Catherine Bell and a real-estate broker debate a 19-acre LA beachfront property listed at $70-$90 million. The broker claims serious bids are at $60 million, but the speaker calls inflated offers "pillow talk" since LA currently bans luxury hotels there, making those high bids impossible to act on.
Are you in the deal room? Looking at $70 to $90 million, around $60 million is the first number that starts to sound defendable, but it's still not cheap. Why I say that? 19 acres, and the broker told you that serious bids are clustering around $60 million. Then here's what I do. I give them a big green flag. I says, where do you want me to send your big green flag so you can wave it in front of that person's face to go ahead and go before me? Because I'm not interested in being told this is an auction. We're doing real estate. And so if this is an auction and you want to bid this thing up to $110 million, by all means, here's your green flag. Please take it and wave it in front of their faces. I'm not interested.
A lot of the people who are putting in offers, they are willing to put in such a high offer because they want to build luxury— because it's right on the beach, right in the— on the Palisades, right on the PCH. So they want to build—
I totally understand, but there's zero comps for there right now, right?
Definitely. So what the broker's saying is they can't accept any of these offers because the city of LA is not allowing any luxury hotels built there.
So here's— ready for this? I can say that I really, I really, really, really think that Jordans are cool and that I got one for $20, but if it's something that I wear, that I, that I wear on my pinky finger instead of on my feet, they're not real Jordans, you know what I Yeah, yeah. What they are is a— they're a knockoff, they're a whatever. And so for this guy to be like, oh, we're getting offers for $60 million, but we're not taking them because they can't do what they want to do, then they're not offers for $60 million. These are— this is what I call pillow talk. Like, these are hot air balloons that we can look at and say, oh, how pretty, but we're not ever, ever going to be up inside of them to see what it looks like, right?
Yeah. And it's so good to see how that, in like a nice way, not in any way, but It's the real estate industry, especially with sales, is very manipulative.
You just tell me I'm not nice, Catherine.
No, no, no. I'm saying that the marketing is very manipulative. So that's why I love running these with you guys, because you can point out what we learned on your last deal. They totally manipulated that marketing. Yeah. Okay. So good to know. But they said they could, it could consider it because it's a real rare coastal site, huge narrative. Hidden value, chance to create value through entitlement clarity.
