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Investors rushing into real estate deals

Sun, 11 Nov 2012 14:32:22 +0000

Real estate investors – an increasingly potent force in the Bay Area market during the housing downturn – are rushing to lock up deals before rising home prices wipe out their chances for profits.

Droves of cheap foreclosed homes are drawing serious investor money. From mom-and-pop folks seeking retirement income to Wall Street-backed funds with hundreds of millions to spend, investors buy distressed homes to either fix and flip or, increasingly, to hold and rent out, mainly focusing on the most-affordable areas – those most devastated by the downturn.

“There is a tsunami of money coming into the market, billions of dollars to buy distressed single-family homes,” said Jeff Lerman, a San Rafael real estate lawyer, speaking about the national landscape. “The window of opportunity is rapidly closing (as prices rise). Over the next 18 months, profit margins in single-family opportunistic buying will be compressed quite a bit.”

But for now, many distressed homes – foreclosures and short sales – sell for about a third off their peak values, and often for less than it would cost to build a new home.

Investor impact in the Bay Area was magnified during the downturn. That’s because for many years, the Bay Area’s stratospheric prices made buying homes to rent out a losing proposition, so investors bought elsewhere.

“Historically the (sales) price-to-rent ratio for California single-family homes has never made sense to hold houses at any scale,” said Brian Burke, managing director of Praxis Capital, a Santa Rosa real estate investment company. “But the market dynamics have completely changed and opened up an opportunity for us to buy, hold and rent, as well as buying to fix and flip.”

A Chronicle analysis of sales data compiled by San Diego research firm DataQuick showed that absentee buyers, who once bought about 10 percent of homes sold in the nine Bay Area counties, account for about a quarter of all purchases this year, more than doubling their share. Absentee buyers are defined as those who have property tax bills sent to a different address than the house they just bought.

Absentee buyers

Absentee buyers were most common in Solano County, where they accounted for almost a third of sales. Solano has by far the lowest median home prices in the Bay Area, weighing in at $200,000 in September, for instance.

Flipped homes – those resold within six months of purchase – went from about 2.5 percent of all Bay Area sales in 2007 to about 4 percent of sales currently, with the biggest bump coming this year. Again, bargain-basement Solano had the most activity, with around 6 percent of sales being flipped homes.

Investors played a big role in helping the market start to recover, experts say.

“The real estate market hit a floor sooner because of investor appetite, so it plays into a stabilizing housing market and overall economy,” said DataQuick analyst Andrew LePage.

But there’s a downside, too. Deep-pocketed investors paying all cash often elbow out prospective homeowners. “It makes it awfully frustrating for first-time buyers who have to compete with them,” LePage said.

Big draw for investors

For now, market dynamics continue to lure investors.

“There are a lot of investors out there, large and small, who continue to relish residential real estate in a market where many people either don’t want to buy a house or cannot buy a house and so are renting,” LePage said. “For a lot of these investors, it’s still penciling out at sometimes-record levels.”

Praxis Capital is a case in point. In 2009, Burke, who had 20 years experience buying homes at foreclosure auctions, partnered with Rivendale Homes, a large private builder, to form Praxis. It started buying about 100 to 120 homes a year to fix and flip in 12 northern California counties, including the East Bay, North Bay and Sacramento area.

A year ago, Praxis started buying houses to hold onto and rent out because home prices finally made the math work, generating positive cash flow. It now has about 100 rental homes, with more in the pipeline.

For instance, it paid $182,000 at a foreclosure auction for a four-bedroom, two-bathroom Santa Rosa tract home that is now getting a $15,000 “cosmetic rehab” of new carpets, paint, flooring and landscaping. The house should rent for $1,950, Burke said. Once it’s rehabbed, he projects its market value will be $253,000. After renting this and similar homes out for five to seven years, Praxis will sell, hoping for significant appreciation.

Praxis has spent $15 million to date on both its flipped and rental properties, and is launching a fund in January focused just on buying homes to rent out. It hopes to raise $25 million, primarily from high-net-worth individuals in the region – winemaking families, small business owners and professionals who are looking to diversify their portfolios, Burke said.

Finding tenants is easy because so many displaced families need housing.

Dominating the market

“Right now the dominating force driving the rental market in California is foreclosed-upon former homeowners transitioning to renters,” Burke said. “That demographic is an important market segment for us.”

Fixing up dilapidated foreclosures “is the home building of the current decade,” Burke said. “In the 2000s, people were building houses everywhere. The home building of today is taking an old rundown house that hasn’t been cared for and bringing it up to current standards and modernizing it.”

