$8.1M Refinance of an Oceanfront Laguna Beach Live-Work Building

This is one of the few records in the database where the recorded instrument itself discloses pricing: the $8,125,000 Wells Fargo deed of trust on 629 South Coast Highway carries a 4.63 percent rate on a 361 month term, per the recorded document. Recorded rates are rare in county data, and where they exist they are the only rates this database publishes.

The collateral is a 1930 oceanfront property addressed across 627 and 629 South Coast Highway in Laguna Beach, described in sale records as a live work property: commercial office frontage directly on Pacific Coast Highway with a one bedroom apartment and a separate 1930s beach house behind it. County records classify it as general commercial at 3,232 square feet; other sources describe up to 4,800 square feet, a conflict reported as recorded. It last rented as a whole at five figures a month per prior listings.

The financing sequence over twelve months is the story. A family trust that had held the property since 2010 sold it in June 2025 for a recorded $12,500,000. A private lender recorded a $12,127,715 purchase money deed of trust that July. Ten months later, Wells Fargo's $8,125,000 refinance replaced it, cutting the recorded debt by four million dollars and converting bridge scale private credit into thirty year bank paper at a disclosed fixed rate.

The earlier chain shows the asset's long private banking era: First Republic Bank recorded five instruments between 2005 and 2015, none above $3,000,000, during the trust's ownership. Wells Fargo, with seven closings tracked on LoanList across four asset types, ranks among the database's most active lenders; this loan is its first tracked Orange County closing, ranking 5th of 25 in the county, above the spring retail cluster in Brea, Foothill Ranch, and Anaheim at $7,700,000 to $8,000,000.

For buyers of trophy coastal property, the arc here is a familiar one executed cleanly: win the deal with fast private money, season the asset, then refinance into long term bank debt once the dust settles. What makes this record valuable is that, for once, the county file shows the actual rate the strategy achieved.