[1][6] Shapell moved to Los Angeles, California, with his wife in 1952, after reading about it in Life magazine, and they decided to stay.
[1][5][6] By 1955, together with his brother David and brother-in-law Max Webb, he co-founded Shapell Industries, a real estate development company.
[1][3][7] The company's first large development was El Dorado Park Estates in Long Beach, California.
[8] Shapell developed the MGM ranch in Thousand Oaks, California, the residential community of Kite Hill in Laguna Niguel, California, the East Lake development in Yorba Linda, and Promenade Towers, a 510-unit project in Downtown Los Angeles.
[1][4] In the late 1980s, he developed Porter Ranch, California, adding commercial buildings to the residential community.
[6] In 1987, he became President of Drug Abuse Resistance Education, an anti-drug non-profit organization in the United States.
[3] In 1998, Senate President Pro-Tem Bill Lockyer appointed him to a commission to help alleviate California's overcrowding of prisons.
[14] Vera still retains a 43 percent interest in the remainder of Shapell industries which includes over 10,000 apartments, five shopping centers, and four office buildings worth an additional $1.7 billion.