4 ORANGE COUNTY BUSINESS JOURNAL www.ocbj.com JUNE 25, 2018

To get an idea of the business acumen of FarWest Industries and the Lissoy family, take alook at the Santa Ana-based homebuilder, de-veloper and investor’s local operations duringthe Great Recession.

When numerous public and private builderswere struggling to keep the lights on during adifficult few years and returning key land assetsto the bank, Far West did a fair number of suc-cessful developments.

The company had the fastest-selling OrangeCounty home project in 2008 in the 54-unit SanMarino development in Fountain Valley.

The 14-acre project featuring homes topping3,000 square feet and prices starting around $1million, sold out in about three months, makingit one of the few success stories in what was acratering OC new-home market.

Despite facing headwinds from the coolingconditions, the development came when fewhomes were being built in Fountain Valley, anarea where then-Far West Senior Vice PresidentScott Lissoy—who’s now president—grew up.

Another unlikely success story took place onDove Street in Newport Beach near John WayneAirport.

In 2006, Far West bought a 74,000-square-foot office as an investment property. By 2009,near the bottom of the recession, it had built a20,000-square-foot office property on emptyland there, one of the largest area commercialproperties built that year.

Both offices remain under Far West’s owner-

Homebuilder Has Lending,Tech, Commercial Arms

By MARK MUELLER

Diversification, Stability Equal Success

ship and have been largely full most of thattime.

The Dove Street buy was paid for with cash,while the new construction was funded with FarWest’s existing resources, eliminating debt con-cerns on the project.

“It was a horrible, horrible time to build,” Lis-soy said. “But the key was that we didn’t be-come overly leveraged.”

What’s more, the company managed to avoidlaying off any of its 20 full-time employees dur-ing the recession.

“To my knowledge, they were the only new-home builder in the nation that did not lay any-one off,” said Steven Kaller, chief executive ofAnaheim-based sales and marketing companyUltimate New Homes.

The Great Recession was apparently no fluke.Far West, which has built thousands of homes

since its 1977 founding, said it has never de-faulted on a loan or failed to finish a community.

Far West, which now has 28 employees, re-ceived the small-business honor at the BusinessJournal’s annual Family-Owned BusinessAwards on June 14 at Hotel Irvine (see profilesof other winners on pages 1, 6 and 8).

Home-Improvement RootsLissoy’s father, Albert Lissoy, started the

business. The one-time University of Arizonabasketball player had stints as a police officer inTucson and as a manager of the Western regionof Peat, Marwick, Mitchell and Co.’s acquisi-tion advisory services, before turning to otheropportunities.

He conceived the company as a home-im-provement business, and quickly became one ofthe largest U.S. distributors of Westinghouse’s

home-improvement equipment.Far West pivoted to real estate development

and homebuilding in the early 1990s after Scottgraduated from the University of SouthernCalifornia and joined the business.

Commercial and nonbank commercial lend-ing operations came next.

Far West now manages a nonbank commer-cial lending portfolio exceeding $100 millionthrough its GF Capital subsidiary. Plans are inthe works to raise another $100 million for thelending operations.

Unit Far West Technologies LLC consultson network security and architecture for some ofthe region’s largest banks, healthcare providersand other businesses.

The technology business, started in 2006, isrun by Scott’s brother, Eric.

Garden Grove PlansHomebuilding remains a focus, primarily in

Southern California. The Coachella Valley hasbeen its biggest source of business over the pastdecade.

The company projects that it will sell about150 homes this year.

In Orange County, where publicly tradedbuilders with deep pockets have snapped up thebulk of home lots, “land is hard to come by,”Lissoy said.

One Orange County housing project isplanned in Garden Grove. The 16-townhome,The Centre, will be on Garden Grove Boulevardjust east of Euclid Street. The three-story homeswill total nearly 1,900 square feet.

Two will be live-work units. The Centre is oneof several new live-work projects slated in thecity’s Civic Center, where civic leaders are at-tempting to revitalize via development.

Lissoy: ‘We’restill making

acquisitions’