The Creation of CALCAP—From a Vision to a $1 Billion Dollar Company

Ed Aloe (00:03):

 Welcome to the Real Estate Wealth Podcast, the show about how you can build wealth by investing in real estate. I'm your host, Ed Aloe, founder and CEO of CALCAP Advisors. I'll dive deep into multifamily investing and today's current market. I'll also help you acquire the knowledge and tools necessary to generate passive income for life through discussions with friends and experts in the industry.

Ed Aloe (00:39):

Today I have the privilege of sitting down with my two friends and business partners, Mark Mozilo and Pat Wakeman. Not only did they help me launch CALCAP, but the three of us went to college together and also worked together over the years in various firms in the industry. We started the company, if you guys remember, with a hundred thousand dollars between the three of us. So not a ton of money. And that a hundred thousand is now worth well over a hundred million, which is kind of hard to believe, but it's true. So I always say better lucky than smart, but I do think there were some smarts along the way and definitely doesn't hurt to get a little lucky as well because we have absolutely had the wind in our backs for the last 14 years in terms of the real estate market.

Ed Aloe (01:24):

I think we all reach a certain point in our lives and our careers where you've achieved a certain level of success and knowledge and there's nothing more rewarding than giving that back. So I see this podcast as a vehicle for sharing that knowledge and trying to help other people.

Ed Aloe (01:46):

Since the podcast is about building wealth in real estate, I thought it would be appropriate for this first episode to tell our story and the story of CALCAP. Mark and Pat, thank you for joining me on the first episode of the Real Estate Wealth Podcast today.

Mark Mozilo (02:00):

Thank you for having us.

Patrick Wakeman (02:02):

Yeah, so glad to be here.

Ed Aloe (02:05):

As you guys know, real estate and life comes in cycles, and so we've been very fortunate to be in an up cycle since we started the company. There's some dark clouds and headwinds right now, and so we'll navigate through those. But we've been extremely blessed along the last 14 years for sure.

Patrick Wakeman (02:22):

Yeah. I completely agree. I mean, the timing, Ed, was great timing for us to get started.

Mark Mozilo (02:28):

We've always been told, location, location, location, and I think I told you that once in the beginning stages and you were like, "No, Mark. It's timing, timing, timing," and we made the right moves during the timing. It's been great for us. As you said, everything's been at our back, so we haven't had a headwind yet. We might be going for one, but that's for another day.

Ed Aloe (02:50):

Of course, I know both of you guys very well and I know your backgrounds and what you do for the company, but would you mind taking a minute and just explaining to our listeners who you are, your backgrounds in the industry, where you worked previously, and what you currently do for CALCAP?

Mark Mozilo (03:05):

Yeah, sure. Again, my name is Mark Mozilo and I basically grew up in the business. I started right out of college, University of San Diego, which we all graduated from.

Ed Aloe (03:15):

Right. USD was a kind of small campus. It still is. Pat and I were fraternity brothers. Mark was in the rival fraternity. Of course, being a small campus that it is, we all knew each other, but we did re-meet once I moved up to Pasadena and started working for IndyMac Bank.

Mark Mozilo (03:29):

Which Countrywide had started and I'd worked for them for about eight to nine years, 2008. Ed kind of came up with a great idea to start CALCAP, and what my job was to do was to raise money for either loans or apartments. So that's what I've been doing for 14 years is trying to raise money for all our deals that we go through. We have some great partners out there that continue to invest with us because of our track record. It's been real rewarding.

Ed Aloe (03:59):

Okay. Pat, you want to tell us a little bit about who you are, what you've done, and what you do for the company?

Patrick Wakeman (04:05):

Yeah, glad to. So like we've mentioned, we all graduated University of San Diego, and I started my real estate career at CBRE shortly after graduation. And I was a commercial industrial broker at CBRE. I wasn't involved in apartments. And then I started my own company called Landmark Realty Group, was doing brokerage and syndication for my own company when Ed called me in 2008 and said, I think there's an opportunity, a generational opportunity, and I think we need to formalize what we've done informally in the past and make it a company. For the company, I run capital markets, which includes financing our new acquisitions, apartment acquisitions. I'll work on refinancing our existing portfolio, and then I work on dispositions. When a property is ready to sell, I'll work on selling that asset and getting it sold on the marketplace.

