RESIDENTIAL
The pace of home sales in Laguna Beach and Newport Beach slowed notably in 2007. But the top ends of both coastal markets aren’t showing too much stress.
H & #244;m Real Estate Group, a luxury home brokerage in Newport Beach, just released its annual detailed neighborhood-by-neighborhood analysis of the priciest sales in the two beach cities.
Its data show a big discrepancy in sales for lower-priced homes,which still can run in the millions of dollars,and the ultra luxury homes that command more than $5 million.
“Homes from $2 million to $5 million are still selling, (but) they are staying on the market a little longer,” said Cari Young, managing broker for H & #244;m.
Total sales in both cities are down. In Newport Beach, there were grant deeds,a measure of home sales,recorded for 986 homes in 2007, down from 1,137 in 2006. Last year’s figures reflect a roughly 50% drop in sales from the averages recorded from 2002 to 2005.
Likewise, in Laguna Beach there were 333 grant deeds in 2007, down from 384 in 2006 and a much bigger drop from the 623 sales seen in 2002.
|
|
4 Park Plaza: Specific Media took 38,250 square feet |
Those drops are due primarily to slower sales at the lower end of the market.
Homes priced at more than $5 million are holding up better. In Newport Beach, for homes costing more than $5 million, there were 51 sales, compared to 59 in 2006 and 52 in 2005. The average price for the top 10% of sales in Newport Beach was $6.3 million, compared to $6.5 million in 2006.
On the upside, those homes sold after an average listing of 146 days, compared to 221 days in 2006.
In Laguna Beach, the average price for the top 10% of sales was $8.1 million, compared to $8.2 million in 2006, according to H & #244;m. Those homes were on the market for an average of 87 days, compared to 59 days in 2006.
The biggest reported discrepancy in a property’s list price and sales price seen last year appears to have been in Laguna Beach’s Emerald Bay, where a home listed for $22.5 million sold for $19 million.
COMMERCIAL
Irvine’s Specific Media Inc., an online advertising company, is more than doubling its office space at The Irvine Company’s Jamboree Center office campus.
The company signed a lease for 38,250 square feet at 4 Park Plaza and will be taking up a second floor of space at the building. Specific Media had been operating out of 15,000 square feet of space.
Terms of the lease weren’t disclosed. The Irvine Co. is marketing space at the building at $3.20 to $3.55 per square foot a month.
The deal means the Irvine Co. has filled up all the empty space at 4 Park Plaza following the departure last year of law firm Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP to the nearby 3161 Michelson office tower, owned by Maguire Properties Inc. Another law firm, Howrey LLP, took 34,000 square feet when Gibson moved out.
Specific Media operates an online advertising network. Earlier this year, it bought Britain’s Adviva Media Ltd., after raising $100 million in funding in 2007.
Tim Helgeson and Greg Tippin from the Irvine office of Newmark Knight Frank represented Specific Media. The Irvine Co. represented itself.
‘Like That’ Lease
The Offices of South Coast Plaza is grabbing a hip restaurant as a tenant.
Comme & #199;a, a French brasserie run by chef David Meyers, is set to open in November at Park Tower, which is run by the office division of C.J. Segerstrom & Sons LLC.
The 6,700-square-foot restaurant, which is being designed by 4c Design Group, should hold about 322 people. It will include a dining room, patio, cheese bar and lounge.
The first Comme & #199;a, which means “like that” in French, opened late last year on Melrose Avenue in Los Angeles. It’s been lauded for “turning out some of the most authentic,and delicious,French food in the city,” according to a food critic at the Los Angeles Times.
Grubb’s Managing Director Leaves
The managing director of brokerage operations for the Los Angeles region of Santa Ana-based Grubb & Ellis Co. has left the company.
Bill Boyd, who began working for Grubb & Ellis in 1998, left the company in May. Its one of the biggest brokerage-related departures at Grubb & Ellis since the company was acquired by NNN Realty Advisors Inc. late last year.
Boyd managed 26 commercial brokers in the company’s downtown office, eight brokers in the City of Industry outpost and oversaw three other offices in the region, according to the Los Angeles Business Journal.
