COMMERCIAL
Newport Beach-based developer Acacia Real Estate Group Inc. has cash to spend in Orange County’s down real estate market.
The company, which President David Pittman describes as a “boutique developer,” built a number of for-sale condominiums in the area during the past decade. Projects included the Irvine Business Center in the Irvine Spectrum area and the Cypress Business Center.
Now it’s focusing on the financial side of the business.
The developer has raised a sizable amount of money from private investors in New York and Chicago to take advantage of the down market.
Acacia will have about $100 million to invest, according to Pittman. But it won’t be focusing on buying distressed assets or properties put up for sale by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp., which is what many developers are targeting.
The company plans to “provide liquidity where there is none,” he said.
Investments primarily will be through purchasing debt, providing bridge loans to property owners and buying non-performing loans.
“That’s where the game is,” according to Pittman. “The market is not over-supplied. The problem is that owners are over-leveraged. They need money.”
After ranking high on the Business Journal’s annual list of largest local developers a few years back, Acacia started cutting down on the number of projects about three years ago when its executives saw the market getting overheated.
“We had a good run. We said ‘let’s not ruin it,'” Pittman said.
Acacia didn’t have any projects in the works here last year and fell off our most recent list in June, which ranks developers by square feet developed in the county.
|
|
NHA auction: company suing rival |
Bike Lease
Aliso Viejo-based developer Shea Properties Inc., part of J.F. Shea Co., landed a big tenant for a large industrial park it owns in Ontario.
Trek Bicycle Corp., a bicycle maker, signed a lease for 207,018 square feet of space at the Shea Center Ontario. The five-building industrial park totals nearly 1.6 million square feet of warehouse and distribution space.
Trek plans to use the space as its West Coast distribution center, and it will store and ship bicycles and cycling products to dealers in the western U.S.
RESIDENTIAL
Irvine-based National Home Auction Corp., a foreclosed home auction company that counted a number of big local names as investors, no longer is holding auctions.
But the company is staying busy in court.
NHA filed a lawsuit in Orange County Superior Court last month against competitor Real Estate Disposition Corp., another Irvine-based auctioneer that’s been the largest business of its type during the housing downturn.
The case alleges REDC engaged in unfair and unlawful business practices that intentionally drove NHA out of the distressed properties auction business.
NHA,whose initial investors included Robert Campbell, president of Newport Beach-based developer CT Realty Corp., and James “Watty” Watson, chief executive of Aliso Viejo-based TechSpace Inc.,is seeking $132 million in damages.
It’s the third time that NHA has brought legal action against its competitor, according to REDC’s lawyers.
A previous lawsuit was settled out of court, with NHA paying a “large, undisclosed” amount of money, REDC attorneys told HousingWire.com.
Last summer, NHA shut down its auction operations after lawsuits from REDC became too costly, Ryan Knott, National Home’s chief executive, said at the time.
REDC claimed that NHA copied Real Estate Disposition’s business model and auction process, operated a virtually identical Web site and ran commercials similar to its own.
Despite the ongoing lawsuits, the connection between the two auction companies grew a bit in recent weeks when REDC hired a chief operating officer from one of NHA’s investors to oversee the company’s new commercial real estate division.
The new hire was Daniel Culler, who comes from CT Realty Corp. He was the vice president of asset management and dispositions for the developer.
Land Sales
Irvine-based land brokerage Whittlesey Doyle said it completed deals for nearly 1,100 home lots in southwest Riverside County last month, in three separate transactions.
In the largest of the deals, Huntington Beach-based Sacjac I LLC bought 578 lots at the Trails, a multiphase project near the Ramona Expressway. Bank of America Corp. sold the land.
Bank of America also sold 378 townhome units in a development called Copper Skye to Solana Beach-based Copper Skye LLC.
Also, in Menifee’s Mahogony Village, Santa Ana-based Continental East Fund II LLC bought 108 lots from Orange-based builder R.C. Hobbs Co. Prices for the deals weren’t disclosed.
