Surf titan lists sprawling Balinese-style Laguna Beach compound for $23 million

Owner of the three-level palace overlooking the surf at Laguna has taken a two-mill haircut after the joint fail to sell earlier this year.

The surf industry titan Joel Cooper, CEO of Lost International and co-founder of iconic eighties surf brand Gotcha, has listed his Laguna Beach compound, for twenty-three million dollars. 

Cooper’s house, which has been styled in the form of a Balinese villa hatched on Californian shores, turtles in little ponds, antique Balinese day bed, heavy wooden doors, slate roof and so on, is in the “ultra-exclusive” gated Irvine Cove community there and stares down the canyon at pretty Laguna. 

It was built in 2002 and squats on half-an-acre of dirt, has six bedrooms, seven bathrooms, a guesthouse, spa, soaking tub, cabana and a kid’s cubby house.

Cooper has been trying to sell or rent the joint for the past ten years. Back in 2017, you could’ve scooped it up for a reasonable enough nine mill. In March, 2024, Cooper was chasing twenty-five mill. Now it’s back to twenty-three.

“One of the goals of building this house was to be able to experience living in Bali and yet living in California,” says Cooper. “As a young child growing up in South Africa, I always dreamed of coming to America. My second dream was to build a home and there was one place that represented everything that I wanted in a home, and that was Bali.” 

Cooper says he wept when he got the keys to the finished house and says it was a moment he’ll never forget. 

Bit of history on the owner. 

Along with his pal, the pro surfer and coke aficionado Michael Tomson, Cooper co-founded Gotcha in 1978. The brand quickly became iconic, pioneering a shift in surf culture and fashion. 

Under Cooper’s business acumen, he’s got a degree in accounting, Gotcha’s sales escalated dramatically, reaching $200 million in annual revenue.

After he split from Gotcha in 1997, Cooper hooked up with BeachGrit’s fav shaper Matt Biolos’ Lost Enterprises Inc, where he became CEO.

Buy the joint here.