Sagewood, which used to be known as Tumwater Highlands, is south of Olympia Regional Airport at Old Highway 99 and 88th Avenue.
In a sign of the slower housing market, Union Community Partners paid $6.4 million for the nearly 600-lot development, or roughly $10,000 per lot, a steep discount compared with lot prices during the housing boom, Tumwater permit manager Chris Carlson said.
During the boom, residential building lots sold for $90,000 to $110,000 each, he said.
“It’s the largest subdivision I’ve ever processed,” Carlson said Friday about the site.
Union Community Partners, a division of Pico Holdings of La Jolla, Calif., acquired the property from a subsidiary of East West Bank of Pasadena, Calif., said Kelly Foster, vice president of land acquisitions for Union Community. UCP “acquires and develops partially developed and finished residential housing lots,” according to a description of the business included in Pico’s annual report.
The Sagewood property has become overgrown with grass and Scotch broom, so the next step is to clean it up and market finished lots to public and private builders, Foster said. Still, he called it a beautiful piece of property that unfortunately came to market at the “crescendo of the bubble.”
“We are very bullish on the Puget Sound region, and we like the long-term opportunity here,” he said. He said the company could begin to market the lots in the next 18 months to two years.
The site originally was developed by a Pierce County home builder called SoundBuilt. The city issued about a half-dozen building permits for the site in 2006 before work ceased because of the downturn in the housing market. Carlson said there are other subdivisions in the county, that also have been halted by the downturn in housing and are “going back to nature.”
In addition to Sagewood, Union Community has acquired 734 lots throughout King County, Foster said.
Rolf Boone: 360-754-5403
rboone@theolympian.com
www.theolympian.com/bizblog
