RESIDENTIAL
Irvine Company is Orange County’s largest landowner and arguably its most powerful company. Now executives at the Newport Beach real estate owner and developer also would like to be thought of as entrepreneurs.
Startup thinking is behind the company’s latest homebuilding project in Irvine, said Dan Young, president of Irvine Co.’s Community Development division, which directs development of homes, parks and shopping centers on company land.
I met with Young and other Irvine Co. executives last month. The company is rolling out details about its new “executive builder” program at Woodbury and Woodbury East near the former El Toro Marine base.
Builders there will be paid a fee to put up a majority of the 685 homes planned for the projects during the next two years.
The Business Journal broke the news of the executive builder program in July. More info was featured in a page 1 story in last week’s paper.
Irvine Co. is directing and financing the project out of its own pockets. A conservative estimate is that the company’s investing $300 million to put up the homes.
The company is effectively “making a major entrepreneurial effort,” Young said.
“We were willing to take the risk when most people were on the sidelines watching,” he said.
A lot of planning went into the project, according to executives.
Irvine Co. spent close to two years doing research with a variety of study groups, tapping consultants and polling potential local buyers about their likes and dislikes of different model homes, according to Thomas Veal, vice president of residential marketing and product planning.
“We’ve done our homework,” Young said.
Changes that the research brought about include larger kitchens, open floor plans, “California rooms” with a mix of indoor and outdoor space and more storage space, Veal said.
Potential buyers now expect to be in their new homes for longer, close to seven or eight years, according to Veal. At the peak of the market, homebuyers may have only expected to live in their homes for three or so years, he said.
Buyers are more focused on cost these days, according to Michael Le Blanc, Irvine Co.’s senior vice president in charge of entitlement issues.
As such, the company’s eliminating one of two homeowners’ association fees for the project and has negotiated with the city’s school district to “substantially lower” Mello Roos taxes applied to homes, officials said.
Homes in Woodbury East are seen as appealing to cost-conscious buyers. The most affordable homes there will have sales prices starting at less than $300 per square foot, or in the $300,000s.
Woodbury’s new homes will be priced slightly higher and start closer to the $325 to $340 per square foot range.
Hoffman Vegas Office
Hoffman Co., an Irvine-based land brokerage, has opened an office in Las Vegas.
The office is focusing on helping banks with troubled loans or foreclosed properties by lining up sales of undeveloped land to developers or investors.
Hoffman currently has listings for more than 300 finished and improved lots in and around Las Vegas, as well as 24 acres of raw land.
It recently closed its first land deal in Nevada, the purchase by a private investor of more than a dozen new homes that had been foreclosed on by JPMorgan Chase & Co. and Bank of America Corp., both Hoffman clients.
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Haskell & White LLP, one of Irvine’s larger accounting firms, is moving to a larger office in the Irvine Spectrum.
The company, whose office had been on Laguna Canyon Road just off the San Diego (I-405) Freeway, is moving to a high-rise building at 8001 Irvine Center Drive at the start of next year.
Haskell & White is leasing 19,000 square feet at the building, owned by Irvine Co. Terms of the deal weren’t disclosed.
The new space allows Haskell & White and its 70 employees all to be on the same floor with room for growth, according to the company. The company’s current space is spread among multiple floors.
The accounting, auditing and tax consulting firms ranked No. 14 on the Business Journal’s July list of largest accounting firms, based on OC employees.
