Stuart Baeriswyl and Geraldine Barry, a husband and wife team, started down the path of real estate investing in the Spring of 2002, when they purchased a 6 unit apartment building.  They wanted to connect with other real estate investors and since no active Association existed, they decided to start their own, and formed the first association for investors in the Silicon Valley.  Over the past several years, the SJREI Association has grown from a half dozen investors getting together in a café to an average of 300 plus attending the monthly meetings.

Geraldine Barry

Geraldine emigrated to the Los Angeles area from Ireland several years ago. She attended and graduated from the University of Southern California where she earned a B.S. Degree in Business. When not otherwise engaged in real estate investing Geraldine is engaged in providing great educations events and the most up-to-date information to bay area investors.

Geraldine has become an expert on the CA market, and she and Stuart liquidated their real estate holdings in CA, in late 2005, thereby missing the tumble in values that took place in the Stockton area where she and Stuart were heavily invested. Utilizing the tax saving 1031 exchange method she began investing in the contrarian states that typically to do well when CA does poorly.  Her strategy is to re-invest in the CA market at the appropriate time, and as she says “market timing is everything, not understanding this component of the business has caused investors to lose all of their gains and them some.”  She has leveraged her experience in the corporate world to become the sophisticated investor she is today.

Never one to sit on the sidelines, Geraldine & Stuart founded Pebble Beach REI, Inc specializing in purchasing REO’s (real estate owned by banks), and financially distressed properties for investors and for their own account.

Stuart Baeriswyl

After a five-year enlistment in the U.S. Coast Guard where he specialized in shipboard navigation, Stuart earned a B.S. Degree in Meteorology from San Jose State University and worked as a meteorologist for ten plus years with Weathernews/Oceanroutes. Stuart is the Executive Director of the SJREI Association, and he does a lot of the behind the scenes marketing, research, seminar coordination, and speaker selections for the organization.