Bill Gross, cofounder of Newport Beach-based Pacific Investment Management Co., is selling a waterfront lot on exclusive Harbor Island.
Last week, the 18,150-square-foot bayfront lot at 24 Harbor Island was listed for sale at $26.5 million.
Gross bought the property two years ago for $23 million and razed a mansion that had sat on the land.
Kathryn White, an agent for Hom Real Estate Group, has the listing. She declined to comment for this story.
The property has enough waterfront—112 feet—to fit three large yachts. It’s a rare listing for Harbor Island that could get snapped up quickly, despite a lingering slump in high-end real estate here.
In 2009, the property was sold by the estate of philanthropist and art collector Elizabeth Colyear Vincent, who died early that year.
The property came with an 11,000-square-foot, nine-bedroom Georgian-style mansion, which Vincent had owned for 35 years.
The home, built in 1979, was valued at about $1.7 million in 2009. The land was valued at $21.3 million.
Gross leveled the home and had planned to build a new one on the site.
Since then, the property has remained vacant, a giant hole along the waterfront that has had people musing on what he might build.
The primary residence of Gross and wife Sue is in Laguna Beach.
Harbor Island, accessed by a single bridge, is one of the county’s priciest neighborhoods.
It has about 30 homes and is the fourth largest private island in Newport Harbor next to Collins, Bay and Linda.
Harbor Island is home to some of the county’s most prominent businesspeople. Actors June Allyson and Dick Powell were among the famous former residents of the island.
Island History
In the 1970s Harbor Island dwellers paid around $275,000 for lots.
By the 1990s, homes were selling for as much as $15 million.
In 2010, another Harbor Island bayfront mansion sold for $27 million to a Colorado couple, according to the Wall Street Journal.
The 12,600-square-foot house with more than 300 feet of bayfront—nearly triple that of Gross’s property—originally was listed for $38 million.
The seller was apparel executive Arnold Simon, who bought the home in 2001 for $14 million.
