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Raised in the Mission District and the son of a restaurateur, Barney Diamos figured his career would be in the food service industry, not real estate. HIs father, Frank Diamos, co-owned Minichiello’s Italian restaurant on 22nd and Valencia streets. Barney Diamos wound up opening a pair of restaurants of his own, before switching gears and becoming a real estate broker.

He started in San Francisco and the Peninsula and built a respectable portfolio from San Francisco to Silicon Valley between 1999 and the Great Recession. But Barney Diamos recognized the root of the problem and pivoted, creating Loan Negotiator Group, a mortgage restructuring company that coordinated with banks to fix homeowners defaulted adjustable-rate mortgages so they could stay in their homes.

“It wasn’t a real estate crash, it was a mortgage crash,” he said.

Barney Diamos estimates LNG saved roughly 1,700 homes from foreclosure during their years in business.

For the last two years he’s headed up Dream Team Development Group, a collection of family members and industry experts who seek out investment opportunities and transform old multi-family residences into condos and tenancy-in-common buildings.

“A few years ago we started seeing a market spike and we were constantly hearing about how expensive housing is,” he said. “So we’ve been taking small apartment buildings and converting to them to tenancy-in-commons or condos because it creates an affordable opportunity for home ownership.”

In this interview with The Chronicle, Barney Diamos talks about his upbringing in the local restaurant industry, his goal to bring more affordable housing and homeownership to the Bay Area and his passion for making sure World War II veterans are property recognized.

Q: What’s your favorite type of architecture?

A: Being a native of the Mission District, I’m always dying to restore Victorians, but they can be a challenge because they’re so old.

One of the common pitfalls of Victorians are their masonry foundation, basically the foundation is made of bricks. A lot of them don’t have cement perimeter foundations, so it’s something to be wary of when we’re looking at them. After all, bricks can crumble during an earthquake.

Beyond that, you’ve got other issues like knob and tube wiring, cast-iron plumbing and wood-rot. That said, they’re a challenge, but I love them. I adore the period details. It’s really fun to enhance a facade with with cornices, rosettes and gold leaf painting.

Q: What is your design philosophy?

A: We take old buildings and modernize the floor plans. When we size up a project, we want the path of least resistance. It can be easy to get hung up on project for years and years. We’re looking for the biggest bang for the buck, and that’s achieved by providing the best value to a new homeowner or tenant.

We’ll redesign kitchens and bathrooms, and add modern features like Nest Thermostats. Recently we did a Viking appliance package in a Marina district home, and we’ll add finishes like counters with waterfall edges. We’re always trying to stay on the cutting edge.

Q: What’s your favorite neighborhood to work in?

A: I love the Marina district. I love the people and vibe. And it has great architecture and weather. Plus, you’re near the bay and the Golden Gate Bridge, and I love the sound of those foghorns.

Q: Do you have family? What are you hobbies?

A: I have a close family with three wonderful children who are now grown. They originally all started out helping the family business. They’re all successful in their chosen careers, and all are related to the real estate and construction industries. My eldest daughter is a project engineer for a large construction firm, while my son works as an electrician.

My youngest daughter helped me with the books when we were first starting. I’m incredibly fortunate to have been able to work closely with my family. My partner, Tracy Stevenson, is a designer and flight attendant, so we travel a lot. We enjoy admiring and learning about all the diverse architecture and new design ideas we see.

Q: Your father, Frank Diamos, was a World War II veteran who served in Okinawa. How did his experience shape your appreciation for veterans?

A: I was raised Semper Fi by an incredible Marine. I can’t express how lucky was I to be raised by my best friend and hero. He was the toughest, nicest guy, and everyone in the neighborhood knew him. Something people don’t realize is that when a lot of the soldiers from the Pacific theater came back, the parades were over and they never got their medals.

So I’ll research old World War II veterans and work to get them the service medals they are entitled to. I’ve probably done 15 or 16 now. I don’t think those guys will ever get the credit they deserve.

Q: What’s a piece of technology you can’t imagine doing business without?

A: My iPhone. I think back to what it was like in the early 2000s, when we were relying on fax machines. Now I can run the business from my iPhone. It does everything, like group texts and resending contracts — plus all the different apps.

The iScanner app allows me to scan things off my phone, so I don’t have to go to office to use a scanner or send a fax. Oh my god, has that made things so much faster and easier. I can submit investor profiles to three different investors from my phone. It’s all stored in my email history and Dropbox and Google Docs. And everything can be shared in real time.

Q: Why are you such a proponent of tenancy-in-common developments?

A: A tenancy-in-common — where residents share co-ownership of a multi-unit property — are most prevalent in two of the most expensive cities in the country: New York and San Francisco. And that’s because of the huge increase in home prices.

