Blanca Torres
Reporter- San Francisco Business Times

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Chinese money has flooded the Bay Area real estate market — and you can expect more, way more.

Investors in Asia have plenty of reasons to put their capital in the United States and with our economy still recovering from the 2008 recession, domestic capital for projects is still relatively hard to come by.

On Wednesday, developers of Oak to Ninth in Oakland’s Brooklyn Basin announced a $1.5 billion commitment from a Chinese investor making it the second, large-scale, master planned development project to secure funding from the far east after developers for Treasure Island announced a similar agreement late last year.

Tishman Speyer also brought in significant Chinese bucks into two condo towers of 42 and 37 stories at 201 Folsom St. in San Francisco.

Other examples include a Chinese biotech firm buying the former Berlix factory in Richmond and the San Francisco Regional Center funneling Asian money into Oakland deals to buy office and industrial buildings.

Those deals are just a sampling, or a harbinger of what’s to come.

In the case of Oak to Ninth, the investor, Zarsion Holding Co. is an expansive owner developer and owner of real estate in China and the Oakland investment is their first in the United States.

Anton Qiu, a veteran broker with TRI Commercial, told me that this kind of deal is appealing to more Chinese companies and investors for a variety of reasons.

At the macro level, China holds more than $1 trillion of U.S. debt, but the dollar has been weak since the recession, so investing in assets is much more attractive. In the last few years, the Chinese government has made it easier for investors to borrow money from the government to invest in foreign countries. In the U.S., the motivation is clear — the better our economy, the more the dollar and thus, the value of China’s holdings go up.

Blanca Torres covers East Bay real estate for the San Francisco Business Times.

Article source: http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/real-estate/2013/04/why-chinese-money-is-flooding-bay-area.html

To vote.

Shea, 51, is one of an estimated 800 Bay Area residents who have plunked down the cash and taken the time to fly back to their native Taiwan and vote in today’s presidential election.

At issue, Shea and others say, is a question that strikes at the identity of the Taiwanese people: Should they continue to court mainland China and its booming economy or maintain ties with the West and its democratic values?

The two main presidential candidates offer competing answers. President Ma Ying-jeou says a close relationship with China offers the allure of a booming economy that can carry Taiwan into the next century. His main rival, Tsai Ing-wen, wants Taiwan to continue to pursue formal independence, a position that has long angered the Chinese government. Polls show the raise is too close to call.

Shea, who is one of estimated 200,000 Taiwanese expatriates who have returned to vote, said she has a duty to help define the future of their county.

“We always want to give the next generation a better future, so we feel like we should be here, we should give them this,” Shea by phone from a relative’s apartment in Taipei. “We want to have democracy, and we want to keep it.”

Unlike in the United States, Taiwanese expatriates can’t simply vote at a consulate’s office or mail a ballot. They have to return to Taiwan to vote at the polls.

Shea, a real estate agent, left her husband and younger son in the Bay Area last week while she, her daughter and 80-year-old mother headed for Taiwan.

Of the estimated 400,000 Taiwanese expatriates in the Bay Area, roughly 800 were expected to fly back for the election, said Manfred Peng, press director with San Francisco’s Taipei Economic and Cultural Office.

“These two political parties have a different perspective on the future of the country, and the members of the parties see a different future for the country,” Peng said. “They probably think the results of the election will affect them so much they want to go back and vote.”

Michael McCarron, a spokesman for San Francisco International Airport, said the flights to Taiwan have been slightly more crowded than normal, in part because of the upcoming Lunar New Year celebration.

Shea, who was up before dawn on Saturday, said the younger generations who support Ma looked only at the money to be made, not the story of Taiwan.

“We feel that we want to tell young people, ‘When you saw the fight two generations ago, you forgot what it was about, maybe your parents didn’t tell you,’ ” Shea said. “They can’t see the big picture, they can’t tell you why.”

E-mail Will Kane at wkane@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page A – 4 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2012/01/13/MNMN1MP9QA.DTL&type=politics