Paragon Real Estate Group® first brokerage in San Francisco to provide Clarus touchCMA™ to its REALTORS®

Paragon has always been a company that is light on its feet, highly responsive to new ideas and opportunities, and now the time has come to take big steps in virtually every facet of our business to take us to the next level – Paragon CEO Bob Dadurka.

San Francisco, CA (PRWEB) September 26, 2013

“Since we opened our doors in 2004, we’ve been gratified by being able to build Paragon into one of the most successful brokerages in San Francisco. 2013 is shaping up to be our best year ever – with total sales up 20 percent and luxury home sales up a whopping 82 percent, we should go well beyond a billion dollars in sales – and our agents now have one of the highest averages sales per agent figures in the country. San Francisco has always been a very competitive market, the price point is very high and our clients are extremely sophisticated financially and technologically and in what they expect from the professionals who serve their needs. Paragon has always been a company that is light on its feet, highly responsive to new ideas and opportunities, and now the time has come to take big steps in virtually every facet of our business to take us to the next level,” Paragon CEO Bob Dadurka.

These steps include spinning off their investment real estate division, already one of the biggest players in that market segment, into the separate Paragon Commercial Brokerage in beautiful new offices at 1700 California. Another big piece of the plan is the centralization of Paragon’s residential brokerage operations in the 4-story building they purchased and completely renovated at 1400 Van Ness. This will then be followed by the opening of new, mobile-oriented, hub offices in other areas of the city such as the luxury home market of Pacific Heights-Marina, Potrero Hill, South Beach-SoMa and the Hayes Valley-Noe Valley area. Paragon is also actively growing the number of agents working in Marin, Napa and Sonoma, where their business is growing quickly. According to Paragon Managing Broker, Sally Stull, “The way people do business is rapidly changing and the way our agents serve our clients is changing. Big old-style offices with desks and phones are much less important; cutting edge technology that improves client communications, property marketing and the delivery of highest quality market analytics is what helps our clients most and what they want. So we are moving resources from an older business model to this more dynamic and more mobile model. We are extremely excited about the large investments we’re making in improved technology and more streamlined operations right now. This will be a huge win-win for Paragon and for our customers.”

Paragon has been investing particularly heavily in new marketing technologies. Paragon’s Director of Brand and Digital Marketing Lisa M. Norman highlighted a few of the biggest initiatives: “Marketing is one of the core products a real estate brokerage offers its clients and Paragon has always invested heavily in stand-out marketing across the multiple media platforms. But now we’re taking a quantum leap in digital and mobile marketing. Both our website and new online resource, ParaScopeSF, offer comprehensive information about living in the Bay Area and its complex real estate market. We’re the first brokerage in San Francisco to offer touchCMA, a highly sophisticated iPad-based presentation and market analysis tool, to all our agents and clients. Paragon has moved to a new, mobile marketing platform, Imprev, that allows marketing staff and agents to create incredible materials from wherever they are in less time than ever. As our footprint in the luxury home market grows by leaps and bounds, we are designing new programs and developing new partnerships to meet the special needs of that market segment. And finally, within the realm of traditional marketing, Paragon is redesigning and upgrading all its print marketing materials to a standard currently unmatched in San Francisco real estate sales.”

About the Company:

Paragon’s main residential office is at 1400 Van Ness Avenue in San Francisco and its Commercial Brokerage at 1700 California Street. Paragon can be found online at paragon-re.com and ParaScopeSF.com.

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Article source: http://www.prweb.com/releases/real-estate/San-Francisco/prweb11166036.htm

But it’s the tenants that aren’t listed — the ones with the stellar rooftop view — that have drawn a crowd of reporters on this sunny Tuesday afternoon.

This building, like 2,000 other spots in the Bay Area, is home to the bulky electrical equipment needed to send and receive cellphone signals.

For the privilege of housing their gear, phone companies pay thousands or even tens of thousands of dollars per month. In some cases, landlords make more from the towers on their roofs than they do from the tenants inside their building.

Because it’s so hard to get approval to build new towers, the same locations are often home to more than one carrier’s cell towers, and it has become commonplace to see towers from fierce rivals located right next to each other. And once one cell company makes its way in someplace, the others tend to follow.

This particular rooftop, for example, houses gear for Sprint, MetroPCS and ATT.

But it is a neighborhood in transition.

An area of peeled-away paint shows the spot that used to be home to gear from Sprint’s soon-to-be-shuttered Nextel network.

