SAN FRANCISCO—“There is unlimited opportunity for all of us to be out there and be successful, but there is a lot of risk too.” That is according to RealShare Bay Area Town Hall moderator Bill Cumbelich, EVP with CBRE and a founder and principal of the CAC Group.

More than 200 were in attendance at the RealShare Conference Series event, which is produced by ALM's Real Estate Media Group, which also publishes Real Estate Forum and GlobeSt.com.To kick things off, Cumbelich said that the Bay Area is doing great, is hot, and that the private sector is doing its job in terms of building and growing. “Today is far and away the most exciting and most challenging time I have ever seen,” he said. But he noted that “We are in unchartered waters in terms of where we go from here.” Some of the biggest issues we are facing the region have to do with infrastructure and traffic, he noted.

Panelist Mary Erchul, president of the American Council of Engineering Cos. of California, agreed that infrastructure is one of the biggest things facing California today. “We are looking at things like water shortage and funding in general for transportation,” she said. “We have a lack of funding.”

To help the situation, she explained, “we have to look at innovation and better ways to do what we are doing and wrapped into that is streamlining.” The outlook as far as traffic is, she said, is to “work together in our industry to come to more technical solutions.”

Erchul talked about BART looking at the efficiency and sustainability of the BART cars, as an example of taking steps forward. “They can't go to infinity with the system they have.” Or the Oakland connector to the airport, for example, which is in its testing phase. “Transportation will keep up with the pace—it is only a matter of time… It has to.”

“The future of transportation is key to getting people to want to live in the Bay Area,” she said. As for the funding shortage, Erchul pointed out that “we have to looking at different ways of financing,” and “use the resources we have in California in the engineering arena and work together with public and private as far as partnership to get things moving forward.”

Switching gears a bit, panelists chatted about the overview of the finance market in the area, where Michael Klein, co-founder, COO and managing director of Partners Capital Solutions Inc., noted that “if you have time today to finance or have an existing project to finance, and you have time to get it done, you can get fantastic rates.” He added that if you had a project that has been stabilized and can work with either CMBS or insurance company money, rates are as low as he has ever seen them and the underwriting requirements are fairly easy, but he pointed out that the paperwork “is a lot of work.”

As for new sources of capital emerging, Klein points out that it is there, but warned that “there will be disintermediating forces going on that will change the way that financing is going on over the next five years so firms like ours can raise capital more easily and at a lower cost,” he said. “We haven't sold our soul for FDIC insurance.”

Switching over to the multifamily sector, Yat-Pang Au, founder and CEO of Veritas Investments Inc., talked about the increasing presence of income disparity that is occurring. Approximately 80% to 90% of the housing stock in San Francisco is rent controlled already, he pointed out. “We provide stability for those who have been here a long time. For those folks who come in, they get to choose a beautiful space at the market price when they move in,” he said. “The energy should not be placed on restricting rent increases, but on building more housing as opposed to restricted rent control.”

Yat-Pang Au noted that “there is a huge vibrance of companies that want to be where the residents are and right now, residents want to be in the City.” He added that never before has there been so much traffic coming into San Francisco. “People want to live in the urban environments.”

When talking about making spaces attractive and relevant to the tech industry broadly on the office side, Alan Walker, VP of Swift Real Estate Partners, pointed out that within the city, a lot of what is being incorporated are reclaimed materials, exposed ceilings, striping down columns to expose the steel, exposed brick and polished concrete. But he points out that tenants are also starting to learn what appeals to the eye versus what is functional. For example, he pointed to a tenant, which wanted the drop ceiling put back in after hearing how noisy it made the office. As for outside the City, Walker says there is more of a focus on recreation such as court space, BBQ, bocce ball courts, outdoor spaces built for entertaining etc.