Nithya Raman, Rae Chen Huang, Adam Miller Head to Debate Stage

Get ready. Mayoral hopefuls Nithya Raman, Rae Chen Huang and Adam Miller are set to share the stage Monday night in the first candidate debate ahead of the June primary.

The trio are expected to tackle housing, homelessness, infrastructure and transportation across an hour-and-a-half at Los Angeles Center Studios in Downtown. If real estate’s keyed in on one thing for Monday it would be housing and, more specifically, Measure United to House L.A.

It’s been a whirlwind week and year, with proponents of the so-called mansion tax, most notably Raman, proposing some of the most dramatic carveouts to ULA since its 2023 rollout.

Councilmember Ysabel Jurado to chair the newly established three-person Ad Hoc Committee on Measure ULA that also includes 12th District representative John Lee and the 6th District’s Imelda Padilla. The three are now tasked with addressing all pending ULA matters before the council with the aim of shuttling amendments to the tax onto the November ballot. The first meeting is set to take place by the end of next week.

That could be why proponents of the tax, which has raised over $1.1 billion since implementation, made their own push in support of leaving ULA alone. A report released Friday by BAE Urban Economics concluded any decline in multifamily development is the result of lack of rent growth and lending costs among other market factors, rather than ULA.

Flip turned ugly

It was odd enough when Kanye West hired demolition crews to strip a Tadao Ando-designed beachfront home in Malibu. He then turned around to sell it unfinished for a discounted $21 million — after originally listing it for $53 million — to a fractional investing company called Belwood Investments that raised millions across hundreds of individual investors to acquire the home. The idea was to fix and then flip the property.

Instead, the project has been mired in nothing but drama. That includes a failed deal to sell the home last year, default on the loan tied to the home’s purchase, a foreclosure auction originally slated for Thursday and an eleventh-hour bankruptcy filing. The Chapter 11 was done to block a sale with Belwood founder and CEO telling The Real Deal “I have to do everything I can to preserve this opportunity for our investors and for the home itself.”

Some investors have lost patience and have grown anxious about the prospects of recovering their money, including one who spoke to TRD on condition of anonymity and said the bankruptcy came out of “left field.”

Cashing out

The buyer who paid $55 million in 2022 for reality TV stars Heather and Terry Dubrow’s former Newport Coast mansion is looking to cash out.

The custom-built mansion at 2 Coral Ridge went up for sale this week with a $62 million asking price that comes out to $3,080 per square foot. The seller is reportedly tied to Gu Fang, the wife Xu Hang, co-founder of medical device maker Mindray Medical

Ginger Glass and Alexandra Glass of Compass hold the listing, which is one of Orange County’s most expensive currently on the market.

If the property sells for anything close to ask, it would make for OC’s priciest deal so far this year.

Wildfire rebuilding roadblock

Insurance has been and continues to be a major holdup to even beginning rebuilding in wildfire-impacted areas.

Kambiz Kamdar, who runs Pali Construction and also co-founded the data resource Pali Builds with Frank Renfro, expects as many as half of the homes lost to the fires to be permitted by year’s end. He’s projecting that activity to peak mid-year when he estimates most homeowners will know by then what they’re getting back from their insurance carriers and make a decision on whether to rebuild or move on.

The Palisades real estate market could also see shifts this year.

This week saw the listing of the first rebuilt home at 1205 Las Lomas Place for $7.5 million. Amalfi Estates’ Anthony Marguleas and Compass’ Dan Urbach hold the listing on the roughly 4,000-square-foot home.

Market watchers are waiting to see what it’ll close at and whether a reset in pricing is heading for the Palisdes.

Outpost Estates

The home designed for Academy Award winner Melvyn Douglas at 7141 Senalda Road sold Thursday for $1,200 per square foot.

That makes for the highest price-per-square-foot deal of an over 5,000-square-foot home so far this year in the exclusive Outpost Estates community. That still doesn’t topple the existing record holder, which was last year’s purchase at $1,400 per square foot for 7100 La Presa Drive.

The over 6,700-square-foot Senalda Drive home with six bedrooms and seven bathrooms sold for $8.1 million and is located in the historic Hollywood Hills community of less than 500 homes.

Carolwood’s Marci Kays and Jonathan Mogharrabi were the listing agents, while The Agency’s Feroz Taj brought the buyer.

For Kays and Mogharrabi, they’ve now racked up over $20 million in Outpost Estates sales volume in the past six months. Notably, they represented Brad Pitt last August in his $12 million purchase within the historic community.