Cash-rich Chinese coming to do some house hunting

旧金山纪事报  2009-02-25 17:53

Call it a bailout from the East. Approximately 40 Chinese real estate investors are winging their way from Beijing today looking to snap up foreclosed and otherwise "distressed"properties in the Bay Area and California. The trip, put together by Beijing real estate portal SouFun Holdings Ltd. and Fortune Group Realty Co. in Pittsburgh, is one of several such Chinese house hunting groups to visit the U.S. periodically.

But the tig of this one appears to be particularly fortuitous, on both sides of the Pacific. "It's good for Chinese investors who see lots of opportunities,"said Fortune Group vice-president Andrew Hang Chen. "It's also good for the American economy, at least on a small scale."

Homes, apartment buildings and other commercial property in the region are on the shopping list. First stop on the 10-day trip is Los Angeles, followed by the Bay Area, then to Las Vegas. Apparently, the group won't have to worry about mortgages and such. "They have cash, believe me,"said Chen.

Fear factor: Portfolio manager Shawn Taylor says he's never experienced the kind of calls he's been getting from clients lately. "They're asking me if they should they take their money out of banks altogether, is their principal safe, even, quite, literally, where they can buy a block of gold?"said Taylor, who manages $2.2 billion in large-cap stock funds for Navellier &Associates, a Reno money management firm with an office in San Francisco. Those calls, which Taylor described to me when he was in the Bay Area last week, may explain in part the mentality that's driving the stock market lower and lower and gold prices higher and higher.

Taylor added that a number of calls are cog from account holders at Bank of America Corp., the focus of nationalization talk in the past few days, along with Citigroup Inc. Taylor also notes that customers are pulling money out of previously untapped bank credit lines, "just to park the money somewhere else."

Every little bit helps: Wells Fargo Corp. is opening a branch in San Francisco's Rincon Hill neighborhood today, creating five San Francisco jobs in the process. It may not do much for the overall unemployment picture, but it's better than the alternative. Branch address: 303 Second St.

Sauce for the goose ... : As The Chronicle's City Insider notes, S.F.'s Planning Commission gave thumbs up to a Whole Foods Market in Noe Valley, which the Texas company says will be ready in October. Supervisor Bevan Dufty said the national chain - 278 U.S. stores and counting - is desirable, in the column's words, because "the alternative might have been no store at all."

Funny, that's precisely the outcome of Dufty and the Planning Commission stiff-arg American Apparel's bid to open on Valencia Street, just 0.9 miles to the east. No store at all, joining the five other empty, no-store shop fronts on that less than "magical"block of the Mission.