Shopoff Realty Investments is gearing up for another busy year, after a record-setting 2023.
This year, Chief Executive Bill Shopoff expects to oversee more acquisitions, a side of the company’s business that slowed last year due to historically high interest rates. Shopoff Realty Investments only made one acquisition last year: an 8.7-acre lot formerly home to a Nordstrom in Pleasanton, which it bought for $16 million.
The company remained active on the sell side in 2023; its high sales and financing volume last year raked in $477 million, Shopoff said. By comparison, in the year prior, the company generated $160 million through six sales and financing deals.
Last year’s activity in a turbulent market earned Shopoff the nod as the Business Journal’s Businessperson of the Year, in the real estate sector.
“The market has a long way to go before it can fully recover, though it’s seeing a little more life than it did last year,” Shopoff told the Business Journal.
Only a month into the new year, Shopoff Realty Investments closed a $15 million refinancing deal on a pair of office buildings totaling more than 122,000 square feet in Goleta, near the border of Santa Barbara.
The buildings, at 70 and 90 Castilian Drive, are below market rents, according to officials.
Proptech company AppFolio Inc. (Nasdaq: APPF) fully leases both offices and lists its headquarters as 70 Castilian Drive. Shopoff Realty Investments obtained a loan that offers “good value and protection for the lender and ourselves,” Shopoff said.
The recent deal represents a rare win for office buildings amidst a troubled sector wrought by slow return to work, Shopoff noted.
“It’s an anomaly, considering the rest of the market, so we’re happy with that,” he said.
