Jerry Long began his career in residential construction in 1972 by doing alterations, renovations, and additions while studying economics, business and law in graduate school. A year later he left graduate school to found and devote full time to Custom Living Communities which completed its first three homes in in 1973.

Expansion followed every year thereafter until, by the mid 1980s, he had built Custom Living into one of the nation's largest privately held residential building companies with over $200,000,000 in annual revenues and 200 employees. Geographic diversification followed with expansion into California and the Washington, DC area. Mr. Long focused particularly on Southern California where Custom Living acquired prime properties stretching all the way from Los Angeles to San Diego including a master planned, 1300 home, Jack Nicklaus championship golf course community that also included a shopping center.

Mr. Long has overseen and directed every aspect of land acquisition, approvals, development, architectural design, engineering, construction, sales and marketing of nearly $2,000,000,000 of real estate development. His projects include multi-million dollar estate homes, luxury communities, low and moderate income housing, condo conversions, townhouses, apartments, golf courses, master planned communities, and offices. He has had as many as 200 employees under his direction, including lawyers, sales professionals, construction personnel, architects, engineers and accountants.

Mr. Long has been guest speaker at Rutgers University, provided expert witness testimony in court on numerous occasions, been quoted in national and local publications many times and achieved several awards and designations such as Builder of the Year and Marketing Professional of the year by regional and national organizations, Entrepreneur of the Year by Venture Magazine and he has been featured in Business Week magazine. His companies have received a variety of national recognitions by the National Association of Homebuilders and Gold Nugget Awards by the Pacific Coast Builder's Conference.

Mr. Long is a graduate of Rutgers University with a B.S. in economics and has completed three years of graduate study in economics, business and law.