Bridgeton Holdings Picks Up Market Street Office Building in SF

Mission Capital Advisors, a national real estate services firm, announced that it had arranged a $45 million acquisition loan for 995 Market Street in San Francisco on behalf of Bridgeton Holdings, a fully integrated owner, developer, and manager of commercial and residential real estate. Bridgeton purchased the 91,300 square foot tower for $62 million, or approximately $680 per square foot. The 15-story building was first placed on the market in October of 2015 by a joint venture between Seattle-based investment firm Columbia Pacific Advisors and San Francisco-based real estate company Long Market Property Partners, who at the time expected it to sell for $60 million. The JV originally acquired the property in 2013 for an undisclosed sum, though the building reportedly sold for $17 million. Columbia Pacific and Long Market redeveloped the property to include significant base building upgrades, a seismic retrofit, exterior improvements and state-of-the-art tenant finishes.

"995 Market Street is a prime example of the radical transformation that has taken place in the Mid-Market neighborhood over the past few years. Since 2012, more than $1 billion of commercial redevelopment has been invested into the area, creating the most dynamic submarket in San Francisco," said Kyle Kovac, a Newmark Cornish & Carey senior managing director who marketed the property for sale.

"The building will be a long term asset for us, as we continue to amass strategic properties in transitioning markets that have improving neighborhood dynamics and strong supply and demand fundamentals," said Atit Jariwala of Bridgeton Holdings.

Built in 1962, the property has a commanding corner presence as the tallest building within a two block radius, offering unobstructed 360-degree views of San Francisco. 995 Market Street is located within the Payroll Tax Exclusion zone, and benefits from the economic incentive plan implemented by the City of San Francisco in 2011 to attract tenants to the mid-Market area. The office space is currently leased to WeWork and a non-profit tenant, while the retail component is full occupied by CVS on a long-term lease.

For more news and information visit Blumberg Partners.

FirstBank Selling Distressed Debt Portfolio

Mission Capital Advisors, one of the leading boutique financial advisory firms in the country, has been hired by San Juan, Puerto Rico-based FirstBank to sell a distressed debt portfolio. According to a Wall Street Journal report, the portfolio consists of about 531 loans to 289 different borrowers with a face value of $443 million on the block. The final bid date on the FirstBank portfolio is in the middle of February.

The makeup of the portfolio marks roughly 65% tied to secured real estate loans, with about 11% set as business loans, the remainder comprising of a combination of land, property and unsecured credits. Stephen Emery, managing director of New York-based Mission Capital Advisors, which specializes in distressed debt and other businesses, said that there has been a lot of interest in the portfolio so far. "As far as distressed sales go, there are a lot of high-quality assets in our pool,” he said. "Puerto Rico has the attention of a lot of investors right now."

Puerto Rico has been suffering from high unemployment, a shrinking population and credit woes. Financial institutions have been selling portfolios of distressed assets at prices ranging from about 30 cents to 50 cents on the dollar, Mr. Emery said.

For more news and information visit Blumberg Capital Partners.

CMBS Markets Better Than Anticipated

CoStar released a new article this week titled "CMBS Markets More Hardy Than Doomsters Speculated" observing that, despite analysts bracing for a flood of defaults, the CMBS markets appear to be performing better than anticipated. An excerpt:

Predictions earlier in the year of a CMBS tsunami of defaults flooding the market largely missed their mark. Delinquencies, which were forecast to hit 12% by 2012, now seem likely to top out at right around 10% this year. And issuance last year tripled from 2009's anemic $5 billion to $16.1 billion in 2010, with 40% of the year's issuance occurring in the last quarter of the year - a much faster recovery than many anticipated, according to Christopher T. Moyer, an associate with Cushman & Wakefield Sonnenblick-Goldman LLC.

"Three major factors contributing to the stabilization of the CMBS delinquency rate," David Tobin, principal of Mission Capital Advisors in New York, told CoStar. "New originations have helped reduce overall delinquency. Conduit programs have re-started or started anew because of the pending maturity avalanche that is expected, because secondary market performance of CMBS has been strong following the credit implosion, and because firms perceive CMBS to have less credit and regulatory risk than RMBS [residential mortgage-backed securities]."

For more news and information visit Blumberg Capital Partners.