REAL ESTATE

Dirt Cheap: Warmington Homes, the Costa Mesa-based residential builder, has purchased 33 lots in Yorba Linda from Home Savings of America at a price that a Warmington official coyly suggests is a substantial discount from what the S&L; had invested in them. Home Savings took possession of the lots in a foreclosure when another builder defaulted on its land acquisition loan.

While Warmington maintains a strict “no comment” policy about land prices, the San Diego brokerage that handled the transaction has no qualms about telling all.

Warmington paid $2.7 million for the lots, said a spokesman for John Burnham & Co.

That works out to about $82,000 for each lot, probably half of the original price. The lots are at the top of the ridgeline overlooking Yorba Linda’s side of Santa Ana Canyon and average 12,000 square feet each--about twice the size of most single-family home lots today.

Warmington said it intends to begin sales in February. The houses will have four or five bedrooms and three- or four-car garages. They will range in size from 2,850 square feet to 3,300 square feet. Prices haven’t been fixed yet but are expected to start in the low $300,000s. That would continue Warmington’s strategy of making bargain-basement land purchases and then putting up houses that it can sell for substantially less than the competition’s. Similar-size ridge-top homes in the area range in price from $350,000 to $500,000.