Ed Aloe (05:08):

You, as I alluded to earlier, we each worked together, at least I worked with Pat initially out of college, and then I worked with Mark later at the bank. But coming out of USD, Pat and I both went to work for CB Richard Ellis, like he said, he was doing industrial and I was doing apartment sales at the time, and then the early '90s hit, SNL crisis, markets collapsed at that time, and that's when I ended up falling into the mortgage banking side of the world. But when 2008 came, I kind of saw an opportunity to dovetail both experiences, and at the same time I said, Gosh, let's not abandon our lending roots because lending's a good business and let's start doing private lending. We didn't want to do regular consumer lending that we came out of because that world changed dramatically. That's when I approached Mark who was still at the bank after it was actually seized and taken over.

Mark Mozilo (06:01):

You had a 30 page PowerPoint. My head was spinning because you were going through it going, "What is he talking about apartments?" And never done private money lending in my life, but I always trusted Ed. He's a smart guy and he's an entrepreneur. And I was like, well, to be honest, I didn't have anything on the side waiting for me. But yeah, it was a great meeting and he got me excited about it and everything he said in his PowerPoint, we basically did. We followed it to a T and that's where we are today.

Ed Aloe (06:29):

Yeah, I agree. It was a very fortuitous meeting and it was funny because I remember talking to you about it and you said, "I don't know anything about hard money lending. I've never done that." And I looked at you and said, "I don't know anything about it either, but we'll figure it out." Right?

Mark Mozilo (06:44):

Yep, exactly. We'll figure it out.

Ed Aloe (06:46):

And that's what we did. Want to shift gears here for a minute and paint a picture for our listeners about what life looked like in the 2000s for people in the real estate industry, because there was no question, especially, Mark, you and I, we were in the eye of that storm. The great financial crisis started and caused really by the subprime lending industry. So you and I were at the heart of that story.

Mark Mozilo (07:16):

To talk about the start of a recession that we didn't know was going on, that's how I could easily explain it, no one knew we were in a recession. No one really figured out. But the markets were closing up. Money was hard to find, and when word got out that IndyMac bank might be in problem, then there was a run on the bank. And so during that time, CEO was freaking out over it and concerned, but still positive and felt we could make our way out of this whole situation. But then when you start seeing the markets dry up with the bigger companies, the Countrywide's of the worlds, the Merrill Lynch is going away. The B of A is having problems, the Wells and the Chases and the... I mean it just went on and on and it was basically a domino effect that affected us all that we couldn't catch up to. 

Mark Mozilo (08:11):

I was in a senior position there, so we were either downgrading, we were either getting rid of staff, I was going to Phoenix and firing a whole group of people there. I was firing another group in Pasadena. So it was tough. It was a tough thing to go through emotionally, physically, and emotionally really. And Ed was in the same boat.

Ed Aloe (08:34):

I ended up leaving there in May of '08. The bank collapsed in July of '08, not because I was that brilliant in seeing a collapse. I didn't imagine that would ever happen to be honest with you, but it did and it was weird being there. But Mark and I both had pretty substantial, at least I did, a lot of my net worth was wrapped up in stock of that bank, which essentially went down. It was trading at 50 bucks, went down, I think I sold my shares because I hung on until the bitter end for about 17 cents a share, literally. There was financial stress as well. When I started this company, obviously we started it with nothing, couldn't pay ourselves as a dime for three years. At the same time, I had lost seven figures, went down to zero. So it was stressful financially.

Ed Aloe ( (09:23):

My wife, we had two young boys under the age of five. One my oldest had recently been diagnosed with autism, which was stressful. And my wife was pregnant with our daughter, our third on the way at the same time. And I'm like, "Hey honey, I want to leave the bank and start a new company." So kind of interesting times. So Pat, you were slightly different. Like you said you had Landmark, you had your own commercial real estate brokerage firm down in San Diego. And so what was your perspective? What was going through your head when we were up at the bank kind of dealing with this craziness?

