'Most exclusive' L.A. condos hit market: Japanese firm's Westwood units go for $1-million-plus.

'Most exclusive' L.A. condos hit market

Osaka, Japan-based developer Daiwa House reported it will begin selling what it claims will be the Southland's "most exclusive" condominiums this week.

Most of the 73 units at Daiwa House's $100 million "La Tour" tower in Westwood are priced at between $1 million and $2 million. The project's two top-floor penthouses, however, are priced at $6.913 million and $7.345 million.

La Tour is the latest of the glitzy towers sprouting up along Wilshire Boulevard's so-called Golden Mile, as Westwood's condo row is known.

Many of those towers had sat idle for years as nothing but heaps of rusting steel when their original developers ran out of money. But most of the projects have since been taken over by deeper-pocketed developers who are now pushing the towers toward completion.

Today's completed and near-completed towers are attractive but the Golden Mile jackpot that developers had hoped for remains largely elusive.

Those developers appeared to be turning rust into gold by the fourth quarter of 1989, with Westwood's luxury condos selling briskly.

Those sales began sputtering, however, in early 1990 and have since come to a screeching halt, reported Eric Brown, a partner at The Meyers Group, a real estate information firm.

One of the most dramatic examples of the Golden Mile slowdown is taking place at The Wilshire, a $138 million tower slated for completion in May.

California Federal Bank, developer of the project, had lined up buyers for 40 of The Wilshire's 97 pricey units by the end of 1989's third quarter. Another 28 units went in the fourth quarter.

Presales slowed dramatically in the first quarter of 1990, though, with only 11 units being presold.

Still, 79 of The Wilshire's 97 units had been presold and the project was still a year away from completion.

Since then, however, Cal Fed has seen 24 of its lucrative condo deals fall apart. In other words, the number of presold units at The Wilshire went from 79 a year ago to just 55 units today, according to The Meyers Group.

Ironically, that back-pedaling began at about the same time its project manager, Lee Danielson, quit amid charges that Cal Fed had breached its contract.

"I would've made more money than Cal Fed's top executives," he said, "and they didn't like that."

Danielson admitted The Wilshire is still the Golden Mile's premier project and attributed the recent troubles to Cal Fed's handling of the project.

"Cal Fed's management doesn't know what they're doing, they're not developers," he said. "No one has taken over active decision-making on that project. It's nine months behind schedule and the interested buyers are going elsewhere."

Bill Schwarz, Cal Fed's marketing director for The Wilshire, said the project is behind schedule because it had to be "improved and redesigned" after Danielson left.

Schwarz also insisted that Cal Fed is very happy with sales activity at The Wilshire. The decline in number of units "sold" in recent months was caused by some tentative buyers backing out when it came time to sign on the dotted line.

"We were converting from 'pink' to 'white' during that time," he said.

"Pink" refers to the State of California's "pink report" which allows developers to only take refundable deposits from interested buyers. "White" refers to the state's final subdivision report, issued shortly before a project is complete, which allows developers to actually sell the units.

Brown of The Meyers Group, however, said the drop in sales at The Wilshire is due more to market conditions and is affecting many other Golden Mile condo projects.

"Someone paying a million bucks for a home has a lot of options," Brown explained. "I hate to sound totally negative, but there are more than 200 unsold luxury condos sitting on the Golden Mile right now. The biggest problem is that even if people wanted to buy, they can't because they can't sell their existing homes."

High-end home developers have maintained for months that demand for their million-dollar-and-up homes remains strong and steady, despite sluggish sales in most other housing sectors.

But that rosy outlook is now being contradicted by reports of dismal home sales in even the highest-priced sectors.

Lynn Borland, La Tour's director of marketing and sales, insisted these reports are overstated.

"The impression these reports make is that every high-end homeowner is in trouble, and that's just not the case," Borland asserted. "Sure, things have slowed down but that doesn't mean the owners of these homes are facing tragic circumstances."

Borland insisted Daiwa House has no plans to lower La Tour's million-dollar-and-up prices.

"They (Daiwa House) have so much money they can afford to sit on those condos for a while," added Linda Ford, a spokeswoman for La Tour.