WITH LARGE PARCELS OF LAND INCREASINGLY hard to find, builders and developers seized the opportunity to bid at three recent government land auctions. The various players described the auctions as “win-wins,” because the builders added coveted locations to their vast land holdings, land was added to the property tax base, and some of the funds raised benefit causes including cleanup of closed military bases, state education, and open space preservation.
The auctions included:
An auction by the U.S. Navy of 3,700 acres on the former El Toro Marine Corps Air Station in Irvine, Calif. Lennar Corp. bid $650 million, $125 million more than the minimum, to beat out Standard Pacific. Lennar plans to build 3,400 residential units on the site, which will also include 2.6 million square feet of commercial and industrial space, a golf course, and park space for Irvine, according to Emile Haddad, Lennar's California regional president. This marks Lennar's fifth project redeveloping military sites in California.
LAND GRAB: Lennar bid $650 million to redevelop the El Toro Marine Corps Air Station, beating out competitor Standard Pacific.
Another in a series of auctions by the U.S. Bureau of Land Management, this time a 1,710-acre parcel in northwest Las Vegas. The Focus Property Group and a consortium of builders won the auction with a bid of $510 million, or $298,245 per acre—just $11,132 per acre more than Focus' winning bid with a similar group in Henderson, Nev., last year.
The second-largest auction by the Texas General Land Office (GLO). The GLO auctioned off 2,045 acres of former prison farm land to an area developer for $47.2 million, $16 million more than the minimum bid. Proceeds of the auction are deposited in the state's Permanent School Fund, a $21 billion equity and bond fund portfolio that covers the state's share of education funding.
Learn more about markets featured in this article: Los Angeles, CA.