Patrick Wakeman (10:01):

It was happening in your industry before it hit the rest of the economy. And I would say in '07, maybe even early '07, you were telling me as we had normal daily conversations about what's going on in the world and you said some interesting things are starting to happen. And you started to explain it to me. Being on the commercial side, I didn't really see it from my vantage point that early, and commercial properties, whether it's a residential apartment building, industrial office, retail, whatever it is, and you and I syndicated a whole bunch of deals before CALCAP was started, commercial underwriting was always a lot more detailed. And so I always felt like, well, I think commercial, I don't see how these same issues are going to happen because everything had to debt cover. Borrowers were thoroughly underwritten. Legal entity formation, everything else was done to a higher standard.

Patrick Wakeman (11:05):

But what happened is the economy really started feeling the effects in the fourth quarter of '07 into 2008 and nine. And when the economy went, that's when every shopping center industrial building started losing tenants, started losing businesses and net operating income plummeted for a lot of these partnerships and firms that own properties. So it happened later than the residential story and the residential side, but it definitely happened and the economy really hit bottom there in '08 and oh '09 and even into 2010. So I was a little bit later than you guys, but that was my recollection.

Ed Aloe (11:49):

It's funny, Pat, that you mentioned that because it reminded me since we were completely in the eye of that storm, we did see it earlier than most. And I can remember being at cocktail parties in late 2007, early 2008, and people would avoid me because they thought it was just a doom and gloomer when I was telling them everything that's going on. And then those same people were lined up to talk to me about six months later once it happened, like, "Oh my God, what's going to happen next?" The interesting thing is after Mark and I had left the bank when it collapsed in July, I had gone to our CEO prior to that and said, "Hey, I'm leaving the company." This was back in May, "And by the way, do you have any office space you could lease me?"

Ed Aloe (12:33):

Which I knew, I mean they were downsizing like crazy, right? We had tons of office space in Pasadena. So Mark and I were subleasing in basically the basement of our corporate building, the old mail room. And we called it the cage because if you can think of a corporate mail room where it has that cage door and basically a cage inside the office where they stored all the packages, that's where Mark and I sat.

Patrick Wakeman (12:59):

I remember the cage, Ed. When I first came to see you guys, I was shocked how dismal that location was. It was poorly lit. There was junk, crap, office equipment, office supplies, stuffed in corners. It was so depressing. It was like being in prison.

Ed Aloe (13:21):

Literally. They threw the key out. We were locked. No, I'm just kidding. No, but we were down in this cage and the feds came in to take over senior management. No one realized we were there and it got to a point where I didn't know who to give my rent to, right? Because all the former people at the bank who I was subleasing for that I paid rent to were gone. Everyone had left, gotten fired. And so I remember sitting there going, "Mark, I don't know who to pay rent to. We can't pay rent to anyone." 

Ed Aloe (13:50):

And this went on for a month, two months, three months, four months. We were rent free because we literally... Everyone I talked to said, "I don't know, we can't take it. We can't take it." And so I remember talking to an attorney and he said, "Okay, so write a letter and give them $10 or something and say that you're canceling your lease. You don't know who to pay, blah, blah, blah." And so that's what we did. And we did get a few Aeron chairs, I think, Mark, out of that, right?

Mark Mozilo (14:18):

Yeah, we did. That was a great thing we out of it, those Aeron chairs, probably two, 250 each.

Ed Aloe (14:23):

Yeah, that was the whole net worth of the company back then, six Aeron chairs, basically. I remember being in the cage the first time the copier ran out of paper. Mark and I were used to, "Well, there's facilities people. There's people that constantly replenish." And we just kind of looked at each other like, "The copier's out of paper. I guess someone has to go to Staples? I don't know."

Mark Mozilo (14:46):

Oh, before that though, Ed, we couldn't qualify for a copier. Remember I had to get my buddy that owned a copier company and he was like put out his name on it just because, "Hey, you guys don't qualify for a copier." And we're like, "Wait, what?"

Patrick Wakeman (15:01):

And we didn't have income.

Mark Mozilo (15:02):

Yeah. We had no income. Exactly. He finally got this really state-of-the-art copier, and it was the largest number we were paying every single month.