The newest arrival is a refrigererator-sized cabinet that houses Sprint’s 4G LTE gear as well as the systems needed to support older networks. Immediately adjacent is a slightly smaller box containing a backup system with enough battery capacity to power the network gear for four to eight hours.

The new gear, like other similar systems in San Francisco, have begun to bring LTE service to Sprint’s Bay Area customers, though it has yet to formally announce this area as one of its expanding network of markets with the high-speed wireless service.

Next to the new system is the one it is replacing. That unit, which handled fewer frequencies and managed fewer services, nonetheless occupied more than twice as much space. Though still up and running, that system will soon be dismantled, removed and recycled.

In addition to the cabinets, the roof is outfitted with a number of different antennas — several for each of the carriers, providing the maximum amount of coverage. The antennas also explain why it is no coincidence that the building has a sweeping panoramic view of the San Francisco Bay. In addition to being a breathtaking sight for the occasional repairman, the view means that the tower is also seen by a good part of the city — ensuring that the tower reaches a wide coverage area.

“Cell towers have the best view,” said Chris Brydon, Sprint’s area director for Northern California.

Of course, few people will ever see that view, given that it is home to vital and expensive computer gear. Plus, its radiation levels are high enough that the door leading to the roof is plastered with nearly a dozen warning signs.

The fact that this roof is already home to network gear means that the approval process to install LTE equipment is far simpler than trying to find a new location. As a result, many rooftops like this one are getting a makeover.

It’s a scene that has been playing out across America, as all the major carriers replace or augment their 3G systems with those capable of providing high-speed LTE service.

To help install all these new systems, Sprint calls upon a variety of other companies. Ericsson manages the installations and network operations, overseeing gear supplied by a trio of companies — Samsung, Alcatel-Lucent and Ericsson’s hardware unit.

The race to build out LTE has created a shortage of a particular specialty of workers — those who climb poles for a living. (In addition to pole-climbing skills, such workers also have to be engineers with a specialty in radio frequency technology — a qualification that significantly thins the applicant pool.)

“It’s one of the most sought-after skills in the industry,” said Joe Meyer, the 21-year Sprint veteran who serves as vice president of network service management.

Sprint’s new 4G LTE network cabinet (foreground, with door open), followed by the Sprint gear it is replacing and, furthest away, a rival carrier’s gear.

Article source: http://allthingsd.com/20130612/a-view-to-a-cell-san-francisco-mobile-towers-get-prime-real-estate/

The Bond Cos. redeveloped a former car showroom to house a Whole Foods in 2007 and just sold the building to an affiliate of DDR Corp. 

Blanca Torres
Reporter- San Francisco Business Times

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The landmark Whole Foods near Lake Merritt in Oakland has a new owner.

The Bond Cos. redeveloped a former Cox Cadillac Showroom, at 230 Bay Place, into a 57,218-square-foot, Class A retail property in 2007 with Whole Foods (NYSE: WFM) as the sole tenant.

The seller declined to disclose the buyer or the terms of the deal, but a public records search shows that the buyer was an affliiate of DDR Corp., an Ohio-based retail investor that owns close to 460 retail centers nationwide. The 2012 assessed tax value for the building was $27.2 million.

The building brought a much-need grocery store close to Oakland’s thriving Lake Merritt and Uptown neighborhoods while retaining the historic aesthetic and character of the original structure.

“On the West Coast, there continues to be a dearth of quality retail properties on the market like Whole Foods at Bay Place, and an insatiable amount of capital,” said Nicholas Bicardo, a broker with Holliday Fenoglio Fowler who represented the seller. “This acquisition for the buyer represents a fantastic purchase of a trophy building occupied by a credit top-tier grocer with some of the strongest sales productivity in the world.”

Bond Cos. develops retail, infill, mixed-use, commercial, civic and hospitality projects. The firm has offices in Chicago and Los Angeles.

DDR already owns two other Bay Area shopping centers: Hilltop Plaza in Richmond and Van Ness Plaza in San Francisco.

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

Article source: http://www.bizjournals.com/sanfrancisco/blog/real-estate/2013/03/ddr-corp-buys-oakland-whole-foods.html

The last one bit the dust 10 days ago, when San Francisco Ford Lincoln Mercury, on Van Ness Avenue’s Auto Row, shut its doors without warning or explanation.

“We’re referring people to Serramonte and other dealers in the Bay Area,” said Roger Bramble, a service department manager, who along with about 50 other employees will be out of a job when the remaining servicing and repair jobs are done.

