A spot in the city’s trendy South Beach neighborhood sold last week for $82,000, the San Francisco Chronicle reported on Thursday ( ).

The 8- by 12-foot parking space is in an enclosed garage in a condominium building near the San Francisco Giants’ ballpark. A Porsche SUV was parked in it on Thursday. The Chronicle said the unidentified buyer did not respond to interview requests.

While it may seem like a lot of money, real estate agents said parking could be a good investment in densely packed San Francisco, where vehicle spaces go for a premium. They can add as much as $100,000 to the purchase price of a property or be rented out at rates of $400 to $450 a month _ the going rate in South Beach.

“We had a very good response right out of the gate,” said Sean Sullivan with Climb Real Estate, which sold the spot. “It was only in the market two weeks.”

Sullivan said he sold a parking spot in the same building at the height of the last real estate boom for $95,000.

Overall, the city has seen real estate prices climb. Home prices in San Francisco grew by 22.2 percent in March compared with a year ago, second only to Phoenix among U.S. cities, according to The Standard Poor’s/Case-Shiller home price index released in May.

Home prices in the wider, nine-county San Francisco Bay area posted a 12th straight month of double-digit price increases last month, according to research firm DataQuick. DataQuick said Thursday that the median price for new and existing houses and condominiums reached $519,000 in May, up 30 percent from the same period last year.

Condos in the South Beach area are going for $1,000 a square foot, the Chronicle reported. At 96 square feet, the parking space was a relative bargain at $854 per square foot.

Sullivan said the building where the parking spot was sold was built before the city restricted spaces to one per unit. It is one of the few buildings that allows nonresidents to own a spot.

The owner has a deed and must pay property taxes and homeowner association dues.

The sale was all cash.

Article source: http://wnyt.com/article/stories/s3066080.shtml?cat=300

SAN FRANCISCO (CBS/AP) – It seems parking spots aren’t immune from the recent surge in San Francisco real estate prices.

A spot in the city’s trendy South Beach neighborhood sold last week for $82,000.

The 8- by 12-foot parking space is in an enclosed garage in a condominium building just a block from ATT Park. The unidentified buyer did not respond to interview requests, but a Porsche SUV was parked in the space on Thursday.

While it may seem like a lot of money, real estate agents said parking could be a good investment. It can add as much as $100,000 to the purchase price of a property, or be rented out at rates of $400 to $450 a month — the going rate in South Beach.

Sean Sullivan, who sold the space, said the spot has an ideal location with Instagram and other tech companies nearby.

“We had a very good response right out of the gate,” said Sullivan, an agent who works for Climb Real Estate. “It was only in the market two weeks.”

Sullivan said that he’s previously sold a space for even more. In fact, he sold a parking spot in the same exact building at the height of the last real estate boom for $95,000.

Overall, the city has seen real estate prices climb. Home prices in San Francisco grew by 22.2 percent in March compared with a year ago, second only to Phoenix among U.S. cities, according to the Standard Poor’s/Case-Shiller home price index released in May.

Home prices in the wider, nine-county Bay Area posted a 12th straight month of double-digit price increases last month, according to research firm DataQuick. DataQuick said Thursday that the median price for new and existing houses and condominiums reached $519,000 in May, up 30 percent from the same period last year.

Condos in the South Beach area are going for $1,000 a square foot. At 96 square feet, the parking space was a relative bargain at $854 per square foot.

Sullivan said the building where the parking spot was sold was built before the city restricted spaces to one per unit. It is one of the few buildings that allows non-residents to own a spot.

The new owner has a deed and will be required to pay property taxes and homeowner association dues on his little slice of South Beach.

The sale was all cash.

(Copyright 2013 by CBS San Francisco. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)

Article source: http://sanfrancisco.cbslocal.com/2013/06/13/parking-spot-sells-for-82k-in-san-francisco-building/

Last month, California’s median home price experienced its biggest gain in more than 33 years, according to the California Association of Realtors. But it didn’t put off wealthy Chinese who have been pouring money into Golden State real estate.

