2021 LUXURY
REAL ESTATE AND DESIGN REPORT One Coast presented CSQ’s 2021 Luxury Real Estate and Design Virtual Event broadcasted live via Zoom from Townhouse 303’s rooftop terrace. The event brought together a panel of L.A.’s top professionals in real estate sales, new development, architecture and design for a roundtable addressing where the luxury market is headed in 2021, how the meaning of home has evolved, and the latest trends in architecture, interior design, and staging.
PRESENTED BY:
Table of Contents
3.Bree Long
Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing, etco Homes
4.
Aaron Kirman
President, International Estates Division, Compass, and Founder and CEO, Aaron Kirman Group at Compass
5.
Erinn Valencich
Interior Designer, Real Estate Developer, and Founder, Erinn V Design Group
6.
Mario Romano
Owner, M|R Walls and Mario Romano Design and Development
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Bob Etebar
Principal and COO, etco Homes
About the Panelists
Moderator
As founder, CEO, and techpreneur of Aaron Kirman Group, Aaron Kirman leads a team of nearly 100 people. With more than $7B in luxury home sales, he represents the largest market share of luxury listings in the country with over $2.2B in active luxury inventory and over $725M in sales for 2020. Kirman kicked off 2021 by co-listing “The One,” America’s most expensive luxury property, for $350M. He also stars in the CNBC show Listing Impossible.
As lead designer of her firm, Erinn V Design Group, Erinn Valencich has spent two decades designing for an international roster of clients. Her portfolio boasts many high-end designs, from oceanfront estates in Mexico to chic Los Angeles restaurants and New York lofts. Her work has been featured on the covers of Modern Luxury Interiors, Modern Luxury Interiors California, and Spaces, with features in Architectural Digest Mexico, Town & Country, InStyle, California Home + Design, Wall Street Journal, Los Angeles Times, and more.
A designer and maker specializing in architecture and innovation, Mario Romano has built and designed some of Los Angeles’ most well-known homes, including the Wave House in Venice. He has patented software that enables digital fabrication of large-scale 3-D surfaces. Recently, in partnership with Dupont Corian, his company M|R Walls has produced intricate surfaces for architects around the globe.
As principal and COO, Bob Etebar vigorously upholds the values established with the founding of etco Homes three decades ago. He oversees all day-to-day operations of acquisitions, finance, accounting, purchasing, construction management, and customer service. He also cultivates the company’s equity and finance relationships, both institutional and private, and manages compliance/execution related to the joint ventures and financing agreements secured by the company.
About the
Moderator
Bree Long is responsible for driving the strategic planning and execution for major sales and marketing initiatives across the entire etco portfolio of luxury urban developments across L Los Angeles. With 20 years of niche industry experience as a strategic and creative driver of etco’s sales and marketing efforts, Long has worked with many of the region’s most notable real estate firms and developers. She is passionate about many aspects of the industry, including sustainability initiatives and creating community through connectivity in urban development.
Obviously, it’s been an unprecedented year. I don’t think any of us expected to go through what we went through for the last 15 months. Home is more important than ever—and money is no object to a good chunk of the market out there that wants what they want.
Bree Long Senior Vice President of Sales and Marketing, etco Homes
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Q&A with
Aaron Kirman President, International Estates Division, Compass, and Founder and CEO, Aaron Kirman Group at Compass What are the biggest challenges you’ve faced during the pandemic? The home became the most important part of everyone’s life this year. Our biggest issue right now is finding property to sell, which in turn is helping sellers get really premium prices. So we’re seeing homes in certain areas up between 15% and 40% since COVID hit, which is pretty remarkable. In 25 years, I haven’t seen this kind of movement ever. To build properties takes so much time. The cost of property is so expensive to build. And so where we’re going is anybody’s game. If it continues, obviously the cost of ownership is just hard to obtain, especially when you’re dealing with the luxury segment. What are people looking for in home purchases now? Are people relocating? I’m noticing something like the great American migration. People are buying all over. If you want to be by the ocean, this is a perfect spot to be. You can work. You can live here. So we’re seeing people migrating from the East Coast to the West, from the West Coast to the North. I mean it’s really people going everywhere. But the consistent thread is the residential property and what they want, and how they’re going to design it to actually live well. But also this year, the bulk of our transactions have been American. We’re beginning to see, even with restrictions, foreign nationals coming back to buy from various different regions. I think that when all is said and done, everybody realizes the importance of a residential property and what it brings. What trends are you seeing in design that may be due to everyone being home so much? What we’re seeing from a salability standpoint is that transitional is really popular. People like to take different styles, with the basis being modern and mix and match, and it’s made for so much more interesting architecture and design, in my opinion. In the uber-luxury segment, that equates to millions and millions of dollars. We recently sold a house for $75M, and it was just so warm and transitional. And that’s what people want today. Also, the gym. Everybody needs a gym. Before the pandemic, a gym was sort of an add on. Today, people are like, I must have a full gym, theater sized. What are your thoughts on vertical development in our market? II think everything is ebb and flow. It changes really, really quickly. And now that, for example, L.A. is somewhat open again, I can’t tell you how many people have called us to buy vertical living. People still want that lifestyle, that walkability, the means to be social without having to go very far. I think there’s so much money
