(Ex) Chino Hills Maternity Hotel Up for Sale

Marianne Napoles of The Champion reported in Saturday's edition that the structure formerly operating as Los Angeles Hermas Hotel, a "maternity hotel" for Chinese women and which overlooks the eastern end of the Carbon Canyon Road corridor is now on the market.

Rowland Heights realty company IRN Realty has the listing and the building is offered at $3.3 million.  The property description (click here for the listing on the California Regional Multiple Listing Service) observes that the structure has "a very unique floor plan." 

Indeed, even though the square footage is given as just under 8,000 square feet, the description states that "according to buyer [that would be the seller], the size of property is around 15,000 Sq.F," which is misleading, as the property is 5.88 acres—the size of the house is said to be 15,000 square feet.  In any case, it is noted that there are "over 10 bedrooms" and "6 detached garages," which latter apears to be another misstated point—the house probably has detached garage space for six cars.

Interestingly, the IRN agent is Xiaoshun Chen, but the e-mail address is under Sabrina Chen, who appears to be the same spokesperson for owner Hai Yong Wu during the recent maternity hotel crisis. 

As noted by Napoles, Wu agreed last month to a court stipulation that he correct nine city building code violations by the end of this year.  These included sewer discharge permits, adding emergency exits for added rooms, and redoing the illegal construction of the ten additional bedrooms and bathrooms.  Moreover, no one was to live in the structure, which has been unoccupied since last December, until all of these issues were handled. 

Not surprisingly, there are only three photographs of the property, one of the front door, another of the driveway coming up the hill toward the house, and the last of the view.  Usually with homes of this price range there are many photos showing the exterior and interior to entice "discriminating" buyers to an unusual property.  The problem here is that this residence is a little too unusual.

So, it will be interesting to know whether the property will be sold before these repairs are completed and, if not, whether a buyer would be prepared to assume the responsibility to do so before occupancy can be certified, which presumably would have to be done under the auspices of the court.

Finally, the listing noted that the prospective buyer "can enjoy your privacy."  Well, that's true to an extent, given that the neighbors will be observing very carefully when someone does eventually inhabit the ex-maternity hotel!