The New Home Co. looks likely to have a busy year of building in Orange County.
The Aliso Viejo-based builder—developer of the Lambert Ranch community in Irvine—last month signed a deal with Newport Beach-based Irvine Company to build 814 homes at five projects in Irvine.
The homes will be built under a fee contract with Irvine Co.’s in-house builder, Irvine Pacific. Construction for the first homes was expected to begin in late December, according to a Dec. 18 regulatory filing.
At least four of the five projects where New Home Co. will act as a fee builder are part of Irvine Co.’s forthcoming Orchard Hills development, according to city documents.
The fee-building agreement was disclosed in an updated registration statement New Home Co. filed with the Securities and Exchange Commission.
The builder is looking to raise about $172.5 million in an initial public offering later this year.
New Home Co. filings with the SEC made last summer noted that the builder signed a letter of intent to buy a pair of undisclosed sites in Irvine totaling 108 lots and selling for a combined $118.2 million.
It was widely assumed that those deals were also for Irvine Co. land at Orchard Hills, which is expected to have some of the highest-priced new homes in the city when it opens for sales this year.
The Dec. 18 SEC filing made no mention of those two proposed land deals; it is believed that they have now closed.
New Home Co. also has its sights set on other local projects outside Irvine.
Its high-end 79-home Meridian project in Newport Center will open this year, and the builder said it expects prices for the condo project to start at around $2 million.
In San Juan Capistrano, a 31-home, single-family project called Oliva also is slated to open this year, according to regulatory filings.
Homes at the project, off Del Obispo Street, will be as large as 5,300 square feet and have starting prices near $1.6 million.
New Home Co. also is building a pair of homes at Dana Point’s oceanfront Strand development under a fee-building arrangement. Those homes should be completed this year and will have asking prices of more than $5 million.
Sonoma Buys
Newport Beach-based City Ventures Inc., another area homebuilder with a potential IPO on the horizon, has made a large acquisition of previously bank-owned land in Northern California.
The company recently closed on the purchase of seven residential-zoned properties in Sonoma County totaling about 95 acres.
Terms of the deal, first reported in the North Bay Business Journal, weren’t disclosed. The seller was North Valley Bank.
It is City Venture’s largest purchase to date in Sonoma County, according to the builder, which could start construction on some of the land this year.
Properties include sites in the cities of Santa Rosa, Windsor and Cotati.
City Ventures, founded in 2009, filed plans last summer to raise upward of $150 million in an IPO. That prospective offering, like the New Home Co. IPO, remains on hold.
Westside Apartments
Early-stage work is under way for a trio of apartment complexes planned by the Irvine Co. for the Westside Los Angeles neighborhood of Playa Vista.
Terra-Petra, a Los Angeles-based environmental engineering firm, said it has begun work for a methane mitigation system installation at the three Irvine Co. apartment projects at Playa Vista, a sprawling development near the San Diego (405) and Marina (90) freeways.
The site is about a mile from the ocean and once held the headquarters of aviation pioneer Howard Hughes, one of the reasons Terra-Petra’s assistance is needed for the development.
Irvine Co. bought the land for the apartment portion of the developments in 2012 for an undisclosed price.
Business Journal estimates at the time put the 100-acre land deal at about $200 million.
The apartment complexes under way total 1,503 units and will be completed in 2017.
The first of the complexes is described by Terra-Petra as Mediterranean-style, four stories tall, and with underground parking.
McLarand Vasquez Emsiek & Partners of Irvine is the architect for the project, and Irvine-based Western National is the general contractor.
Irvine Co. currently owns just one rental property in Los Angeles County: Santa Monica’s high-end 1221 Ocean Ave., where monthly rents start at more than $6,000, and penthouses command prices in excess of $20,000.
