Our History

D. R. Stephens & Company was organized in 1973 in San Francisco, to consolidate and manage the real estate investment activities of the Stephens family and its outside investors.

Over the past nearly fifty years, the Company has been an active investor/principal in a variety of areas of the real estate business: industrial, office, research and development (R&D), residential (multi- and single-family), and condominium conversions on the West Coast.

In 1999, Stephens & Stephens, LLC was organized to invest in industrial and office real estate in the greater Bay Area. The purpose of the firm was not only to continue to provide investment opportunities for the Stephens family investment entities, but to include outside partners and to generate substantial cash flow distributions and equity growth through ownership and repositioning of high-quality assets over an extended investment horizon.

Managed by Lane Stephens, Nicholas Stephens, and Nicholas Kapranos, the firm now sees the greatest opportunities in the acquisition of Bay Area industrial/office and R&D buildings. The firm is also active in large scale, single family residential land entitlement opportunities in the Bay Area and the Central Valley.

The Company Investments are all controlled through the three existing Managers: D.R. Stephens & Company, Stephens & Stephens, LLC, and SSKB Managers, LLC. Lane, Nicholas and Nicholas are the current principals of the three entities.

Our Founder

Donald R. Stephens
Don Stephens earned his BS degree at the University of Southern California and his Juris Doctor at Hastings School of Law.  He started D. R. Stephens & Company in 1973 as a real estate investment company and continued in the business until his passing in February of 2020.

In 1978, Don started the Bank of San Francisco with $3 million in capital.  Don ran the bank as Chairman of the Board and Chief Executive Officer, building the bank to $420 million in assets by 1990.  In 1992 the bank was sold to an Indonesian investment company.

In 1992, he returned to D. R. Stephens & Company on a full-time basis and resumed his activities in the investment business.  He was solely responsible for the sourcing, structuring, financing, and acquisition of properties acquired prior to 1999, and jointly with Lane Stephens for the structuring and financing of properties acquired after 1999.

Don was a Director of the Fisher Center for Real Estate & Urban Economics, University of California, Berkeley, and a Trustee of the Charles Schwab Family of Funds (a $200B mutual fund complex). He served on the board of the Buck Institute for Research on Aging, and was a former Director of St. Francis Hospital, San Francisco Chamber of Commerce, and the California Chamber of Commerce. He served on the San Francisco Airport Commission from 1986 to 1990.