Agents swapping leads led to the sale of an unlisted ocean-view home on Sandcastle Drive in Corona del Mar.
The four-bedroom, two-bathroom home in the Harbor View Hills neighborhood sold for $3.8 million in cash, just under the seller’s asking price of $4 million. The buyer, a pharmaceutical company executive, liked the home the moment he saw it.
“He knew that was the house he wanted,” said Cathy Kroopf, an agent with Newport Beach-based Surterre Properties Inc. who represented the buyer.
“He just really, really loved it,” Kroopf said. “He bought it with furniture and all.”
The buyer wanted a home in an ungated neighborhood, she said. The seller was a real estate agent from a local agency who buys homes to fix up for resale.
Kroopf found out about the home through her colleague Jody Chapman, also an agent with Surterre Properties.
The seller had originally purchased the home through Chapman and talked about putting the home on the market at some point. Chapman mentioned to Kroopf that the home wasn’t listed, but if Kroopf brought a buyer, the seller might be interested in selling the home.
Kroopf knew of just a prospective buyer. She had shown him a $6.3 million home in Cameo Shores in Newport Beach, a home he liked but didn’t end up buying.
The Corona del Mar home was originally built in 1967 and has been renovated through the years.
Kroopf said the sale worked out well for both parties: The seller didn’t have to put his home on the market, and the buyer found a home that he liked in a market with a limited number of homes.
Kroopf said it is getting to be a seller’s market for coastal properties. She’s been getting four to five offers on homes, similar to the activity before the recession struck.
“Some agents are being savvy and underpricing to lure buyers,” she said.
Rockledge Auction
Villa Rockledge, a historic mission-style mansion on oceanfront-bluff property in Laguna Beach, is being auctioned on Dec. 15.
The opening bid is $10.5 million.
The home was built by Frank Miller, developer of the Mission Inn Hotel & Spa in Riverside, and was designed by architect Arthur Benton. The home—once called Mariona, for Jones’ second wife, Marion—was Miller’s beach residence.
The home has been listed on and off in the past few years. In 2009 it was listed for about $35 million. Most recently it was listed for $29 million.
The auction will be held on the property at 2529 S. Coast Highway. Prospective buyers need to be registered.
Manhattan Beach-based Premiere Estates Auction Co. is handling the auction for the current owners, Roger Jones and Sherill Bottjer.
Jeff Knowles, an agent with SageLang Inc. in Monarch Beach, is the listing agent.
The 5,000-square-foot main house has eight bedrooms and seven bathrooms. The estate is 8,065 square feet in all, including several villas on site, for a total of 12 bedrooms and 11 baths. Below the home, nestled in the cliffs, is 120-feet-long beach-front.
The Joneses bought the home in 1973 for $430,000.
Roger Jones, a retired manager of an electronic parts company, used to rent one of the villas at the estate before he made an offer to buy the entire property.
The Joneses, who live in the main house, have restored and tended to the estate over the past few decades. In his 70s now, Jones told The Wall Street Journal in 2009 that Villa Rockledge was too large for he and his wife. They had planned to move to a lakeside retreat in Washington.
Villa Rockledge, the oldest home on the ocean in Laguna Beach, is listed in the National Register of Historic Places.
Jones researched the history of the home for many years and published a book: The History of Villa Rockledge: A National Treasure in Laguna Beach.
It hosted Hollywood celebrities in its early years, including Bette Davis and Errol Flynn.
If Villa Rockledge sells for more than $22 million, it could be the highest-priced sale of the year.
The highest-priced sale so far this year is 2692 Bayshore Drive in Newport Beach, which sold for $22 million. The home had been on the market since 2010, when it was listed for $31.2 million.
It had been in escrow late in 2011, but a reported deal to entrepreneur Winston Chung collapsed. Herbst bought the home in 2008 from actor Nicolas Cage for $35 million.
Argyros Sale
The 10,000-square-foot home at 7 Troon Drive sold for $10 million, down from $12.9 million when it was listed in May.
The seven-bedroom, contemporary Troon Drive home is in the exclusive One Ford Road neighborhood of Newport Beach.
Stephanie Argyros of Costa Mesa-based Arnel Estates represented the buyer and seller. The buyer was a couple from Chicago. The sellers were her parents, George Argyros, owner of Arnel & Affiliates, and his wife, Julia Argyros, who lived in the home while remodeling their Harbor Island property.
