Irvine’s most affordable batch of newly built, for-sale homes in years have hit the market, with a look unlike much of what’s been built to date in Orange County’s fastest-growing city.
William Lyon Homes (NYSE:WLH) last week took the wraps off Nova, the first of seven types of homes it will be building at Novel Park, the latest community to open at FivePoint Holdings LLC’s Great Park Neighborhoods.
The community is just off Irvine Boulevard, along Ridge Road, in the northwestern portion of the former El Toro Marine base.
The Newport Beach-based builder paid a reported $166 million for the 33 acres that will hold Novel Park. It is building all the homes at the entire 536-unit development—the other six product types will be rolled out over the next month.
Nova has the lowest priced offerings at Novel Park. Homes there include a mix of single-story flats arranged in three-floor buildings; units range from 654 square feet to 1,555 square feet. Pricing starts around $435,000 for the smaller one-bedroom units and $680,000 for three-bedroom units.
New homes in Irvine have been averaging closer to $1 million in recent years.
The units are selling for $667 per square foot for the smallest options, and $437 per square foot for the largest. A per-square-foot price around $500 is the norm for much of the newer homes in the city of late.
With the lowered price comes a few design tweaks from most other area offerings. Nova flats lack larger closet and storage space in the units themselves; instead, there are individual storage units for each home in the main hallways of each floor.
A majority of the ground-floor garages hold two cars, but the space is arranged so the cars park bumper to bumper, rather than side to side. There’s also a shared space for bikes in each building.
FivePoint (NYSE: FPH) Chief Executive Emile Haddad noted earlier this month that a goal of the Great Park Neighborhoods is to offer “a wide range of homes catering to people from different generations and economic abilities.”
William Lyon has indicated that Nova is likely to appeal to first-time homebuyers, as well as those who are downsizing.