Ed Aloe (15:09):

It was. It was about 300 bucks a month, which was our biggest expense at the time. Let's shift gears here and kind of talk about early on some of the first deals we did. The first apartment building we bought was in Phoenix, Arizona. So when we started the company, we kind of looked at the world melting down and said, "Gosh, where's the most distressed real estate market?" And it was arguably either South Florida or Phoenix at the time. And so since Florida was too far and we can get to Phoenix on a Southwest flight. We said, "Hey, let's go to Phoenix." Pat and I had owned a building in Phoenix prior to that, so had a little bit of market knowledge there. Pat, do you remember flying out there to see our first acquisition? It was a 52 unit building in Phoenix. I equate it to a building on fire when everyone was running out of the burning building. And here we show up running in.

Ed Aloe (15:59):

And so there were a few brave guys running in, but not many. But we were kind of the unknown new kids on the block. And I remember sitting down with these brokers on this first deal telling them, "Hey look, we're going to buy a thousand units in Phoenix." And I remember them kind of glancing at each other, rolling their eyes like, "Oh, here's another one." But we did, we ended up buying close to 2000 doors there during that run. But the first deal was stressful because nobody would lend us any money. Even hard money guys said no. Because I remember a couple of conversations with investors and they're like, "You're crazy. You want to go to Phoenix right now? Phoenix is not coming back. It's done. You're nuts going there trying to buy apartment buildings."

Patrick Wakeman (16:43):

The question I kept getting as I would talk to investors is, "Are you sure?" Because the news was so bad in Phoenix. I think our answer was, "Well, yeah, we think so. We're pretty sure. This used to be worth a hundred cents on the dollar and now we're at 30 cents on that dollar. So it's time." We paid like 980 or 990, 990,000, something like that.

Ed Aloe (17:08):

Yeah, it was 18,000 [inaudible 00:17:10]. I think it was 965 maybe. Something like that. We had problems raising equity and debt. And I remember then talking to Mark when we couldn't get any debt and you said, "Well, let's just pay all cash for it."

Mark Mozilo (17:22):

I did. We both got on the phones and called the people we knew, friends and family it started with, and then high net worth individuals. And I think we raised it pretty quickly, to be honest with you. I mean a lot of questions from the investors, but at the end of the day, they all understood the story.

Ed Aloe (17:42):

But I believe we only had about two or three weeks to do it.

Patrick Wakeman (17:44):

We raised a million 128 was our total raise, including reserves. And that's something that today we would raise in an hour.

Ed Aloe (17:52):

And that building today, Pat, we paid 960,000. What's that building worth today?

Patrick Wakeman (17:57):

Yeah. Over 10 million.

Ed Aloe (17:59):

Okay. I want to talk a little bit about pivotal points in the company in stressors. And one of the more stressful moments, but I think was kind of pivotal for our success and the success of the company is when we bought two apartment buildings via an auction platform in Las Vegas in 2015. So if you can imagine people come up to me and say, "God, do you think real estate's going to crash? You think it's going to..." Just today, I'm hearing that again. And I always tell people, "Look, equity markets move quickly. Bond markets move quickly. Real estate moves slowly." And so when the real estate great financial crisis hit and value started collapsing in '08, if you can imagine, we bought the last REO Properties in 2015, I mean seven years into it, which is pretty unbelievable. But it took a long time for that market to bottom out. But we bought two buildings in Las Vegas.

Patrick Wakeman (18:58):

And remember they were two separate auctions and we just went for both and got them both. So yeah, that was a critical, critical moment.

Mark Mozilo (19:07):

I was in the car driving somewhere and Ed called me up going, "We won both of them. Like, can we raise this money?" I'm like, "How much is it Ed?" "7 million bucks."

Ed Aloe (19:17):

Which at that time was the biggest raise ever. And to kind of take a step back with this auction process, as soon as you win, you have to wire 10% of the winning bid within 24 hours. And it's completely non-refundable. And that's when I called Mark going, "Oh God, we just won 15 million worth of real estate. Where are we going to get 1.5 million in the next 24 hours?"

Mark Mozilo (19:40):

I said, "Oh my God, I don't have that." And Ed didn't have it and Pat didn't have it. And I was like, "All right, I'm going to go to one of my good friends and asked him for a million and a half dollars and see what he says." Now the scariest part of that is if we don't close them and raise that $7 million, we lose that million and a half dollars. So that was very stressful for me. I was in his office every single day for 30 days going, "Are we closing these deals, Ed? Are we going to close these deals?"

