Chevron Agrees to Sell Land Holdings Worth $400 Million : Real estate: Sale of portion of oil company’s California properties would be one of the largest in recent history.

In what would be one of the largest California land sales in recent history, Chevron Corp. has reached a tentative agreement to sell a portion of its vast real estate holdings to an investor group led by a division of the investment bank Morgan Stanley & Co., sources said.

Although neither party would comment on the deal or its value, sources said Morgan Stanley Real Estate Fund II L.P. and Orange County builder Christopher Gibbs had been selected to buy more than 18,000 acres Chevron owns throughout California. The deal is worth at least $400 million.

Included are such major undeveloped properties as 2,200 acres in the master-planned community of Coto de Caza in Orange County, a 480-acre site in Huntington Beach, the 85-acre Torrey Pines Science Park in La Jolla, 400 acres in La Habra and more than 14,000 acres of ranch land from San Diego to Calaveras County.

“It’s certainly one of the biggest deals we’ve seen in a very long time, as long as I can remember,” said Sanford Goodkin, a real estate consultant in La Jolla.

*

In March, Chevron said it would sell 40,000 acres it owned through its subsidiaries Chevron Land & Development Co., Huntington Beach Co. and Pacific Coast Homes units and affiliates.

A source on Monday said Chevron decided to pull some properties out of the deal and negotiate with Morgan on the remaining 18,000 acres.

About 1,000 acres Chevron owns in Whittier, about 500 acres in Montebello and 500 acres in Fullerton were not included in the deal, although the company is negotiating with other buyers for those properties.