Lou Mellman is the Co-Founder of CCI and is also a principal investor in almost all of CCI’s real estate holdings. Together with Garry Collett, he forges strategic partnerships and acts in an advisory role, driving new ventures.
Graduating with honors in 1985, Lou received his Bachelor of Science in Business Administration with emphasis on real estate and finance from California State University, Northridge. He began his career in real estate brokerage, where he honed his skills in commercial real estate, focusing on multi-family investment. Diving into onsite operations and sale negotiations, he discovered a penchant for understanding investor priorities and realized that he saw opportunity where others didn’t. After a decade of first-hand experience in multi-family real estate transactions, in 1995 he made his first principal investment, where he began building a portfolio of local apartment complexes, specializing in value added real estate transactions.
For the last twenty years, Lou has concentrated on Project Based Section 8 properties and other affordable opportunities, as he learned to navigate the US Department of Housing and Urban Development’s intense regulatory environment in order to help the nations’ low-income seniors. Along with his partner, Garry Collett and their investors, he now owns and operates approximately 80 affordable communities across the country, almost all of which are managed by CCI Management.
Lou has also focused on local, market-rate ground up development over the last ten years, where he has been able to impact the housing market in the community in which he lives.
Thirty years after creating CCI, Lou has purchased, sold, and developed over $1 billion in real estate and owns and operates more than 7,500 units.