News
PRESERVING (MOST OF) FARIA
March 21, 2012
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| Lafferty Communities, a private, family-owned developer, bought the 440-acre Faria Preserve in San Ramon. The transaction marks one of the East Bay’s largest land deals in recent years. Yesterday we chatted with Cameron Fowler of the land brokerage firm The Hoffman Co, which repped the buyer. Hoffman was the only brokerage firm involved in the off-market transaction. (Cameron’s relationship with the seller, Faria-AJF Partnership LP, got ’em in there.) He tells us earlier transactions had fallen through with a handful of parties that were unable to close due to the infrastructure costs associated with the project. “You name what could have happened, it did.” The complex deal took a lot of hard work and understanding of the local market, and a lot of people “struggled to get their arms around it.” |
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| The arrow wasn’t placed here to direct aliens to their crop circle. The City of San Ramon annexed the site in 2009. Cameron tells us development will occur on less than one-quarter of the site, currently vacant land. The development is a master-planned community with a tentative map approved for 786 units—traditional detached, cluster homes, and multifamily—along with parks and natural resource preservation. According to Cameron, a good portion of the project will be for rent. The exact unit count is still being worked out, but he says Faria Preserve will offer a good mix of for-sale product, rentals, “and obviously a great amount of open space, representative of a very balanced project.” |
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| Lafferty is hoping to start site work in 2014. “The buyers felt that timing was pretty well aligned with what they’re seeing in the market.” The target market will be current residents of San Ramon as well as folks commuting into the city for work. The project is located two miles from the corporate HQ of Chevon, the city’s largest employer employing one in every eight workers. Other major companies include AT&T and Robert Half International. Cameron says the deal reflects Hoffman’s strategy of identifying residential opportunities close to job centers—the company currently has a dozen listings ranging from raw land to finished lots, but the majority under contract are infill deals on the Peninsula and San Jose. The Napa native is an avid basketball and tennis player. Yes, he’s got his brackets filled but it “hasn’t been going so well. I have Kentucky as the winner.” |
