Real Estate Market Up in the Air Over Base Development

Businessman Ian Joseph is only half-joking when he says he’s ready to consult a crystal ball to help him decide where he should buy a home for his growing family.

For Joseph and many others looking to settle in central or southern Orange County, the uncertain future of the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station looms like a ballooning mortgage payment.

Will the base become a commercial airport, as some have proposed? A spectator sports and recreation center? Perhaps a university, which Joseph’s daughter could someday attend?

Such concerns are becoming a constant refrain for real estate agents, whose clients, both buyers and sellers, are eager for any nugget of information about what the future might hold.

“They ask us what will happen, and we tell them we don’t know,” said Irvine broker Jason Hartman. “But of course that’s not what someone likes to hear when they’re looking to buy a home.”

What impact the base’s closure in 1999 will have on already depressed real estate values is as unclear as what will ultimately happen to the base.

However, sellers already are being forced to disclose to potential buyers the possibility that a commercial airport might join the neighborhood someday, and both buyers and sellers are wondering if they can live with that.

Proponents say an airport would reinvigorate the economy and bring more than 20,000 jobs to the area. Opponents say only special-interest groups would benefit, leaving residents with noise, traffic and sagging home values.

In November 1994, a slim majority of Orange County voters endorsed Measure A, which calls for a commercial airport at El Toro. A rival initiative to block an airport, Measure S, goes before voters in March.

The county also is looking at alternative uses for the base in case an airport is deemed unworkable. In addition to a university or sports center, proposals include a mammoth business complex, homes or a film production studio and theme park.

Even if it ultimately is decided that El Toro will become an airport, anticipated litigation and then construction would take years, real estate agents say.

“There are just all these questions. It might not ever be an airport,” said Mission Viejo real estate agent Jeff Maass. “I don’t see any real need to get excited over this, or panic. No one knows what’s going to happen there.”

But Aliso Viejo resident Richard DeMers said he wasn’t going to wait around to find out.

The graphic artist spent Friday packing to move to Phoenix. A new job offer and fears about a commercial airport at El Toro helped him make the decision, he said.

“The flight path goes right over Aliso Viejo,” said DeMers, who has put up with the sounds of nearby military planes for nearly four years. “My big concern was, what if Measure S doesn’t pass?”

Lake Forest real estate broker Tom Martin says he is confronted with such concerns more and more.

“I’m definitely hearing from sellers, who are saying, essentially, ‘Should I try to bail out now?’ ” said Martin, who cautions against a hasty decision.

“I think that in the long run, if they go ahead and do the airport, it will end up as a long-term benefit,” said Martin, who has been in Lake Forest more than 20 years.

Realtor Shiva Ommi says there is little to fear from an airport.

“People seem to forget that planes are flying in and out of there now, and people still bought in that area,” Ommi said.

Esmael Adibi, director of the Center for Economic Research at Chapman University in Orange, agrees, adding that new noise-reduction technology and public outcry probably will keep an airport’s impact to a minimum.

“There’s been so much discussion of this out there, there will be a great number of restrictions on an airport in terms of flight patterns, businesses that are allowed there, noises, that will ensure we won’t be negatively impacted,” he said.

Adibi means “we” literally. His Lake Forest home is a short distance from the base.

Lake Forest Councilwoman Helen Wilson says she is keeping an open mind about El Toro’s future, but can’t help wondering about the value of her home, which is close to the base.

“I’m finding it hard to imagine how an airport would have a positive impact on residences,” she said.

Michael Davar, a real estate manager in Mission Viejo, said he thinks an airport will mean economic improvement but that meanwhile, homes immediately nearby could drop in value.

The upside is a bargain for buyers, he said.

“You’d be able to buy more house for your money there, and if it ends up not being an airport--and really, who knows what will happen--it will end up being a good gain for someone,” Davar said.

Market analyst Nima Nattagh with TRW REDI Property Data in Anaheim said TRW is launching a long-term study of the impact of El Toro’s closure on real estate in the area.

“Experience shows it will have an adverse impact, but with this study, we will be able to see what happens to homes within a five-mile, 10-mile and 15-mile radius,” he said.

All this discussion does little for folks such as Joseph, who lives in a condominium in Lake Forest and needs more room. The family would like to stay in the neighborhood to keep their commutes to a minimum: He works in Irvine and his wife, a data analyst, travels in the opposite direction to Santa Ana. A short-distance move also would allow their 2-year-old to remain in her day-care facility.

“Your worst nightmare would be buying a home and then finding out it’s right underneath the flight path,” Joseph said. “You ask the Realtors, but they can’t make any representations about the future. They’re the experts. And if they don’t know, how should I?”