Welcome to San Francisco

Posted by AGI Capital on January 29, 2008 02:46 PM | Comments (0)

With the U.S. dollar in free-fall, foreign investors have been flocking to hunt bargains in this country, including in real estate. And the Bay Area is of course an attractive market for second home owners.

But while the retailers at Apple or Levi's have the resources to effectively sell to tourists and foreigners, global marketing can be a big challenge for the smaller businesses in real estate.

Over the weekend, SF Chronicle's James Temple explored what some local real estate companies are doing. He talked with Alexis about one of our most interesting marketing initiatives -- our interactive advertising for international sales.

Wrote Temple,

AGI Capital, which most recently co-developed the 246-unit SoMa Grand project on Mission Street, is working with a technology marketing firm to seek overseas buyers. Alexis Wong, the company's president and chief executive officer, said it is using the Internet "as a tool to educate and also influence buyers' decisions to invest foreign monies into Bay Area real estate." Preferably in buildings they've built.

You can see our international marketing program in full swing at www.newinsf.com, where we've put up a new Web site to capture the attention of newly arrived buyers and inspire them to take a closer look at SoMa Grand.

The program is off to a great start. Thus far, the key has been the highly targeted nature of online ad buying and the high comparative cost of generating sales lead through traditional channels. The numbers eventually make sense.

On the Web, the perfect customer is out there. You just need to cast the net widely enough.

Here's the rest of the article.

Flexing our muscles

Posted by AGI Capital on October 19, 2007 03:29 PM | Comments (0)

Cynthia Kincaid at the SF Business Times has a nice write up about Alexis and AGI, with a focus on our growth since the company was founded in 1998.

Here's an excerpt:

Last year, AGI reported $3.3 million in revenues. Wong hopes revenues for 2007 will top $5 million. She credits smart business planning and execution for such growth in an industry with notoriously tight margins. But she also emphasizes AGI's entrepreneurial culture, which she has nurtured and incubated throughout the years.

"We've been driving our corporate growth pretty aggressively ever since we founded the company," she said. "The (results) of years of incubation are starting to take place, and the events that we planned to happen did happen, according to schedule."

It's nice to see an article put our expansion strategy into perspective. You can read the rest of the piece here.

Condo Conversion Is Not A Dirty Word

Posted by AGI on October 12, 2006 09:09 PM | Comments (0)

The bane of housing development, wannabe home builders, profiteering fly-by-night opportunists, it's all been said about the infamous condo converter. Having done a few ourselves and been through the ringer, at the height and at the current state of the housing market, here's a few words in defense of the much maligned condo converter.

Under most city codes, a condo conversion can't be approved unless it is demonstrated that there is sufficient rental housing stock and that converting rental units to ownership, will not adversely affect the availability of rental inventory. So, there is no impact on the rental market. Additionally, most converted units are those that can't be rented because they sorely need additional capital improvements, but because of the high rental vacancy and depressed rental market, there is no money to make the necessary improvements, even for basic items, the result, in some cases is urban blight.

Thus dost arrive the Condo Converter. Yes an opportunist, but also someone who is willing to turn a depressed apartment project around by bringing the vision to raise the necessary capital to upgrade the building. Further, it creates out of the ashes of neglected apartment communities, opportunities for young families to purchase their new home, to create pride of ownership and build equity during a time of outrageous pricing and where new construction is generally unaffordable. And, believe it or not, it requires great imagination to make a tired run-down apartment community sing. . . . slack, cut it for the converter, see for yourself: our Hayward Communities, our San Jose Community, our El Sobrante Community and our Antioch Community.

Tenderloin 94102

Posted by AGI on September 20, 2006 11:11 PM | Comments (0)

A couple of Sunday's ago, the NY Times introduced a magazine completely devoted to real estate. An amazing collection of articles talking about everything from style and design, the market place to irreverent musings of existentialism and the modern perception of one's home. This last piece referenced the various community/city based popular media, captured by titles to shows such as Laguna Beach, Beverly Hills 90210, the OC and on a more intimate level, MTV Cribs, Flip This House, Million Dollar Listing, and more. It appears that popular culture has embraced the notion of self and society through their homes or other people's homes and neighborhood. This is even more evident in the massive proliferation of real esteate and home improvement blogs/websites and persistent coffee-table chatter about interest rates, housing prices and whether one's kitchen has granite counters, - everyone has become a real estate developer and speculator . Well, here at Keeping it Real, we'd like to see some more alternative programming in this space.

It may be a show called the TL or Tenderloin 94102, perhaps Mid-Market Blues or the W.A. However, it wouldn't be a reality show of cops on patrol or drug addiction; rather it would be programming about individuals and community groups rebuilding and reinventing neighborhoods that have historically been more, uh, lets say eclectic then their OC/Beverley Hills 90210 counterparts. This current boom really has opened up the endless possibilities of smart growth in areas traditionally neglected for private investment, couple that with the uncompromised originality of the people, traditions and communities in these areas and one has compelling and intriguing programming.

Nuff said, Hollywood studio execs, this Developer is ready to sit-back at prime time and flip-off the articial lives of rich nipped and tucked socialites and flip-on programs showing the revitalization of our urban cores and cultural centers.

