Laguna Waterfront Lot Goes to High Bidder for Cool $5 Million

With few waterfront homes available at a time of high demand, a half-acre vacant lot in Laguna Beach recently fetched a cool $5 million, one of the highest prices ever.

A mini bidding frenzy for the parcel broke out last month among business executives who live near the lot in the exclusive Smithcliffs neighborhood. Philip Carroll, Jr., chief executive of Fluor Corp.; Gary Brinderson, whose company developed Smithcliffs, and DiTech Funding Corp. founder J. Paul Reddam, who bought a house in the neighborhood for $7 million earlier this year, joined the fray.

Carroll snapped up the lot with a bid of $5 million. He was unavailable for comment.

The lot was part of the large estate of Rick Rozar, 44-year old founder of one of the nation’s leading Internet purveyors of public records. He died last year in a fall.

Many of his homes, including an oceanfront mansion in South Laguna, another palace in Corona del Mar and another in New York’s Trump Tower, were sold in order to pay federal taxes, said W. Bailey Smith, a longtime estate tax planning lawyer.

Then the estate put one of the most coveted vacant lots in the Smithcliffs on the block. “It has to be the premium lot along the gold coast of Orange County,” Smith said.

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Prime Territory

This vacant lot in an exclusive Laguna Beach enclave triggered a bidding battle when it went on the market.