantage for the organization.
Oden was the corporate sponsor and ultimate decision-maker in the creation and development of Camden's comprehensive brand strategy. Taking a fully-integrated marketing approach, Camden launched its brand through an award-winning website; corporate and community collateral materials; and a naming convention so that all of Camden's communities would be captured under the company's flagship name. As a result, Camden increased market recognition and gained the ability to weather the ups and downs of the real estate cycle effectively.
Oden is a member of the Executive Council of the Center for Real Estate Finance at the University of Texas and serves as advisor, financial supporter, guest lecturer, and panelist for the faculty and students pursuing their MBAs in real estate finance. He is a member of the American Institute of Certified Public Accountants (AICPA) and a licensed real estate broker in the State of Texas.