The San Francisco Bay Area is seeing a tremendous surge in real estate investment from China. According to the San Francisco-based Asia Society, California is on track this year to receive record investments in both commercial and residential real estate.

The society recently held a panel discussion on “Courting the Chinese Buyer: The New California Real Estate Boom”. The experts there agreed that Chinese investment in Bay area properties would continue to be strong.

Yat-Pang Au, founder and CEO of Veritas Investments Inc, one of the largest owners and operators of apartments in San Francisco, said that one of the reasons it made sense to invest in San Francisco was that it is a true cosmopolitan city recognized throughout the world, but still one of the cheapest. Au called it “a natural fit” for a Chinese investor.

“We have good schools, a safe environment, clean air,” Au said. “It is a relatively safe investment in real estate.”

According to the National Association of Realtors, buyers from China are now the second-largest group of foreign investors in US residential real estate (after Canadians), spending $9 billion in the year ending March 2012.

While Chinese individual investors are focusing on residential real estate, Chinese enterprises are making an even harder push into the commercial market.

Chinese developer Zarsion Holdings Group inked a deal to build a $1.5 billion waterfront development in Oakland, California, during Governor Brown’s trade mission to China in April. There is also a joint venture underway between China Vanke Co Ltd and US firm Tishman Speyer Properties to develop luxury apartments in San Francisco.

Wilson Chen, president of Portland-based American Pacific International Capital, thinks that China’s slowing economy will not slow down Chinese investment overseas; on the contrary, he believes there will be more people looking to diversify their portfolios with investments outside of China.

Chen said that inflation in China was huge and in the international currency market, the US dollar was weak against the Chinese yuan. “When Chinese investors come to the US to invest, they pretty much grab the money off the printing machine and come over here to buy cheaper stuff,” he said.

Chinese investment in the US hit an all-time record in 2012 of $6.5 billion and will likely surpass that level in 2013, according to the research firm Rhodium Group.

Leonard Rosenberg, head of the Palo Alto-based law firm Mayer Brown, said investment growth in China goes beyond market forces.

“I think there are policies in place to encourage Chinese investment, particularly the state enterprises,” Rosenberg said, noting that Chinese insurance laws were modified to allow state-owned insurance companies to invest in real property assets.

Rosenberg also mentioned a recent Bloomberg report about China’s official overseer of foreign-currency reserves talking about potentially investing in US real estate.

“It makes sense that they will want to move into real estate in general,” he said. “US real estate is very transparent and a low barrier entry sort of industry.”

The experts suggest being aware of the cultural gap between US and Chinese investors. Because the Chinese are usually thinking differently in terms of what their US partner can offer.

“There are some gaps that cannot be bridged,” Chen said, “primarily on the financial structure side, but also some on the legal structure side that they don’t understand.”

As an example he mentioned that China has no property tax, so when Chinese people come to the US to buy property, they say, Ok, that’s cheap, then buy it, without realizing what they’re getting into.

Yuwei12@chinadailyusa.com

(China Daily USA 06/21/2013 page10)

Article source: http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/epaper/2013-06/21/content_16643650.htm

Last month, California’s median home price experienced its biggest gain in more than 33 years, according to the California Association of Realtors. But it didn’t put off wealthy Chinese who have been pouring money into Golden State real estate.

The San Francisco Bay Area is seeing a tremendous surge in real estate investment from China. According to the San Francisco-based Asia Society, California is on track this year to receive record investments in both commercial and residential real estate.

The society recently held a panel discussion on “Courting the Chinese Buyer: The New California Real Estate Boom”. The experts there agreed that Chinese investment in Bay area properties would continue to be strong.

