Commercial real estate veterans John Drachman, founder of Stillwater Investment Group, and Sean Rawson, founder of the Waterford Group, have launched a new diversified investment and development firm, the Waterford Property Group. The dup has completed more than $1 billion in real estate transactions in California and Arizona. The duo will leverage that experience at the new investment firm to target both residential and commercial properties throughout the Western US. "We had been working together as separate companies long enough to know we really wanted to partner and create a best-in-class operating platform that is well-positioned to take advantage of the opportunities that we see in both residential and commercial properties in Southern California," Drachman tells GlobeSt.com. While the firm will focus on markets throughout the Western US, it will focus on high-barrier to entry markets in Southern California. With high competition, it is a challenging market to locate and secure deals, but both Drachman and Rawson have experience in the market. "We focus on submarkets that have high barriers to entry with strong core fundamentals and look how we can find both commercial and residential opportunities to take advantage of the improvements in the market," explains Drachman. "When you look at the almost $400 million of acquisitions we've completed in our respective careers since 2015, more than 65% are in Los Angeles County with a focus on Long Beach and the Eastern San Gabriel Valley for both office and multifamily assets." They plan to hit the ground running. In the first 12 months, Drachman says the firm plans to complete more than $300 in real estate deals. "We have been around for almost five years working within our separate firms, but under Waterford Property Company our goal is to acquire $100 million worth of new real estate while selling approximately $225 million of our existing assets," he says. "We plan on being a net seller over the next 12 months. We have executed the business plan on a number of assets and we feel now is a great time to be selling to achieve our investment goals with our partners." To fund these transactions, Waterford has a stable of institutional equity partners and high net worth investors. "We raise capital for each new joint venture with the source of capital that best suits the returns and profile of the project we are capitalizing," says Drachman. "We believe a diversity of capital partners is important to our business plan." Waterford has also hired Yashaar Amin as partner and COO and Phil Christian as VP, leading asset management and construction-related activities.