51.5 F
Laguna Hills
Thursday, Mar 28, 2024
-Advertisement-

Coldwell Banker Runs ‘Apprentice’-Style Competition

Orange County’s version of “The Apprentice”,minus the TV cameras,is set to start next month. What industry are the contestants looking to grab a plum job in? Luxury real estate, of course.

A competition seeking out the best and brightest local real estate agent kicks off in Newport Beach Oct. 15.

In the role of Donald Trump: high-end broker John McMonigle of Coldwell Banker Previews International. His nine-agent McMonigle Group real estate team has been the top-selling group for Coldwell Banker the past three years. It posted $432 million in home sales here last year.

The contest: A group of 10 to 15 real estate agents, who are being selected now, will be put through a month-long training program, boot camp and competition by McMonigle and the Newport Center office of Coldwell Banker. The winner of the competition gets the title of “top agent” and a job with the McMonigle Group. It’s expected that a few other candidates will get jobs elsewhere with Coldwell Banker.

Ideally, all the candidates already will have their real estate licenses, but they don’t have to be seasoned agents, Coldwell Banker officials said. A few candidates without a real estate background, but strong sales skills, also might be considered.

Candidates will face off in various competitions including generating sales leads, holding open houses and conducting listing presentations.

Despite the downturn in countywide homes sales, OC’s ultra high-end market still is going strong, according to McMonigle. Earlier this month, his group sold a beachfront lot in Emerald Bay for an estimated $18 million.


Ponzi Charges Hit Home

A year ago, I wrote about Seacrest Apartment Homes, my old apartment complex in San Clemente, trading hands for almost $88 million. I ended up moving right after the sale, to get closer to the beach,and further away from the next-door neighbors who fought all the time and never took their garbage out.

Now it appears that the complex’s new owner, Irvine-based Real Estate Partners Inc., has more problems on its hands than just my crazy neighbors.

The investment and management firm and its president, Dawson Davenport, were among several parties the Securities and Exchange Commission charged earlier this month with conducting a $50 million real estate fraud scheme.

The SEC says that Real Estate Partners ran a Ponzi-like scheme, where investors were promised huge returns for their investments, which were used to pay commissions and other investors. It also claims the company failed to disclose that more than half the $50 million it raised from more than 1,600 investors from 2003 to 2006 went to commissions. The suit also charges other local individuals with running boiler-room operations.


Carmel Buys More

Carmel Partners Inc. of San Francisco has made its second big area apartment buy of the year.

The privately held real estate investment firm, which has an Irvine office, paid $26.4 million for the Villa Pacific Apartments, a 136-home complex in Westminster.

Villa Pacific was built in 1963. Carmel Partners plans to spend another $2.5 million on it.

In March, I reported that Carmel Partners was paying $43 million for Tustin’s Park Place, a 246-apartment complex. The company said it is putting in more than $7 million of renovations there.

Midwest Air Technologies Inc., a Lincolnshire, Ill.-based distributor of gardening gear and supplies, has signed one of the larger local industrial lease deals of recent months.

The company just renewed its lease for five more years in Fullerton. Midwest Air moved from Huntington Beach to 127,375 square feet at 675 S. Placentia Ave. in 2002.

The lease is valued at about $4.7 million, which on a monthly basis runs about 62 cents per square foot.

RREEF Funds LLC is the landlord for the building. Bob Goodmanson of CB Richard Ellis Group Inc.’s Newport Beach office represented both parties.


Our Bad

We got it wrong in the headline on the Sept. 17 column.

The headline referred to Newport Beach-based Koll Co.’s buy of a 63,225-square-foot building at 17862 Fitch Ave. in Irvine.

Koll bought the building knowing tenant Kyocera Tycom Corp., a maker of tools for producing circuit boards, already was planning to leave.

The company decided to buy the building anyway and redevelop it as office condominiums that meet the U.S. Green Building Council’s Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design rating system, according to Scott Meserve, Koll’s development manager.

Want more from the best local business newspaper in the country?

Sign-up for our FREE Daily eNews update to get the latest Orange County news delivered right to your inbox!

Mark Mueller
Mark Mueller
Mark is the Editor-in-Chief of the Orange County Business Journal, one of the premier regional business newspapers in the country. He’s the fifth person to hold the editor’s position in the paper’s long history. He oversees a staff of about 15 people. The OCBJ is considered a must-read for area business executives. The print edition of the paper is the primary source of local news for most of the Business Journal’s subscribers, which includes most of OC’s major corporate and community players. Mark’s been with the paper since 2005, and long served as the real estate reporter for the paper, breaking hundreds of commercial and residential real estate stories. He took on the editor’s position in 2018.
-Advertisement-

Featured Articles

-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-

Related Articles

-Advertisement-
-Advertisement-