Despite its millions of dollars worth of investments, Praxis is small compared with the Wall Street-backed giants who have plunged into the distressed residential real estate market. Oakland’s Waypoint Real Estate Investment Group, for instance, hopes to pour $1 billion into single-family homes over the next couple of years. It owns hundreds of homes in eastern Contra Costa County and Oakland, as well as markets outside the Bay Area.

It’s since been joined by other private-equity backed heavyweights, including Blackstone Group, Colony Capital, Och-Ziff and American Homes 4 Rent.

Many of those big players are focusing on cheaper markets than the Bay Area, such as Arizona, Nevada and Florida. Likewise many mom-and-pop investors have shied away from buying locally.

‘Unlikely to last’

“California doesn’t have large cash flow; it’s more of an appreciation play,” said Kathy Fettke, CEO of Real Wealth Network, a Walnut Creek real-estate investment club. Her club usually steers members to lower-cost markets, but recently recommended buying California homes between $150,000 and $300,000.

“This is the first time we’re featuring California,” Fettke said. “We now have a combination of low home prices and low interest rates, which makes for better cash flow than we’ve ever seen.”

But it’s unlikely to last. “In the last six months, prices have gone up as much as 20 percent in certain neighborhoods,” she said.

“Investor activity eventually will taper off,” LePage said. “Prices will get to the point where it doesn’t pencil. That’s inevitable – but the big question is when. You have to know when the economy will gain a lot more traction.”

Carolyn Said is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: csaid@sfchronicle.com

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Investors-rushing-into-real-estate-deals-4026281.php

Foreigners shop for Bay Area real estate

Sun, 09 Sep 2012 10:24:53 +0000

Whether snapping up a discounted Marin mansion for vacations, buying a small Oakland apartment building for a cash-flow investment or purchasing a home of their own as they move here, foreign buyers are an increasingly potent force in residential real estate in the Bay Area, as well as nationally.

Drawn by the relative bargains after housing’s free fall of the past few years, many foreign citizens view U.S. residential real estate as a safe place to park their euros, pesos, rupees, loonies, pounds or yuan.

“Housing is much more affordable in the U.S. than it has been, both for Americans and foreigners,” said Jed Kolko, chief economist with real estate site Trulia.com. “In markets where prices fell dramatically during the housing bust, foreigners have been searching for and buying bargains.”

Foreign buyers plowed $82.5 billion into U.S. homes for the 12 months ended in March, up 24 percent from $66.4 billion the year before, according to the National Association of Realtors, which does an annual survey on international buyers.

The sales – which represented 8.9 percent of all home purchases – were evenly split between recent immigrants and nonresident foreigners, the Realtors group said.

In the nine-county Bay Area, about 6 percent of all property searches by prospective buyers come from abroad, according to Trulia.com, which gets 100 million page views on its site every month. San Francisco is by far the most popular search location for foreigners. Since it is a high-cost area with a thriving job market, it seems likely that many searchers are not looking for rental properties for investment purposes but instead are looking to move to the city.

No U.S. credit history

That was the case with Anant Sapatnekar, 40, who was born in India and after 16 years in Canada has joint Indian-Canadian citizenship. Sapatnekar moved to San Francisco for a software engineering job a few months ago and decided to buy a home to establish himself in his new city.

He faced the usual challenges of sticker shock and a competitive market. But his citizenship added some special hurdles.

“It turned out because I didn’t have any U.S. credit history, I didn’t have FICO scores and all that stuff that U.S. banks required” to get a mortgage, he said.

His first accepted offer fell through when he couldn’t get a home loan in time. Eventually he lined up financing from the U.S. division of the Royal Bank of Canada, since it was able to track his Canadian credit history.

In another way, his status as an immigrant helped him.

When Sapatnekar found a Bernal Heights condo that he liked, his agent encouraged him to write a personal letter to the seller.

“I wrote something from my heart about how I just moved here to start a new life, uprooting myself from one country and starting all over again for the second time,” he said. “I said I really liked the house and it would really help me if you sell it to me.”

His agent, Robert Carter of Vanguard Properties in San Francisco, said: “The seller was an overseas immigrant as well, who came from another country with nothing. She started tearing up (when she read the letter). There were other offers for more money, one of which was all cash” – but she picked Sapatnekar.

Nationally, Florida, California, Texas and Arizona are the preferred states for foreign buyers, the Realtors group found, with Florida accounting for 26 percent of international sales and California in second place with 11 percent. Slightly more than half (55 percent) of the buyers came from five countries: Canada, China (including Taiwan and Hong Kong), Mexico, India and the United Kingdom.

Financing a challenge

In the Bay Area, Trulia found that Canada and the United Kingdom were where most foreign searches originated. In San Mateo, people from Hong Kong, China and Taiwan were heavy searchers, while in Santa Clara County, Indian nationals did a lot of searches.