Ed Aloe (20:10):

And we had a bridge lender lined up who started getting a little squirrely on the deal midway through. We had about 5 million in equity commitments and needed another 2 million for the smaller deal.

Mark Mozilo (20:24):

A YPO gentleman in my chapter here said, "Why don't you call this guy in Denver? I really like him. He's a good guy and he likes these type of deals." So I give him a call, doesn't know who I am, just knows I'm with YPO. And I said, "We have this deal. I want you to look at it. We're trying to raise $2 million. Can you check it out?" He goes, "Well, what's funny is I'm going to be in San Diego next week. Why don't you and your partner drive on down and meet me at this fish restaurant?" This was down to the wire. I mean, we're 2 million short at this time. So we sit down and two hours later he goes, "I got a 2 million check for you guys." And that guy has become an incredible investor with us for the last 15 years and a good friend of all three of us.

Ed Aloe (21:10):

I felt like that was a real pivoting point for the company. It kind of put us on the map. We had already done a bunch of deals in Phoenix, but then if you remember in valuation wise, Vegas kind of lagged Phoenix by about 18 months before it hit bottom. It was like a year and a half later. And so we moved with that market and kind of caught both luckily very close to the bottom, but I do feel like that 2015 deal in Vegas, those two buildings kind of put us on the map there and was a game changer for the company. I guess going back early on when we were in the fog of war with what was going on in the market, really trying to figure out, God, where's opportunity? Early on, we're at one of those distressed conferences and we're sitting there listening to a speaker, and there was an old guy sitting next to me and he leaned over and he goes, "There's so much crap lying around. There's got to be a pony somewhere." And so I was like, "We're going to find that pony."

Ed Aloe (22:12):

So when we started the company, obviously what we've talked about is, times were very risky. People were losing money left and the real estate markets were collapsing. I'm just curious, as an entrepreneur, one of the hardest things that no one tells you is when you have an idea or a vision and starting something, the really, the hardest thing is to convince other people to join you in that vision. Especially when we started, I came to you guys with this idea, there was no money to pay anyone. You knew that going in. So I'm just kind of curious from your perspective, what made you believe the business would work and what kind of convinced you to join in my vision?

Patrick Wakeman (22:56):

For me, it was the trust in you and the trust in Mark that we could do it. I do remember the first time you said, "Hey, I think we need to hire someone and we'll have to go and do our first couple hires." But we weren't paying ourselves at that time. And every time you'd call me and say, "Okay, I think we need to hire someone or hire another one," it just became further and further away before the three of us ever earned anything in my mind. I'm like, "Oh my gosh, we're never going to get there. It's getting, It's in a race, it's getting farther away." But those decisions were important to grow the company. And there's only so far the three of us can go without good people to fill in and do things better than we do them.

Patrick Wakeman ( (23:47):

So we kept hiring and hiring and every time you guys would call and say, "Okay, we're hiring a controller. We're hiring any number of positions." I just trusted that we were on the right path and that we eventually would get there. And at some point you get used to not getting paid, so you kind of shrug, you just like, "Oh, well, I'm not getting paid anyway, so."

Mark Mozilo (24:10):

My recollection was when we met and you were asking me about, "Hey, join me in doing this," and I just kind of went back on your track record, number one, the amount of time and effort and thoughtfulness that you put into that PowerPoint presentation and the way you explained it to me and the honesty when you went through it. And then I didn't know Pat very well, but had talked to him on the phone so many different times, I trusted... I mean, Pat is very trustworthy and so are you, ed. And I think that's what brings us all together, trust, because that's all we had at that time is we trusted everyone.

Mark Mozilo ( (24:51):

We weren't going to steal from the company. We weren't going to ask for raises. We weren't going to ask for bonuses, whatever. We all understood going into this, "Hey, it's a long tough road ahead of us. You might not be paid for three to five years." And we all understood it. We're all responsible enough to be able to save money so that we could live off our reserves until something were to happen, which it finally did years later. But I guess I could sum it up in one word, and it's trust.

