Bradenton John , Fla. - Lie-Nielsen John Lie-Nielsen, 90, a restless and innovative entrepreneur who founded what became the biggest manager of apartment buildings in the United States in the 1980s and developed technology to help landlords reduce the risks of property ownership, passed away on May 31, 2025, in Bradenton, Florida surrounded by family.
Starting in the early 1960s, Mr. Lie-Nielsen used a loan and his savings of $2,000 to buy a crumbling two-family house in Sacramento, California. Learning by doing, he repaired the foundation, put on a new roof and replaced sinks, toilets and kitchen counters, allowing him to sell the house for a profit.
''And so, I was on my way," he told The New York Times, which published a profile of him in 1985 and described him as "an empire builder with a frugal touch."
Mr. Lie-Nielsen launched Johnstown American in the 1970s, a management company for apartment buildings owned by others. He expanded the firm rapidly through acquisitions. At its peak in the 1980s, Johnstown managed buildings with a total of about 160,000 rental apartment and condominium units across the country, primarily in the Sun Belt.
The Atlanta-based company, whose shares traded on the American Stock Exchange, also managed shopping centers and industrial buildings, and owned a mortgage banking firm and a supplier of carpeting.
At Johnstown, Mr. Lie-Nielsen pioneered computer software, known as Little Buddy, to keep track of such data as rent payments, maintenance needs and vacancies. The company trained its own maintenance workers and baked pies in model units to give prospective tenants a homey feeling. In 1985, Johnstown acquired Consolidated Capital, a real estate investment company in which Mr. Lie-Nielsen was an investor and senior executive, for $200 million.
"He set a tone with 'do it right and do it right now,'" recalled Steve Alvarez, who was an executive vice president of Johnstown. Mr. Lie-Nielsen was known for keeping costs low. Executive lunches tended to be at Denny's.
He was an early adopter of stand-up desks and liked to hold stand-up meetings with his staff. "When you came to meet with him, you didn't get too comfortable," Mr. Alvarez said. "He wanted to get business done."
Mr. Lie-Nielsen sold Johnstown in 1988 and moved on to other ventures, including investments in real estate.
He founded HandyTrac Key Control in 1993, a provider of security systems that control access to apartment units for maintenance workers, leasing agents and others. The business remains a market leader in its space.
In 2009, at the age of 74, Mr. Lie-Nielsen founded WaterSignal, a provider of patented technology that he developed to allow building owners to detect leaks and keep tabs on water-usage rates. At the age of 88, he successfully sold that business in 2023 to Metron Farnier.
Johan Douglas Tate Lie-Nielsen, later known as John, was born on March 16, 1935, in Boston. His mother, Patricia Marshall Tate, was a high-society portrait artist, some of whose works were acquired by the Smithsonian Institution. His father, Oistein Lie-Nielsen, born in Norway, was a master yachtsman, hired to helm racing boats in regattas, and later owned a yacht-building business in Rockland, Maine.
John's parents divorced when he was two years old. At age four, he was sent to Norway to live temporarily with his paternal grandparents, only to be marooned there by the outbreak of World War II. His parents sought help from the State Department and Red Cross to bring him home. In September 1941, he was able to board a Lufthansa airplane and fly from Oslo to Lisbon, where he boarded the ocean liner Excambion, with a Jersey City destination tag around his neck. He made headlines in September 1941 when his parents embraced him at a Jersey City pier after his perilous Atlantic crossing.
The Boston Globe reported that the red-haired boy spoke almost no English, was impressed by the sight of the Empire State Building and eagerly tucked into ice cream, a sweet ending to wartime privations in Norway.
Around age 12, while living with his father and stepmother in southern Georgia, he ran away from home and worked on a sugarcane farm. Retrieved by the family, he enrolled at the Berry boarding school in Rome, Georgia, where he helped pay for his education by milking cows. Encouraged by a teacher there to widen his horizons, he moved on to Emory University in Atlanta and majored in economics.
As a young man, he supported himself by running coin-counting machines at a bank, teaching ballroom dancing at an Arthur Murray dance studio, and selling such items as highchairs and photograph albums.
After graduation from Emory and service in the Marines, he moved to Sacramento, where he worked in a state government personnel office. He also co-founded a short-lived dance studio before finding his calling in real estate.
Mr. Lie-Nielsen is survived by his wife of 31 years, Debra Lie-Nielsen; sisters Linda and Annella; brothers Erik, Charlie, Tom and Richard; children Ilya, Bo, Richard, John, Shana, Ryan, Kerry and Brent; and grandchildren Reilly, Ben, Kai Tristan, Scarlett, John Connor, Savannah, Johan, Sophia, Tristan, Gavin and Wyatt.
His advice to young people was "to get in the game" rather than spending too much time contemplating ideal careers and worrying about what could go wrong. Launching into any kind of opportunity was bound to be educational, even if it did not work out perfectly, he said.
Though he was always a hard worker, and family trips typically involved looking at real estate opportunities, Mr. Lie-Nielsen found time to coach his children's soccer teams and run the Peachtree 10K road race in Atlanta. In later years he was an active grandfather in all of their lives, making sure each holiday, however small, had small gifts and treats for them.
He enjoyed reading about business and history. He occasionally read fiction, but few novels could match the adventures of his own life.
Brown & Sons Funeral Homes & Crematory 43rd Street Chapel, 604 43rd Street West, Bradenton, FL 34209, is in charge of arrangements.