As Sapatnekar discovered, financing can be a huge challenge for foreign buyers, which may limit the pool to those with deep pockets. The Realtors survey found that 62 percent of international buyers simply paid in cash.

But even those with resources at home may face restrictions.

“The biggest challenge I have with (overseas) buyers is getting their money into the United States,” said Mary Beall, an agent with Prudential California Realty in Walnut Creek. “Many countries have limitations on how much money (citizens) can take out.” One buyer from the Philippines spent several years moving money into a U.S. account in order to pay for a home. “When you make an all-cash offer on a house, if your money is not sitting here in a bank account, they won’t take your offer,” she said.

Luxury properties

Some overseas buyers have such deep pockets that it’s not an issue.

Russian venture capitalist Yuri Milner, an early Facebook investor, bought a 25,500-square-foot Los Altos mansion last year for a cool $100 million – the highest price ever paid for a single-family home in the United States. Modeled on an 18th century French chateau, it has indoor and outdoor pools, a ballroom, and a tennis court, the Wall Street Journal said.

“Lower end” luxury properties are bargains these days. Anna Roberts of Coldwell Banker Residential Brokerage represents a Dubai oil executive who paid $1.75 million for a luxury home in the Marin community of Ignacio. “The owner had put over $3 million into it, so it was an excellent value,” she said. Her buyer plans to use it for family vacations.

“There are cultural differences and sensitivities” in working with overseas buyers, she said. “They need lots of additional information.”

Serbian national Milos Citakovic, 26, who moved to San Francisco four months ago as co-founder of a text-messaging company called Poosh.com, said he is seeking a two-bedroom condo here in the $800,000 range – and considers that a bargain, especially after having recently lived in Moscow, where prices are even more outrageous than here.

“The dollar is relatively weak against the euro. A million bucks in the U.S. is more like $800,000 in Europe, so we are basically saving 20 percent on the exchange rate when we come over from Europe to buy here,” he said.

Citakovic said he knows it would be hard to get a mortgage here, so he plans to pay all cash – thanks to a previous tech company he founded, he has the funds. Getting his money out of Serbia just involves a wire transfer.

After his company takes outside financing, he would be interested in investing in real estate here, Citakovic said. “I think it’s a good investment because it brings predictable cash flow,” he said. “There’s a very limited supply in San Francisco. The way it looks right now, it’s easy to sell and things are moving quickly in case you might need to pull the money out.”

Interest expected to decline

Meanwhile, Kolko expects foreign interest in U.S. real estate to decline in coming months as prices continue to climb.

“As prices start to rebound in the U.S., foreigners are searching here less since prices are no longer quite the bargain they had been a year ago,” Kolko said.

Where foreign house hunters come from

Canada and the United Kingdom were the most common countries of origin for foreign people searching for Bay Area real estate during the 12 months ended June 30. There was some regional variation among international searches targeting the various Bay Area counties. Countries are listed in order of where the most searches originated from.

Bay Area (all 9 counties)

– Canada

– United Kingdom

– Australia

– China

– France

Carolyn Said is a San Francisco Chronicle staff writer. E-mail: csaid@sfchronicle.com

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/business/article/Foreigners-shop-for-Bay-Area-real-estate-3850028.php

Investors drive the real-estate market in the Bay Area

Sat, 05 Nov 2011 17:08:49 +0000

OAKLAND, Calif. — Real-estate investors have become a potent force in a moribund housing market, accounting for more than one-fifth of transactions in the San Francisco Bay Area over the past 12 months, according to real-estate data.

Despite record low interest rates, many consumers simply don’t have enough confidence in their economic outlook to buy houses. Investors have kept prices from falling further, real-estate experts say.

“The market would be quite a bit sicker were it not for investors snapping up a lot of the properties,” said Andrew LePage, analyst at DataQuick real-estate service. “They account for a meaningful portion of the demand. To the extent to which there’s at least a temporary floor under this market, they’ve helped to build it.”

Almost half of the Bay Area homes purchased on the open market are distressed — either bank-owned foreclosures or short sales being sold for less than the mortgage. Often these properties suffer from deferred maintenance, making them challenging for an owner-occupant.

Investors play a valuable role in buying and rehabbing such properties and then reselling or renting them out, said Jeff Weissman, a Realtor with Highland Partners/BHG in Oakland. “They clear out inventory and then bring it back on the market in move-in condition, thus improving neighborhoods and giving opportunities to first-time homebuyers,” he said.

Not everyone is enthusiastic about investors. Other homebuyers complain that they get muscled out by deep-pocketed investors who can pay all cash, LePage said.

