DiTech Founder Buys $7-Million Smithcliffs Home
In one of the largest home purchases in Orange County this year, DiTech Funding Corp. founder J. Paul Reddam bought an oceanfront property in an exclusive Laguna Beach neighborhood for $7 million.
Reddam, who also is the TV pitchman for the Costa Mesa-based mortgage company, bought the home completely furnished. He paid an additional $1 million to $1.5 million for the home’s custom-made sofas, tables, chairs, desks--just about everything except for china and books--which may have raised the total transaction to between $8 million and $8.5 million, real estate experts said. The property was listed for $10 million.
Reddam, who sold DiTech this summer, paid cash for the 10,000-square-foot home. Real estate brokers believe it to be the most expensive property ever sold in Smithcliffs, a 10-acre enclave of multimillion-dollar properties that was created a decade ago from a family estate.
The four-bedroom, seven-bathroom home has a 15-car underground garage, a blue pearl granite swimming pool and spa that creates the illusion of flowing into the Pacific Ocean, and 7 1/2 fireplaces. The view extends from Dana Point to Catalina Island.
The kitchen has three 10-foot island counters for food preparation, four ovens and three dishwashers. The home has 5,000 square feet of terraces, decks and patios, including a penthouse suite with its own bathroom, living area and kitchenette that leads to a roof garden.
The home was owned by George Naritoku, a Florida greenhouse owner. It was designed as a retirement home by his daughter, Lori Naritoku, a prominent architect in Orange County, who also created the furniture. But George Naritoku recently became a widower and decided to sell. The home, built in 1997, sits along the bluffs at the south end of Emerald Bay.
“It was more like a piece of art than simply architecture,” said Bob Chapman, general manager of Prudential California Realty in Laguna Beach and a longtime local broker, who was not involved in the sale. “It was a unique piece of property.”
Reddam, who acted as his own agent, was unavailable for comment. He looked at the home twice and decided to put in a bid, said Rick McIntire, an agent at Re/Max Real Estate Services, who represented Naritoku.
“I had a steady flow of people interested in this price range that were qualified to buy it,” McIntire said. Most of the prospective buyers were young professionals in the high-tech industry, he said.
Reddam’s company was acquired earlier this year by GMAC Mortgage Corp., a unit of General Motors Corp. DiTech is one of the Southland’s largest mortgage lenders and an aggressive marketer of higher-risk home-equity loans. The company shelved plans for an initial public stock offering last fall. It had hoped to raise $110 million. The sale to GMAC gave DiTech the capital it needed to grow, Reddam said at the time.
A Colorful Past
The jagged bluff parcel that is Smithcliffs has a colorful history. Silent film-era starlets once rode horseback nude along a secluded strip of beach there. Florence “Pancho” Barnes, the legendary cigar-smoking aviator, lived here, hosting lavish parties for the Hollywood set in the 1920s.
The property passed through several more owners over the next six decades before being acquired by developer Gary Brinderson in 1985. After overcoming heavy opposition to his development plans, Brinderson divided the property into custom ocean-view lots and began selling them in the early 1990s.
Among the buyers in the walled-in community was fashion designer Mossimo Giannulli, who listed a Smithcliffs home for $3.25 million last year, about $1 million more than he paid for the lot and home on it. Prices have continued to rise since then.
With the economy creating unprecedented wealth and a rising number of consumers growing rich from the stock market, agents said, more buyers have been willing to pay top dollar for oceanfront properties. The Naritoku home, for instance, was on the market for only 32 days. It is not uncommon for such expensive property to spend months, even a year or more, on the market.
“There was the right buyer in the marketplace at the right time,” said Gary Legrand of Coast Newport Properties. “It was one of these houses that had to take a specific buyer, a buyer that either walks in and falls in love, or else the house would sit a long time. You get one buyer a year for a product like that.”
