Irvine-based TRI Pointe Group Inc. has made its largest reported Orange County land deal in several years for a 232-home infill housing site in downtown Anaheim.
The publicly traded homebuilder, whose market value is about $2.4 billion, recently took over a portion of a 20.7-acre site at 901 E. South St. about three-quarters of a mile from Anaheim City Hall.
The vacant site, home to industrial buildings totaling about 340,000 square feet that was last used by trade-show company Freeman Co., was recently entitled for a combined 232 detached homes and attached townhomes and 314 apartments.
The entitlement work was headed by Irvine-based Shopoff Realty Investments.
TRI Pointe is acquiring the roughly 15 acres that will hold the for-sale portion from a venture between Shopoff and its Wayne, Pa.-based financial partner in the property, Argosy Real Estate Partners.
It’s paying about $48.3 million, property records show, in a deal with Calabasas-based land banking firm Hearthstone Inc., according to property records and real estate sources.
The sale, brokered by Marc Kleiman and Dan McDonough with the Irvine office of Province West, works out to about $208,000 per home lot.
Outside of land sales made on OC’s larger master-planned communities, the transaction is the largest reported land deal here this year for a for-sale housing project, according to records of real estate market tracker CoStar Group Inc.
The for-sale homes will come in three product types. Some will be more affordably priced and should fall under current Federal Housing Administration loan limits for the area, according to Kleiman.
FHA limits for one living-unit homes in Orange County are at about $680,000.
The entire for-sale portion of the development should bring in more than $150 million in revenue for the builder, said Kleiman, who estimated construction could begin in the first half of next year.
The site generated interest from multiple public builders seeking to add more affordable local offerings, he said.
“The deal was unique, in that it gave one builder the opportunity to build all three product types on their own.”
Shopoff Realty and Argosy still own acreage where apartments will be built but plan to sell that parcel to a multifamily developer, according to Bill Shopoff, founder and chief executive of the real estate investor and developer, though an asking price hasn’t been disclosed.
Shopoff Realty is also heading development of the 25-acre Uptown Newport project underway on Jamboree Road in Newport Beach that’s entitled for more than 1,200 homes and apartments.
Shopoff declined to comment on the sale of the for-sale portion of the Anaheim property, citing confidentiality agreements. His firm and Argosy paid about $38 million for the entire site early last year, according to property records.
By unit count, the 546-unit project would be the largest housing development in downtown Anaheim since the recession.
More than 2,000 homes have been built near the Packing House food hall and Center Street Promenade over the past decade, city officials say.
The biggest residential project built in the vicinity of the 901 E. South St. site is Colony Park, a 670-unit townhome community that opened in 2008.
Infill Boost
TRI Pointe’s Anaheim project would be its largest OC development in several years by home count.
The company, which sells homes locally as TRI Pointe Homes, had nine projects underway here at the end of last year, when 310 of 824 planned homes had been sold.
By unit count, its largest OC project at the time was Aria, a 151-home development at Rancho Mission Viejo where homes start at about $636,000, according to the company’s latest annual report.
It also has the 149-unit StrataPointe townhome project on Artesia Boulevard in Buena Park where a Nabisco food manufacturing facility once was. Units start at about $530,000. TRI Pointe bought the site about two years ago in a deal the Business Journal estimated at $30 million.
“We are looking to this project to build on downtown Anaheim’s appeal as a place for cool, urban living,” said Anaheim spokesperson Mike Lyster.
“Ownership changes aren’t unusual for projects like this, and we’re glad to see it moving forward with TRI Pointe, a builder we are familiar with for their work creating a community on a former school site in east Anaheim.”
