It’s a Buyer’s Market for Mansions : Real estate: Surge in sales reflects comparative bargains in lavish estates.

The most expensive home ever sold in Orange County is up for sale again, and this time at a hefty discount.

The home, a widely recognized Newport Beach landmark, offers breathtaking views of the Lower Newport Bay. Want mansion amenities? How about 46 sets of French doors, an elevator, 11 1/2-foot ceilings, an eight-car garage, a tile pool, seven bedrooms, nine bathrooms and six fireplaces. The neighbors? Some of the most rich and powerful people in Southern California.

Bought by reclusive Hong Kong businessman George Yao in 1991 for $13.8 million--a county record--the waterfront estate is now on the market for only $8.9 million.

“It’s . . . the best buy in town right now,” said Bill Cote, a broker who sells luxury homes.

The Newport Beach estate is one of a number of luxury mansions now on the market throughout Southern California, where pricey properties have lost a third or more of their value during the recent real estate slump.

But spurred by lower prices, falling mortgage rates and strong interest from foreign buyers and local entrepreneurs, mansion sales are picking up in Southern California and throughout the nation. Luxury homes that have been on the market as long as five years are finally finding takers, albeit at prices much lower than initially sought.

Such a pickup in buying, however, has not yet hit lower-priced homes for the less well heeled.

While sales of homes declined overall in Orange County during 1995 as the county’s bankruptcy filing last year hurt the market, sales of multimillion-dollar homes jumped 27% from last year, according to Dataquick Information Systems in La Jolla. A total of 278 homes sold for more than $1 million, the highest number since 1990.

“People out there are swooping in to get the deal of a lifetime while they can,” said John Karevoll, analyst with Dataquick. “There are some great bargains now in Orange County” among luxury homes.

While Los Angeles and Beverly Hills are famous for pricey real estate, Orange County has its share of luxury estates.

They are being put on the market by many Southern California real estate developers and investors who, like Yao, have found themselves facing a double whammy in recent years.

As the market soured and their real estate business investments lost value, developers were forced to sell their luxury estates, which had declined in value as well. Yao, a hotelier, is currently in negotiations to keep his 289-room Radisson Plaza Hotel in Irvine near the John Wayne Airport from foreclosure.

The nearly 18,000-square-foot former Yao mansion--built with poured, reinforced concrete and covered with Texas limestone blocks in 1989--is located on nearly a half-acre on the tip of exclusive Harbor Island with just 30 other estates.

Whoever moves in will join an upscale community of the rich and powerful who live on various islands scattered in the Lower Newport Bay off Newport Beach.

Wealthy Orange County real estate developer George Argyros lives down the street on Harbor Island. Just across Newport Bay, on Linda Isle, lives Donald Bren, chairman of the Irvine Co., Orange County’s largest landowner.

Also within view of the mansion is Bayshore, John Wayne’s old estate. Close by is Lido Isle, a community of 820 homes where the late actor Rock Hudson once lived.

Once part of the estate of Los Angeles banker and arts patron Howard Ahmanson, the former Yao home at 18 Harbor Island was built by local developer Leroy Carver III, whose father founded the county’s only Rolls-Royce dealership.

Yao owned the home for about five years, but didn’t live there the entire time. In June, with his finances worsening, the bank foreclosed on Yao. The home’s title was transferred to an investor group called Newport Harbor Corp., which paid $7.35 million, said Cote.

While Cote is confident the home will sell, some brokers said the county’s wealthy remain skittish about buying, and are waiting to see if interest rates go lower.

“There’s been a tremendous amount of activity--lots of looking--but people are still cautious,” said Barbara Amstadter, a broker with Prudential California in Newport Beach.

Others are more bullish.

“The money is here. People who have the cash to buy those homes in the first place have not been hit hard like those in the middle class,” said Margaret Goedeke, a broker with Donmar Ltd. in Newport Beach. “They are seeing some great bargains now.”

This year, the lavish hilltop mansion once owned by Leisure World developer Ross W. Cortese in north Tustin was snapped up for $5 million after being on the market for two years at $7.5 million.

Other pricey Orange County estates now on the market include real estate developer James Baldwin’s Emerald Bay home near Laguna Beach, which has a $10-million asking price.

But the most expensive mansion on the market is Pacific Reflections, an 11,000-square-foot home perched on a Laguna Beach cliff. It carries a $16.5-million price tag.

Built in 1978 by stockbroker Boyd L. Jeffries, the home has granite floors, a mahogany exterior and a rotating bed under a domed ceiling that opens to the stars.

Jeffries, who ran into trouble with the Securities and Exchange Commission for stock trading violations, sold the mansion in 1986 for $6.2 million to resort developer Robert Breese.

In a sign of the local real estate market’s troubles, another Orange County mansion on and off the market since 1989 is now priced for half what is was six years ago.

Former Clothestime Inc. executive Mike DeAngelo’s 30,000-square-foot home in Tustin Hills is now for sale for $9.9 million, down from an original listing price of $22 million.

The 10-bedroom, 13-bath estate was featured on the show “Lifestyles of the Rich and Famous,” and is located on 26 acres. The home, which has a disco with a fog machine and a hair salon, was built in 1985 for DeAngelo and his wife, Pat.

“We’re close to getting an offer for that home,” said Amstadter, the listing agent. “It’s a wonderful deal now. It’s less than half the price.”

The James Baldwin home was put on the market after Baldwin’s home-building company filed for bankruptcy reorganization this year. A palatial four-story granite and glass estate with an elevator, the home is on the water in an exclusive enclave of about 500 homes in a gated beach-side community near Laguna Beach.