HOUSTON – Realty News Report has named Marvy A. Finger the recipient of its inaugural RNR Lifetime Achievement Award.
A native of Houston, Marvy A. Finger is the founder, president and chief executive officer of the Finger Companies. Over a long career, he helped reshape Houston’s residential landscape and reinvigorated the city’s Central Business District.
In 2005, Finger saw an opportunity for high-rise residential development in downtown Houston — an area that for decades housed few residents and saw little new housing construction. At that time, a planned 12-acre park, Discovery Green, was still on the drawing board. Finger, who was then developing apartments in multiple cities nationwide, believed a multifamily high-rise downtown could succeed in his hometown.
“There was nothing new in downtown, and with 5 million people in Greater Houston, I knew I could find 340 people out of 5 million who will want to live downtown. I was able to sell that pitch to lenders at the time,” Finger said in a 2018 interview with Realty News Report.
Acting on that conviction, Finger built the 37-story One Park Place tower on a block across from the future Discovery Green site. The building included ground-floor retail such as Phoenicia Specialty Foods, a multicultural grocer on Austin Street. When Discovery Green opened in 2008, it was an immediate success and helped change perceptions about downtown living.
One Park Place attracted tenants quickly, and other residential developers soon followed, helping spark a broader wave of downtown housing. Today, more than 10,000 people live in Houston’s Central Business District.
Finger, now 86, graduated from the University of Texas in 1957 and entered the apartment business soon after. His first project was built along Chimney Rock Road in Houston. Over the years, Finger added roughly 25,000 units to his company’s portfolio. Unlike many developers who sell newly completed projects after they stabilize, Finger historically held onto most of the properties he built for many years.
In October 2021, Finger sold 20 garden-style and mid-rise properties in a transaction valued at $2 billion. The portfolio was acquired by a venture led by the Greystar multifamily firm. As part of that sale, Finger insisted that the new owners retain his long-time on-site employees, including maintenance staff, reflecting his concern for the team that supported his properties.
Realty News Report, the publication founded by Ralph Bivins, honors Marvy A. Finger as the inaugural winner of the RNR Lifetime Achievement Award.