Record-Breaking $70M Sale in Laguna Beach

Last year, Orange County hit a new sales price record for luxury homes twice over. This year, that record has been shattered once again.

Late last month, an 18,000-square-foot estate in the exclusive Laguna Beach enclave of Abalone Point sold for $70 million, breaking the previous record of $61 million set last year in Crystal Cove for a home bought by loanDepot’s Anthony Hsieh.

Records indicate biotech hedge fund executive Joseph Edelman and his wife, Susan Lebovitz-Edelman, acquired the 1-acre parcel at 2585 Riviera Drive, situated inside the high-end community of Irvine Cove, at the northern edge of Laguna Beach along Coast Highway.

The record deal was first reported by the Wall Street Journal.

The price is more than double what the sellers paid for the property in 2018, when it traded for $32.7 million, not including personal property.

The home includes a five-bedroom main residence, two-story guesthouse, a wine cellar, screening room and a pool cabana.

Jon Curci and Rex McKown of the McKown Weinstein Associates team at Compass represented the buyer; Evan Corkett and Steve High of Villa Real Estate represented the sellers, only identified in property and legal records as Abalone Point LLC.

State records and other press reports indicate the seller is Jason Moore, owner of Irvine’s Merchant Services, a credit card processing company.

Litigation 

The deal was not a straightforward one, as is often the case in Abalone Point, where there are only 12 homes and nine homeowners. One resident, Sue Gross, owns three of the 12 homes.

Abalone Point homeowners have the option to keep the neighborhood as exclusive as they want, with a right of first refusal covenant in the HOA that’s unique to the community’s residents.

The record price paid by Edelman didn’t buy happy neighbors.

A lawsuit alleges the sellers of 2585 Riviera Drive did not follow protocol after sending out a memo notifying neighbors of a $45 million offer on the house with an additional $25 million for personal property.

One neighbor at 2675 Riviera Drive, identified in court records as the owner of Colorado-based Cliffhanger LLC, allegedly exercised its right of first refusal by matching the $45 million offer, and filed a lawsuit after that offer was refused.

The sellers of the home have flatly denied all of the lawsuit’s assertations.

Rare Sale

Homes rarely come online within the 12-home community, with no active listings currently.

Prior to the sale of 2585 Riviera, only one other home has sold since 2018: an 8,600-square-foot home across the street at 2620 Riviera Drive.

That six-bedroom, nine-bath inland home sold in May for nearly $24.3 million. When it hit the market earlier this year with a $30 million price tag, it was the second area residence to go on the market in nearly three years.

Rob Giem of Compass represented that property’s seller; Villa Real Estate’s John Stanaland represented the buyer.

The 8,600-square-foot home has three stories, a unique feature for Abalone Point; the other homes on the oceanside of Coast Highway in Irvine Cove are only allowed to be one level above ground.

Prior to that listing, the last home to hit the market in Abalone Point was 2675 Riviera Drive, first listed in August 2020 for $60 million. It was pulled from the market two months later.