A newly built Crystal Cove estate has sold off-market for $38 million, the highest Orange County home sale so far this year.
The Mediterranean-style, 18,336-square-foot house in the guard-gated Newport Coast community has six bedrooms, 12 bathrooms and a great room off the kitchen for seamless indoor-outdoor living. Its flat three-quarter-acre-plus lot with wraparound canyon and ocean views make it a rare find.
“There’s been a lot of sloped land, but people would rather have one big flat lot, and there’s just not that many of them,” said Marcy Weinstein of M|W|A at Compass. She co-listed the house with Rex McKown, her brother and real estate partner at M|W|A.
Records show the seller is spec home developer Tom Haigh of Haigh Builders Inc. A deed recorded with the county in October 2021 indicates Haigh and his wife, Annette, bought the vacant lot for $8.5 million. M|W|A also brokered that deal.
Weinstein, who spoke by phone about the record sale but did not disclose the buyer’s or seller’s names, said her group has represented the developer on several build-to-sell luxury homes in Newport Coast over the years, acting as “the thousand voices of the buying public in his head.”
The $38 million home marks their 13th project together.
She also said the house is the 11th home in Newport Coast to close for $30 million and up, and her firm has sold seven of them.
“We really do have the experience of what is a person with over $30 million looking for,” Weinstein said.
When the buyer’s agent, Michelle Linovitz of Coldwell Banker Realty, approached M|W|A about upcoming projects, Weinstein said they offered this one, which was still in progress at the time.
During construction, the buyer — identified by TheRealDeal as Las Vegas-based Tony Huang whose name the Southern California News Group confirmed through county records — had the unique opportunity to customize the home to his liking.
“You rarely get to have that without being involved in the entire process from the beginning,” Weinstein said. “There are not to many situations like that. But he happened to come along at a time when we were just starting the construction of it, so he got to contribute his input.”
The house details are sparse, but a few images provided by Compass show a reverse infinity-edge pool and spa surrounded by lush lawn.
Large pavers connect one end of the pool to a cabana.
“It has all the features you could want, but really it’s about someone’s dream that we built,” Weinstein said. “And when we can’t build them, we can find them for them.”
