Bruce Carlson landed in the title biz as a result of the recession, joining First American Title in December 2011 to support his three kids as a full-time single dad. It was "a brand new frontier," says the former Grubb & Ellis SVP. He recently moved over to Chicago Title Insurance as VP. Bruce says his 30 years of experience in development and acquisitions in SF and the Western US across all asset types has been useful for his job today in facilitating transactions and getting complicated deals closed.

At First American Title, he sourced closed to $4B in transactions, including the sale of 101 Cal (above) for $1B for Hines, in addition to the biggest multifamily refis in San Francisco history for Veritas at $750M. He sees 2014 being very active with a tremendous amount of capital to go around. More of the larger trophy assets traded last year, so he expects to see more of the middle market product start moving. (Prepare your underdog scripts, Hollywood.) In addition, he thinks there will be more sales activity in the outer Bay Area with investors chasing yield.