Investment Opportunity in San Francisco

If you are a foreigner holding tourist visa and you would like to purchase the property by cash, meaning no need lender(banks) financing and wire by banks. Without USA credit score, you would need 35% downpayment to purchase a property in San Francisco, banks will check your source of income and if your relationship with the bank is good enough, you might get better than 35%, ex. 30%. For a studio condo in San Francisco worth 500,000 USD, you would pay 150,000 USD to own the property, it’s still a good investment, while the property price increase around 5–10% a year. The normal annual loan interest rate for USA citizen is 4%, for the foreigner could be 5+%

If you are interested to buy a parking lot in the center of San Francisco, the market price is 100,000 USD, it’s even a rare product on the market. Although this price sounds crazy for other countries, it’s a nice investment, considering the property values in that area is 1,000,000+ USD and not every unit has a parking lot. There’s a restriction that certain unit numbers of the property could own some % of the parking, ex. 50 units can have 20 parking lots, case by case. It’s quite unreasonable you bought such an expensive property, but you still have no parking lot, this makes parking lot becomes an interesting product in San Francisco property market, which you’re able to rent out 300 USD per month, meaning 3,600 USD a year.

You could own the parking lot as a company (LLC), there are some fees you could consider when purchasing a parking lot:
- Parking Management Fee 28/month
- Transfer fee (pay by the seller)
- Escort bank fee 1%
- Property tax 1.18% per year, by Sam Francisco City Government value
- Sales Tax: no need to pat if you’re not USA tax resident, while you stay less than half year

Once offer accepted by the seller, meaning you send your offer to the seller by the contract signed, and then seller signed the contract back, the legal combine is completed, therefore, please carefully check contract before you sign.

You would require 3% in escort account as an honest deposit, one-time fee included in the property price. You would need to wire within 7–10 calendar days by cash, or 30 days by loan, or 40 days by banks. If you are by cash, you would better open a bank account in the USA, in case there is an inefficiency when your international bank may process more than 10 days, this will result in you fail to fulfill the contract requirements, which you won’t want it happened. Once you open a bank account in the USA, if you’re eligible for the credit card, please apply it and keep the good record for 1+year, you could build your credit score.