Don recently closed on this 40,000 plus square foot office building in Camarillo. He represented the buyers in tracking this property through foreclosure and negotiating the sale with the lender. While much has been written about the housing crisis over the past 2 years or so, commercial real estate is beginning to be hit by the same pressures of falling values and lack of financing. Commercial properties were commonly financed through the CMBS (Commercial Mortgage Backed Securities) market, but that marketplace has essentially been frozen since our near financial meltdown in late 2008. This financial pressure on commercial properties, however, brings excellent opportunities for institutional and/or commercial investors. Interested in this arena of investment possibilities? Give Don a call to find out more.

A couple weeks ago I wrote a post (see “Investors and buying opportunities in a down market”) about investors looking to acquire commercial and multi-family properties in this market.

We’ll have a casual working lunch in our office on Thursday, October 22 from 11:30 to 1 p.m. as I discuss how investors are taking advantage of disruptions in the marketplace to acquire assets for their portfolios and the pros and cons of various strategies investors are using.

Interested? Please email or call Leslie to RSVP so we get a head count for lunch.

Savvy investors with the financial wherewithal are taking long hard looks at commercial properties that are either in foreclosure or have already gone to sale. The “vulture capitalists” are swarming! They’re taking advantage of the plunge in values from our current economic crisis.

So how are investors finding the deals? Read the rest of this article »

It’s late Friday afternoon (yesterday) and I’m clearing out old paperwork that inevitably stacks up on the counter behind my desk, when I stumble upon a ripped out page from an auction catalog from earlier this year. Wow – look at those great deals!

I’d been curious last March to see what the ultimate results would be from those “great deals” so I’d ripped out the page and promised myself that someday I’d check out the final bid prices to see what really transpired on each home.

I’d circled the bid items for our local towns in Hueneme, Ventura, Camarillo and Oxnard – what did I discover yesterday on those homes?

Read the rest of this article »

Our office is across Victoria Avenue from the County’s Hall of Justice where the majority of foreclosure auctions in Ventura County are held every day at 11:00. I was interested in a particular commercial property scheduled for sale yesterday, and so for those interested in what happens at a foreclosure auction read on… Read the rest of this article »

On Friday I met with an investor who owns a number of rental properties by the SeaBee base. I told him, “I’ve got good news and I’ve got bad news”. The good news is that inventory is way down from last summer. The bad news (for investors like him) is that property values have plunged. Here is detailed data of active listings, homes in escrow, and sold listings for a micro section of Oxnard:  Read the rest of this article »

You know many investors are snapping up REO (bank owned) properties. But why?

You can buy any number of nice homes for about $400,000. These will be 3+2 or 4+2 homes,  about 1,500 or 1,600 square feet in good family neighborhoods. Assume for now you pay all cash. Let’s run some numbers:

Income – $2,000 a month gross x 12 months = $24,000

Taxes – about $400 a month x 12 months  =  <$4,800>

Insurance  =  <$750>

Vacancy (5%)  =  <$1,200>

Maintenance (5% budget per year)  =  <$1,200>

Approximate Net Operating Income (NOI)  =  $16,000  (4% cash on cash return)

But are investors buying properties today because of cash flow? NO! They are making the assumption prices will come back over the long term and are looking for future appreciation. That’s why properties look so good today to investors!