COMMERCIAL
A real estate management consulting company starting up in Irvine has some big names on its executive team.
Al Beaudette is launching Attentus Advisors. He’s the company’s chief executive and managing partner. He most recently was the national chairman of the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties.
Among local positions, he previously worked for the Newport Beach office of Lowe Enterprises Real Estate Group Services.
Other managing partners include: Rick Chich-ester, former president of North America operations for Colliers Macaulay Nicolls Inc.; Bob Cutlip, who directed the North American operations for First Indust-rial Realty Trust; and Tom Senkbeil, the former chief investment officer for Post Properties and Duke Realty Corp.
According to Beaudette, Attentus will be similar in operation to traditional consulting companies such as Ernst & Young LLP or McKinsey & Co., except its only focus will be real estate. Along with providing strategy, the company’s experts can jump in and operate real estate assets if needed, he said.
Attentus counts about a dozen workers. It also has offices in Chicago and Atlanta, with plans for a couple other locations.
Panattoni Property
The local offices of CB Richard Ellis Group Inc. just landed a big property management assignment.
Sacramento-based Panattoni Development Co., one of the West Coast’s biggest industrial and office developers, said it is turning over management services for about 17 million square feet of properties to CB Richard Ellis’ strategic accounts group.
The buildings primarily are in Central California and the Inland Empire, although Panattoni’s Orange County properties,which make up about 2 million square feet of space, largely in Anaheim,also are part of the deal.
Cindy Burger, managing director for asset services in CB Richard Ellis’ Newport Beach office, will oversee about 7.5 million square feet of the space here and in the Inland Empire.
The assignment makes up nearly half of Panattoni’s portfolio, which totals 36.9 million square feet.
Studley Gains
Commercial brokerages have been cutting positions in the past year as leasing and sales deals have dried up. According to Business Journal data, brokerage headcounts are down about 14% this year (see our new centerfold list inserted into the middle of the paper).
The Irvine office of tenant brokerage Studley Inc. is moving in the opposite direction. It’s added 4 people in this past year, an 18% increase in staff.
Among the additions is a retail services group, a new practice for Studley. The group will be nationally focused and based in OC. It’s being led by corporate man-aging directors John Beaney and Paul Barlett.
Another addition is Stephen Pisarik, a 22-year industry veteran who had been focused on tenant representation work for Colliers International. Pisarek has worked on more than 6 million square feet of deals in the past decade.
He’s coming on as a senior managing director, along with Assistant Director Scott Becket, also formerly of Colliers.
RESIDENTIAL
Sycamore Urban Properties LLC, a new Irvine-based business that plans to buy distressed condominium properties, has made its first acquisition.
The company said it bought a 41-unit, newly constructed townhome development in Rancho Cucamonga for an undisclosed price. The note for the property was bought in September, but title wasn’t taken until March, following foreclosure on the development, the company said.
“We anticipate many of these notes and properties changing hands via note sales or bank (owned) sales,” said Sycamore President Mitchell Bradford, who founded the company in early 2008 with Chief Executive Lew Halpert.
Halpert comes from Kennedy-Wilson Inc., a real estate services and investment company. Bradford counts positions at a number of homebuilders, including locally-based William Lyon Homes Inc. and John Laing Homes.
Another executive at Sycamore is Vice President Daniel Flynn, formerly the vice president of land acquisitions for John Laing.
Landlord Tracker
Irvine’s RealtyTrac Inc., which tracks foreclosure properties across the country, is starting a service for renters worried that their landlords might not be making the mortgage payments for their properties.
More than 30% of foreclosed homes are not owner occupied, the company says.
RealtyTrac Renter Alerts gives tenants advance notice when the property they are renting enters into default or is about to be foreclosed by a lender. The service costs $25 a year.
I profiled RealtyTrac Chief Executive James Saccacio in the March 30 issue of the Business Journal.
One correction: Saccacio still goes by the name James, contrary to a page 1 reference box that got his name wrong due to an editing error.
