briefs

Americana Holdings Opens New California Franchise

This week, Americana Holdings, which operates Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Nevada Properties and Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices Arizona Properties, will open a new division of Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices California Properties. The franchise will operate in Southern California’s tricounty area, which includes San Bernardino, Riverside and Orange Counties.

“We are opening our first office in Yorba Linda today and will open a second office in Brea next month,” Americana Holdings President and Chief Operating Officer Gordon Miles said.

The company will do business as Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices California Properties in California. The name is used by multiple Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices franchise owners with operations in the state.

The new office is at 22601 Old Canal Road in Yorba Linda.

“We plan on opening three offices this year and continuing a strong growth plan in the years to come,” Miles said. “We currently have many great relationships with top producing sales executives in the market place and look forward to our California expansion being a very successful extension of our Nevada and Arizona operations.”

CEO Mark Stark said Americana Holdings’ decision to open a franchise in California was a natural progression of its growth in the past five years.

“We want to continue to grow, and California offers huge opportunities for our sales executives and their clients,” he said.

Americana Holdings joined Berkshire Hathaway HomeServices franchises in 2014. Last year, the company posted $2.7 billion in sales between Arizona and Nevada. Visit www.bhhscaproperty.com for more information on the office and new franchise.

Steve Wynn lists Los Angeles mansion for $17.45 million

Mark David at Variety.com reported that multibillionaire casino developer Steve Wynn has listed his Los Angeles mansion for $17.45 million. He purchased the Bel Air estate via corporate entity for $16.25 millon six months ago.

The 11,027-square-foot home has five bedrooms, eight baths and has three stories. It was built in 1991 and backs directly up to the greens of the Bel-Air Country Club.

The marketing material says the house has main-floor living spaces that include a double-height entry with twin staircases, spacious formal living and dining rooms, a paneled library, an oversized kitchen and a bifurcated family room with fireplace and wet bar.

Upstairs, a pair of en-suite guest/family bedrooms are joined by a master suite with windowed walk-in closet/dressing room, dual marble bathrooms and long views over the golf course toward the University of California, Los Angeles campus.

There’s an additional guest suite on the lowest level along with a screening room and gym plus a staff bedroom and bathroom tucked into the service wing on the main floor.

Glass pocket doors open the living spaces on the main floor to a charity event-sized semicircular terrace that overlooks the swimming pool and spa that, in turn, all but hover over the golf course. The gated, 0.9-acre grounds also include a koi pond, landscaped waterfall, a putting green, a motor court and attached three-car garage.

The article says Los Angeles real estate watchers say it’s not the first time Wynn has changed his mind about real estate in that area.

According to the Las Vegas Review-Journal, until the end of February, Wynn — who was granted citizenship in Monaco in 2010 although he never officially established residency there — held leases on three contiguous villas at his eponymous gambling emporium Wynn Las Vegas at a reported $43,750 per month.

It is unknown whether Wynn and his wife, Andrea Hissom, reupped their lease and remain in residence at the Wynn.

The pair keep a nearly 11,000-square-foot New York penthouse pied-a-terre at the Ritz-Carlton on Central Park South that was acquired in 2012 from real estate developer Christopher Jeffries for $70 million.

The Wynns had the place redecorated to showcase their trove of world-class artworks — think de Kooning, Warhol, Matisse and a museum’s worth of Picassos — and photographed for the March 2014 issue of Architectural Digest.

Incidentally, the Wynns’ downstairs neighbor at the Ritz-Carlton Howard Marks, who has his smaller but equally luxurious spread for sale at $50 million because he and his wife decamped to the uberposh 740 Park Ave., where in May 2012, they paid $52.5 million for a sprawling, 30-ish-room duplex sold by philanthropist Courtney Sale Ross.