out there and there’s so much global wealth that it’s not always one size fits all. There’s going to be people that move out and want the countryside for a minute, but need that urban landscape and want that city vibe. And so we see a lot of people buying second, third homes, and those do include vertical living in L.A. What trends are you seeing in staging and furnishing? Today, we’re selling lifestyles. It’s the total package. It’s not just a house. It’s the furniture. It’s the art. I pretty much will not take on a listing unless it’s staged correctly, unless it feels right—paint color, wallpaper, carpet, kitchen, bathrooms. Sometimes sellers can’t afford to do it all, but we do as much as we can do, because buyers have no vision for what it is that they want. They look to the sellers and us pretty much to provide that vision. So by staging and putting art curation and collections in homes, we see houses getting these huge premium numbers. I would tell anybody, it’s better to live well when you’re living in a house. Because when you go to sell it, you’re going to have to do it anyway, so you might as well spend money on design. You might as well spend money on art. You might as well make it feel great, because if you don’t do it for yourself, you’re going to have to do it for somebody else, if you want a premium. Are open houses going to return to what they once were? As time goes by and everyone gets vaccinated and it’s safe to do them, we will. But what’s been interesting is that we’re seeing a real point-to-point buyer pool. Buyers know what they want. Agents know what they’re looking for, and obviously without having open houses, we are in the hottest market we’ve ever been in. What’s a favorite project you’re working on now? I sold a piece of dirt probably seven years ago for $16M that’s coming online in the next couple weeks for $80M. We worked on it from start to finish, and I worked with the designer and found the site. We love it when we can see a project come to fruition.
Q&A with
Erinn Valencich Interior Designer, Real Estate Developer, and Founder, Erinn V Design Group What have you experienced in the market over the last year, and where do you think we’re headed in the next six to nine months? From a designer standpoint, we’ve seen a tremendous amount of sales, clients wanting more space. Bigger homes have become important again. Where I think people were starting to downsize and wanted more city living, now they’re returning to the suburbs. We’re doing a lot of pools, pool houses, indoor–outdoor living spaces. Instead of spending money on travel and events, they’re reinvesting in their homes and buying second and third homes in places they want to spend their time. We’ve seen a lot of people leave the city. Personally, I moved to Montecito, got out of Beverly Hills, and still come here for work and love it. But at the same time, I have the freedom to live from anywhere, which has been one blessing in all of this craziness. What have you seen in design trends related to working from home that you believe are going to stick? Freedom is the word that really comes to mind. That has a lot to do with where people want to live and the freedom they now have to work remotely. Flexibility is key. We’re seeing a lot of corporate clients downsizing their office spaces, making them more beautiful, and also putting up walls again, no more open floor plans, people wanting private spaces where they can have Zoom calls and can communicate and don’t have to worry about the sound. From the home-office standpoint, we’re putting in two to three home offices—the kids need a workspace, mom, dad, grandparents, they all need their own spaces to work and not be on top of each other. I’m seeing a lot of requests for more space, more rooms, more walls, more doors, and great outdoor space. With all the time we’ve been spending at home, what are clients spending money on to enhance their living spaces? People are spending more on finishes than I’ve seen. They used to be willing to spend on the land or the property, but then try to go really low budget on all the finishes or furnishings. Now they’re realizing that that gorgeous marble fireplace makes a difference to your enjoyment every day, or that stunning glass chandelier over the dining table that you sit at for hours every day actually makes you happy, and has a better impact on your enjoyment and well-being in the space. You just don’t get that layer of real lifestyle if you’re trying to do everything on a super-tight budget. What are your thoughts on buyers being willing to invest in vertical properties? The ability go out to dinner and be in a fabulous place and have a variety of all the great things that make this city come alive is fan-
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tastic. I think that a lot of people are looking at it. I know many clients that have bought a new bigger house outside of the city, and then a new small pied-à-terre condo, second home, third home in the city. We’re doing a project in St. Helena, where now St. Helena is the main residence, but they have a fabulous Golden Gate view condo in the city in San Francisco. So I think a lot of that is always going to be needed. What is your current favorite project that you’re working on? I’ve been building a new project in Greenwich, Connecticut, for some amazing clients, and we’re now putting in the pool house and all these extra features, and expanding the game rooms. The clients are so appreciative—they just go, “Yes, I love it,” and they write the check. That’s kind of a dream project.
Q&A with
Mario Romano Owner, M|R Walls and Mario Romano Design and Development
Even with a hot market, we face challenges. What are the biggest challenges you are facing right now? There’s going to be challenges with finding the right property and the right project. Because as prices go higher, there’s less quality projects and less properties. So in that regard, there’s actually sometimes less work for the whole design community. Fortunately for us, we work all over the United States and even in other parts of the world. There’s always a pocket that needs beautiful design, and we’re noticing more than ever that people want to beautify their spaces and give tremendous value to something, which is really just beauty, and how we want to live in beauty.
seen homes even with a big closet, they wanted to break into the kid’s room and make that a closet. Also, the kitchen island, that’s another object that almost can never be too big—15 feet is not big enough. The kitchen island is really the hub. It’s the center place where we all gather around, and so much happens there.
