Bob Shallit: Foreclosure firms are faring well in Fair Oaks

We may need to start referring to Fair Oaks as Foreclosure Town USA.

Not because it has a particularly high rate of mortgage defaults. It doesn't.

But, surprisingly, it is home to two very big players in the national foreclosure business. Both have seen activity surge now that the housing market has slowed and defaults are rising.

The larger of the two unrelated companies is Foreclosures.com, which provides information to investors interested in acquiring foreclosed properties. Owner Alexis McGee is quoted frequently in the Wall Street Journal and other national publications.

The other is ForeclosureLink Inc., which is hired by lenders to file legal papers associated with foreclosure actions. For the past five years, activity has been "very, very slow," says Marsha Townsend, co-owner and CFO. But in the last 60 days, it's been "exactly the opposite." In fact, its July business is double that of a year ago.

Both owners say it was purely happenstance that two foreclosure companies wound up in the same neighborhood.

Net gains: Local employees of Health Net soon will have new digs.

A company spokeswoman confirms rumors that the Los Angeles-based health insurer is consolidating its local operations at 11031 Sun Center Drive -- a now-vacant building just acquired from a Bay Area partnership by Sacramento's Panattoni Development Co.

The two-story, 113,000-square-foot building was most recently occupied by the state Franchise Tax Board and before that Continental Insurance. The sale to Panattoni, handled by the local office of Cornish & Carey Commercial, closed Monday. The price? In the neighborhood of $13 million.

Cashing in: Speaking of commercial real estate, one of South Natomas' most prominent office projects is on the sales block.

The four-building brick-and-glass Metro Center, off I-5 near West El Camino Avenue, is being offered by RREEF, the international real estate investment firm that bought it in 1999 for about $32 million.

The price this time should be north of $200 a square foot, or well over $50 million, says George Eckard, half of a hot two-broker team from Cushman and Wakefield's San Francisco office, which is marketing the property.

The selling points: blue-chip tenants -- including Sutter Health, IBM and Comcast -- a parklike setting and an increasingly attractive location, Eckard says.

"That market has changed a lot since they bought it," he says, noting residential and business growth in Natomas. "It's moved closer to the center of the bull's-eye."

Why sell now? Why not? The owners could end up nearly doubling their investment.

Tricks taker: Another Sacramentan is reporting a close encounter with billionaire Warren Buffett. He's small biz lender Gordon Gerwig, whose brushes with Buffett have been of the virtual variety.

Gerwig is a bridge player. So is Buffett. Gerwig reports that Buffett plays regularly at the online site OKBridge.com, and has played against him a half-dozen times.

How does he know it's Buffett? The Wall Street Journal broke the story in 2003 that Buffett plays online under the name "T-bone." Gerwig went to the Web site and found "T-bone," who, he reports, is a heck of a bridge player. "Most of the time, I get my clock cleaned against him," he says.

T-bone's real identity is known to most of the online players but they respect his privacy and resist asking non-bridge questions of the billionaire investor. Says Gerwig, "He's doing it to relax; he doesn't need that."

Gerwig, who works for First US Community Credit Union, takes pleasure in sharing a virtual activity with the world's second-richest person.

"I'm not worth $50 billion. He is," Gerwig says. "But in this moment of time, we're doing the same thing."

What are people saying about mortgages today:

Rates on 30-year mortgages edged down last week to a seven-month low. Mortgage-giant Freddie Mac reported Thursday that 30-year, fixed-rate mortgages fell to 6.3 percent, down slightly from 6.31 percent two weeks ago. It put rates at the lowest level since they were at 6.24 percent the first week of March.

Bank of Hawaii, Central Pacific Bank, Territorial Savings Bank and Wells Fargo Home Mortgages all cut their 30-year mortgage rates to 5.75 percent this week.

Most people think of a mortgage as a means to an end. After all, you buy a house, not a home loan. But a mortgage is much more than the path to homeownership. It is a financial instrument that must be managed, just like any other financial investment.