Ed Aloe (25:19):

Yeah, I think that's accurate. And I always tell people, it's like, man, I trust these guys like my brothers. Mark and Pat, I trust them implicitly with anything. And even we added another partner, Drew a couple years ago, and I feel the same way about Drew. We might not always all agree, but I think we agree that we trust each other to the utmost degree, which really it is important and critical. So guys, after kind of reminiscing and hearing these stories and memories of CALCAP and how it came about, is there anything you'd change about the CALCAP story? Pat, I'll start with you.

Patrick Wakeman (25:57):

Well, about the CALCAP story, no, but it's pretty easy to look back deal by deal and think, "Oh, we missed that deal. We missed several deals by almost nothing, 20, 50,000 that maybe we should have made, but for some reason we didn't." So deal by deal. I can come up with a dozen regrets in Phoenix, Las Vegas, Dallas, Albuquerque. But in terms of our story together and the ups and downs, pitfalls and successes, no, I don't think I'd change it.

Mark Mozilo (26:33):

Yeah, I'm kind of in the same camp with Pat. I mean, I guess I would've liked to be in a 10 story building to start off with views of the St. Gabriel Mountains versus being in a cage. And deal by deal, you're right, we have so many regrets on deals we should have done or shouldn't have done, and who cares about that? But the way it turned out, beyond my wildest dreams, I would not have thought we'd be this successful. I just didn't. And it's great, and it's a wonderful story. I'm glad we're telling it, but no, there's nothing holistically that I would've changed.

Patrick Wakeman (27:11):

So Ed, what about you? Anything that you look at for the first 14 years?

Ed Aloe (27:17):

Well, I mean there's a couple things. One, like you and I have talked about before, hindsight's 20/20, right? But in terms of buying deals, God, we should have bought every single deal we ever looked at. I mean, we were blowing out of deals over 50 or a hundred thousand dollars, which is kind of ridiculous to even think about, but that's where it was back then. So yeah, clearly had we known the trajectory of the market, you would've bought everything. The only thing sometimes I think about is we really bootstrapped the company, raised everything, friends and family, have not raised any real institutional money a lot of our competitors have. And so sometimes I think about would we be better off instead of us putting in a hundred grand to start the company by having found an institutional partner and being 10 times the size, but owning a much, much tinier sliver of the pie versus owning a much bigger piece of a smaller pie?

Ed Aloe (28:16):

And I'm not sure I know the answer, but I can tell you from most friends I know that raise institutional money always tell me, "Keep doing what you're doing. It's much, much better." So I think at the end of the day, pretty happy, like Mark said. And yeah, pretty amazing how it turned out. Yeah, I agree.

Ed Aloe (28:40):

Well, guys, today was a real pleasure. It was a lot of fun looking back at building the company and some of the old stories, which you don't always have that reflection time. So thank you for joining me today. Really appreciate you guys as my brothers and my partners and love the work we're doing. And hopefully we can do it for another 15 years.

Mark Mozilo (29:03):

Thank you.

Patrick Wakeman (29:03):

Yeah. That was fun, Ed. Glad to do it.

Ed Aloe (29:11):

It's hard for me to believe. 14 years ago we started this company from nothing with nothing. We now have about 140 employees. We have four companies, which we call the Four Pillars of CALCAP, which is CALCAP Asset Management, CALCAP Lending, CALCAP Properties, and the last company who started CALCAP Strategic Opportunities, which does preferred equity investments. Probably we will end the year with close to 50 limited liability companies and probably about 800 million in assets under management. I hope today's show inspired you just a little bit and would like to thank my guests again, Mark Mozilo and Pat Wakeman. I'm excited to bring you more episodes with interesting and informative experts to help you navigate your way to wealth in real estate investing.

Susan Rangel (30:06):

Thanks for listening to the Real Estate Wealth podcast. The Real Estate Wealth Podcast is produced by Gusto, a Matter company. Our producer and audio engineer is Jeanette Harris-Courts with support from Gabe Gerzon and Susan Rangel Maia Laperle is our writer. For show notes and more information about this podcast, visit edaloe.com. And for more information about CALCAP Advisors, visit us at www.CALCAP.com or follow us on Twitter, @CALCAPAdvisors.

Ed Aloe (30:46):

I'm your host, Ed Aloe, and thank you for listening.