Yat-Pang Au, founder and CEO of Veritas Investments Inc, one of the largest owners and operators of apartments in San Francisco, said that one of the reasons it made sense to invest in San Francisco was that it is a true cosmopolitan city recognized throughout the world, but still one of the cheapest. Au called it “a natural fit” for a Chinese investor.

“We have good schools, a safe environment, clean air,” Au said. “It is a relatively safe investment in real estate.”

According to the National Association of Realtors, buyers from China are now the second-largest group of foreign investors in US residential real estate (after Canadians), spending $9 billion in the year ending March 2012.

While Chinese individual investors are focusing on residential real estate, Chinese enterprises are making an even harder push into the commercial market.

Chinese developer Zarsion Holdings Group inked a deal to build a $1.5 billion waterfront development in Oakland, California, during Governor Brown’s trade mission to China in April. There is also a joint venture underway between China Vanke Co Ltd and US firm Tishman Speyer Properties to develop luxury apartments in San Francisco.

Wilson Chen, president of Portland-based American Pacific International Capital, thinks that China’s slowing economy will not slow down Chinese investment overseas; on the contrary, he believes there will be more people looking to diversify their portfolios with investments outside of China.

Chen said that inflation in China was huge and in the international currency market, the US dollar was weak against the Chinese yuan. “When Chinese investors come to the US to invest, they pretty much grab the money off the printing machine and come over here to buy cheaper stuff,” he said.

Chinese investment in the US hit an all-time record in 2012 of $6.5 billion and will likely surpass that level in 2013, according to the research firm Rhodium Group.

Leonard Rosenberg, head of the Palo Alto-based law firm Mayer Brown, said investment growth in China goes beyond market forces.

“I think there are policies in place to encourage Chinese investment, particularly the state enterprises,” Rosenberg said, noting that Chinese insurance laws were modified to allow state-owned insurance companies to invest in real property assets.

Rosenberg also mentioned a recent Bloomberg report about China’s official overseer of foreign-currency reserves talking about potentially investing in US real estate.

“It makes sense that they will want to move into real estate in general,” he said. “US real estate is very transparent and a low barrier entry sort of industry.”

The experts suggest being aware of the cultural gap between US and Chinese investors. Because the Chinese are usually thinking differently in terms of what their US partner can offer.

“There are some gaps that cannot be bridged,” Chen said, “primarily on the financial structure side, but also some on the legal structure side that they don’t understand.”

As an example he mentioned that China has no property tax, so when Chinese people come to the US to buy property, they say, Ok, that’s cheap, then buy it, without realizing what they’re getting into.

Yuwei12@chinadailyusa.com

(China Daily USA 06/21/2013 page10)

Article source: http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/2013-06/21/content_16643650.htm

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Parking spots apparently aren’t immune from the recent surge in San Francisco real estate prices.

A spot in the city’s trendy South Beach neighborhood sold last week for $82,000, the

The 8- by 12-foot parking space is in an enclosed garage in a condominium building near the San Francisco Giants’ ballpark. A Porsche SUV was parked in it on Thursday. The Chronicle said the unidentified buyer did not respond to interview requests.

While it may seem like a lot of money, real estate agents said parking could be a good investment in densely packed San Francisco, where vehicle spaces go for a premium. They can add as much as $100,000 to the purchase price of a property or be rented out at rates of $400 to $450 a month – the going rate in South Beach.

“We had a very good response right out of the gate,” said Sean Sullivan with Climb Real Estate, which sold the spot. “It was only in the market two weeks.”

Sullivan said he sold a parking spot in the same building at the height of the last real estate boom for $95,000.

Overall, the city has seen real estate prices climb. Home prices in San Francisco grew by 22.2 percent in March compared with a year ago, second only to Phoenix among U.S. cities, according to The Standard Poor’s/Case-Shiller home price index released in May.

Home prices in the wider, nine-county San Francisco Bay area posted a 12th straight month of double-digit price increases last month, according to research firm DataQuick. DataQuick said Thursday that the median price for new and existing houses and condominiums reached $519,000 in May, up 30 percent from the same period last year.

