Property developer reveals California city where investors could 'make a killing'

While dozens of businesses have joined an exodus from San Francisco, one property developer says the California city is ripe with "opportunities." 

"We're looking for opportunities in San Francisco," Post Brother CEO Michael Pestronk said. "For all this noise, do you know how many non-performing office buildings have traded in San Francisco in the last year? Zero. You know how many vacant office buildings are available today to buy that are ready for conversion? Zero."

On "Varney & Co" Wednesday, Pestronk acknowledged that The Golden City has witnessed "terrible stories" of businesses leaving, including shopping center giant Westfield and Park Hotels & Resorts. He claimed, however, that it is only a "temporary issue."

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"There were a series of terrible stories in the last week about San Francisco, about the biggest hotels shutting down, the biggest mall shutting down," he said. 

"If you look at the Wall Street Journal story about the hotels, the most relevant things in that story are the beginning and the end. At the beginning, they discuss how [in] New York, L.A. and other major cities, the hotel markets are thriving and doing great. And at the end, the head of the hotel workers union for that hotel says effectively the next buyer is going to make a killing here. And that's what we think, we think this is a temporary issue."

Shopping center giant Westfield confirmed to FOX Business Monday that it is walking away from its San Francisco Centre mall, becoming the latest major company to leave the California city amid rampant crime problems.

The company and partner Brookfield Properties earlier this month stopped making payments on a $558 million loan securing the San Francisco Centre property.

Westfield's move comes less than a week after Park Hotels & Resorts announced it had handed two prominent hotels back to the bank. The real estate investment trust said it was abandoning the Hilton San Francisco Union Square and Parc 55, saying the city's streets are unsafe and expressing doubts about the area's ability to recover.

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While Westfield and Park Hotels & Resorts are parting ways, Post Brothers is prepared to make major investments into the city as opportunities become available. 

"We generally start approximately $1,000,000,000 in development a year," Pestronk said when asked how much the property developer plans to put towards San Francisco. 

"San Francisco is the capital of the tech world. Berkeley and Stanford aren't going anywhere. It's still one of two metros in the U.S. where the most ambitious, the most intelligent young people go," he added.

The CEO predicted the city will take "a few years" to fully recover from the cycle of crime and economic struggles but added it is not facing anything out of the normal real estate cycle.

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"A few years, but that's also the cycle of real estate development," he said. "In the early 80s, in the early 90s, in 2000, in 2008, there were many seemingly intelligent people who wrote off Manhattan and Manhattan real estate and even three years ago. And every time with hindsight, those kind of myopic viewpoints are easy to see why they were wrong."

FOX Business' Breck Dumas contributed to this report.