“Not only are we offering someone a lot of flexibility,” Watts says, “they’re also going to save considerable time. If someone bought raw land and went through what we went through, they’d probably spend three to four years of their life going through construction permitting.” The land, he continues, “is what we in the industry call ‘shovel ready.’ ”

Those shovels have license to go unusually deep for the area. “One of the key benefits is you can also build a large subterranean level,” he says. Last year, the median price for a home in the area was $3.2 million, according to a report by Douglas Elliman, but the neighborhood is home to some of Los Angeles’s more outrageous properties. There’s a 38,000-square-foot spec home that comes with a decommissioned helicopter on sale for $150 million; a $49.9 million mansion with 20,000 square feet of underground space; and “Chartwell,” a 10-acre estate used in The Beverly Hillbillies, currently on sale for a mere $245 million.

Domvs has already commissioned renderings for a new house to rival its neighbors, plans for which can be included in the sale. The property has views of the city, the ocean, and, on a clear day, Catalina Island off the coast.

Competitive Market
The listing comes during a modest downswing in L.A.’s real estate market, where inventory is rising and homes are taking longer to sell. In Bel Air, the average sales price was down nearly 21 percent year-over-year during the fourth quarter of 2018, according to a report by Douglas Elliman, which noted that “the number of sales jumped as negotiability expanded sharply.”

When the first Bel Air plot was listed, its price broke down to $15 million an acre. Today, even after all the improvements Watts says he’s done to the land, the price has been reduced to just over $14 million per acre.

“We’ve actually priced this extremely competitively,” he says. “We’re looking to avoid what other developers have done, which is to set the price really, really high and then come down. We see ourselves as an intelligent investment group.”

For contrast, there’s currently a 1.88-acre, undeveloped tract in Bel Air on sale for $47.5 million, or $26.4 million an acre; nearby, there’s a 1.41-acre plot of land on sale for $19.95 million, or $14 million per acre.

Still, buyers might make a few uncomfortable comparisons. Most prominent among them is what’s been dubbed “the mountain,” a billion-dollar, 157-acre plot of land in Beverly Hills, which comes out to about $6.4 million an acre, or less than half of what Watts is asking. This, Watts says, isn’t a reasonable comparison because the mountain, as the name implies, is “130 acres of hillside, and then 30 acres of usable land.”

The key, he continues, “is that we’re not selling homes, we’re selling flexible land that people can customize. It’s very different” than the many spec homes that have clogged the high-end market.

Advance Interest
Watts says there’s already been a significant amount of advance interest.