Condos in the South Beach area are going for $1,000 a square foot, the Chronicle reported. At 96 square feet, the parking space was a relative bargain at $854 per square foot.

Sullivan said the building where the parking spot was sold was built before the city restricted spaces to one per unit. It is one of the few buildings that allows nonresidents to own a spot.

The owner has a deed and must pay property taxes and homeowner association dues.

The sale was all cash.

Copyright Associated Press

Article source: http://www.nbcbayarea.com/news/local/San-Francisco-Parking-Spot-Sells-for-82000-211467521.html

Renée Frojo
Reporter- San Francisco Business Times

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While I’d rather not put a negative spin on San Francisco’s gangbusters economy, it’s hard to ignore the fact that it’s putting pressure on nonprofits to either pay up, get creative or get out.

As I wrote in this week’s paper, rising rents are pushing nonprofits out of the city and into the East Bay in search of affordable space. But what about local nonprofits that need a San Francisco address? How are they facing skyrocketing rents and landlords that refuse to renew their lease in hopes of attracting higher-paying tenants?

Well, “it’s really nuanced,” said Leiasa Beckham, a real estate consultant with the Northern California Community Loan Fund, in trying to explain the kinds of solutions that nonprofits in the city are coming up with to find more stable, affordable rent.

According to Beckham, some nonprofits with enough funds are looking into buying their own space. But because these projects are currently undergoing complex lease negotiations, she wouldn’t specify who is doing what.

Other scrappy nonprofits, she said, are looking for shared space concepts, co-locating to buildings with reasonable rents or renting spaces from other nonprofits in shared-space buildings — a model that has been used by nonprofits for some time.

But as rents continue to rise and real estate throughout the city — including the historically affordable areas of town — becomes increasingly desirable, even shared office spaces have become harder to find and develop.

“The real estate market is really prohibitive to centers expanding or replicating here,” Katie Edwards of Tide’s Nonprofit Centers Network, a peer learning community for nonprofits that share space, told me.

Renée Frojo covers hospitality, restaurants, retail and nonprofits for the San Francisco Business Times.

Article source: http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/2013/02/san-franciscos-prosperity-puts-a.html

So, how did I wind up here? I grew up in suburban Rochester, New York with a mother and father from rural parts of Louisiana and Virginia, respectfully. I’m not from the ‘hood, even though that’s where I live and work now. I also don’t pretend to be from the ‘hood. I don’t even pretend to be a “celebrity” chef, even though some people see me as such. I’m just Tanya from the block (or, cul de sac, actually.) But as we all know, location is everything. Where we are from shapes and defines us all.

The same is true in the restaurant business. Location dictates concept, and often dictates success. I fell in love with Oakland when I moved here from New York in 2003. I love the weather, the diversity, and the history. I saw a lot of opportunity, and I knew I had to open my first restaurant here. So, I immediately started shopping my business plan for a Creole bistro. Steak frites, lentil salads, onion soup… I’ve always wanted to put my Creole spin on this classic French outlet!

I spent a couple of years looking all around downtown Oakland and Jack London Square in the waterfront/port area of Oakland. I was aiming to open in a neighborhood with lots of weekday business diners and a large residential crowd for dinners. The best way to start in this business is to start with a location that was formerly a restaurant. It’s ideal if you don’t have to build the restaurant from the ground up, which can get pricy.

In 2005, my husband and I got caught up in the frenzy that was the Bay Area real estate boom. The only affordable home we could find was in West Oakland. We are, admittedly, “urban adventurers,” as marketers like to call us. Being from the East Coast, we’ve witnessed numerous neighborhoods go through positive transitions. West Oakland was once a gem of a middle class neighborhood formed by African Americans who worked as porters in the railroad industry. Highways that were built in the 1950′s had partially “divided and conquered” the neighborhood and crime flourished in the latter half of the 20th century. Currently, things are on the upswing and folks are moving back to West Oakland, including many young professionals who were priced out of the San Francisco housing market.

