In Dana Point, 2 Oceanfront Gems Are For Sale : Real Estate: They are two of the largest undeveloped coastal parcels in Southern California. One may be bought by the Japanese.

There is nothing as crass as a “for sale” sign on two of the largest undeveloped parcels on the Southern California coast. But the two Dana Point properties are for sale nevertheless, and people in this quiet Orange County beach town have been wondering for months what will happen to the land.

Now they have a few clues.

One parcel, a 232-acre swatch at Monarch Beach owned by the debt-ridden Australian company Qintex, will probably be sold in the next few months, said the accountant presiding over the sale of Qintex assets.

Among the possible buyers, he said, are two big Japanese concerns that own half of Qintex’s three other resorts and hold an option to buy half of the Monarch Beach property.

Qintex had planned to build a $1-billion resort on the Monarch Beach property and a nearby parcel before the company slid into receivership late last year.

The receiver, John Allpass of accounting firm KPMG Peat Marwick’s office in Brisbane, Australia, said this week that negotiations to sell the property continue and that a deal is expected “shortly.”

Allpass wouldn’t say who is trying to buy the land. But the Japanese concerns--the consumer credit company Nippon Shinpan and the huge trading firm Mitsui & Co.--are a possibility, he said.

Qintex executives didn’t return phone calls for comment.

Meanwhile, Qintex was also going to build another hotel on property called the Headlands about a mile south on Pacific Coast Highway. Qintex had an option to buy the land but lost it when it couldn’t meet the payments late last year. These 115 acres atop a bluff are the town’s most prominent geographic feature and a local landmark.

The owners--the wealthy Chandler and Sherman families--don’t seem in a hurry to sell. But a source familiar with the families’ business affairs said Thursday that the property is for sale again and that an arm of the New York financial services firm Morgan Stanley Group Inc. has been hired to market it.

“We get a lot of interest in it,” the source said. “But until somebody actually signs a check, it just means they like the view.”

The families’ representatives wouldn’t comment.

The price is likely to be more than the $120 million that Qintex agreed to last time, real estate brokers said.

But this time the land may be harder to sell, even though it’s one of the last large undeveloped beachfront parcels so close to Los Angeles.

The reason: Whoever buys it must still get permission from the city to build. While Dana Point has zoned the land for a resort hotel, sentiment to keep the wind-swept bluffs vacant is said by local officials to be growing. And Dana Point will soon reconsider the zoning of the entire city in a series of public hearings.

A number of investors who could afford it, however--including Japanese investors, who like to buy resorts--are said to be interested in buying, real estate brokers said.

Qintex must sell the Monarch Beach property for more than $250 million to recoup the $242 million that it borrowed to buy the land and the interest that it’s paid on the loan since, people familiar with the transaction said. The receiver would not disclose the asking price.

Unlike the Headlands, though, the Monarch Beach property already has city permission to build a hotel, which may make it easier to sell. A 1,100-room copy of San Simeon’s Hearst Castle has been approved, which if built would be one of the largest hotels on the California coast.

The two companies’ local offices referred questions to Japan, where executives couldn’t be reached.