When it comes to attracting Chinese tech companies to the Bay Area, San Francisco is giving Silicon Valley a run for its money.

“So far, we have seen about eight Chinese tech companies choose to set up a presence in San Francisco or are here already, with more in the pipeline,” said Zhang Xintong, a program manager for economic development with China SF, the go-to support organization created by the San Francisco mayor’s office dedicated to encouraging Chinese companies to take root in San Francisco.

“When talking about high-tech jobs, San Jose, with its more affordable cost of living, might be still considered as the Silicon Valley capital,” Zhang said. “But in recent years, San Francisco has been gaining on them.”

China’s Deputy Consul General Song Ru’an said: “The relative low cost of office space has always been an important factor for Chinese companies choosing Silicon Valley over San Francisco.”

This year, real estate in the Bay Area has seen price increases from an overall recovery in leasing and purchasing.

“My apartment in Silicon Valley’s Burlingame will cost me an increase of $300 a month this year,” said Liu Qiang, a Chinese IT engineer. “An equivalent apartment in San Francisco’s SoMa District has gone up only $150 a month.”

“Neither location has great deals,” Liu added. “But in SoMa, more things are within walking distance. I stumble upon lots of hidden treasures and funky urban charm exploring San Francisco on foot.”

As the hub of Google, Twitter and Zynga, SoMa (shorthand for South of Market) is a patchwork of warehouses, parks, shopping malls, upscale superarkets, loft apartments, and tenacious start-ups that survived the tech market meltdown.

Though San Francisco’s technology sector is much smaller than Silicon Valley’s, its tech employment market has come roaring back since the region’s economic recovery that began in late 2009.

Silicon Valley’s innovation engine may be driving a recovery that leads the nation, but, according to the 2012 Silicon Valley Index, the persistent public sector fiscal crisis and other factors continue to drag on widespread economic gains.

“San Francisco is catching up and may overtake San Jose,” Janice Shriver, a labor-market consultant at the Employment Development Department, told the Wall Street Journal in 2012. “San Jose had been in the lead for information jobs and software publishing and all that kind of activity for so long.”

“San Francisco Mayor Ed Lee has been pushing for business friendly policies to lure and keep new tech companies, including Chinese companies,” Zhang Xintong said.

“And these companies, in turn, are a magnet to increasing numbers of young tech workers who enjoy the San Francisco lifestyle.”

UCWeb, a leading China-based developer of mobile Internet browsers with 400 million active users, set up its first US office in Silicon Valley’s Sunnyvale last year.

But Rick Chen, a director with UCWeb’s team in Sunnyvale, told China Daily he is already shopping for new office space in San Francisco. Why? He’s doing for the pool of young tech talent.

“The cost of office space is much higher in San Francisco,” Chen said. “But it’s an urban, thriving, dynamic city with a younger population, and young tech talent wants to live and play in the city.”

chenjia@chinadailyusa.com

Article source: http://usa.chinadaily.com.cn/epaper/2013-05/01/content_16465517.htm

LOS ANGELES, Nov. 7, 2012 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) — City National Bank today announced that real estate veterans Charlie McGann and Deven Mays have joined the real estate team in the Bay Area.

McGann is a senior vice president and regional manager of Northern California real estate for the bank, focusing on lending to developers and investors in the region. McGann will work closely with the bank’s commercial real estate clients, including home builders and commercial real estate developers, providing them with construction, bridge and permanent financings. McGann will report to Mark Forbes, executive vice president and manager of the Real Estate Division at City National.

“We are pleased to have such veteran real estate bankers join our team in the Bay Area,” said Forbes, who noted that for the third quarter, City National’s average balances for commercial real estate loans were up 27 percent from the previous year. “We are seeing much opportunity in many sectors of the real estate market, and the Bay Area is clearly leading the industry’s recovery in California.”