Immediately, we had faith in West Oakland. Its proximity to the Bay is amazing. We stand by our word…it’s the most convenient neighborhood in the Bay Area… 10 minutes to downtown SF (you can’t even get there that fast from the Golden Gate Bridge), 45 minutes to Napa… HELLO! 3.5 hours to Tahoe, etc. There is a reason people move to California and never leave.

West Oakland is also quite diverse… a quality we value as a mixed couple — he Jewish, me black. We also value economic and educational diversity. I am a black girl who went to an elite East Coast university who married a Jewish guy who didn’t go to college. We wanted to live in a community where none of that really matters. And I wanted to create a restaurant with the same feeling, where everyone is embraced.

When I was looking for restaurant spaces in downtown Oakland, the pickings were very slim. After living in West Oakland for almost two years, it hit me: I’m living in a city of 420,000, right next to San Francisco, yet there is nowhere in my neighborhood I can walk to even get a cup of coffee. There were no amenities in my neighborhood, and in general, Oaklanders are forced to spend their money outside of town. To borrow from my old colleague, Emeril, “BAM!” — I saw the opportunity right in front of me in the form of a local joint, four blocks from my home that was rarely open. They sold an average coffee blend, but hey, it was local! It was also run by a nice Jamaican, but his hours were erratic to say the least. His kitchen was spotless, and the setting in industrial West Oakland was unique. I soon learned that he was looking to “exit the business,” due to too much overhead.

My dream “bistro” locations in downtown Oakland weren’t presenting themselves, and the draw of working in a gleaming new kitchen four blocks from home was too great. I knew that a bistro wasn’t the concept for West Oakland. I thought that diners wouldn’t venture to this neighborhood at night.

In my research, I met a lot of people who were trying to revitalize West Oakland, and I discovered that redevelopment money was available for small businesses making a go of it. I knew there was an existing and new captive audience. I thought, coffee, bakery, maybe a breakfast sandwich on artisanal baked bread, organic cheese, local eggs and voila! Then, I had to think of a name that was accessible to this community. It seemed that the esoteric names of some of my colleagues, and even the name I was thinking for the bistro, were too sophisticated for this location. I thought of my favorite and frequent ingredients and I thought about the exposed kitchen at this location. Not to mention, “I” was in the kitchen.

I successfully purchased the business from the Jamaican guy and I got some local real estate developers to invest, but most people I talked to thought I picked the craziest location… so off the beaten track with no other real retail to speak of except for the storage facility next door. But just like in “Field of Dreams,” I built it and they came. I’m proud to have opened Brown Sugar Kitchen on Martin Luther King’s birthday in 2008 on Nelson Mandela Parkway, in what we like to call Sweet West Oakland.

And now they come from all over the country (my little 50-seat restaurant looks like the model UN and I love it!) to eat the extended menu that has become unchangeable at Brown Sugar Kitchen. Especially the Chicken and Waffles! I trained in France where I learned to cook crepes, not waffles! I never planned to fry chicken all day long, but I’m happy to be a part of the transformation of Sweet West Oakland, no matter what it takes.

Article source: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/tanya-holland/brown-sugar-kitchen_b_935444.html

One real estate sector is still booming; is it about to bust?

^{A version of this article originally appeared on our US site, Fool.com.}

Real estate. They’re not making any more of it. Demand is only increasing. Those arguments helped fuel an epic real estate boom and bust over the past decade — except when it comes to Internet data centres, which have continued to boom on explosive growth in cloud computing. They haven’t been able make those fast enough. But that may be changing, too.

A warning shot over the bow

On its recent earnings call, Akamai (NASDAQ: AKAM.US) was asked about co-location price trends in Internet data centres. Here’s what the company had to say:

… it’s like a real estate market. There are some places where our prices are holding. There are other places where there are very aggressive price declines, and we try to take advantage of that gain in terms of how we deploy our network assets. … The other lever we have on co-location costs, of course, is to make our servers more efficient and get effectively more throughput for our footprint in the co-lo facility.

