Westlake Realty Group

After my last post, a few people reached out and asked about what makes the mindset of a family office different from an individual managing money for themselves. I thought it was a great question. When an individual is managing their money, they may be thinking about themselves and their children but likely not much about setting up a structure beyond that. For a family office (at least ours here Westlake Realty Group), it all comes down to the concept of stewardship. I mean this across a few different contexts outlined below. 1. Financial stewardship: We are responsible for maintaining and growing wealth per capita from one generation to the next beyond just thinking about our current needs and the needs of our children. This includes multi-generational tax planning and growing the operating companies. In our family, a major goal of the business is to be able to cover certain expenses for the beneficiaries in order to alleviate financial burden. 2. Corporate stewardship: We manage the operating companies (Westlake Realty Group and Westlake Urban) along with the embedded family office (Westlake International). Our responsibility is to create profitable businesses that are great places to work where the employees feel like an extension of our family. The quality bar is high and we strive for operational excellence at an institutional quality level. 3. Community stewardship: In the third generation of our family, we have two of the six members (myself and Kelly Chang Levine) running the business. Our role as a family office is to use our resources to create a distinct family culture so we can pass these values onto the next generation. As much as the family office helps to maintain our financial wealth, it also helps to maintain our shared values. We demonstrate our values by not only investing in the communities in which we are located, but also by giving back to causes that we believe in. Kelly and I always love meeting other family offices and nerding out about investments and family office-related topics. If you’re interested, always feel free to reach out to Kelly or myself. Below is a picture of my grandparents (in the center) with my father (on the right) breaking ground on our first development project back in 1981. Kelly and I feel honored to carry this legacy into the third and fourth generation for our family.

Westlake is hiring an Operations Analyst to join our growing team!

Check out this job at Westlake Realty Group: Senior Administrative Assistant to the CEO

In Defense of California Real Estate It’s easy these days to just write off California real estate… too much regulation risk, too much entitlement red tape, too low returns, etc. You name it, I’ve heard it. But it’s not that simple, real estate is ultra local and writing off an entire state like that creates opportunities for local operators like us to find deals where others may not be looking. Let’s take the self-storage market as an example. We (along with our storage partners Frontera Real Estate Investments) have bought two facilities in “secondary” markets in California, one in Dixon (pictured below) and one in Sonoma. We’re bullish enough on Sonoma that we’re building another 70,000 sf of storage next to our existing facility where we’ve increased rents over 25% in the last year. When we fundraised for that deal, we were oversubscribed in less than two weeks. So here we go, 5 reasons (there are more, just trying to keep this brief!) why we like secondary markets in California: 1. Population Growth: Population growth in secondary cities has increased demand for storage as people relocate or downsize. As hybrid work becomes more prevalent, living in a bigger house 1-2 hours away from one’s job becomes more appealing if you only drive to the office 2-3 times a week. These are favorable migration patterns for secondary cities. 2. Affordability: Cheaper to build and operate in these cities. 3. Limited Competition: Less people interested in investing in these less sexy markets and willing to drive to places like Dixon. With offices in San Mateo and San Diego, pretty much everything is within a four hour drive and we are always willing to just get in the car and go whenever there’s a problem. 4. Diversification: Great asset class and geographic diversification play for ourselves and our investors. 5. Higher Yield: Everyone’s favorite and pretty self explanatory… So there you have it. Comment if you agree / disagree, would love to get the conversation going.