An Arizona family recently purchased a home at 765 Gaviota Drive in Laguna Beach for $7.5 million, representing the highest-priced real estate sale in the community this year.
The family purchased the 4,200-square-foot oceanfront home, situated within walking distance to Laguna Village, in an all-cash transaction. Both the buyer and seller are from Arizona.
“This is a popular place for Arizonans to have second homes,” said Ray McAfoose, an agent with Coldwell Banker. McAfoose represented the seller.
McAfoose had the listing for about seven months.
He listed it for $7.9 million.
A couple of years ago it was listed by another agent for about $14 million.
The sellers, who have other homes in Orange County and Arizona, are retired and hadn’t been spending as much time in Laguna Beach.
The home was custom-built in 2007 with light hardwood and Pennsylvania oak floors.
“They did not cut any corners,” McAfoose said. “It is really well built.”
The home didn’t get many offers, but the few offers that were made were sound, McAfoose said.
“This was a tremendously solid offer, so my sellers agreed to negotiate,” he said. “Both seller and buyer felt very good about the transaction.”
Eliisa Stowell, an agent with Newport Beach-based Surterre Properties Inc., represented the buyers. Stowell also is representing them in the sale of their 4,044-square-foot Cape Cod-style home in Corona del Mar, situated away from the beach at 221 Poinsettia Ave. and listed for $3.9 million.
The family wanted a beach home somewhere on the bluff between Corona del Mar and Laguna Beach, she said.
“They just wanted to be on the beach so they can walk down the steps and surf,” the agent said.
The Gaviota home has private steps that lead to the beach. Stowell brought the home to the buyer’s attention in the past, but they didn’t want to pay $14 million for a home that wasn’t brand new.
The buyers weren’t in a hurry to buy, but the price drop was incentive for them to buy now, she said.
They plan to renovate inside the house.
Good Feng Shui
Privacy, a giant lot and an appealing layout helped sell 8 Peninsula in Newport Coast.
The two-level custom Santa Barbara-style home in the exclusive Pelican Ridge neighborhood recently sold for $4.4 million, down from $4.8 million when it was listed in October. The home is touted as having good feng shui, a design technique rooted in Chinese culture and now used by many designers worldwide. Kathryn White, an agent with Newport Beach-based HÔM Sotheby’s International Realty Inc., represented the buyer, along with her real estate partner John Cain.
Tami Wang, of Remax Orange County East in Tustin, represented the buyer.
The buyer already owned a home in Pelican Ridge and wanted another nearby.
The home was built by Newport Beach-based Manning Homes in 2007.
The seller, the original owner, wanted to be closer to the water and moved to an oceanfront home in Orange County, White said.
8 Peninsula doesn’t have an ocean view, but it’s on a cul-de-sac and has a gated driveway with good privacy. The 7,283-square-foot home is on an oversized lot with plenty of space for entertaining. It’s one of the larger lots in the Pelican Ridge neighborhood.
The 24-hour guarded Pelican Ridge is similar to the Crystal Cove or Shady Canyon neighborhoods, a mix of custom homes and production homes.
Some celebrities are known to live in Pelican Ridge, including basketball star Kobe Bryant.
Bits and Pieces
3030 Breakers Drive in Corona del Mar, listed last month for $11.5 million, has been reduced as of June 6 to $9.5 million. The 8,000-square-foot, ocean-view property on Big Corona Beach—a multifamily compound built in 2005—is listed by Stowell of Surterre Properties. … A lack of inventory has Orange County homebuyers less optimistic about buying a home in the second quarter compared to the first quarter, according to Redfin.com’s second-quarter homebuyer survey, with 52% of OC respondents believing now is a good time to buy. That’s down from 57% last quarter. Some 62% of OC respondents said there weren’t enough homes on the market, up from 58% of homebuyers in the first quarter.