From what we can gather, the dealership, Ford’s only one in San Francisco after SC Ford in the Castro closed in 2008, had been on the block for some time. Ford had taken control of the dealership three years ago, when the original franchisee handed back the keys.

The owner of Journey Ford Lincoln in Novato, Ali Omoomy, had been looking to take it over, but walked away a couple of months ago, I was told. Other interested buyers subsequently faded away, prompting Ford finally to cut bait.

Referring to the “very tough decision” to close the dealership, Ford Lincoln Mercury President Mel Turner, said, in a statement, “We are proud to have served the San Francisco community and will be focusing over the coming weeks on helping employees through this transition and ensuring our current customer commitments are met.”

Omoomy did not return calls for comment.

No domestics please, this is San Francisco!: The closing did not come as a surprise to Mike Hollywood, a sales manager at the former Ellis Brooks Chevrolet at Bush and Van Ness, which got out of the American new car business 2 1/2 years ago.

“People in San Francisco just weren’t buying Cadillac Escalades. You can’t even park them in the parking structures here,” he said.

Neither, it seems, are they buying Ford Fusions in any quantity.

“It’s a tough market. Imports have a much bigger share in San Francisco,” said Dennis Fitzpatrick, owner of Concord Chevrolet and regional vice president of the California New Car Dealers Association. “When you can sell 100 imports a month as opposed to 25 domestic, and what with the rents and real estate, it’s tough to make a U.S. car dealership pencil.”

It’s a different story a few blocks down on Van Ness Avenue and on South Van Ness Avenue, where Audis, Scions, Hondas, VWs and Mazdas are on display. BMW and Mercedes-Benz are close by. Or hop on a 38-Geary bus, right by the Scion dealership on Van Ness Avenue, to get to the Toyota showroom on Geary Boulevard.

“San Francisco is not loyal to anything domestic; its allegiance is to anything but domestic,” Fitzpatrick said. (Oof!)

— The seven-story, 195,000-square-foot Ellis Brooks Chevrolet, by the way, is being transformed into a flagship Nissan/Infiniti dealership and “will represent one of the largest automobile retailing locations in the United States,” according to Nissan North America.

“We believe the facility will help us grow sales across the region and strengthen our competitive position relative to other automakers such as Honda and Toyota,” Paula Angelo, a Nissan spokeswoman, told me in March.

Too easy lay the head …: Google was getting used to wearing the crown as the world’s most valuable brand. That is, until Apple knocked it off.

The Cupertino company’s brand value jumped 84 percent to $153.3 billion, dropping Mountain View’s Google, which topped the list for the past four years, to No. 2, with a measly $111.5 billion (-2%), according to this year’s rankings from the WPP Group, a global advertising and marketing company.

“Successful iterations of existing products like the iPhone, creation of the tablet category with iPad, and anticipation of a broadened strategy making the brand a trifecta of cloud computing, software and innovative, well-designed devices,” was the stated judgment of the WPP’s sixth annual BrandZ Top 100 Most Valuable Global Brands.

Ten Bay Area companies made the list, with San Francisco’s Wells Fargo ranked 16th with an estimated brand value of $36.9 million, a 97 percent increase (what financial meltdown?). HP, at No. 18, dropped 11 percent to $35.4 billion, closely followed by San Francisco’s Visa and Redwood City’s Oracle.

The biggest percentage gainer (246 percent) is – surprise – Palo Alto’s Facebook, valued at $19.1 billion. Not bad for a company that’s yet to go public. Rounding out the Bay Area contingent this year are San Jose’s Cisco Systems, Santa Clara’s Intel and San Jose’s eBay.

Non-Bay Area items of note: Amazon.com beat Wal-Mart as the world’s leading retail brand. Twelve Chinese brands made the top 100, including the Chinese search engine Baidu, ranked No. 29, with a 141 percent increase in value, to $22.6 billion.

Oh, and Toyota reclaimed its crown as the world’s top car brand, demonstrating “the power of strong brands to recover from the most fundamental challenges to product efficacy and reputation” (sfg.ly/iMc8cV).

Blogging: www.sfgate.com/columns/ bottomline. Facebook page: sfg.ly/doACKM. Tweeting: @andrewsross. E-mail: bottomline@sfchronicle.com.

This article appeared on page D – 1 of the San Francisco Chronicle

Article source: http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/05/09/BUA31JDR5T.DTL