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These spots give the concept of pay-to-park a whole new meaning.

In the past week, parking spots in two major U.S. cities were bought for major cash. The IRS auctioned off two tandem spots in the Back Bay neighborhood of Boston for a whopping $560,000 together. In San Francisco, a single downtown spot was listed and sold for $82,000.

The purchases give the owners the right to park in the space at any time for however long they want. Just like buying a house or a condo, these spots are owned until sold or until the owner dies, when it becomes a part of his or her estate. Pemits are not required for any of these recently-sold spots, because they are in residential locations with restricted access.

Real estate experts say as major cities become more densely populated, parking will become even more of an epic struggle—making any available pavement space a hot commodity.

Sean Sullivan, senior sales leader at Climb Real Estate in San Francisco, sold last week’s parking spot for $82,000. He says he sold a space in the same garage for $95,000 last year, and highlights their proximity to AT&T Park as a key selling point.

“I think we will start seeking parking as a more competitive piece in the overall market,” Sullivan says. “Cities have to manage their on-street parking better.”

The price tag of the spaces in Boston started at $42,000 last week and quickly escalated to $560,000 for the tandem spots in just 15 minutes, says Elliot Levine, real estate broker at Marston Beacon Hill in Boston.

“Parking spots sell all the time, but this just happened to be a bidding war that drove up the prices,” Levine says.

He says selling parking spots is normal in Boston.  “The spots that sell for $300,000 or $250,000 make the news—but they usually sell for much less.”

Many times, condos within Boston will bundle parking spaces with the property and can increase the value of a listing by $150,000 on average in an area like Back Bay, Levine says.

“Most people will think it’s valuable to keep the spots with the condo because it will add value,” he says. “It depends on where it is, but generally these are tandem spots or are in a garage.”

Sullivan is betting the high-pay-for-parking trend will continue. Since his latest sale, he has listed two more spots for $85,000 each thanks to the publicity. The real estate market has largely turned around, he says, and the prices these pieces of pavement are fetching signal a cultural shift.

“People now want to live in cities. They are buying for the long haul. They realize ‘my city house has to work for me, and I am going to be here forever.’ And for people who have the means, they are acquiring these spots to make urban homes work for them.”

Wealthy people will shell out cash in the name of convenience, and these parking sales demonstrate just that.

“People who have the means to make their lives easier and nicer will keep doing just that,” he says. “Cities will become what they were prior to WWII—glittering, dense and glamorous.”

Just as long as you can find parking.

Follow Kate Rogers on Twitter at @KateRogersNews

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Lone Star Funds, the biggest buyer of delinquent mortgages, is leading the fundraising pack for real estate private equity with a $6 billion target for a pool to buy distressed commercial-property debt and equity.

The firm, based in Dallas, plans to begin gathering pledges for Lone Star Real Estate Fund III as early as this month, John Grayken, the company’s founder and chairman, said at a meeting with the state of Oregon’s pension trustees in May. Lone Star is seeking as much as $6 billion, according to Anthony Breault, interim senior real estate investment officer for the Oregon State Treasury, a longtime investor in Lone Star funds.

Lone Star is among firms including Carlyle Group LP, TPG Capital and KKR & Co. that are seeking more money for real estate and capitalizing on investors’ search for higher returns as 10-year Treasury notes hover around a 2.2 percent yield. Blackstone Group LP last year collected $13.3 billion of pledges for the biggest-ever private real estate fund.

“Fundraising is still quite difficult out there, but Lone Star has a longstanding track record of success in raising large amounts of capital,” said Steve Coyle, chief investment officer for global private real estate opportunity strategies at Cohen & Steers Inc. (CNS) in New York. “I would expect them to be one of the winners.”

Lone Star last month finished raising a residential-focused real estate fund, Lone Star Fund VIII, with $5.1 billion.

Jed Repko, a spokesman for Lone Star at the public relations firm Joele Frank, Wilkinson Brimmer Katcher, declined to comment on fundraising.

Seventh Fund

Carlyle, the world’s second-biggest manager of alternative assets, is seeking to raise $4 billion for its seventh real estate fund, the Washington-based company’s biggest-ever property fund, a person with knowledge of the plans said last week. Randall Whitestone, a spokesman for Carlyle, declined to comment.

“We’re suddenly seeing a lot of the large mega-funds back in the market,” Coyle said in a telephone interview. “It’s a good point in the cycle. People still see distress, and opportunistic real estate is a place where a lot of folks think they can make money.”

The Lone Star target was first reported yesterday by real estate news service PERE.

Larger firms with established track records probably will have an easier time raising capital from limited partners, or investors in their funds, Breault said.

“LPs are somewhat risk-averse still,” he said. “Those seeking opportunistic investments will rely very heavily on past performance. It’s much more competitive for the smaller firms without the same track record or name behind them.”

