Tag Archives: US Property

Property adviser to Calpers resigns

Posted on 27 Oct 2009 | Comments Off on Property adviser to Calpers resigns

Victor MacFarlane will remain under contract with the fund through year’s end

San Francisco businessman Victor MacFarlane is ending his longtime role as a property adviser to the California Public Employees’ Retirement System (Calpers), a spokeswoman for his firm said on Saturday.

The development came after property investments by the nation’s largest pension fund lost much of their value during the global economic downturn, costing the fund hundreds of millions of dollars.

MacFarlane Partners spokeswoman Julie Chase said that Mr MacFarlane will remain under contract with the giant pension fund through year’s end. She said that Mr MacFarlane resigned within the past month, but she would not say why.

Calls to Calpers spokeswoman Pat Macht at home and work were not immediately returned.

Mr MacFarlane had advised the pension fund for years, Ms Chase said. ‘More than a decade is probably fair.’

In January 2007, his firm helped engineer a US$970 million purchase by the pension fund of a majority share of a massive Southern California residential development known as LandSource, The Wall Street Journal reported on Saturday. Continue reading →

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US housing risks lurk even as buyers return

Posted on 13 Oct 2009 | Comments Off on US housing risks lurk even as buyers return

Cash-rich: Home sales are now routinely above asking prices in California, from wealthy Orange County towns like Irvine to harder-hit San Bernardino County in the high desert, east of Los Angeles

Postponed foreclosures create a backlog that banks may dump onto the market

On the surface, a glimmer of confidence is returning to the battered US housing market, after more than three years of gut-wrenching defaults, price slumps and foreclosures.

But investors and homeowners in California, the most populous US state and a benchmark for housing across the country, are bracing for another fall as emergency government support measures fall short or expire.

‘All that has been achieved is to put off the real pain until later on,’ said Mark Jacques, a mortgage broker in Corona Del Mar, California. ‘I’m hunkering down for the storm.’

California led the United States when housing prices soared early this decade, spurred by an array of public policy incentives to encourage home ownership. The boom fuelled a frenzy of lending and spending that drove the US economy. Continue reading →

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