FEBRUARY 2012 |
www.opp.org.uk Calpers sells resi By Geoff Hadwick
Calpers, America’s biggest public pension fund, announced this month that it is selling off 28 housing developments, equivalent to about one-fi fth of its total residential real-estate portfolio, in line with the $226.5 billion fund’s decision to reduce its property holdings. Calpers (The California Public Employees’ Retirement System) is also putting 16,300 un-built home sites and about 5,000 acres of undeveloped land in 11 states on the market. The move is part of “an overall restructuring in our real- estate holdings,” spokesman Brad Pacheco said. The land is “one of our last, large holdings in housing.” The buyers are developer Newland Real
Estate Group LLC, which has worked closely Calpers since 1994, and the North American division of the Japanese housebuilder Sekisui House Ltd. Bob McLeod, chief executive offi cer of San Diego-based Newland said that
“Sekisui and Newland have formed a partnership to buy out Calpers. We had to put some money into the new deal. Sekisui was the largest investor.” The Wall Street Journal has reported
that the two companies have paid between $500 million and $600 million for the properties. Last August, Calpers’s investment committee decided to pull back its real estate exposure as a proportion of assets from 10% to 8% and the fund continued to miss its real-estate benchmark targets. Calpers did not like being forced to accept “signifi cant writedowns” when the housing bubble burst.
NEWS
International mortgage specialist Conti has been flooded with overseas property agencies and specialists keen to become mortgage intermediaries and open up a new revenue stream. The company told OPP this month
that it has been signing up “an average of 70 per month since last summer, bringing the grand total to more than 8000.” There is a “healthy appetite of overseas institutions to lend to foreign investors,” says Conti. “Historically low interest rates and
Going | Calpers is selling its stock
bargain property prices are making it much more affordable to buy a property abroad.” Speaking to OPP, Conti director Clare Nessling said “if overseas property brokers haven’t yet considered the overseas mortgage market as a source of additional income, it’s a great time to do so.” “There are plenty of buyers taking advantage of the property bargains
FINANCE | 13 Mortgages pull agents
available abroad, and they’re more willing to explore overseas opportunities in their search for better potential returns on investment.” Even though “Europe may be facing
its own challenges,” Conti adds, “the most recent
PrimeLocation.com International Search Index, published quarterly, revealed that the number of people house hunting on its site increased overall by 14% during the third quarter of 2011 and by 17% for the top ten most popular destinations, with France and Spain coming top. These are also the two countries that Conti receives most enquiries about.” Conti uses a “Mortgage Brain”
overseas sourcing module which allows brokers to process enquiries and applications simply and quickly. Commission rates start at 25% per
case, but higher levels can be achieved when volume increases or through membership of a qualifying group or network says the company.
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