Valerie Achtemeier
Valerie Achtemeier
Vice chairman at CBRE
Valerie Achtemeier figures she has structured and closed more than $40 billion in real estate financing transactions across the United States during her three-decade career in real estate.
Just named vice chairman of CBRE (CBRE) Capital Markets — the firm’s rank for highest producers — Achtemeier leads a Los Angeles-based team in placing debt and equity on commercial properties throughout the country.
“My niche has always been how to make the economics of a development really outperform,” Achtemeier said. “I love the challenge of crafting the optimal capitalization stack for development projects — whether [joint venture] equity, debt or a combination.”
Achtemeier reported developing her strongest expertise in the industrial sector thanks to years of hands-on experience, which has become particularly valuable as Southern California became the hotbed for warehousing and logistics real estate.
“We are also concentrating on data center and mixed-use capitalization strategies,” Achtemeier said. “As such, I gravitate towards large industrial portfolio loans, complicated redevelopment or construction financing projects and strategic ground-lease assignments.”
Achtemeier, an Iowa native, mentions several recent projects as being some of the most rewarding, including an LAX-area redevelopment involving a $142 million sale and a $95 million loan that transformed the site into a world class e-commerce industrial project. Another is the Dana Point Harbor project involving $350 million financing for a marina, hotel and retail redevelopment.
She is quick to point out that the CBRE team has a national footprint, but said there is “nothing better than doing business right here in SoCal.”
“You will find us working near the ports, airports, intermodal yards and everything in between,” Achtemeier noted.
With CBRE since 2009 and before that a vice president at Majestic Realty for 13 years, Achtemeier enjoys everything about commercial real estate, including the people, the markets’ ebb and flow, the strategizing and, of course, the deals and transactions.
“As a woman, I am also very fortunate to have enough confidence and a resilient spirit, which were both gifts from my father,” she said. — J.M.
