William Lyon Homes has put its high-profile Newport Beach headquarters up for sale and is looking to relocate to a smaller location in the area around John Wayne Airport.
The homebuilder, which emerged from a short stint in bankruptcy this year, is looking to sell its longtime headquarters at 4490 Von Karman Ave. for about $11.2 million.
The asking price for the 32,093-square-foot building, located a few blocks from the airport at Von Karman and Birch Street, comes to about $350 per square foot.
Brokers with the Newport Beach office of CBRE Group Inc. have the listing for the two-story property and also are working with the homebuilder to find new office space.
“Underutilized”
The builder expects to remain in the “general area” as its current headquarters, according to Bill H. Lyon, president and chief operating officer of the builder and son of the company’s founder and namesake, Gen. William Lyon.
“It’s a good opportunity for us to sell (the office),” Bill Lyon said. “The building’s been underutilized.”
The builder has about 60 people working at its headquarters, he said.
The company was estimated to employ nearly 300 people in Orange County near the peak of the last housing boom.
“We’ve gotten leaner and meaner,” Lyon said.
The iconic builder has been in its current location for about 25 years. The company and its predecessors have sold some 100,000 homes since 1956, becoming one of the better-known builders on the West Coast over that time.
A time frame for the sale’s completion hasn’t been announced. The 4490 Von Karman office, built in 1979, was put on the market last week.
Family trusts tied to the Lyon family own the 4490 Von Karman property and lease it back to the builder. The lease runs about another year, according to Bill Lyon.
The Von Karman building is expected to generate interest from potential owner-users looking for a prominent Newport Beach location, said Anthony DeLorenzo, a broker with CBRE’s investment properties group, which is handling the marketing for the office.
The office is across the street from the Fairmont Hotel and about a block from the Pacific Club.
A sale of the builder’s headquarters would be the latest notable operational change for William Lyon Homes, which builds homes in California, Arizona and Nevada.
The company filed for a prepackaged bankruptcy filing late last year, as part of an effort to restructure its debt.
The restructuring saw the builder reduce its debt load by about $180 million while getting an additional $85 million of capital.
Noteholders, led by New York-based hedge fund Luxor Capital Group LP, grabbed a sizable equity stake in the builder following the bankruptcy, which was concluded in late February.
The restructuring left Gen. William Lyon and his family owning about 20% of the builder, plus warrants to buy an additional 9% of the company’s common stock.
Lyon and his family owned about 95% of the company, which he took private in 2006, prior to the restructuring.
The proposed sale of the Newport Beach office is the second big commercial property deal involving William Lyon Homes that’s been announced in the past month.
San Francisco-based real estate investor Rockwood Capital LLC announced in early May that it had bought a 27-acre former mall site in Northern California from the builder for a reported $90 million. William Lyon Homes bought the site, located on the border of Mountain View and Palo Alto, last October for an estimated $65 million. It had planned to convert the site into a housing development before deciding to sell it to Rockwood for an apparently steep profit.
The builder remains on the lookout for residential land opportunities in Northern California as well as in Orange County, where it has several projects under way, Bill Lyon said.
Others on Market
The 4490 Von Karman building is one of several small- and midsize offices running between Birch Avenue and MacArthur Boulevard in the Koll Center Newport office campus that have been put up for sale of late.
Pricier buildings currently up for sale include 4300 Von Karman, a smaller office owned by Professional Real Estate Services Inc. The company, which also goes by Pres Cos., has its headquarters at the building.
The 6,850-square-foot Pres building is listed for sale at $4.9 million, or about $715 per square foot.
Among closed office deals in that same stretch is a nearly 43,000-square-foot building at 4440 Von Karman Ave. That building traded hands for about $12 million, or roughly $280 per square foot, late last year.
