Real Estate & Mortgage Owners: The Builders Behind Rod Khleif, Thuan Nguyen, Veena Jetti and David Walentas

Rod Khleif

Founder, Khleif Companies

Official links: Website · LinkedIn · Facebook · Instagram · X

Rod Khleif arrived in America from the Netherlands at six years old, with his mother and brother, and settled in Denver. The family shopped at a store that sold expired food because it was cheaper. They drank powdered milk, and the boys wore hand-me-downs from Goodwill and the Salvation Army through junior high.

At fourteen he lied about his age to work at Burger King. At seventeen he watched his mother make $20,000 on a rental house — and understood, in one transaction, the ladder out. He got his real-estate license at eighteen and started climbing it.

“We drank powdered milk with our cereal in the morning because it was cheaper than real milk.”

Khleif built an empire of more than 2,000 single-family homes and thousands of apartment units. In a single year his net worth rose $17 million — and in 2008 he lost more than $50 million, some 800 houses and his apartment complexes gone in the crash.

He rebuilt, again, and now hosts Lifetime CashFlow, one of the largest multifamily real-estate podcasts, teaching the mindset side of the business to the investors coming up behind him. The boy who drank powdered milk has strong opinions about wealth, and he earned them in both directions.

Podscan / Financial Freedom Podcast — “Rod Khleif on Wealth Mindset & Bouncing Back After Losing $50 Million in 2008” (transcript)
REI Diamonds — “From Immigrant Hustler to Real Estate Titan: Rod Khleif’s Psychology of Building & Rebuilding Empires”
Mind For Life — “Rod Khleif Lost $50 Million: Comeback”

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  Ricardo Pagan  ·  Shashank Shekhar

Shashank Shekhar

Founder, InstaMortgage — San Jose, CA

Official links: Website · LinkedIn · Instagram · X

Shashank Shekhar arrived in the United States from India and landed an executive job — the plan was working. Then the financial crisis took the job, less than two years after he had arrived in the country. He sat at the kitchen table of a rented apartment with $1,900 in savings, knowing three people in America.

Most sensible people would have updated a résumé. Shekhar founded a mortgage company instead, in 2008, in the smoking crater of the mortgage industry — and then closed seven loans in his first twelve months. Seven.

The business nearly died of its own obscurity before it died of anything else.

“There I was, less than two years in the country, sitting at the kitchen table of a rented apartment with $1,900 in savings.”

His way out was to write. Shekhar became one of the early mortgage bloggers, publishing weekly, answering borrower questions in plain language until the clients started finding him.

Personal production climbed to nearly $200 million in a single year; the company he founded as Arcus Lending made the Inc. 500, rebranded as InstaMortgage, and now lends in more than two dozen states.

The immigrant with $1,900 and three contacts became one of the most visible independent mortgage bankers in America — one blog post, and then one loan, at a time.

Scotsman Guide — Shashank Shekhar, Arcus Lending (profile)
National Mortgage Professional — “Action Plan” (Shashank Shekhar)
Business Wire — “InstaMortgage Named to Inc. 5000 Fastest-Growing Companies for the Second Time”

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  Rod Khleif  ·  Stephanie Graves

Stephanie Graves

Founder and President, Q10 Property Advisors — Houston, TX

Official links: LinkedIn

Stephanie Graves spent more than twenty years running apartment communities for other people, and she rose about as high as an employee can rise: senior vice president of operations, overseeing more than 22,000 units in six markets nationwide, with a communications degree from St. Edward’s University, magna cum laude, and the industry’s CAPS and CAM designations on her wall.

In Houston she had made a specialty of the hardest work in the business — taking over properties and redeveloping property-based Section 8 housing into low-income housing tax credit communities. In 2015 she looked at the whole of that career and bet it on herself.

Graves founded Q10 Property Advisors with a partner, Ginger Bernstein, and in July 2015 the new firm acquired a single 276-unit Houston community. Today Q10 manages 35 properties and 5,700 units with about 150 employees — a woman-owned firm built from one community.

She also served as the 2023 president of the Houston Apartment Association, the largest apartment association in the nation, and teaches through the National Apartment Association’s education faculty. The executive who spent two decades making other owners’ properties perform now owns the company doing it.

ResMan PropTalk — “An Entrepreneur’s Journey ft. Stephanie Graves”
Sprout Marketing — “#81: Stephanie Graves on Starting Her Own Woman-Owned & Led Property Management Company”
Houston Apartment Association / ABODE — “2023 President Stephanie Graves”

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  Shashank Shekhar  ·  Thuan Nguyen

Thuan Nguyen

Founder and CEO, Loan Factory — San Jose, CA

Official links: Website

Thuan Nguyen grew up in post-war Vietnam, and at fourteen years old he tried to escape the country by boat. The attempt ended in capture and imprisonment. He made it to the United States eventually, a refugee, and built his American life in the most literal way available — he studied.

At UC Berkeley he earned a business degree with highest honors, then a master’s in information management and systems. In 2006 he launched Loan Factory in San Jose, initially serving the Vietnamese community. Then he did the thing almost no mortgage CEO does: he wrote his company’s software himself.