Based on Akamai’s comments, co-location supply is still constrained in some markets. In others, it’s starting to meet demand. That brings to mind a classic real estate maxim: location, location, location.

Economics 101 teaches us that supply and demand affect pricing. When supply is constrained, prices rise. Internet data centres have been benefiting from that situation. But high prices attract more supply, and eventually supply will catch up with demand. When that happens, prices — and profits — are destined to fall. And that’s starting to happen. What’s more, increasingly efficient IT equipment can offset much of the growing demand for more processing, bandwidth, and storage. What’s good for Akamai can be the opposite for co-location and hosting companies.

Growing up

One factor affecting demand is companies that are shifting from the consumer equivalent of renting to buying their own home. Much like a young adult moving out of Mom and Dad’s place for the first time, companies moving onto the cloud often rent a temporary meets-my-needs-for-now space with no intention of a long-term commitment. As the companies mature, gain a better understanding of their needs, and gather cloud assets, they often began building their own data centres.

Generally, it’s the largest, most attractive tenants that make that shift. Recent examples include Apple (NASDAQ: AAPL.US) and Facebook. They’re following the example of Google (NASDAQ: GOOG.US), which has built its own data centres for some time. As the horde of young companies pursuing cloud strategies gain scale and mature, many more are likely to follow in Google’s, Apple’s and Facebook’s footsteps.

Other tenants are likely to go bust. From a co-location landlord’s perspective, that’s the corporate equivalent of having a tenant lose his or her job and move back in with Mom and Dad. Too much of that, and rental rates take a hit.

Build it and they will come?

Many data-centre developers are doing the equivalent of building on speculation that there will be a tenant. To wit, the CEO of Equinix, a large data-centre operator, has acknowledged that overbuilding is a “main concern.” 

Equinix invests heavily in the IT infrastructure used to serve its clients. Given the rapid depreciation on IT equipment, pricing pressure could make Equinix’s capital expenditures less profitable than anticipated. Pricing pressure is potentially a huge risk for the company.

Say when

When might co-location and hosting supply catch up with demand? Tier1 Research estimates that data-centre utilization in key markets is currently running between 81% (Northern Virginia) and 88% (Silicon Valley). That’s less than I’d expect in an exceptionally tight market.

And it’s a fast-moving market. In the San Francisco Bay area, which includes the Silicon Valley, rental rates for large tenants have reportedly declined 20% over the past 18 months thanks to new supply that’s coming online. A fresh surge of supply is expected in the area before year’s end. In the coming two quarters, data-centre landlord CoreSite Realty predicts that the new supply will outpace demand by as much as 50%.

A recipe for getting burned

With the sector viewed as a cloud play, valuations are sky-high. P/E ratios typically exceed EPS growth rates — that is, when EPS is positive. Over the last four quarters, CoreSite’s EPS was -$0.31 while Internap’s was -$0.10.

The trouble is, supply will catch up with demand sooner or later… and it looks like it might be sooner. When that happens, prices, profits, and P/E ratios are likely to plummet. A UBS analyst stated last December that data-centre developers were grappling with slowing growth, rising competition, and pricing pressure that made their valuations “unsustainably high.”

Foolish takeaway 

When prices sneeze, revenues catch a cold and profits catch pneumonia. Akamai’s comment about pricing trends in co-location centres signals that it may be time for investors to break out the handkerchiefs.

More on US shares:

• Where Should You Invest? This Indicator Will Tell You
• This Oil Stock Has Incredible Opportunities
• A Tale Of 2 Silicon Valleys

The Motley Fool owns shares in Google.

