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This case study highlights the Ivy Group’s representation of a commercial real estate buyer: Lighthouse for the Blind and Visually Impaired (“Lighthouse”), a well known, San Francisco based non-profit organization founded in 1902. Lighthouse is one of Northern California’s oldest and most influential non-profits dedicated to serving the blind or those with low vision. The Ivy Group saved them $700,000 below appraised value, by structuring the purchase with a tax donation component. Lighthouse has retained the Ivy Group again and again for more than a decade, and counting.
There are many nuggets in this story, such as:
“We were introduced to the Lighthouse for the Blind through a trusted friend of mine, an ophthalmologist who knows the CEO because she sat on their board.”
“She’s actually my optometrist, and she’s also a friend of mine who ran for public office. I supported her candidacy by donating money to her campaign, going to events and introducing her to community leaders, and voting for her. In return, she supported me with this opportunity.
“She said, ‘I want to introduce you to the Lighthouse, and I want you to go to this event and introduce yourself to the CEO. His name is Bryan.’ So I went. I had never met Bryan or anybody else from the Lighthouse. Since I was introduced by somebody that Bryan trusted, we hit it off instantly. That’s how it got started. The next day, Bryan said, ‘I’d like you to come to San Francisco to meet my CFO.’ And we did. My colleague David and I went over there, toured their headquarters, met the CFO, and they said, ‘here’s what we’re looking for… we want to buy another property somewhere in the East Bay close to a BART station, convenient for the blind to take public transit to get to work without having to get into a car. Can you help us?’ And we said, ‘Yes, we can.’”
“We first worked with the title company to come up with a list of all the commercial properties near the BART stations, and zoomed in on the properties that met their location criteria, size specification, and other needs”, said Tim.
“In a very old fashioned way”, Tim continued, “we just wrote letters to all the property owners adjacent to BART stations, and we literally knocked on people’s doors. We sent out hundreds of letters and we told them a financially strong non profit organization is looking to expand and they wanted to buy a warehouse in this area, and asked them if they were interested in selling their properties. and then, lo and behold, a few owners did call us back, asking: ‘Do you have a real buyer?’ ‘Yes, we do’, so that’s how we got started.
“One of them had a portfolio of many properties as a part of a family trust over many decades. They were interested in selling, for the right price, one particular property within walking distance of the Bay Fair BART Station in San Leandro”, recalled Tim.
The property owner had the property appraised for $3.5 million. We put the offer in front of the Lighthouse executives. They presented it to the board, and the board liked the property but thought $3.5 million was expensive.
“Then we started negotiating, the seller was very firm on the price: ‘Why should we sell it for less than what it was appraised for?’ We came up with all kinds of reasons, one of them was ‘it’s off market, we have saved you thousands in commissions.’ But the most powerful persuasion was based on the fact that the seller owned a lot of properties, and they were getting a lot of taxable rental income; the buyer, a nonprofit over 100 years old, could help reduce the seller’s tax obligations by providing a donation letter to offset the rental income. In other words, instead of closing the deal at $3.5 million, we could close it at $2.8 million, the difference of $700,000 would be the seller’s donation to the Lighthouse.
“We figured out a way to do that, and that was a win win situation for everybody”, beamed Tim.
“Lighthouse was extremely pleased with how we handled that first deal, they came back to us after realizing that they did not need all of the 43,000 square feet space in that warehouse that has a restaurant in front. The Lighthouse asked us to find a tenant for the restaurant. And we found a restaurant tenant for them.
“We first found the restaurant tenant, who signed a five year lease. When the lease expired, Lighthouse came back to us again to help them find another tenant. We helped them rent the restaurant twice. We leased another portion of the warehouse twice after we helped them buy the building.”
They came to us again after they partitioned off the warehouse into four different compartments. Since they only needed two sections, they wanted us to lease out the other two sections.”
“One of my agents at the Ivy Group, who worked on this Lighthouse deal with me, actually has vision problems. His doctor warned him to stop playing extreme sports, because his eyeball is literally hanging by the string. He said to me, ‘one day I might just lose my sight and vision. I want to be able to help this organization. Who knows, maybe I might use their services to learn how to read Braille and navigate.’ We really believe in the Lighthouse’s mission”, said Tim.
“Through the years, when they held events, we would attend and support the Lighthouse. We would donate to their causes, to say that we actually believe in them and want to support them, not just to do a deal to make money.”
Tim developed genuine admiration for Lighthouse through working alongside them: “Even though they’re blind, they’re among the smartest people in the world. When they wanted to know how big the section of the warehouse was, as I was running to my car trying to pull out a laser to figure out the dimensions, this blind guy literally clapped his hand, waiting for the echo to come back, and then he said, ‘I think this portion of the warehouse is about 7,000 square feet’, and he was off by only 100 square feet. It was actually 7,100 sq ft.
“And then he asked how high the roll up door was. I was trying to turn on my laser reader, but the sun was too bright, I couldn’t see the reading, so I was kneeling down trying to get this height. And he got up to the edge of the loading dock, sticking his hand up with his cane. He said, ‘my cane is six feet. I’m six feet tall, and I can touch the top. I think the height is between 12-13 feet.’ And he was on the spot, unbelievable!”
“That’s why they have this blind leaders program because they don’t believe in feeling sorry for themselves. They don’t believe in the mentality that ‘because I’m blind I can just sit home and get paid by the government and get subsidies.’ In fact, they had federal government contracts for their factory to manufacture toilet paper for the military. When the military goes to war, they have these little toilet packets. It’s all folded, nicely packed, disposable. That’s what they did at this property. They made toilet paper for the government. They bought this property just to expand and to give blind people a chance to be a productive part of society. It is a great organization. We’re so happy that they decided to work with us. That’s an honor.”
“Years later, the CEO ended up being interviewed by Leslie Stahl on 60 Minutes. When I flipped the TV on, I was like, Oh my goodness! I know this guy. We work with this organization. To be able to make it to 60 Minutes is pretty darn impressive”, Tim said proudly.
“Even though they first approached us for buying a commercial property back in 2013, we have been representing Lighthouse for more than a decade. Looking back, it all started with a warm introduction from mutual friends. We ended up doing five or six deals with Lighthouse because we kept doing a great job for them. We kept the communication lines open, kept building relationships, building trust, and delivering promises and results. So that’s how that deal came about, Lighthouse has become one of our most important clients through the years.
“Buying a commercial property is never just a transaction. We at the Ivy Group always go above and beyond, with results, with relationships, with services”, concluded Tim.
When you need to sell, buy, or lease a commercial property, the Ivy Group is ready to help you reach your goals with more than 100 years of combined experience and expertise in real estate, investment, technology and engineering. Contact us with your next real estate needs.
Copyright ©️ 2025 by Tim Vi Tran, SIOR, CCIM. All rights reserved.
