Sandeep Mathrani started his real estate career with a $52k FHA loan and $1,900 from selling his Nissan Sentra—now he’s the CEO of the nation’s second-largest mall portfolio owner.

His first investment was his own DC apartment—he bought it with his combined funds only to turn around and sell it for a $20k profit a year later. That’s when he realized, “This real estate stuff’s pretty good,” he tells CNBC.

And it looks like he’s pretty good at it too—after working as a president at Vornado for eight years, Mathrani led General Growth Properties out of bankruptcy by raising $2.3B. He went on to recapitalize the company with an additional $6.8B in equity.

Nowadays, in a landscape with too much shopping space per capita, Mathrani focuses on owning a small group of the best malls in the country rather than as many malls as possible. In his view, the best malls get better and the worse malls continue to deteriorate. Coming from a guy who turned $20k into retail dominance, it seems like a solid view. [CNBC]