Home and land sales to homebuilders continue to be strong at Irvine’s Great Park Neighborhoods, according to the project’s master developer.
The former El Toro Marine base saw 135 home sales in the third quarter, bringing year-to-date sales totals at the community to 591, according to Lynn Jochim, president and chief operating officer for FivePoint Holdings LLC, which oversees the massive Irvine property.
Sales thus far in 2021 are up 44% compared to the first nine months of 2020, according to Jochim, who a few months ago took over the top spot at the Irvine-based developer from FivePoint founder Emile Haddad, who now serves as chairman emeritus.
The Great Park Neighborhoods is now capturing about 23% of the new home sales in Orange County over the last year, Jochim told analysts earlier this month, following the company’s latest earnings report.
Pulte, Taylor Morrison
FivePoint reported selling a total of 133 homesites to builders last quarter, for what regulatory filings indicate was $65.1 million. The 13-acre land sale works out to a price of $5 million an acre, and nearly $490,000 per home lot.
The homebuilders that bought the land weren’t disclosed by FivePoint; CoStar Group Inc. records indicate the buyers were Pulte Homes and Taylor Morrison, which each paid more than $30 million for their portions of land.
The September deal follows a separate, larger land sale the prior quarter, when 774 home sites traded for a reported $328 million, or about $423,000 per home lot.
With the continued strong pace of home sales in Irvine, “we expect to have [another] meaningful land sale in the second half of 2022,” Jochim told analysts.
The Great Park Neighborhoods, which totals about 2,100 acres, is currently designed to include 10,500 homesites. More than 7,000 home sites have been sold to date.
Housing Mandate
FivePoint is looking to boost entitlement figures for its Irvine project, in an effort to help the city meet state requirements for increasing its base of affordable housing options.
The company is working with “community leaders to pave the way for additional and essential homesite entitlements to help our public partner at the city of Irvine to comply with the state housing mandate and to mitigate California’s housing shortage,” Jochim told analysts.
“We have engaged with them on opportunities here at the Great Park, and [discussed] how we can provide the necessary housing that they have been targeted to deliver in order to meet the state needs.”
The developer is still working through what kind of type of housing would work best to meet those needs, she said.
FivePoint’s also “crafting a renewed strategy approach” to its commercial development opportunities at its Irvine land holdings and its other master-planned developments in the state, Jochim said.
FivePoint currently has entitlements for 4.9 million square feet of commercial development at the Great Park Neighborhoods.
