Forget three- or even four-car garages. The mega rich are more likely to ask about how many boats they can dock at their prospective Orange County home, or how many horses a stable will hold, according to brokers who cater to wealthy buyers.
“Buyers are looking for extras and special features,” said Gary Legrand, president of Newport Beach-based Surterre Properties. “They want big docks to handle big boats.”
If you’re a boatman, $11.5 million will buy you a Linda Isle home in Newport Beach with six dock slips for yachts running up to 90 feet. The house, nestled tightly between other pricey homes on the island, counts six bedrooms and seven baths.
Buyers “are looking for monster views,” said Bill Cot & #233;, a luxury broker in Corona del Mar.
High-tech options are important, especially in the kitchen, according to Cot & #233;. And buyers want master bedrooms that will “knock your socks off,” he said.
Cot & #233;’s selling an $18 million, 2,774-square-foot Emerald Bay home in Laguna Beach that overlooks Irvine Cove Beach and has a pool and two spas.
Some wealthy buyers will put a million dollars or two of renovations into a home. But most expect their homes to have the necessary touches already in place.
“Buyers of $10 million-plus homes in Orange County demand a certain level of high-quality, luxury amenities,” said Coldwell Banker’s John McMonigle of Newport Beach, whose luxury brokerage McMonigle Group is the company’s top-selling team.
The Basics
As a baseline, features typically include theaters, gourmet kitchens with professional equipment, elevators for homes of three or more floors and the best finishes available, according to McMonigle.
Beyond those core items, the most expensive homes for sale in the county read like a “top this” contest.
Wine cellars are a must. But a $22.9 million Coto de Caza home offers its own vineyard on its 9 acres. It also includes a horse facility, two pools and two one-bedroom guest homes to go alongside the five-bedroom main home.
Need to work on your golf game? A 12.5-acre estate being built at Newport Beach’s Pelican Crest is set to have a two-hole golf course, along with a lake, orchard and a 21,000-square-foot home. The tentative price: $57 million.
If you like great views, $19 million will buy you an 8,000-square-foot oceanfront lot and home along Three Arch Bay in Laguna Beach. It has four bedrooms, not to mention disappearing doors that open to an oceanfront terrace, a director-quality theater, wine room and billiards room with a 2,200-gallon salt water aquarium.
The county’s wealthiest still are buying if the location’s right, brokers said. And they’re willing to pay top dollar.
That’s especially true along the coast. Developer Sanford Edward’s Strand at Headlands project in Dana Point is selling undeveloped lots at prices nearing $30 million per acre.
A 10,336-square-foot lot running some 25 feet above Strand Beach just sold for $9 million last month, a record for the region, according to Edward.
Existing multimillion-dollar homes continue to generate big sales, though not at the frantic clip of the past two years.
Through May, there were 60 sales of homes costing more than $3 million in and around Newport Beach. That’s more than the annual totals of any year before 2003.
But this year’s number of sales through May is down about 35% from the same period in the prior two years.
For even higher-priced homes, sales aren’t dropping as much. There were 19 sales of Newport Beach homes costing more than $5 million in the first five months of the year, down slightly from 23 sales in the same period last year, McMonigle said.
For ultra luxurious homes, “it’s still a normal market” along OC’s coast, Surterre’s Legrand said.
For homes more than $10 million that sold in the past year, the average per square foot price has run from $1,200 (at Pelican Crest) to nearly $5,000 (at Emerald Bay).
McMonigle has the listing for the most expensive home on the market, the $75 million Portabello estate on Corona del Mar’s coast. The house sits on a lot of about 42,000 square feet. With about half of the property livable, the home runs about $3,443 per square foot.
Forbes called it the sixth most expensive home on the market last year.
What do you get for $75 million? A three-story grotto with two pools, two spas and a swim-up bar, a two-lane bowling alley, an auto museum, an Art Deco theater and a 2,000-square-foot master bedroom suite. Not to mention a triple oceanfront lot with a panoramic view of the ocean.
Frank Pritt, who founded Bellevue, Wash.-based software maker Attachmate Corp., had the home built. He’s selling since he spends most of his time in the Seattle area.
