Commercial Investment Real Estate March/April 2018 | Page 14

CCIM
Q& A
Global Guru
by Sarah Hoban
12
March | April 2018
CIRE: Describe your work in Los Angeles — how you
started and what you do now.
Chao: I started out in 1983 as a residential broker in the San
Gabriel Valley of California. I learned about professional organi-
zations such as CCIM, SIOR, and IREM in 1985 when I took
courses from the Realty Institute, LLC, in San Bernardino, Calif.
After taking CI 101 in 1986, I realized commercial real estate
is totally different from residential. The course opened up my
eyes and led me into a different world. I continued with the rest
of the courses and earned my CCIM designation in 1988.
During the late 1980s, I started my own syndication, buying
small apartment buildings of between 20 to 30 units in the Los
Angeles area. However, the timing was bad due to one of the
worst U.S. down cycles. Most of the property values were far
less than the existing mortgage debt, so I lost all the apartments
in which I had syndicated.
On the other hand, since property values fell so much, I started
working with several wealthy international investors, buying
landmark Class A buildings in California, including office, retail,
and hotels. This effort proved highly successful.
COMMERCIAL INVESTMENT REAL ESTATE
L
os Angeles has proven to
be an appealing market for
Asian commercial real estate
investors. A 2016 report from
Cushman & Wakefield noted that Los
Angeles was the No. 3 market for Chi-
nese investment, after New York and
San Francisco, with about 7 percent of
Chinese investment in U.S. real estate,
totaling more than $1.5 billion.
Eddy Chao, CCIM, of Infinity
Realty
Advisors works almost exclu-
Eddy Chao
sively with global investors. Chao and
his company made headlines in 2014
when they handled the year’s largest hotel deal: the sale of the
Los Angeles Airport Marriott to a Chinese real estate developer
for $160 million.
He recently discussed with Commercial Investment Real Estate
how the influx of investment has helped change the city’s com-
mercial marketplace.