Content area
Full text
There are colorful photos of tulips and daffodils on the walls of the Mayfield Cos. in Palo Alto. Also photos of office buildings and apartment complexes.
Combined, they're a snapshot of real estate entrepreneur John Klimp, whose family roots are in The Netherlands and whose firm has owned and managed dozens of commercial properties on the Peninsula and in the Portland, Ore., area during the past 31 years.
His company's history sounds almost like those "get rich in real estate" books.
Mr. Klimp earned a degree in electrical engineering from Long Beach State University. While working in engineering for Sylvania, he and his wife, Nancy, bought their first rental property, spending all their spare time fixing it up.
It wasn't much of a stretch for Mrs. Klimp. Her family has been involved with commercial real estate since 1910. But Mr. Klimp had to learn the commercial real estate business from scratch, starting with small deals.
He went full time in 1971, quitting his comfortable job in engineering and using $1,500 in savings to start a company.
"Cold turkey. My parents couldn't believe what I had done," he says.
Some of his former engineering associates at Sylvania joined him in the initial buying of apartment buildings. That's how his company has been structured ever since. Mr. Klimp puts together individual partnerships, keeping dozens of investors involved in dozens of properties at any given time. Many investors are involved in more than one property, but in all there are more than 200 investors associated with Mayfield properties in California and Oregon.
Mayfield is made up of a management corporation and an investment corporation, with the properties themselves owned by separate limited partnerships.
Mr. Klimp says he looks for more than the real estate adage "location, location, location. "We...