Geographically, Figueroa is looking all around the country,although it tends to gravitate toward Southern Californiaproperties in its debt placements, Conn says. In placing equity,"We will concentrate on the Southern California area because wefeel that there are some very good opportunities here, but we'vealso been looking at a lot of other markets," he says. The companyis working on a deal in Idaho and has also been looking in placeslike Charlotte, NC; Texas, Arizona and Las Vegas.

Figueroa represents a change of direction for its founders, allof whom formerly were with Pathfinder Mortgage Corp. in DowntownL.A., working primarily in the CMBS and life company arena. Connexplains that over the past year, as conditions changed in thecapital markets, Figueroa's partners found themselves pursuingother sources of debt, including local commercial banks.

The company's founders achieved "a pretty strong success ratewith closings" on debt and were also successful in assemblingequity from private sources, "so it made a lot of sense for us toget much more focused on how to close quality deals in this newenvironment," Conn says. "One reason that we started our own firmwas that we have been successful on the equity side in assemblingprivate capital for a number of transactions over the past year,"he adds. He says that Figueroa's partners wanted to continue thatequity placement "in a little bit larger way," so they arepreparing to go to market with an opportunity fund of probably $25million in discretionary equity for joint ventures and other equityinvestments.