Sellers prefer cash offers because they’re quick, clean and guaranteed to close. Community groups worry about investors turning into slumlords as they manage fleets of rentals.

Some of investors’ bad rap stemmed from boom-time flippers, who capitalized on a rapidly rising market.

“There is a huge difference between speculation and investing,” said John Robin, a Realtor with BHG/Mason-McDuffie in Berkeley. “Until 2009, most (non-homeowners) buying real estate here in the Bay Area were speculating on appreciation. What an investor does is look at what a property will cost now to purchase and operate, and look at the return every month. If one day they can sell it and make a profit, that’s even better.”

He sees more investors becoming landlords, although there are still plenty of flippers.

With prices continuing to soften, more “ordinary people” are getting involved in real-estate investing, since the barriers to entry are lower, Robin said.

“The biggest growth area is first-time, small investors,” he said. “These are people who may have cashed out (other investments) that they want to put into real estate. Some people use self-directed IRA money to buy real estate. Sometimes it’s families who pool their money together or individuals who have jobs and do this to supplement their income.”

The Obama administration implicitly recognized investors’ value in the marketplace this summer when it called for proposals from investors and others on how to buy, rehab and rent out the legions of foreclosed properties owned by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

But investors are not a single monolithic entity. They come in all types, from the mom and pop who buy a couple of rentals to fund their retirement, to the professionals who deal in dozens of homes a year as a full-time occupation.

Pete McDonough of Pleasanton, Calif., had a secure, well-paying job in sales for a technology company.

But three years ago when he realized how many bargain homes were for sale in the Bay Area, he switched to full-time real-estate investing.

“In a horrible job market, I quit a good job,” he said. “I’ve considerably exceeded my previous salary and I haven’t looked back.”

He had dabbled in buying rental properties for some time, but not in California, where high prices meant it was impossible to rent them out for enough cash flow. But the real-estate downturn made the Golden State much more affordable.

He partnered with Andrew Wilson, who had a background in kitchen and bathroom design, and David Rosen, a real-estate broker. The three put up cash and also attracted some investors. Today they operate a $5 million fund.

Most of their efforts go to buying, fixing and flipping, but they also maintain a small stable of rentals.

Article source: http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/realestate/2016682817_realinvest06.html

Investors help prop up Bay Area housing market

Sun, 30 Oct 2011 15:54:10 +0000

Real estate investors have become a potent force in a moribund housing market, accounting for more than a fifth of transactions in the Bay Area over the past 12 months, according to real estate data.

Despite record low interest rates, many consumers simply don’t have enough confidence in their economic outlook to buy houses. Investors keep some properties – especially ones that need extensive work – from languishing unsold for months and have kept prices from nose-diving further, real estate experts say.

“The market would be quite a bit sicker were it not for investors snapping up a lot of the properties,” said Andrew LePage, analyst at DataQuick real estate service. “They account for a meaningful portion of the demand. To the extent to which there’s at least a temporary floor under this market, they’ve helped to build it.”

In addition to homes sold through the multiple listing service, an increasingly large share of properties at courthouse-steps auctions – the final stage of foreclosure – are being bought by investors. Some 5,243 properties were purchased by nonbank entities in the 12 months ended in September, according to ForeclosureRadar.com.

Almost half of the Bay Area homes purchased on the open market are distressed – either bank-owned foreclosures or short sales being sold for less than the mortgage. Often these properties suffer from deferred maintenance, making them challenging for an owner-occupant.

Investors play a valuable role in buying and rehabbing such properties and then re-selling or renting them out, said Jeff Weissman, a Realtor with Highland Partners/BHG in Oakland. “They clear out inventory and then bring it back on the market in move-in condition, thus improving neighborhoods and giving opportunities to first-time home buyers,” he said.

Not everyone is enthusiastic about investors. Other home buyers complain that they get muscled out by deep-pocketed investors who can pay all cash, LePage said. Sellers prefer cash offers because they’re quick, clean and guaranteed to close. Community groups worry about investors turning into slum landlords as they manage fleets of rentals.

Some of investors’ bad rap stemmed from boom-time flippers, who capitalized on a rapidly rising market.

He sees more investors becoming landlords although there are still plenty of flippers.

With prices continuing to soften, more “ordinary people” are getting involved in real estate investing, since the barriers to entry are lower, Robin said.

The Obama Administration implicitly recognized investors’ value in the marketplace this summer when it called for proposals from investors and others on how to buy, rehab and rent out the legions of foreclosed properties owned by Freddie Mac and Fannie Mae.

Professional

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/10/29/BU411LMJIV.DTL&type=business