McCarron’s on the Housing Fast Track
CHRIS McCARRON, the jockey who won the $3-million Breeders’ Cup aboard Sunday Silence last month, and his wife, Judy, have sold their house in the Beverly Hills Post Office Area and are planning to build.
They sold the house they bought three years ago in a project known as the Summit and are renting while getting ready to build in the new, nearby Mulholland Estates.
The McCarrons’ new house will be one of 85 to be built in architect Ken Chang’s 188-acre development, where homes on the market range from $2.8 million to $4.3 million. The McCarrons are purchasing a lot at a price of more than $1 million.
The English-style house that the McCarrons sold was 7,500 square feet in size with five bedrooms, maid’s quarters and what was described as “a great view” by Joe Babajian, who represented the McCarrons with Judy Cycon through Fred Sands Estates.
The Summit, where the home is situated, was developed by the late Clint Murchison Jr., an oil baron and one-time owner of the Dallas Cowboys whose financial empire crumbled before his death in 1987. “He lost the Summit in foreclosure,” Babajian said.
Neither he nor Cycon would divulge the McCarron home selling price, but other industry sources indicate that it was $2,995,000.
One of nine kids in a Boston family, Chris McCarron, now 34, had trouble as a younger man scraping up $45 toward his first car, but since then, his mounts have won more than $108 million in race purses. He was elected last May to the Racing Hall of Fame.
Forty top residential real estate agents and their spouses from Montecito to Palm Desert were invited last Wednesday to a preview, touted as “the most exclusive open house ever held,” of a $4.8-million spec home in Rancho Santa Fe.
The agents were to be treated to a cocktail reception at the house, followed by a gourmet dinner at John Gardiner’s Rancho Valencia Resort, where they would be put up overnight.
The next day, a continental breakfast was planned at the Rancho Santa Fe Farms Golf Club before a short tour in Mercedes mini-buses of the San Dieguito Valley. Host of the two-day bash was Prudential Pickford Realty, which has the listing.
The Mediterranean-style house has a sunken piano area and bar, a pool and walls of glass providing views to the ocean over thoroughbred horse-training facilities and four country clubs.
The house is the first of several multimillion spec homes to be built by EUGENE KLEIN, former owner of the San Diego Chargers. Klein also owned Winning Colors when the horse became the 1988 Kentucky Derby winner.
Klein is building the spec houses on some of 23 estate sites, ranging from 1.6 to 12 acres in size, at his Del Rayo Estates development. Of the 23 sites, 13 have been sold, one to retired National Football League Commissioner PETE ROZELLE.
The 150-room McCUNE MANSION was the highest-priced house on the Phoenix market--at $14 million, or $19 million including furnishings--when it was owned by shopping center developer Gordon Hall in 1986, but it will be auctioned at 2 p.m. Saturday with no minimum opening bid.
That means the three-story, 53,000-square-foot Arizona mansion--with an indoor swimming pool and racquetball court; billiard room, barber and beauty salons and an outdoor tennis court with 100-seat amphitheater--probably will sell for much less.
The auctioneer, Las Vegas-based Eric Nelson, issued a statement that “high bids could come in anywhere between $1 million and $18 million.” However, Scott Jalowsky, the Phoenix broker who had Hall’s 1986 listing, said, “Mr. Hall turned down $5 million, but it probably will wind up selling for $4 million or $5 million or maybe less, because there is no minimum.”
