CWS began in 1969 as a small investment firm founded by Jim Clayton and Bill Williams. They combined their own money with equity raised from friends and family to purchase an apartment complex in Southern California. Their next acquisition was a mobile home park, the investment vehicle that the company emphasized for the next twenty years. In 1977, Steve Sherwood joined Clayton and Williams to form Clayton Williams and Sherwood, Inc. and began acquiring manufactured home communities much more aggressively. By the 1980s, Clayton Williams and Sherwood, Inc. established itself as the largest owner and operator of manufactured housing in the nation.

 

In the late 1980s, CWS began selling its manufactured housing units to focus on acquiring apartment communities. By 1997, CWS had completed its transition from manufactured homes to apartment communities when it merged its manufactured housing management company into a new private real estate investment trust (REIT) called CWS Communities Trust. In 2001, CWS Communities Trust was sold to Chateau Communities, a publicly traded New York Stock Exchange REIT, in a $500 million deal. As CWS continued to mature in the apartment market, it expanded its investment activity in 1990 to include the acquisition and development of luxury apartment communities. To this day, CWS continues to specialize in luxury apartment communities around the nation.