David Lichtenstein
Early career
Born to a Jewish family, Lichtenstein launched his real estate career with one building and a loan. And he bought that debut investment in a two-family home in New Jersey with a $12,000 down payment raised by maxing out a credit card and tapping out a small savings account. Over the next couple of years, Lichtenstein used the cash his properties generated, leveraged with loans, to keep buying. Three years later, in 1988, he founded The Lightstone Group, quickly growing the company into one of the biggest private property holders in the U.S. By 2003, Lightstone was recognized as one of the most active property buyers in the U.S., with an estimated worth of $1 billion to $2 billion. By 2005, that worth had grown to an estimated $3 billion.
Today, Lightstone ranks among the top 25 largest real estate companies in the United States, and employs approximately 1,150 staff and professionals. Lightstone has offices in New York City, as well as in New Jersey, Maryland and Illinois.
Strategy
Lichtenstein’s strategy is a willingness to seek out properties that offer the prospect of high returns and have challenges or complexities that limit their appeal to other investors, including properties with distressed capital structures.
Lichtenstein has publicly spoken that he made risky investments in the past. He even shared some of his business tactics by saying that it is clever to buy land, instead of the homes that are build on it. Lichtenstein has even publicly spoken about the risks and predictions in the Commercial Real Estate on CNBC and Bloomberg.
Philanthropy
Lichtenstein is a founder of the Friendship House, an organization that provides housing near hospitals for families that want to be near loved ones in times of need.
Source:wikipedia