Real Estate Industry Orange County

Moving to allay growing complaints from tenants, the Irvine Co. is poised to limit rent hikes for its long-term residents. The step by Orange County's largest landlord would be short of rent control but it comes as apartment dwellers in Irvine and elsewhere are starting to organize in response to skyrocketing rents. In recent weeks, renters in Huntington Beach have picketed outside an apartment complex and others in Costa Mesa have met with church groups about their housing worries.

Southern California's once-booming commercial real estate market, which dramatically altered the region's office skylines in the 1980s, is in the early stages of a bust that may last two years or more, property experts believe. While not as severe as in other regions of the country, the downturn nonetheless could further depress the Southern California economy when it is already reeling from thousands of aerospace industry layoffs. "We're in the throes of a real estate recession . .

Century 21 Real Estate Corp., the brokerage giant founded by two Orange County realtors 24 years ago, will move its headquarters to New Jersey as part of a massive restructuring, the company's new owners said Tuesday. The loss of such a prestigious firm with a national presence--while having minimal job impact with fewer than 200 workers affected--will further weaken the image of Orange County and is a setback to Southern California's efforts to retain businesses, analysts said. "It's a shame.

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.

Henry Nahoum severed his East Coast ties in 1990 as a dental professor at Columbia University and retired to Orange County to be near his grandchildren. South County was then at the tail end of a huge building boom; new homes were selling faster than builders could frame them. With only a model to judge, Nahoum put much of his nest egg down on a $600,000 home to be built amid the rolling hills of Nellie Gail Ranch, an exclusive neighborhood with an equestrian bent.

In one of the largest sales of an Orange County industrial complex, a Northern California real estate investment trust has bought the 48-acre Stadium Plaza Business Park. Spieker Properties in Menlo Park is believed to have paid $39 million in cash for the complex at the northwest corner of Katella Avenue and the Orange Freeway, industry sources said.

As they survey Orange County's commercial real estate market, where prices are at their lowest levels in years, tenants who have been leasing are wondering if the time might be right to buy. Increasingly, companies that plan to lease a substantial amount of new office space or to sign up for more space in a building where they already have operations are finding it makes good business sense to buy the property outright, local brokers say. A recent example is Sterling Casualty Insurance Co.'

Japanese investors and lenders continued to purge their portfolios of U.S. real estate last year, selling or putting on the auction block $8.9 billion in property, including New York's famed Rockefeller Center, according to a survey to be released today.

The merger announced Wednesday by Santa Margarita Co. marks a milestone in the long, colorful history of one of Orange County's pioneer families. The company said Wednesday that it will join forces with apartment management giant Western National Group to form one of the state's biggest real estate concerns. But the O'Neill-Moiso family that founded Santa Margarita had made its name known long before that.

The Japanese developer's $500-million vision has vanished. Gone are plans for a complex of first-class homes, tony shops and Orange County's tallest office tower. Instead, the city may have to settle for a more ordinary shopping center anchored by a store like Circuit City. The story of the development that was to be the Main Street Concourse, built by the Shimizu Corp. of Japan, shows how ambitious plans can disappear when real estate and financial markets turn sour.