Article source: http://www.fool.co.uk/news/investing/2011/08/01/the-coming-digital-real-estate-bust.aspx

For 18 years, Mr. MacFarlane’s real estate development and asset-management firm in San Francisco invested huge sums for the California Public Employees’ Retirement System, the nation’s largest pension fund, and other institutional investors.

His early dedication to urban real estate produced healthy returns and management fees. With his long friendship with the power broker Willie L. Brown Jr. and onetime partnership with the former basketball star Magic Johnson, Mr. MacFarlane became the most-prominent black financier in San Francisco.

Mr. MacFarlane rode the real-estate boom with flair, buying two private planes, a soccer team, and two penthouses at San Francisco’s St. Regis (also the residence of Mr. Brown).

Then came the crash.

Mr. MacFarlane lost more than $1 billion of CalPERS’s money on exurban housing developments in Southern California and Arizona. Unable to sell his St. Regis aerie for $70 million, he recently turned the penthouses over to his lender. CalPERS is no longer a client of his firm, MacFarlane Partners. Half of his employees are gone. Ownership of the soccer team, D.C. United, didn’t work out, either.

Many investors, of course, lost big in the financial crisis. But few lost more publicly than Mr. MacFarlane. A recent Bloomberg headline reminded everyone that, thanks to him, “Arizona Land Sells for 8% of Price CalPERS Group Paid at Peak.” Mr. MacFarlane said he resigned his CalPERS account, and The Wall Street Journal heralded the news with “CalPERS Cleans House, Finally.” That $1 billion Mr. MacFarlane lost will haunt the state for years, since taxpayers are responsible for CalPERS’s liabilities.

But now Mr. MacFarlane is mounting a comeback, announcing two developments in recent weeks. The rental-apartment and small retail projects — one at what is now a pit at the corner of Market and Octavia, the other involving an old foam-cup factory in Corte Madera — are quite a comedown from glamorous projects of yore like the Time Warner Center in New York.

Some might take Mr. MacFarlane’s ability to get even small deals done as a sad indicator of a financial industry culture in which failure brings few consequences. But if this 60-year-old liver-transplant survivor can pick himself up and get back in the game, then perhaps it’s a sign of something more hopeful — that if you have the smarts and the moxie, you can pick yourself up and start afresh.

Sitting in his office in SoMa, framed by celebrity-friend photos and a commanding view of the Bay Bridge, Mr. MacFarlane doesn’t seem to have put the past entirely behind him. The once-formidable investor has a haunted look about him, his broad, reflexive salesman’s smile never quite making it to his eyes.

Spinning gamely, Mr. MacFarlane said he was simply returning to the strategies that brought him initial success decades ago.

“The market is moving back to what we do,” he said, adding that while his firm was “always well-known for our biggest investments, we have always done this range of deals.”

Mr. MacFarlane raised his current $211 million investment fund in 2009, from three unidentified European institutions, and Goldman Sachs now owns 20 percent of the firm. The two new projects will cost about $123 million.

Nori Gerardo Lietz, chief strategist for private real estate at the Partners Group, an investment-management firm, gives Mr. MacFarlane considerable credit for forging on. A self-made man, Mr. MacFarlane grew up poor in Middletown, Ohio, made it to a Presbyterian boarding school in Arizona and later earned an M.B.A. from the University of Pittsburgh and a law degree from U.C.L.A.

“Victor is an interesting, complicated person,” Ms. Lietz said. “The real estate business in general is very clearly a white man’s business.  And so, he had to maneuver as an African-American man in that context, which certainly wasn’t easy. Without a doubt he had to build a business with considerable headwinds against him.”

In that vein, Mr. MacFarlane explained that it was fine with him, at this point, to be dealing in much smaller deals.

In today’s post-crash reality, “much more important is your sphere of influence,” rather than huge dollar figures attached to big developments, he said. “That’s usually enough to get by.”

estevens@baycitizen.org

Article source: http://www.nytimes.com/2011/07/10/us/10bcstevens.html