One word describes the CWS philosophy: consistency. In 1969, when Jim Clayton and Bill Williams started working together - raising capital from family and friends to purchase a small apartment community in Huntington Beach, California - they believed that personal involvement would create the greatest opportunity for success.

By putting their own money into the project, their interests would align with those of their investors. They also believed that their hands-on management approach would maximize investor returns. They were right.

Sharing their vision, Steve Sherwood teamed with Bill and Jim in 1977, and Clayton, Williams, and Sherwood, Inc. was born. With the addition of Steve, the company embarked on an ambitious investment campaign, acquiring manufactured home communities that offered favorable risk/reward characteristics. The three partners believed that this asset class was deeply under-valued and saw the potential for equity growth through a very predictable and growing income stream. Their intuition proved correct as the returns on these investments exceeded both their own and their investors' expectations. As the company continued to grow, the partners made sure to surround themselves with a team that shared their commitment to meeting or exceeding investor expectations.

By the late 1980's, Clayton, Williams, & Sherwood had become the largest owner and operator of manufactured homes in the United States.

Entering 1990, a tremendous opportunity was created by the collapse of real estate values during the late 1980's. CWS read the changing landscape and adjusted its investment strategy accordingly, selling highly valued manufactured home communities and repositioning the equity into depressed apartment assets in Texas. CWS and its investors benefited greatly as the economic recovery brought about stellar total returns.

CWS completed its transition from manufactured homes to apartments in late 1997 when it merged its manufactured housing management company into a new real estate investment trust (REIT). This new company, CWS Communities Trust, is a private REIT whose majority shareholder is affiliated with Security Capital Group, one of the world's largest real estate organizations.

Since its move into the apartment industry in 1990, CWS has expanded its investment activity into the purchase and development of luxury apartment communities while, maintaining its efforts in the area of acquiring and rehabilitating older communities in quality locations.

To this day, the company's success is still grounded in its roots. The principals have a personal investment in each property. They also have a key management team that is involved in each and every project. And they continue to maintain a hands-on management approach to each property.

The combination of work ethic, strategic intuition, experience, strong management, and personal investment has allowed CWS the unique ability to say, "We have never lost an investor's original capital investment."