The MOSO platform he coded became the engine of everything that followed.

“For me, what’s different is, I built my own technology.”

What followed was a record the industry had never seen.

Nguyen became the first individual originator in American history to top $2 billion in personal loan volume in a single year — 5,216 loans in 2020, then a new Scotsman Guide record again the next year — and Loan Factory grew into the No. 2 mortgage brokerage in the United States, powered by a network of more than 2,000 loan officers running on the software its founder wrote.

The refugee teenager who was imprisoned for trying to leave Vietnam now holds the production records of the American mortgage business, and he still closes loans on his own license.

HousingWire — “This Techie Mortgage Broker Has Cleared $1 Billion in Originations This Year”
YesPress — “Thuan Nguyen, Founder & CEO of Loan Factory”
Scotsman Guide — “Featured Top Originator: Thuan Nguyen, Loan Factory Inc.”

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  Stephanie Graves  ·  Veena Jetti

Veena Jetti

Founding Partner, Vive Funds

Official links: Website · LinkedIn · Facebook · Instagram · X

Veena Jetti’s parents came to America from India, in her words, with twenty-six dollars. Her father’s income in the early years was about $400 a month; her mother, on a spouse visa, could not legally work.

What they did with that start was methodical: they lived below their means, invested early and often, and Veena’s mother built a single-family rental portfolio house by house. Veena grew up inside that education.

Her first deal, a little over a decade ago, was a condo; she bought five houses in a single week once, hated the chaos of scattered single-family rentals, and saw the thing her parents’ generation had not reached for.

“I come from a real estate family but I’m the first in my family to buy multifamily.”

Jetti is a founding partner of Vive Funds, a commercial real-estate firm built on conservative, investor-first underwriting. The portfolio she built runs to more than 3,000 units worth some $600 million, with over $1 billion in real-estate assets and transactions behind her — scaled, as she is fond of noting, while raising twin daughters.

Her parents turned $26 into a family’s future; the second generation turned it into an institution, and she teaches other women and second-generation investors to run the same play.

“Inspired to Invest” with Serena Holmes — “Revealing the Roadmap to a Billion Dollar Real Estate Portfolio with Veena Jetti” (transcript)
Rod Khleif podcast — “The Art and Science of Multifamily Underwriting” (Veena Jetti)
Captivate / Financial Freedom with Real Estate Investing — Veena Jetti episode

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  Thuan Nguyen  ·  Vinney Chopra

Vinney Chopra

Founder, Moneil Investment Group — Danville, CA

Official links: Website · LinkedIn · Facebook · Instagram · X

Vinney Chopra came to the United States from India more than forty years ago with seven dollars in his pocket.

He had a bachelor’s degree in mechanical engineering, and he enrolled at George Washington University for an MBA in marketing — and paid for it the way he paid for everything, by selling: encyclopedias and Bibles, door to door, as a student.

There is a reason the industry calls him “Vinney Smiles” and “Mr. Smiles”: the door-to-door years taught him that enthusiasm is a strategy, and he has now spent more than three decades as a motivational speaker and fundraising consultant, with over 10,000 speeches and seminars behind him.

The salesmanship became an investment firm. Chopra founded Moneil Investment Group and became a multifamily syndication specialist — more than two dozen successful syndication deals, a portfolio of more than 3,800 doors worth over $300 million, and several companies under his roof, including a management group and his Multifamily Academy.

He wrote Apartment Syndication Made Easy to hand the playbook to the next arrival. Seven dollars, a bag of books and a smile turned out to be a complete business plan.

Listen Notes / Syndication Made Easy — Vinney Chopra episode
Listen Notes / Jake & Gino — “Setting Goals with Vinney Chopra”
BiggerPockets — “2018 Goal Setting with Success Dynamo & Syndicator, Vinney Chopra” (speaker bio)

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  Veena Jetti  ·  Weina Zhang

Weina Zhang

Founder and CEO, Z-Life — Las Vegas, NV

Official links: Website

Weina Zhang was a self-made millionaire in China at twenty-one. Working as a tour guide, she noticed guides earned a commission steering tourists into antique stores — so she reverse-engineered the whole arrangement and opened her own store, and the other guides brought their tourists to her. Then she gave it up.

She landed in New York City in 1998 with no degree and no English, because, as she puts it, she wanted to be a millionaire there. She found her way to Las Vegas, worked for a noted architect, and at twenty-seven started her own company in the least forgiving corner of construction: glass.

“I landed in New York City in 1998 because I wanted to be a millionaire there. I had no degree and spoke no English.”

Her glazing company became the No. 3 glazing contractor in the United States — one of the contractors on New York’s Freedom Tower — growing from $1 million to $15 million in revenue in three years. She pioneered bringing fully engineered unitized curtainwall into the U.S. market.

In 2018 she co-founded Z-Life in Las Vegas to develop communities with that builder’s edge, and Z-Life reached $50 million in revenue and $8.3 million in EBITDA in just three years. Twice a self-made success, in two countries, in two languages — the second time starting from zero on purpose.