Morgan Stanley

Even some large firms have struggled as investors flocked to more predictable income-producing real estate after the credit freeze drove down property values. Morgan Stanley (MS), the biggest property investor among Wall Street banks before the financial crisis, is trying to raise $1 billion to $3 billion for a new global real estate fund, two people with knowledge of the effort said in May.

Morgan Stanley is seeking a large contribution from China Investment Corp., which owns 6.4 percent of the New York-based firm, one of the people said.

Matt Burkhard, a Morgan Stanley spokesman, declined to comment.

The new fund would be Morgan Stanley’s eighth for global real estate. Morgan Stanley is betting the profitability of its current real estate fund, a $4.7 billion pool raised in 2010, will help it win pledges from investors, one of the people said.

KKR Fund

KKR, the buyout firm run by Henry Kravis and George Roberts, has begun marketing its first fund dedicated to real estate investments with an initial $500 million committed to the pool. The firm committed a significant amount of its own money to put investors at ease as it geared up to pitch the fund to additional limited partners, a person with knowledge of the matter said in March. KKR hadn’t set a target for the fund as of March, the person said.

Kristi Huller, a spokeswoman for KKR, declined to comment.

TPG Capital, founded by David Bonderman and James Coulter, has formed real estate funds with sole investors as the firm prepares to raise its first multiple-investor real estate fund, which investors have said will likely be about $1 billion or more.

Owen Blicksilver, a spokesman for TPG Capital with Owen Blicksilver Public Relations, declined to comment.

Carlyle is replenishing capital after a record-setting sale of a New York property earlier this month. The firm agreed to sell 650 Madison Ave., a 600,000-square-foot (55,700-square-meter) office tower in Manhattan’s Plaza district, for $1.3 billion, setting a per-square-foot record for a U.S. office building.

To contact the reporter on this story: Hui-yong Yu in Seattle at hyu@bloomberg.net

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Kara Wetzel at kwetzel@bloomberg.net

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After a relatively quiet weekend, more rain is headed to New Jersey today in the form of scattered thunderstorms, forecasters say.Tony Kurdzuk/The Star-Ledger

After a relatively calm weekend and a mostly sunny morning today, Mother Nature has turned her nasty side on once again, bringing strong thunderstorms to parts of New Jersey.

Strong storms are currently moving through sections of Hunterdon, Somerset and Middlesex counties, prompting the National Weather Service to issue a severe thunderstorm warning for those counties, effective through 3:45 p.m.

Some of those storms could dump small hail and could pack wind gusts as strong as 60 mph, according to a bulletin issued by the weather service.

A heavy thunderstorm is also moving through the Newark area at this hour, with torrential rain falling on the region and occasional claps of thunder.

MORE WEATHER NEWS

Somerset Medical Center Urgent Care at Hillsborough.Google Maps 

HILLSBOROUGH — After a short delay, a new urgent care center in Hillsborough will open Monday, providing walk-in family medical care seven days a week.

The Somerset Medical Center Urgent Care at Hillsborough will be open from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Mondays through Fridays and from 9 a.m. to 4 p.m. on weekends and holidays at 751 Route 206 North between Homestead Road and Raider Boulevard.

Urgent-care centers have been opening around the state as hospitals try to lower costs and offer patients more convenient services between a primary care doctor and the hospital emergency room.

The facility is staffed by physicians certified in emergency medicine, including physicians from Somerset Medical Center’s Emergency Department. The physicians will work closely with each patient's primary care doctors to coordinate follow-up care, and both will be able to access their records and test results electronically through Somerset Health Connect, a website portal that provides password-protected medical information.

No appointments are necessary. Most major insurance plans are accepted. For more information, call 908-685-2513 or visit the center's website.

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The Somerset Hills YMCA swim team has won a 2013 Silver Medal Club award from USA Swimming.

USA Swimming recognized the Somerset Hills YMCA Swim team as one of 200 national swim clubs that promote the development of strong, well rounded age group and senior level swimmers. Each one of the swim clubs obtained high levels of athlete performance and this is shown through the total points accumulated at the end of the swim season.

The highest level of accumulated points is considered to be the Gold Medal level, with Silver and Bronze levels following respectively. The program also provides grant funding and recognizes the club development system as integral to achieving excellence in the sport of swimming.

In order for a swim club to obtain the Silver Medal status, the swim club must obtain the following criteria for Long-Course Swimming:

Submit an application with USA Swimming and have all swims be ranked according to the Performance Scoring component of the program.
In order to be eligible to score points, athletes must achieve at least Bronze level time standards with at least one swimmer obtaining the Silver time standard.
All swims must be swum in long course meters.
Athletes must be USA Swimming members, U.S. citizens, and 18/under.

For Open Water Swimming:
Any 18/Under athlete who competes in the 2012 USA Swimming 10k Open Water National Championship finishing: 11th-20th place for Women/11th-20th place for Men
Any Club Excellence eligible athlete would score 860 points toward their team’s performance scoring.

For more information visit http://www.usaswimming.org/DesktopDefault.aspx?TabId=1615&Alias=Rainbow&Lang=en

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