Joshua L. Waltzer, Chief Executive Officer, HomeVestors of America, Inc.
It was the adventure of a lifetime. In May 1999, I arrived in Williamsburg, Virginia, to start a cross-country bicycle ride with 12 strangers. We took a few days to get to know one another and prepare our rigs for a 4,500-mile, 92-day trip along the Transamerica Trail. I cycled through the Ozarks, the Great Plains, the Rockies, the Cascades and ended up in Astoria, Oregon.
The trip served as a pivotal point in my career as I was transitioning my career from a local real estate professional at a traditional New York family firm to a financier serving real estate corporate clients across the country. It was a long, physically and mentally challenging journey, but I gained tremendous confidence knowing that by applying patient and persistent effort and being focused on a specific goal, I could achieve great things.
The Early Years
I actually started my working life on a bicycle, delivering newspapers to my neighbors. In high school, I worked at the local supermarket facing product on the aisles, bagging groceries and cleaning the store. As a Stanford undergraduate, I sold ads for the student newspaper. All these early jobs required hustle and intensity. Upon graduation, I was determined to live and work in New York, the business capital of the world. I networked through my family and friends and was fortunate to be hired as an Assistant Asset Manager at Newmark Real Estate in the summer of 1995.
At Newmark, I worked with all sorts of New York personalities. I was assigned to manage several older office buildings in midtown Manhattan with a diverse set of tenants, essentially serving as the primary interface between the tenants and our clients, the landlords. I developed working relationships with many of our tenants, especially the more problematic ones who consistently paid their rent late. In this role I learned that I could create more value for our clients by developing constructive relationships with our tenants where we would collaborate to solve issues.
After four years at Newmark, I realized that my professional focus and experience was too narrow; I wanted exposure to real estate finance and capital markets while wanting to enhance my earnings potential. Accordingly, I applied to business schools in the fall of 1998 and was accepted to Columbia Business School.
At Columbia, I developed some amazing relationships and most importantly, I met my beautiful, intelligent wife, Lori. She and I both concentrated in real estate finance; we actually met in the “Real Estate Club!” Almost immediately after starting school, I oriented myself to a Wall Street job post-graduation. Specifically, I was determined to land an investment banker position in a real estate group at a large Wall Street institution. As it turned out, Banc of America Securities’ real estate group, based in San Francisco, hired me for a summer internship position in the summer of 2000. I spent ten weeks working long hours on a diverse set of M&A and capital raising transactions and I accepted a full-time position with them when I graduated the following year just as the dotcom bubble was bursting and just before the September 11th attack.
The Formative Years
The next 12 plus years as a real estate investment banker at Bank of America was the formative experience of my career. As a junior banker, I worked non-stop preparing financial models and pitch books to deliver to sophisticated clients. As my career progressed, I managed my own client accounts and had the good fortune to lead multiple IPOs, dozens of capital markets transactions and several large M&A deals.
I also developed great relationships with colleagues, competitors and clients. But, I grew restless.
Finally, in 2014 I left the corporate world to pursue more entrepreneurial endeavors. At the time, large institutions were in the process of aggregating portfolios of single-family homes following the Great Financial Crisis and I spent a considerable amount of time with many of these investors as a banker. I teamed-up with a local real estate entrepreneur and his team. Within a year, we were deep into the private lending world working with smaller investors originating bridge aka “fix ‘n flip” loans. We sold our small lending platform to B2R Finance in 2015, where, for a hot-minute, we stayed as employees to stand-up their bridge lending platform. B2R didn’t work out.
In 2016, I struck out on my own to originate loans, sell them to investors, build a track record and generate cash so that I could raise outside money and expand my business. Operating in the San Francisco Bay Area was highly competitive and capital intensive. I struggled to find clients. Eventually, I found several through active cold-calling and networking efforts, but I could not generate sufficient cashflow. In 2017, I “chickened-out” for a W2 job at Lending Home, now known as Kiavi. At Lending Home, I ran the credit committee and reviewed thousands of loans, developing a deep understanding of the residential investment business and the key risk factors involved.
Meanwhile, I was permitted to maintain my own small book of business. With very little effort it grew organically through repeat business and referrals.
In 2019, I gained enough confidence that I resigned from Lending Home to be a full-time entrepreneur…again. I gained immediate traction financing several high-volume investors operating in San Francisco with high priced properties.
Then, COVID-19 hit. At first, I was gravely concerned about my ability to succeed in a frozen market. Within a few months, though, I began a three-year journey of growth and adaptation. I steadily increased volume while diversifying into larger, new subdivision construction loans.
In early 2022 I was afforded a unique opportunity to launch Silver Hill Capital’s bridge lending business to serve HomeVestors franchisees. We built the platform from scratch with great people by leveraging Silver Hill’s existing resources and relationships. We successfully grew to be one of the top HomeVestors lenders utilizing a relationship-oriented, client focused approach. Leading Silver Hill, I became steeped in the HomeVestors culture meeting many great franchisees and gaining a real appreciation for the power and success of the HomeVestors community.
Leading The HomeVestors Community
I was approached to be CEO of HomeVestors in the summer of 2025. The company and its franchisees face an incredibly competitive market in challenging conditions. My job is to re-imagine how we succeed in the homebuying business. I intend to bring a franchisee focused approach, leveraging data and analysis to identify and implement a series of changes that will improve the performance of all of our franchisees.
Being the CEO of HomeVestors is the most challenging role of my career and has the potential to be the most fulfilling. At the heart of it, HomeVestors is a collaborative community of like-minded professionals dedicated to providing innovative solutions to homeowners. I am thrilled and honored to be part of this community.
Most important, I have the full support of my wife — an amazing woman who has succeeded in her own career as a CFO at several real estate companies all while leading the charge on raising our two awesome children, Jessica and Joey.
Lori has always been a hugely positive influence on my life and has supported me throughout my career.
Although I spend most of my time concentrated on HomeVestors these days, you can still find me riding my bicycle, whether it’s in the Oakland hills, along the San Francisco Bay or on the White Rock Lake trail here in Dallas.
