Bill Freeman Thinks Being Nashville’s Landlord Will Prepare Him To Be Its Mayor

If you live in an apartment in the Nashville area, Bill Freeman may be your landlord. And now he’d like to be your mayor, saying his experience in property management has prepared him for the job.

“We know something about affordable housing,” he says. “That’s what we do.”

The “we” Freeman references is the investment and property management company he started with Jimmy Webb 35 years ago. It’s now the largest private owner of apartment units in Nashville, with other complexes around Tennessee and a handful of nearby states.

Freeman was just 17 when he bought his first piece of property — a vacant lot by the Nashville airport that he had rezoned and subdivided. He sold the land for a “nice little profit for a 17-year-old young man.”

As the third generation in real estate, Freeman put his own spin on the family business by specializing in apartments. He liked that there were profits to be made with each sale but also steady rental income each month. He bought his first complex in Donelson more than 30 years ago.

“I just said gosh, this is a great business.”

It’s a line of work Freeman is well suited for. He’s a guy who prefers hugs over handshakes with a legendary gift of gab. Even his opponents say they can’t help but like him, and that comes in handy at the negotiation table.

Freeman Webb doesn’t build apartment complexes. It buys buildings that could use a little sprucing up where owners haven’t “pressed the rents.” A recent purchase in Nashville involved a complex that had average rents of $700 a month. Freeman Webb already owned a nearby property and was getting $1,000 a month on average. The company bought the place with cheaper rent, gussied it up, and started walking up the rents.

This business model has made Freeman an untold fortune. His company now has a portfolio worth $1.2 billion. 

The only other job Freeman held as an adult was at the Metropolitan Development and Housing Authority, where he worked in the late 1970s. But that only lasted a couple of years.

“The thing that always excited me about the real estate business was the profit motive,” he says. “I really loved the give and take of acquiring the real estate, improving it and selling it for a profit. That was what I enjoyed and that’s what pulled me back into the real estate business.”

Freeman Webb is a good landlord by most accounts. In recent years, the firm has discounted units as part of a
project to house Nashville’s chronically homeless. He says the company can only charge what the market will bear, though right now the market is climbing out of reach for many residents.

From the renter’s point of view, Freeman’s company could appear to be part of the affordable housing problem. 

“It might look that way,” he says. “But we also know what it takes to motivate you as a developer to come into our town…to entice you to come in and build 250 units of affordable housing. I know what it is you would need to do that.”

Freeman has a
plan to subsidize construction of 10,000 units where the rent will be controlled. And he says these shouldn’t just be 400 square-foot efficiency apartments, as sometimes is the case when developers build so-called “affordable” units. He’s talking about three bedrooms, suitable for a working family.

It’s been a while since Freeman had to worry about money. In between inking multi-million dollar real estate deals, Freeman entertains presidents in his home. He’s President Obama’s
top money man in Tennessee.

And yet, Freeman says he doesn’t perceive himself as a wealthy man.

“I still worry about pennies,” he says. “During my business career, I dealt with a lot of wealthy people, and it always amazed me that they were worried about pennies, nickels and dimes when they were worth hundreds of millions of dollars…and the amazing thing about it is I kinda find myself in that same position.”

Freeman is presumed to be the richest candidate in the mayor’s race. He told
The Tennessean he’d spend “whatever I need to put in” on his campaign.

What does Freeman make of people who are suspicious of those with such deep pockets?

“I guess I was probably suspicious of folks who had a lot of money when I didn’t have any,” he says. “That’s just something you’ve got to get over. You’re going to deal with people who have money. You’re going to deal with people who don’t have money. The real test, is dealing with them in the same way.”