TICs, like condominiums, provide a more affordable option to entry-level home buyers in San Francisco. And “fractional financing” is becoming more available to purchase TICs, making it even more achievable to afford and buy them.

BART may move its Oakland headquarters in an effort to save millions of dollars in annual rent as it grapples with the city’s record-high office costs.

The transit agency’s current headquarters lease at the Kaiser Center complex near Lake Merritt expires in 2021, and rent would rise by more than 60%, said Sean Brooks, BART’s manager of real estate.

Instead, agency staff recommend a relocation and the $140 million purchase of 2150 Webster St., which is across the street from Kaiser Center. Interior construction and additional costs would total $87 million. BART’s board of directors will vote on the deal on Sept. 12. Around a third of BART’s 3,300 employees would be affected by an office move. (BART has a separate operational center near Lake Merritt and most employees work in BART stations and rail yards.)

The agency wants to limit costs, use space more efficiently, and stay close to a BART station as part of a move, Brooks said.

A 25-year sales tax bond would finance the deal. The agency already uses such bonds for its current operations, and a move wouldn’t raise taxes or fares for riders. The bond doesn’t require voter approval.

“It doesn’t change the use of the funds,” Brooks said. “The money being used to purchase this is not taking away from any other capital projects.”

BART has a $2.3 billion annual budget this year, but falling ridership and fare evaders are eroding revenue. In June, BART’s board approved an 18% fare increase over seven years to help offset the decline.

BART occupies 369,587 square feet, or over a third of the Kaiser Center complex, making it one of the city’s largest tenants. It signed its lease in 2004, long before real estate values surged throughout the Bay Area, and pays rent of $15 million annually, or $40 per square foot, about half of current market rates, said Brooks. If it renewed its lease, the agency would pay hundreds of thousands of dollars more in rent, according to a recent staff report.

Oakland office rents have doubled in the last four years. Competition for limited space is growing, with only a few vacant downtown buildings. San Francisco tech companies Square and Credit Karma expanded to Oakland and filled two large projects: Uptown Station and 1100 Broadway. Blue Shield is moving its headquarters from San Francisco to Oakland’s 601 12th St., another new tower.

BART began studying its real estate options last year, surveying 225 managers and touring new offices in San Francisco. BART’s conclusion: Its 1990s-style offices were obsolete and had excessive space.

Now, BART plans to downsize to around 250,000 square feet and build a modern work environment that allows for more interaction among different divisions and fewer private offices. The agency is also reducing the amount of paper records it uses to cut its space needs.

BART is “a very siloed organization today. People don’t know what others are working on,” said Tom Maloney, managing director at JLL, BART’s real estate broker, at a June hearing. “The idea here is to move BART to a more open, collaborative layout.”

A new office with more technology integration will aid in recruitment of younger workers, said Maloney. There would be space at 2150 Webster St. for around 1,300 workers, an increase of 200 from the current office.

“BART is facing a retirement cliff,” said Maloney in an interview. “It’s critically important for them to create a workplace that will attract Millennial talent.”

The new building will include a ground-floor board room that is more publicly accessible.

BART also considered relocating to 601 12th St., the new tower also leased by Blue Shield, but costs were higher than at 2150 Webster St. BART studied moving to two proposed office projects by different developers at Lake Merritt and West Oakland BART stations on land that the agency owns. However, those projects aren’t approved and won’t be ready in time when BART’s lease expires, said Brooks.

Lane Partners and Walton Street Capital own 2150 Webster St., which was formerly an ATT office building that was fully renovated. Lane Partners didn’t immediately respond to a request for comment.

BART’s departure would leave a major vacancy — and opportunity to find a more lucrative tenant — at the Kaiser Center, one of the city’s largest office complexes. Kaiser Permanente will also move out of the property into a new headquarters in Uptown Oakland.

“While we value all of our tenants, should BART elect to make the substantial investment to acquire its own building or otherwise relocate, we are confident that Kaiser Center will benefit from Oakland’s robust tenant demand and limited space availability, and that we will continue to attract top tenants in this important submarket given the recent transformation of the lobby, common areas and building amenities,” Kaiser Center owners the Swig Co. and Rockpoint Group said.

Other Bay Area transit agencies have spent millions on real estate. The Metropolitan Transportation Commission moved from Oakland to San Francisco in 2016 after spending $155 million on renovations, double its original estimate.

The San Francisco Municipal Transportation Agency is headquartered at 1 South Van Ness Ave., along with other city divisions. The city of San Francisco bought the property for $71.5 million in 2007. Caltrans owns its regional office at 111 Grand Ave. in Oakland.

Roland Li is a Chronicle staff writer. Email: roland.li@sfchronicle.com Twitter: @rolandlisf