Attended UC Irvine’s Paul Merage School of Business Center for Real Estate Real Estate Management Breakfast Series.
For the most part it was the typical real estate networking event, except for 1 great insight into the Blackstone-EOP $36 billion private equity buyout that you won’t find anywhere else.
Bill Halford, formerly of The Irvine Company and now Bixby Land Company, got a lot of disbelief from the following:
“The Blackstone Group buyout of Equity Office for $36B closed in 3 weeks.”
Obviously there’s justification for doing so, but it just doesn’t happen in real estate companies of any size. Of course, they’re a private equity group, and so they have a different focus.
This was also a great conversation, right after a discussion on real estate market inefficiency:
Guy #1 – With the help of Guy #2, we just bought a 10 acre development site.
Guy #2 – Funny, I thought we bought a 200,000 sf industrial building.
