Gary Carmell
Member for
1 year 16 weeks
Biography
Gary Carmell is president of CWS Capital Partners LLC, an investment management company focusing on the development, acquisition, management, and financing of apartment communities throughout the U.S. The CWS real estate portfolio has a value in excess of $1.5 billion and comprises more than 13,000 units and 500 employees. Gary joined CWS in 1987 and became president in 2002. He has an ownership interest in CWS and is significantly involved in the company's strategic direction and capital deployment. As president, he oversees a management team responsible for property management, investor relations, accounting, human resources, and acquisitions and dispositions. Gary is closely involved in all aspects of the firm's money raising from its large pool of investors. In Gary's career at CWS, he has played an integral role in structuring and financing well over $1 billion of investment opportunities. These have been presented to and funded by CWS' extraordinarily loyal cadre of more than 700 individual investors, many of whom have been investing with CWS for more than 20 years. In addition, CWS has a very strong relationship with large institutional investors with whom CWS has purchased and developed more than $800 million of properties since 2003.
Prior to focusing on apartments, CWS was one of the nation's largest owners and operators of manufactured home communities. In 1998, Gary was responsible for structuring and implementing a $300 million merger of the company's manufactured housing community division into a newly formed real estate investment trust (REIT).
Gary has a very healthy respect for economic cycles and the powerful impact of credit on asset values. While at CWS, Gary has experienced the stock market crash in 1987, the collapse of Texas real estate values, the implosion of the savings and loans, the formation of the RTC, the boom, bust, and boom of California, the dot com melt down, the dramatic drop in interest rates from 2001 to 2005, and the explosion of subprime lending and its impact on the apartment industry, just to name a few key experiences. This perspective is critical in Gary's investment approach, which views risk as a permanent loss of capital, the importance of independent thinking and feeling very uncomfortable in crowded investments. Rather than viewing his liberal arts background as a liability, it has become his greatest asset as he came to learn that real estate is only a byproduct of powerful economic, social, demographic, and psychological trends. Without assessing the state of each of these, the probability of success diminishes greatly. His educational background and deep curiosity and intellect have given Gary the tools to connect the seemingly unconnectable to generate important insights that can help allow the firm to deploy capital in ways that can generate above-average, risk-adjusted rates of return.
Gary holds a B.A. in political science from the University of California, Los Angeles and an M.B.A. from the University of Southern California. Gary earned a Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) designation in 1997. He is a member of the Los Angeles Society of Financial Analysts and the Association for Investment Management Research (AIMR) and Young Presidents Organization (YPO). He is a licensed California real estate broker.
