The SF Gate has a fantastic real estate success story featuring Frank Lembi, the 87-year-old founder of Skyline Realty and one of the City's biggest real estate moguls.
To give you an example of the success of the Lembi family, they now own more than 150 buildings -- including three office buildings, five boutique hotels and 140 large apartment houses in virtually every neighborhood in San Francisco. Besides the corporation that owns the Villas Parkmerced complex in the City's southwest corner, Skyline owns the most units in San Francisco, housing some 7,000 tenants.
Lembi got his start with 8 units at 15th and Castro for $30,000, with $3,000 down, and the owner carried the mortgage at 6 percent. Then, in 1989, he traded it in for $1 million!
SF Gate summed up the Lembi story this way: "the family buys, the family holds and, one day, the property is worth an obscene amount."
This is a great article and well worth the read...
