RESIDENTIAL
Redwood Real Estate Partners LLC, a Rancho Santa Margarita-based real estate investor run by a brother of tennis great Michael Chang, is launching a new fund that targets distressed properties.
Redwood? fund, called the Occasio Distressed Residential Fund, plans to buy up to $500 million in distressed housing, the company announced in late May.
The fund will be ?n effective exit strategy to sellers of residential real estate assets looking for liquidity,?Chief Executive Carl Chang said in a statement.
Carl is the elder brother of Michael Chang, who is the 1989 French Open champion and a 2008 inductee into the International Tennis Hall of Fame. Both Carl and Michael Chang are cofounders of Redwood, which was started in 2005.
Carl Chang and Redwood have developed and managed more than $425 million worth of retail shopping centers in the Western U.S. since that time, according to the company? marketing materials.
Occasio will be led by John Duden, a 20-year real estate veteran who most recently was one of the founding partners of Orange-based Fasthold Capital, which focused on the acquisition, restructuring and liquidation of housing loans and bank-owned portfolios.
I first wrote about Fasthold about a year ago. The company, founded by Duden and two other former mortgage executives, launched in 2007. It said at the time it had raised more than $300 million to buy distressed mortgage assets as a principal investor.
Last September, the company partnered with Newport Beach-based developer CT Realty Corp. to buy $33.5 million in troubled mortgages for about 100 homes in California, Washington and Arizona.
Fasthold is no longer around, according to officials representing Redwood. The partnership dissolved after one of the other two partners decided to pursue interests outside of real estate, officials said.
Duden maintained Fasthold? staff, which he? brought over to Occasio.
COMMERCIAL
Newport Beach-based Steadfast Cos., a real estate investment and development company best known locally in recent years for its plans to build an office tower in Anaheim? Platinum Triangle, said it is launching a new securities and financial services division.
The division, called Steadfast Capital Markets Group LLC, will be used to raise money for buying distressed assets.
Grayson Sanders is the new division? chief executive and will be responsible for the creation of investment products and overseeing sales and distribution efforts. He previously was the president of Orlando, Fla.-based CNL Fund Advisors Co.
Aaron Cook is the division? president and will oversee business and product development, operations, finance, sales and marketing efforts. He previously was a managing director and national sales manager for Santa Ana-based Triple Net Properties LLC, which now operates as Grubb & Ellis Co.
Steadfast? existing business lines include divisions that count 14,500 apartments, 850,000 square feet of office and industrial buildings and 2.2 million square feet of retail developments. It also has a resort division.
In late 2006, Steadfast announced plans to build a 22-story office tower on an industrial site that runs along East Orangewood Avenue. Plans for that project have been put on hold due to the slow market.
2006 All Over Again
Office rental rates in OC are now at levels last seen in 2006, if not earlier, according to the Irvine office of tenant brokerage Studley Inc.
Tenant effective rents?he actual cost of the lease once concessions are factored in?ell nearly 15% in 2008 for OC? best office properties, the brokerage? most recent market report shows.
Rents fell another 6.4% in the first quarter of the year, and the nicest office space now is seeing monthly asking rents around $2.40 per square foot, Studley? figures show.
An improvement isn? expected any time soon. With almost 20 million square feet of space available for lease, the market ?as several years of available space on its hands, which means that tenants and landlords are likely to be operating in a tenant-favored market for quite some time,?the report said.
Not only are rents falling, but office sale prices are dropping, too, the report notes. That could soon make the possibility of a tenant buying its own building, rather than leasing, a more viable option, Studley reports. The trouble will be finding a loan to finance a sale, the brokerage said.
