Chevron Sells Huntington Developments : Real estate: Deal involves only a fraction of the vast land holdings the firm intends to unload.

Chevron Corp., which is close to a deal to sell its vast Orange County real estate holdings, has sold a small portion of its local land to a partnership.

Chevron sold two partially built Huntington Beach housing developments, the Hamptons and Surfcrest, to a partnership that includes New Urban West Inc., a Santa Monica home builder, and Institutional Housing Partners of Irvine, an equity partner with the nation’s largest public-employee pension fund, the California Public Employees Retirement System. The developments have room for about 224 homes.

Chevron also unloaded its stake in two other housing developments in Huntington Beach, Cambria and Oceancrest, to Urban West, Chevron’s former partner. The developments have room for nearly 300 homes.

“It’s really a minor portion of Chevron’s Orange County holdings,” said Doug Neff, principal with Institutional Housing. “Urban West was already involved in those projects; they just bought Chevron out.”

Terms of the deal, which involves about 65 acres, were not disclosed.

Earlier this year, Chevron announced plans to sell its vast land holdings, which total 40,000 acres. In Orange County, Chevron owns about 6,270 acres, which could be worth as much as $500 million, real estate specialists said.

The Huntington Beach land sale could signal that Chevron plans to market its properties individually rather than sell them to one bidder in a bulk sale, real estate sources said. Properties on the sales block here include the South County master-planned community of Coto de Caza and the West Coyote Hills project in Fullerton.

But Chevron officials said they plan to sell the rest of their holdings in one package.

“We are hoping to sell all of Chevron Land & Development Co. to one bidder,” said Norm Angell, senior vice president with Chevron Land & Development. “The sales team is still evaluating bids.”

According to real estate sources, two consortiums are bidding on the remaining Chevron land holdings. One group includes publicly traded Lennar Corp. of Miami, the nation’s seventh-largest builder, and longtime Orange County builder Jim Peters.

Ironically, the other group bidding for the property includes Christopher Gibbs, former head of operations at J.M. Peters, the home-building company Jim Peters founded. Gibbs, 51, now runs Christopher Homes and reportedly is backed by money from the Middle East. He could not be reached for comment.