Fueled by a weak dollar and lower prices, international buyers are snapping up luxury homes in Orange County.
“I see more of the international clientele coming, and they’re starting to buy,” said Jacqueline Thompson, an agent for Newport Beach-based Surterre Properties Inc.
She recently sold a couple of homes to international buyers, including one on Linda Isle in Newport Beach.
She sold the Linda Isle home on the third showing in a cash deal to a Chinese businessman and his wife. The couple has multiple homes in the U.S.
The seller is moving out of the area for business, said Thompson, who represented the seller.
Renee West of Prudential California Realty’s Corona del Mar office represented the buyer.
The home sold quickly, and for not much less than the asking price. It was listed in January for $6.4 million and sold late last month for $6.2 million.
The home first sold in 1989 for $2.5 million, according to Redfin.com, a Seattle-based brokerage. It was sold once more in 1997 for $2.2 million.
Linda Isle is a horseshoe-shaped waterfront area off Pacific Coast Highway, just before Mariner’s Mile. Each of the homes has a private boat dock.
Irvine Company developed Linda Isle in the 1960s. It was named after Linda Irvine, the granddaughter of James Irvine II.
Early on, people called it Shark Island after the sand sharks that hung out there. A few movies have been filmed on Linda Isle, including the 1940s film “Sands of Iwo Jima” starring one of the county’s most famous residents, John Wayne. He had a home near Linda Isle.
Many local business moguls have lived in Linda Isle, including Irvine Co.’s Donald Bren.
Paul Salata, the founder of Irrelevant Week—a celebration of the final pick in the National Football League’s yearly draft—currently lives there.
Residents like the privacy of the island, Thompson said.
“It’s one of the best gates for privacy,” she said.
The home’s layout appealed to the buyers. It has four bedrooms upstairs. It’s rare to have that many bedrooms all on one floor in Linda Isle, Thompson said. The bedrooms are relatively large with big closets and his-and-her sinks in the master bedroom.
“It has one of the best layouts in all of Linda Isle,” Thompson said.
The buyer also liked the way the sun shines on the home.
“It’s a very nice orientation, facing southwestern exposure, which is exactly where you want the sun to shine on it,” she said.
Thompson had a few luxury home closings in March, $22 million worth in all. Year to date, she’s sold $34 million. Most of her listings are referrals from past clients, she said.
“My numbers really help me,” she said.
She’s bullish about luxury market despite some recent sluggishness.
“There are still a lot of buyers walking through open houses, which is a good indicator of the pulse of the market,” Thompson said.
She said she gets eight to 12 potential buyers at her open houses and tries to learn as much as she can about them.
“To be effective you have to know what buyers are out there, who’s looking,” Thompson said.
Another of Thompson’s March sales was 83 Canyon Creek in Irvine’s Shady Canyon.
The newly built home sold within six months for $4.5 million to a retired couple who have multiple homes in Shady Canyon. It listed for $5.4 million in October.
The 8,546-square-foot, three-level home has four bedrooms on one level.
Last year Thompson sold $80 million worth of real estate, including $50 million in Shady Canyon.
Big Laguna Sale
Sometimes a buyer wants one thing but ends up going with something different.
Suzi Dailey, an agent for Prudential California Realty who sells homes as Dailey by the Sea, recently represented a retired American businessman who she said is frequently featured on the front page of the Wall Street Journal.
The buyer and his girlfriend flew to OC on a private jet with the intention of looking for homes within the $2.5 million to $3 million range, Dailey said.
She showed him a few of those listings. But by the afternoon, he had a hankering for an ocean view. He asked Dailey if she had any oceanfront homes available. She made some calls, and they toured a few more homes.
“When he walked out and he was on the oceanfront, he said, ‘Now we’re talking,’” Dailey said.
The buyer showed interest in a newly built, ecofriendly home at 990 Ocean Front in Laguna Beach. Laguna Beach-based Tresor Properties, a builder of luxury ecofriendly homes, built and listed the home. Laguna’s Mark Singer Architects designed the home.
By his second visit to the home, he was thinking in terms of an offer, she said.
On his third visit, Dailey had a team of experts at the ready, including the builder and a civil engineer. “There were a lot of experts there to assure him of any questions he had,” Dailey said.
She also brought champagne and a birthday cake for his girlfriend.
After looking at the home three times in two weeks, he bought it for $11.5 million. The sale was one of the highest so far this year.
Made a recent sale? Contact me at cruz@ocbj.com.
