COMMERCIAL
Add Newport Beach-based Greenlaw Partners to the growing list of local companies that are creating businesses to take advantage of the tumult in the commercial real estate market.
The real estate investor and developer,which has a portfolio of 22 properties and about 3 million square feet of office, industrial and retail buildings, much of it local,has launched a receivership services arm.
It’s offering asset and property management, financial services and development and construction management services to banks and other owners of troubled properties.
A number of other companies have begun offering similar services. Greenlaw provides “a principal mindset,” said John Tumminello, who runs the firm along with co-principal Wil Smith
Most receivers generally work as third-party consultants. Smith and Tumminello say their experience as real estate investors allows them to approach troubled properties and deals with an owner’s perspective and mindset, especially when it comes to leasing or disposing of an asset.
Greenlaw’s principals have been involved in more than $2 billion worth of deals in the past eight years. But they held off in 2008 to ride out the volatile market.
“We didn’t make any acquisitions in 2008,that was by choice,” Smith said. The company doesn’t have any debt coming due in the next year, he said.
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Model Home at Brightwater in Huntington Beach: developer sold 17 homes for $25 million to investor |
It’s looking to buy distressed assets if the price is right, Smith said.
Sellers “are taking 5% to 10% off, and buyers are looking for 40 cents on the dollar,” he said.
Sperry Promotion
Irvine brokerage Sperry Van Ness International has named Kevin Maggiacomo its president.
Maggiacomo has held executive positions with Sperry for the past eight years. Most recently he served as chief operating officer and previously was an executive vice president.
He’ll be tapped to oversee the daily operation and growth of the company.
Maggiacomo will be the second president for Sperry in as many years. The company’s last president, Jerry Anderson, was appointed in late 2007 and stepped down in early 2008. Mark Van Ness had been assuming the president duties since then.
Anderson stepped down from that position to take over operations of Sperry’s franchises in Florida,a role similar to that of Bob Osbrink, who heads up Sperry franchises in Southern California, Arizona and Oregon.
Correction
In the Dec. 29 column on a Fullerton industrial lease signed by UCI Medical Center, Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian should have been cited as the county’s largest hospital. Hoag had $574 million in revenue for the 12 months through September 2007, as well as 508 licensed beds, according the Business Journal’s February 2008 list.
RESIDENTIAL
Irvine’s California Coastal Communities Inc., one of Orange County’s smaller housing developers and builders, is taking a page out of the commercial real estate handbook for its 300-plus home Huntington Beach project in the Bolsa Chica wetlands.
California Costal said early this month it sold 17 model homes at its Brightwater community at the development to a local investor for $25 million, or about $1.47 million per home.
Other homes at the project have been selling at more than $2 million each.
Filings with the Securities and Exchange Commission show the buyer being IHP Capital Partners, a big housing investor that’s based in Irvine.
California Coastal plans to lease back the models from IHP Capital to show to prospective homebuyers during the next three years, with two renewal options for one year each.
Sale-leasebacks deals have become more prevalent in the office and industrial market in recent years, as business owners have sold their offices to investors but remained in the properties as tenants.
But there’s a twist: Once the lease ends, the homes will be put up for sale to homebuyers, with both parties getting a portion of any profits from sales.
California Coastal will pay about $9.7 million in rent for the first three years of the leaseback agreement.
The leaseback plan “increases our liquidity and improves our company’s financial position during this extraordinarily difficult time in the housing market,” Chief Executive Raymond Pacini said in a statement. The company is using about $21 million from the sale to pay down debt.
Strand Sale
They aren’t going cheap, but the latest batch of homesites at the high-end Strand at Headlands project are being offered below the stratospheric prices seen in previous rounds of sales at the Dana Point development.
Five homesites up for sale in the 48-lot South Strand neighborhood are being priced from $2.2 million to about $2.9 million, according to developer Sanford Edward. The lots average 13,600 square feet and are perched atop the Dana Point promontory, some 160 to 230 feet above Strand Beach.
Previously, Strand at Headlands sales had been limited to the 70-lot North Strand neighborhood that directly fronts the beach. Sales there have generated record-setting prices for the county,nearly $6 million a site, or about $30 million an acre.
To date, 32 homesites have been sold, totaling more than $205 million, and 16 homes now are under construction.