What design innovations are you seeing? What’s a fun project you’re working on right now? There’s a lot of fascinating trends, and a lot of emergent ones as well, because people want to do a lot of classical and traditional stuff. But then there’s this great desire or need for multidimensionality, and how surfaces can be as sensual and tactile as possible. We love doing that—to take the language from, let’s say, a classical mode to traditional to modern, to push it more toward a contemporary idea or even artistic in bringing the outside in, literally, and have it go on the walls or have it go outside of your walls. I think we also all need a good dining room, because we’ve all had to do so much cooking at home, and we really appreciated our kitchens, our dishwashers, our sinks, and our dining spaces, and I think those were probably even undervalued. I can’t imagine anybody who hasn’t looked at those spaces and didn’t wish they were better in some way. What are you seeing in terms of trends in architecture? I think it was 2012, I was doing a modern spec house. All the real estate agents said, “You can’t do modern as a spec house, because you’re going to limit the market.” Fortunately, that sold for a record. Since then, you’ve had this trend of modern spec houses for about a decade. What’s wonderful to see is that it has been embraced by the developers, the designers, the homeowners, the spec builders. Modern is kind of like the staple. And that word, modern, gets used to mean a lot of different things. Nowadays, it means almost anything that’s not traditional, anything that’s a little bit avant-garde or cutting edge, really contemporary. People are embracing that. They want to personalize it, and we’re pushing the design language with all those amazing technologies that are out there. Are there any absolutely must-have features that are a new development from this year? It’s the master closet, really, it can never be too big, period. I’ve
We have to sign nondisclosures, so it’s unfortunate, but I’ll try to leak something that we’re really proud of. Recently there’s an incredible Zaha Hadid project in Hong Kong. You can Google it. We’re going to be solving a lot of great design challenges there, and making some incredible 3-D surfaces and ceilings, and it just keeps on going in terms of compound curvature. So that’s really exciting. It’s a long-cycling business. It takes years to really achieve anything. And when it does it’s very satisfying. So you’ve just got to make it as great as you possibly can.
Q&A with
Bob Etebar Principal and COO, etco Homes
What are the biggest challenges you’ve faced during the pandemic? As a builder, certainly we’re seeing rising costs in skilled labor. And of course in the material costs, increases have been significant. And with that, as we try to use some of the finest materials here in the States it’s relatively available, but as we go global and try to search out some of the finest products in the world, that comes with some lead times which could lead to some delays. Those are some challenges for us as a developer and builder. The other challenge that is noteworthy is the difficulty in obtaining the entitlements for properties these days; it’s just taking a significantly longer amount of time. Where do you see the market headed in the next six to nine months, based on what we’ve seen this last year? I think we’re going to see a return to urban living. I think people are going to start embracing these metro areas once again, especially folks that have some travel to make up in this next few months and years to come. With urban living comes that freedom and peace of mind where you have the ability to lock and leave, and know that your residence is secure. They really want that social connectivity, sense of community that comes with that. I think people have missed that in this last year. Who have you been seeing in the last year or so transacting in the marketplace? We’re seeing a migration from the East Coast and even just locally from inland valleys, like Calabasas. People are buying as pieds-à-terre or just a second home. But they’re really flocking to the coastal properties. With the vaccine being released, people are making that move. There’s only so much land to build on in Los Angeles, so in the last few years we’ve seen a focus on vertical development. Do you think Angelenos are ever going to really embrace this way of living, like they do in other metropolitan markets, like San Francisco or New York? In many regards, I feel like they already do. People want to live without that burden of having to maintain their homes and their gardens, and they just want to have that ability to lock and leave. More than ever people are getting adjusted to that. As we continue to improve our public transit, our mass transportation, our ground-level retail amenities, vertical living will only start gaining more and more traction. There’s a real scarcity of product now. I truly do believe, as we enter this next chapter post- COVID, that people do want to have that social connectivity, that sense of community. The urban environments really offer that—Pasadena to Beverly Hills, West Hollywood, all the way over here to the Palisades, it’s something that we’re seeing gaining a lot of traction.
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What does it take to build homes today in terms of working with the city, getting permits, any material delays, or any other obstacles? People are working from home, and that includes city officials. That includes the plan checkers, the engineers, the processors. So the delay in getting any project through the system is significant. And that’s just the tip of the iceberg, until you get to construction and some of the ever-changing regulations and some of the other city processes that you have to adhere to. They are ever changing, especially during COVID. There’s been new practices, new protocols. But we’ve continued to build through this last year. What’s your favorite project you’re working on right now? My favorite project is probably the latest one that we’re developing in Beverly Hills. It’s probably one of the smallest ones, but we have integrated a beautiful design where you’ve got this living wall up the entire front elevation and side elevation of the building. It’s in a prime Beverly Hills locations. Obviously it’s deserving of that kind of quality. We love catering to the buyer in terms of indoor and outdoor living, and lots of sunlight. We’re big on large windows and flexible workspace.
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