ENR (Engineering News-Record) — “Five Minutes With Weina Zhang and Anna Olin”
Nancy’s Walkabout — “From Limited English to $50M in Revenue: Weina Zhang” (video interview)
Hospitality Net — “Z Life Company Partners With Sightline Hospitality”

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  Vinney Chopra  ·  Eddie Garcia

Eddie Garcia

Founder & CEO, Realty of America — Chicago, IL

Official links: Website · LinkedIn · Instagram

We’re inspired because Eddie Garcia grew up below the poverty line in inner-city Chicago — son of Mexican immigrants who had known homelessness, teased for hand-me-downs and a thrift-store graduation suit, undocumented until he was 13 — and decided poverty would not be his family’s address anymore. His rule ever since: once you rise, you pour into the next person.

“I was tired of being poor. I thought, 'I have to make something of myself.' I didn’t know what I would do but I thought, 'I will become somebody and I will chase my version of the American dream.'”

Garcia’s first attempt at real estate left him taken advantage of and penniless; he came back and built Realty of Chicago from a solo start into the city’s 11th-largest real estate company — $4 billion in sales volume, more than 10,000 families into homes, and a millionaire by 26.

He recruited people nobody else was hiring: by his count, 90% of his agents were not realtors when he found them — busboys, waiters, warehouse and retail workers, transit drivers, nurses and police officers — and turned many into top producers and millionaires.

Then he walked away from the mountaintop to do it again nationally: Realty of America is fully owned by its leaders and agents, runs with no debt and no outside investors, and has grown to more than 3,500 agents across 25 markets, closing $7.1 billion in sales — allocating up to 60% of revenue to agent revenue share.

His companies run a national back-to-school giveaway and a Thanksgiving turkey giveaway; he counts some 50,000 kids sent to school with supplies and more than a quarter-million people fed.

Inman — “How 1 Broker Went from Poverty to Running a Real Estate Empire”
National Association of Realtors — “Eddie Garcia Bet Bigger on Brokerage Ownership”
HousingWire, RealTrending — “Realty of America’s Eddie Garcia on Rev Share and No Debt”

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  Weina Zhang  ·  David Walentas

David Walentas

Founder, Two Trees Management — Brooklyn, NY

Official links: Website

David Walentas grew up poor in Rochester, New York. When he was five, his father — a postal worker — suffered a stroke in his thirties and was left paralyzed.

His mother went to work two jobs, and David and his older brother Peter were sent to live on nearby farms, up at four in the morning, milking cows and shoveling manure before school — in his son’s retelling, effectively indentured children. Walentas became the first college graduate in his family, at the University of Virginia.

What he wanted, from boyhood, was a job that did not yet have a name in his world.

“I just wanted to be a real estate developer. I was attracted to the ability to build stuff, to collect rent, to own it.”

In the late 1970s Walentas borrowed $12 million and bought roughly two million square feet of derelict industrial waterfront in Brooklyn — a dying district called Fulton Landing that he proceeded, over decades of fights with city hall, to turn into Dumbo, one of New York’s most valuable neighborhoods.

Two Trees Management, the firm he founded, now manages more than $4 billion in assets; he later bought the Domino Sugar refinery site and remade that stretch of Williamsburg, too. Forbes counts him a self-made billionaire.

And the farm boy who was sent away at five has pledged $100 million to the University of Virginia, mostly for first-generation students — kids, that is, exactly like him.

Wikipedia — David Walentas
Forbes — David Walentas profile (Billionaires list)
Brooklyn Magazine — “7 Interesting Things We Learned From Forbes’ David Walentas Profile”

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  Eddie Garcia  ·  Albert Berriz

Ricardo Pagan

Founder and CEO, Claridge Properties — Los Angeles, CA

Official links: Website

Ricardo Pagan was born in the Dominican Republic, emigrated at nine, and was raised in Brooklyn. He never attended a four-year college. In his late teens he started buying houses, and he taught himself the development business the expensive way — deal by deal, mistake by mistake, with his own money on the table.

In 1999 he founded Claridge Properties in Brooklyn, a firm that remains 100 percent minority-owned. The kid with no degree and no connections was not waiting for an institution to credential him; he was too busy learning how buildings actually get bought, financed and built.

The self-taught developer’s record now runs past $1 billion in acquisitions and development, more than 3,500 residential units and over half a million square feet of office space.

His projects are landmarks: the Gretsch Building in Williamsburg, the Pencil Factory on the Greenpoint waterfront, Detroit’s Book Tower and Westin Book Cadillac — and Angels Landing in downtown Los Angeles, a project valued at more than $1 billion, where his partnership was selected by the city.

The teenager who bought houses in Brooklyn without a college degree grew into the developer cities call when the project is the skyline.

Claridge Properties — About Ricardo Pagan
Everand / Leading Voices — “Ricardo Pagan, Founder and CEO of Claridge Properties”
Modern Luxury — Ricardo Pagan profile

More from The Bourgeois Society: The full list  ·  Reed Goossens  ·  Rod Khleif