For Big-Money Homes, It Was a Very Good Year
For the Southland’s high-end home market, 1999 was the best year in a decade.
Among the highlights were a couple of $25-million sales and the “good year” enjoyed by a San Gabriel Valley real estate broker named Steve Davis, who participated in the highest home sales of Arcadia, Pasadena, South Pasadena and San Marino.
On the Westside of Los Angeles, no other year during the last 10 even came close to 1999, according to Cecelia Waeschle, a broker with Coldwell Banker Previews, Beverly Hills, who has tracked the area’s sales since 1987.
A total of 301 homes sold during 1999 at more than $2.5 million, 25 during November and December; 228 sold above $2.5 million in 1998, she said.
Fifty-nine homes sold in 1999 at more than $5 million each, in contrast to 42 in 1998, and seven sold in 1999 for more than $10 million; six sold at that price in 1998, she added.
The highest Westside sale was Herbalife founder Mark Hughes’ $25-million purchase, in December, of the Malibu beachfront home of Verna Harrah, widow of the late casino magnate William F. Harrah.
The sale was matched by one in Santa Barbara. A high-tech corporate executive bought two properties, totaling 38 acres, in the Hope Ranch area there for about $25 million. The 38 acres had been owned at one time by movie producer Ted Field, but a subsequent owner subdivided the land and sold it as two sites. The buyer will probably use the 38-acre property as one estate, local Realtors said.
High-tech money has been fueling much of the high-end home-buying in the Southland.
Billionaire Paul Allen, co-founder of Microsoft, was one of the first of these high-tech buyers. In 1997, he paid $9 million for director John Landis’ Beverly Hills house, formerly owned by actor Rock Hudson.
Since then, Allen has expanded that estate with the purchase of adjacent properties and new construction that is expected to take one more year to complete.
And he hasn’t even started to refurbish the nearby 120-acre Kollsman property, with a Wallace Neff-designed house, that he purchased later in 1997 for $20 million.
In Orange County, the biggest home sale of 1999 was about $14 million in cash for a house on Harbor Island. The buyer was Robert McNulty, former chairman and chief executive of Shopping.com Inc. Bill Cote of Cote Realty Group in Corona del Mar had the listing.
The second-highest Orange County home sale, at $9 million, was for a Laguna house bought by J. Paul Reddam, founder and former CEO of DiTech Funding Corp.
The highest home sale off the water in the Newport area was at Pelican Hill, said Susan Scanlan, who had the listing at Coast Newport Properties. The selling price of the house was in the neighborhood of $7 million, other real estate sources said.
There were 12 home sales along the Orange County coast, from San Clemente to Huntington Harbor, at prices of more than $5 million each, Cote noted.
In the San Fernando Valley, 1999’s biggest sale was a Hidden Hills home that had been listed at $6.9 million. The seller was Roy Disney, vice chairman of the Walt Disney Co. and Walt Disney’s nephew.
In the San Gabriel Valley, Steve Davis of Fred Sands Estates in Pasadena participated in the highest home sales of Pasadena, South Pasadena, Arcadia and San Marino. “It was a good year,” he said.
In Pasadena, he represented both sides in the $4.4-million sale of the 16,000-square-foot house on five acres that was used for the “Batman” TV series.
In South Pasadena, Davis represented the seller in the highest sale there, at $2.7 million. In Arcadia, he had the listing for the highest sale there, at $2.6 million. And in San Marino, Davis was a co-listing agent in the area’s biggest home deal, at $3.7 million.
In La Canada Flintridge, the highest sale was slightly more than $2 million for horse-zoned property on a flat street, said Rowena Emmett of MacGregor Realty. There are many hilly areas in the city.
On the Palos Verdes Peninsula, the highest home sale was at $4.5 million in Rancho Palos Verdes, said Janet Earl of Fred Sands, Palos Verdes Realty. Next came a house that sold for $4.49 million in Rolling Hills, she said, and the third-highest sale was of a house at $4.43 million in Palos Verdes Estates.
In the desert, the highest selling price in 1999 was $3.4 million, said Palm Springs Realtor Paul Shepard. It was for a seven-bedroom 8,500-square-foot house in Mission Ranch, a gated community in Rancho Mirage.
In La Jolla, the biggest home sale was $16 million for an unfinished oceanfront house purchased by supermarket mogul Ron Burkle, Ralphs/Food 4 Less Foundation and company chief. He owns silent screen star Harold Lloyd’s Greenacres in the Beverly Hills area.
The second highest sale in La Jolla was a $14.5-million home bought by an executive of Oracle.com.
In northern San Diego County, the highest sale ever at Fairbanks Ranch, in Rancho Santa Fe, was recorded in 1999 at close to $6.4 million, according to Ann Brizolis of Coldwell Banker, Rancho Santa Fe. It was a newly built house on five acres.
For big-name buyers and sellers, though, the Westside had probably the highest concentration of any market in the world.
Here are some of the larger celebrity deals that closed there in 1999:
* Actor Will Smith’s $7.5-million purchase of singer Bobby Vinton’s 100-acre ranch in Malibu-Santa Monica Mountains area.
* Singer-songwriter-producer Kenneth “Babyface” Edmonds’ purchase of a Holmby Hills home for nearly $13 million.
* Home Shopping Network co-founder Lowell “Bud” Paxson’s purchase of a Beverly Hills home for about $8 million.
* Singer-songwriter Lionel Richie’s purchase of a Beverly Hills house and sale of a Hollywood Hills home, each for about $6.5 million.
* Rock star Ozzy Osbourne’s purchase of a Beverly Hills home for about $6.5 million.
* Singer Olivia Newton-John’s sale of a Malibu home at $6.3 million.
* Steven Spielberg’s purchase of a Brentwood horse ranch for $5.75 million.
* And “Titanic” director James Cameron’s purchase of a 500-acre Malibu property for $5.4 million.
Earlier in the year, Cameron also bought a home on 100 acres in a gated enclave near Santa Barbara for about $4.4 million.