With more than 15 years of industry experience, Deven Mays is a senior vice president for real estate in the Bay Area and he reports to McGann. He was a senior vice president and team leader of real estate with Wells Fargo’s real estate division and formerly with Greater Bay Bancorp., which was acquired by Wells. Mays received his bachelor’s degree from California State University at San Jose and attended graduate school at the University of Southern California. Mays is active in his local community having served as traffic coordinator for the City of Orinda and as a youth soccer coach.

Prior to joining City National, McGann has spent nearly two decades involved in the real estate industry. He most recently served as regional manager of real estate for Union Bank and before that was with Carr Capital Corp., in Washington, D.C., and with Montgomery Securities in San Francisco. McGann earned his bachelor’s degree from Trinity College and his master’s degree in finance from the University of California at Berkeley.

(For an image of McGann: https://www.cnb.com/PublishingImages/Charlie-McGann.jpg)

(For an image of Mays: https://www.cnb.com/PublishingImages/Deven-Mays.jpg)

About City National

City National Bank is the wholly owned subsidiary of City National Corporation (NYSE:CYN). It is backed by $26.3 billion in total assets, and provides banking, investment and trust services through 78 offices, including 16 full-service regional centers, in Southern California, the San Francisco Bay Area, Nevada, New York City, Nashville and Atlanta. The company and its investment affiliates manage or administer $56.7 billion in client investment assets, including $38.0 billion under direct management.

The City National Bank logo is available at http://www.globenewswire.com/newsroom/prs/?pkgid=3143

CONTACT: Media Contact:
         Debora Vrana, City National Bank, 213.673.7631
         Debora.Vrana@cnb.com

Source: City National Bank

Article source: http://www.nasdaq.com/article/city-national-bank-hires-charlie-mcgann-and-deven-mays-as-senior-vice-presidents-of-real-estate-in--20121107-01131

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

– Germany

– India

– Hong Kong

– Taiwan

– Japan

Alameda

– Canada

– United Kingdom

– China

– Australia

– India

Contra Costa

– Canada

– United Kingdom

– India

– China

– Denmark

Marin

– United Kingdom

– Canada

– France

– Germany

– Australia

Napa

– Canada

– United Kingdom

– Australia

– France

– Japan

San Francisco

– Canada

– United Kingdom

– Australia

– France

– Germany

San Mateo

– Canada

– United Kingdom

– Hong Kong

– China

– Taiwan

Santa Clara

– Canada

– United Kingdom

– India

– China

– Taiwan

Solano

– Canada

– Philippines

– Germany

– United Kingdom

– Mexico

Sonoma

– Canada

– United Kingdom

– Germany

– Australia

– Mexico

Source: Trulia.com

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

Rental price growth in our market was the highest in the nation for 2011, as much 12.2 percent on average according to a new report.

Researchers at RealFacts, a company that analyzes rental data, also found that occupancy in cities like San Francisco rose only 1.3 percent over the last four years. There’s just nothing available.

Real estate experts agree: “We’ve reached a point where there’s nothing out there,” said Craig Berendt, a broker with Berendt Properties in San Francico. “People are knocking down my door to get an apartment.”

When something good does hit the market in trendy neighborhoods, young professionals come from everywhere and line up for a chance to start a bidding war. And it’s not just Hayes Valley or the Mission — San Jose actually led the pack, with highest rental price increases in the U.S. last year.

For decades, the tech industry has been widely credited with driving-up commercial and rental real estate in the Bay Area, bringing young, high-earning and uncompromising professionals into market that are willing to spend way too much to get what they want. And with Facebook gearing up for one of the biggest tech IPOs in history, we don’t see this situation getting any better for the middle class in 2012.

“I see our middle class really starting to dissipate,” Berendt said. “Obviously we don’t want that. We want a well-balanced class system, but the rents are just going through the roof.”

Article source: http://sfbay.ca/2012/01/19/bay-area-rent-hikes-highest-in-u-s/