La Jolla Farms, the oceanfront, Muirlands – first to break million-dollar mark

It is possible to acquire a toehold in the Farms for far less, of course. Just two doors north of the Gagosian splendor on La Jolla Farms Road is the clifftop manor built two years ago by Donald Cole and priced at $1,595,000. It includes such features as a huge gourmet kitchen with four skylights and two built-in dishwashers, a backyard pool overlooking one of the impossible precipices above Black’s Beach, and imposing twelve-foot ceilings. And Peggy Chodorow says other recent sales of homes at the Farms have been in even lower ranges, between a half and three-quarters of a million dollars.

The Coldwell Banker office at 930 Prospect Street, where Chodorow works, gets about twenty-two percent of all the La Jolla listings. So the broker states with authority that the majority of homes still fall into the $275,000 to $400,000 range. “Once you get over $550,000, the market just thins out,” Chodorow claims. “The millionaire buyers are so few and far between that most brokers would rather have three $300,000 homes than one million-dollar home. Although when a million-dollar house sells, the rewards are tremendous.” She adds that only this past year has that picture begun to change. “What I think La Jolla is trying to do is establish a million-dollar image,” an attempt which she eyes dubiously. “I think this is not a Beverly Hills/ Bel Air type of community. I think those people [in the swankest sections of Los Angeles] take pride in saying they’re in a million-dollar home. People here are less interested in that ostentatious display of their wealth. There are people here who can afford a million-dollar home but have a better use for their money.”

She and other knowledgeable La Jolla realtors seem to agree that the first homeowners to break the million-dollar limit clustered in a very few areas: La Jolla Farms, the oceanfront, and the Muirlands (“which has old La Jolla charm and the land and hardwood going for it,” says Chodorow). Indeed, REBA currently lists two dwellings at $1.6 million in “Old Muirlands,” as the brochures describe the area developed in the Forties and early Fifties on the mesa just south of the La Jolla Country Club. The one owned by a Canadian corporation on Inspiration Drive is a 7000-square-foot two-story Spanish villa with three balconies; and the second on an acre off Muirlands Drive, includes such extras as two built-in refrigerators/freezers, servants’ quarters, a basement, and a paneled English library. Among ocean-front properties,no less than five houses have been for sale on Camino de la Costa, the quiet street which meanders along the water just north of the Bird Rock area. Though three have been taken off the market for the summer, (the owners of the brown stone-and-wood house at 6160 have been asking $1,959,000; those at the brown brick house with the ceramic stable boy at 6378 have been asking $1,500,000; and those at the corner house at 6450 on the south end of Windansea Beach have been asking $1,195,000), two are still for sale. The “villa,” architecturally reminiscent of French Normandy, at 6000 Camino de la Costa, currently owned by insurance executive Kenneth D. Olson, is priced at $ 3 million. The latter includes such features as an elevator connecting its three levels, enclosed and open deck areas, mercury spotlights to illuminate the breakers in front of the house at night, six full and two half bathrooms, and more than 200 wood-framed windows. (It sold a few years ago for $520,000.)

More recently, the million-dollar price tags also have been invading other sections of La Jolla, such as the Azure Coast area just northeast and up the hill from the Summer House Inn and Ardath and Torrey Pines roads. There the estate at 7780 Starlight Drive (formerly owned by an heir to the Maytag fortune) is listed at $6.5 million. For that you get not one structure, but four — a main house, a guest house, pool house, and annex — situated on 4.35 acres next door to the home of La Jolla cultural leader Danah Fayman. Also for sale in that neighborhood is the home of the S.A. Stephenses, on Moonridge Drive, now listed for $1,250,000.

Savvy La Jolla realtors do point out that those are only asking prices and that the houses may actually sell for considerably less, a figure much harder to determine. Buyers of any San Diego County property must pay $1.10 in documentary transfer stamps for every $1000 of their property’s value. Those figures are part of the public record — the San Diego Daily Transcript newspaper publishes the more spectacular among them. However, the realtors say that nothing prevents a property buyer from paying for far more stamps than necessary, a move which can conceal the true sale price transacted; those who might do so range from speculators who don’t want future buyers to know what they paid for the property, to “people who are just absolutely crazy about their privacy,” according to Chodorow. She, for example, says she’s had two or three clients in the last nine years concerned enough to hide the real purchase price by using that method. The possibility for such manipulation makes her and others skeptical about reports of million-dollar-plus sales; she thinks probably only four residences have actually brought that kind of money — the Gagosian mansion, two in the Muirlands, and a fourth on the ocean.

We were curious about how one markets a million-dollar piece of property. “The sellers usually want you to spend a lot of money, to advertise in national magazines, or to print up fancy brochures,” asserts Chodorow, who further judges, “As far as I can tell it really isn’t effective to put an ad in the Wall Street Journal or to contact the Zurich Times. The real buyers usually end up just contacting a realtor who can get access to the listings.”