Evanisko Realty Closes on the Worthe Ranch
Our marketing effort to sell what we knew to be a one-in-a-million, flat, 50,000 SF, hold-out residential parcel resulted in a dozen on-site buyer meetings with no offers. It was quite interesting to witness. The market was clearly intrigued by the parcel, but it was either too small of a deal or too big of a deal depending on who we were talking to. Perhaps more formidably, it would require a 2- year entitlement slug (maybe more) to subdivide at the rate of Los Angeles’ processing capacities and/or lack thereof especially in the wake of streamlining polices laden within every applicable City department giving resource and priority to only certain forms of housing typologies deemed worthy which this site is not. I digress. The Seller was open to terms but wasn’t necessarily keen on working a lengthy complex deal with the generally gravitating buyer pool and we weren’t either. What we were looking for was the proverbial sophisticated, yet non-IRR-driven buyer and it simply wasn’t happening. Our seller wanted to transact to move to the next phase of his life. We became inspired by a new possible solution.
With months of acquiring site-specific knowledge and a mutually growing relationship with the seller, we decided to shift the conversation to the idea of becoming the purchaser ourselves. The seller was grateful for the idea and, together, we structured a transaction that would give us reasonable runway to amass our team of consultants and author and submit the application for the desired subdivision action. No re-negotiations. Some aspects of the deal worked in our favor, and some did not. We wanted to play this differently and make sure that the transaction served both of our goals reasonably enough. Furthermore, Evanisko was a dual agent and the Buyer. Ask the seller and he will tell you we played the role artfully.
The existing owner-occupied SFR on site enabled us to finance the transaction with a conventional loan source. We’ve named the property Worthe Ranch and the SFR will remain in the new subdivision as the face of the project. The SFR is being beautifully appointed as a 1970’s era time capsule geared for a multitude of creative endeavors.
Our current pipeline of land transactions spreads amongst diverse housing typologies and locations nearly all of which are un-entitled at the time of our initial involvement. The Worthe Ranch transaction further solidifies our skillsets as both real estate transactionalists and developers. The coupling of these skillsets, we have proven ad nauseam, provides our Sellers and Buyers with significant advantages in today’s rapidly changing economic and bureaucratic environment.
To strategize an approach for your Los Angeles real estate contact: Frank Evanisko frank@evaniskorealty.com
