$150M PLOT OF LAND HITS MARKET IN BEL AIR
Looking to escape the Canadian winter? You can build your dream home from scratch just across from the Hotel Bel Air in sunny California.
You’ll just need a little over $14 million per acre for the land.
Three parcels totalling 10.6 acres, all carrying the necessary permits to build a 60,000-square-foot house apiece, have just become available in the trendy neighbourhood of Los Angeles. The area is home to a combination of billionaires ( Rupert Murdoch’s ranch and winery was singed by the recent Skirball fire), and celebrities including Beyonce and Jay Z, who bought an $88 million spec house in 2017.
The listing comes during a modest downswing in L.A.’s real estate market, where inventory is rising and homes are taking longer to sell. In Bel Air, the average sales price was down nearly 21 per cent year-over-year during the fourth quarter of 2018, according to a report by Douglas Elliman, which noted that “the number of sales jumped as negotiability expanded sharply.”
The developer Domvs London and Junius Real Estate Partners, the real estate investment art of JPMorgan Chase & Co. bought the land in 2014.
When the first Bel Air plot was listed, its price broke down to $15 million an acre. Then the developer did work on the land to make it “shovel ready,” says Barry Watts, the president of Domvs.
The land is now pristine, levelled, and back on sale, this time with a price tag of $150 million for the entire 10.6 acres, or just over $14 million an acre. The land is listed with Connie Blankenship, a broker with Douglas Elliman.
“We’ve actually priced this extremely competitively,” Watts says.