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Trad Couple Pays $5.1M for Contemporary in CdM­­

A semi-retired business owner and his wife recently closed on a home in Corona del Mar’s Cameo Shores neighborhood that was anything but an obvious first choice.

They purchased the five-bedroom property at 4527 Fairfield Drive for $5.1 million cash. The home had been priced for $6.4 million in January 2011.

“We pulled up, and they looked at me like I was nuts,” recalled Coleen Brennan, an agent in Prudential California Realty’s Corona del Mar office.

The exterior of the house is contemporary, and they are very traditional, Brennan explained.

The agent persuaded the couple to take a look inside, if only to take in the property’s ocean view for comparison purposes.

“We walked through the front door, and their mouths dropped,” Brennan said. “It was love at first sight.”

They liked the open floor plan of the 5,000-square-foot home, featuring four baths and an ocean view from the kitchen, dining area and family room.

A 3,000-square-foot underground garage accommodates seven cars.

“The courtyard has glass on all sides, so it feels like you’re outside but you’re not,” Brennan said. “It’s all what you want here, which is outside living.”

Architect and seller M.J. Knitter of Newport Beach-based Knitter Partners International Inc. built the house to live in with his wife.

Staci Dancey and Cathy Kroopf, agents with Newport Beach-based Surterre Properties Inc., represented the Knitters.

Brennan started working with the buyers about two years ago. The couple postponed their house hunt for a period when the buyer’s business got busy. They only recently resumed the search—with an extra couple of million to spend and more of what they wanted: to see and hear the ocean crashing, with space for their dogs in a move-in-ready beach house.

Brennan took them to about a dozen houses in Laguna Beach, Beacon Bay in Newport Beach, and finally Cameo Shores, visiting the only property in the neighborhood available to show that weekend. The next weekend they looked at a few other homes in Cameo Shores and decided that 4527 Fairfield was the one, Brennan said.

“We were done in two weekends,” the agent said.

Pelican Crest

Rex McKown, an agent with Surterre Properties, recently closed on two cash transactions in the double-digit millions.

A home at 9 Avalon Vista in Newport Coast, which was listed for $15.7 million in 2010, sold for $11 million. McKown represented the seller, a local surgeon with grown children who wanted to move to a smaller home.

Sam Ali, an agent with Riverside-based Ash Realty, represented the buyers, a local independent businessman and his family.

The 13,600-square-foot, ocean-view home in the Pelican Crest neighborhood was set to be sold last year to another buyer and was tied up in escrow for about 10 months until financing collapsed, McKown said.

When the new buyers came along they had been looking at homes for about four years.

They were tough negotiators, he said.

The buyers plan to make changes to the home.

“They saw a potential to make it what they really wanted,” the agent said.

McKown also was involved in the $10.9 million sale of 1 Shell Beach in the Crystal Cove neighborhood in Newport Beach. The property had been posted for $13.5 million in November 2011.

Lena Doroudi of Surterre Properties represented the buyers, an entrepreneur and his family. The buyers of the 9,303-square-foot, ocean-view home already lived in Crystal Cove and wanted a bigger house.

Recent sales

Other recent luxury-home sales included:

n 23 Lagunita Drive in Laguna Beach, which sold for $5.7 million, down from $6.5 million in October 2011.

John Stanaland, an agent with Newport Beach-based HÔM Sotheby’s International Realty, represented the seller and the buyer. The 4,100-square-foot home, featuring five bedrooms and four bathrooms, is located in the gated Lagunita neighborhood on the ocean side of Pacific Coast Highway.

n 12 Beacon Bay in Newport Beach sold for $4.9 million, down from $5.9 million when first listed in January 2011. Karen Betson of Surterre Properties represented the seller.

Carol Lee, also with Surterre, represented the buyer.

The home was built in 2007 by Corona del Mar-based Tony Valentine Construction and was designed by Newport Beach-based Brion Jeanette Architecture. Homes in Beacon Bay are on privately owned land, so homeowners pay an annual lease of about 2.5% of the purchase price.

Email recent transactions above $4 million to cruz@ocbj.com.

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