| Land is the reason most settlers came to California in the first place (besides those shiny rocks found at Sutter's Mill), and there's still a vigorous trade in it, though the business took a hit during the Great Recession. Bisnow sat down with Irvine-based land brokers Hoffman Co recently and found out that land deals are beginning to pick up in SoCal and statewide, which bodes well for development. |
| Hoffman principal Tom Dallape (pointing) tells us that just in the last week, the company closed four deals involving land parcels in the state. They're bread-and-butter deals, he adds, but come on the heels of an increasing volume of land transactions since late last year. More remarkably, an increasing number of the deals involve land on which residential development will occur. Principal Norm Scheel says that an uptick in home sales has developers thinking ahead and looking to get land squared away as housing demand increases. |
| Land developers are starting to become more aggressive, too, says Norm, after five or six "long, hard years." (We assume he's referring to life after Friends.) The trend, he adds, isn't specific to any part of the state, but he does note that Orange County is "where every homebuilder wants to be." Competition for land in OC has always been strong, but it's even more so now. Every homebuilder, public or private, is jockeying for position in Orange County these days, Tom tells us, a fact that no doubt gladdens the heart of any SoCal land broker. (The Hoffman guys: Scott Covington, Tom, Norm, Nick Giannini, Graham Gilles and Bryant Brislin.) |
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