Toll Brothers Inc. has completed Orange County’s biggest land acquisition this year, buying into a Lake Forest property expected to hold 1,780 homes and 414 apartments.
The Pennsylvania-based homebuilder last week finalized its purchase of a 50% interest in Baker Ranch, a 387-acre master planned community set to begin development later this year. The site is between Bake and Alton parkways, next to the Foothill (241) Toll Road.
Financial terms were not disclosed, but real estate sources familiar with the deal said Toll paid about $130 million in the transaction. That works out to $118,000 per residential unit, assuming Toll builds half of those planned.
The sale is one of the largest residential land transactions in California in the last five years, according to Province West, an Irvine-based land brokerage that worked on the sale. The last OC residential land sale believed to have been in excess of $100 million was Irvine Company’s reported $101.4 million buy of a 14-acre site at Irvine’s Park Place campus, where a 980-unit apartment complex is planned.
Toll Brothers bought its stake in the Lake Forest site from Baker Ranch Properties LLC. The Baker family once owned close to 5,000 acres in the area, after snapping up land in the late 1950s.
This sale involved the last significant portion of the Baker family’s land, developed over time into most of what is today the city of Lake Forest. A unit of Walnut-based homebuilder Shea Homes owns the other 50% interest in the Baker Ranch and retained that stake following last week’s transaction.
Shea and the Baker family spent more than a decade getting the site entitled for residential development. The land once was expected to hold a commercial business park, but plans changed after the closure of the nearby El Toro Marine Air Base.
Shea Homes and Toll Brothers will partner on the development and are expect to begin grading at the Baker Ranch site this fall. Models home openings are tentatively planned for early 2014.
The project is expected to hold 21 residential neighborhoods within three villages, in a mix of single-family attached, detached and multi-family homes. The development also is slated to hold about 40 acres of open space and recreation areas, including an 8.4-acre central park.