Feng Shui and the SF Politic

Posted by AGI on September 18, 2006 05:18 PM | Comments (0)

Two separate articles, two separate subjects. Then again, the science of positioning things correctly to generate a positive outcome somehow seems not too distant from the world of politics. Asian Week and the SF Business Times site Mrs. Wong on both fronts.

My spell check doesn't recognize "Inclusionary"

Posted by AGI on August 14, 2006 12:19 PM | Comments (1)

Welllll, so we all read the press release . . .

MAYOR NEWSOM SIGNS LANDMARK INCLUSIONARY HOUSING LEGISLATION - Strengthened Ordinance is model for nation's cities

San Francisco, CA- Mayor Gavin Newsom today signed landmark legislation that strengthens the City's affordable housing policy. The legislation, sponsored by Supervisors Daly, Maxwell and McGoldrick, makes San Francisco's inclusionary housing ordinance a model for large cities nationally.

"Not only are we improving the City's housing policy to create affordable housing in economically integrated communities" Newsom said, "We are also celebrating our ability to prioritize good policy over politics."

WOW! In essence the City has bumped the affordable housing requirement from 10% to 15% and made the requirement apply for any development with 5 or more units, versus the prior 10 units or more threshold. On paper the implications are massive, basically a 50% increase on the number of required affordable units...ouch! What's more, for every 10 units built, that means double the number of affordable units because the planning department law requires the builder to round-up (i.e., you can't build 1.5 units, so build 2 affordable units for every 10; so I guess we'll see a lot of projects with 9's at the end: 19 units, 29 units, etc.).

So, here at Keeping It Real...Estate, are we shuttering the windows, burning our fundraiser RSVPs, jumping in our ozone depleting luxury SUV's and heading for the unregulated badlands east of the Caldecott Tunnel?

Well damn the torpedoes...there is a silver lining. Don't get us wrong, this new policy hurts like a sharp Gracie ju-jitsu blow to the solar plexus and is leaving us gasping; however, there is an unintended truth to Mayor N's statement about "prioritizing good policy over politics." In the politically charged city of SF, almost every major housing development is accompanied by a cacophony of complaints, suggestions, demands; among the strongest and most vocal are those with an interest in affordable housing and NIMBYs who are opposed to gentrification (a topic which will be, ahem, afforded, its own bevy of blogs). Without going into the technical details of the quirky system here in San Francisco where nearly all major projects are reviewed the Board of Supervisors in addition to the Planning Commission, developers here are at the mercy of the various interest groups and generally never know what they will be required to do.

Recently the pound of flesh exacted has been to require affordable housing well in excess of the planning code's 10-12%. We say again, emphatically OUCH to the 15%, but an exodus is not in order. This new legislation sets the bar at 15% for onsite affordable housing, an expensive cost indeed; however, if the result will be that lawmakers stand by this as the high-water mark and give developers certainty, meaning not caving into interest groups asking for more, (as of course is their right, prerogative and necessary component to the delicate balance of a diverse community), it would at least provide that housing projects can be properly planned, financed and actually built. By hopefully removing the uncertainty with the codified high standard, it allows progress without (or at least less of) the politics and brings some order into the chaotic process of San Francisco housing development.

We'll Start With the Jumbo Shrimp...

Posted by AGI on August 9, 2006 07:43 PM | Comments (1)

The Times ran an article on what is hopefully not a national trend: the growing popularity of the term "vertical sprawl" by the radical anti-development set.

More particularly, they argue "vertical sprawl" in urban locations is a terrible concept.

"They use this specious argument about smart growth to dump density in urban cores," Ms. Smith said.

This is the kind of idea that gives the term "progressive thought" a bad name, i.e. ones that hold fun and avant-garde concepts over reality. If you don't like density, maybe you shouldn't live in a city. But at least don't encourage any more of this, or this.

At its best, this is another NIMBY (not in my backyard) attitude trying to be pushed under the guise of:

"We want to protect these places from being taken over by infill and driving out working class."

Which all seems sort of backwards considering that infill creates more housing opportunities, which raises supply, and lowers demand. No need to take deductive reasoning to the next step. But we can't help but link to this and wonder how long.

Benefits of Residential Conversion

Posted by AGI on June 16, 2006 09:12 AM | Comments (1)

AGI CEO Alexis Wong was quoted in Contra Costa Times writer Kiley Russell's piece last month about the benefits for first-time home buyers. Acquest is our residential development subsidiary.

"The trend has been instilled for a ... few years now, largely because of the escalating construction prices (for single-family homes). At a certain point, it's very difficult to construct new product at somewhat of a reasonable price," said Alexis Wong, president of Acquest Residential, an urban infill and mixed-used developer based in San Francisco.

Acquest is involved in about three times as many condo conversions in the Bay Area than it was a few years ago. "It's supply and demand: When more developers are looking for these types of opportunities, (apartment building owners) become more interested in selling their product," Wong said.

The article also quoted Tom Reiser, whose Reiser Group is our marketing and sales partner at our Hayward portfolio:

"It's affordability for people. ... It's the only way that entry level buyers can enter the market," he said.

For now, you can read the whole piece here, until it eventually requires a fee.