St. Pete property management firm merges with Arizona company, rebrands

Weller Management, a St. Petersburg multifamily management company, has merged with MEB Management Services, a counterpart based in Phoenix.

The combined company is called Bryten Real Estate Partners.

Financial details of the merger were not disclosed.

According to a news release announcing the agreement, the two companies spent about a year hashing out the details and consolidating before rolling out as a new, revamped firm in the past few days. That includes launching a new website April 11.

Bryten’s portfolio, according to the statement, now includes mid-rise, garden style, build-to-rent, luxury, student living, eco-sustainable and attainable housing communities.

In addition to property management, the company also offers due diligence and advice on positioning properties to be sold.

The combined company will operate out of four offices, including the existing one on Second Avenue Northeast in St. Petersburg. The others are in Tucson, Arizona and Littleton, Colorado, just outside Denver. The fourth is the main office in Phoenix.

Weller was founded in 2005 as a boutique property management agency and now employs 450. It currently manages close to 20,000 units.

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As for MEB, it has 700 employees and manages 27,000 units. Of those, 4,200 are new developments that will open by mid-2024. It also has an additional 5,000 new development units under contract for mid-2024 and into 2025.

Combined, Bryten will manage about 47,000 units in 11 states — Arizona, New Mexico, Tennessee, Florida, Colorado, Kentucky, Georgia, North Carolina, South Carolina, New York, and Texas — with plans to extend into 13 more states.

Joe Emerson, a founding principal at Weller who is now with Bryten, says the merger allows the company to grow its assets under management by diversifying its portfolio both geographically and in product type while growing internally.