Real Estate Developer & Permitting Expert — Co-Founder & President, Crest Real Estate | Los Angeles
Jason Somers's Audemars Piguet Royal Oak: The Prince of Permits Wears the Watch That Also Broke Every Rule
Nicknamed the "Prince of Permits" — co-founder and president of Crest Real Estate, the Los Angeles firm that has mastered the art of navigating the city's most complex municipal codes, baseline hillside ordinances, and entitlement processes to bring ambitious developments to life. Over fifteen years, Jason Somers has shaped thousands of properties across LA, including the restoration of historic John Lautner buildings. On his wrist: an Audemars Piguet Royal Oak self-winding — the watch that, when it was introduced in 1972, broke every rule the Swiss watch industry had about what a luxury watch was supposed to be.
| Jason Somers — Audemars Piguet Royal Oak on wrist. Source: YouTube |
AP Royal Oak — octagonal bezel, integrated bracelet, tapisserie dial. Source: YouTube |
▶ Source: YouTube
Jason Somers is the co-founder and president of Crest Real Estate, a Los Angeles-based firm that has built its reputation on a specific and difficult-to-replicate service: navigating the most complex permitting, entitlement, and project management challenges in one of the most regulated development environments in the United States. The City of Los Angeles — with its layered municipal codes, neighbourhood-specific ordinances, baseline hillside regulations, and Department of Building and Safety processes — is a system that regularly defeats developers who do not have deep institutional knowledge of how it works. Somers has spent fifteen-plus years becoming the person who knows how it works better than almost anyone.
His nickname — the "Prince of Permits" — captures the specific expertise that distinguishes Crest from conventional real estate firms: not the acquisition or sales side of development, but the municipal approval process that determines whether a project is possible at all before a dollar of construction capital is committed. His firm has handled thousands of developments across Los Angeles, including restoration work on buildings designed by John Lautner — the American architect whose biomorphic, futurist residential designs represent some of the most technically and bureaucratically complex structures in the city's housing stock. Restoring a Lautner building in Los Angeles requires navigating historic designation processes, structural engineering requirements, and planning commission approvals simultaneously, while preserving the design intent of a building that was often ahead of the code when it was built. This is Somers's domain.
"The Prince of Permits — excelling at navigating complex municipal codes, building regulations, and approvals to bring ambitious projects to life." — On Jason Somers's expertise
Timepiece
Audemars Piguet Royal Oak Self-Winding
The Audemars Piguet Royal Oak was introduced in 1972, designed by Gérald Genta in a single overnight session for the Basel Watch Fair. It broke the established conventions of Swiss luxury watchmaking in every direction simultaneously: it was made of stainless steel — then considered an unacceptable material for a luxury watch — it had an integrated bracelet that flowed directly from the case rather than attaching separately, its octagonal bezel was secured by eight hexagonal screws that were visible from the front, and it was priced at five times the cost of a gold Rolex Datejust. The Swiss watch industry expected it to fail. It became the defining luxury sports watch of the twentieth century and the archetype of an entire category.
The current self-winding Royal Oak references — including the 15510ST (39mm) and the 15400ST (41mm) — are powered by in-house automatic calibres (4302 or 3120) with power reserves of 60–72 hours and Côtes de Genève decoration on the movement bridges. The iconic tapisserie dial — the small square hobnail pattern that covers the entire dial surface — is applied by hand and is one of the most labour-intensive finishing processes in mainstream Swiss watchmaking. The integrated bracelet, with its precisely brushed horizontal links and polished chamfers, remains the most technically demanding bracelet construction in the luxury sports watch category. Retail prices run from approximately $24,000–$30,000 for steel references; secondary market values are significantly higher.
| Introduced | 1972 — designed by Gérald Genta; the original luxury sports watch |
| Case | Stainless steel — octagonal bezel with 8 exposed hexagonal screws |
| Dial | Tapisserie — hand-applied hobnail pattern; blue, grey, silver, or black |
| Bracelet | Integrated — brushed horizontal links with polished chamfers; no separate attachment |
| Movement | Cal. 4302 or 3120 — automatic, 60–72-hour power reserve; Côtes de Genève finishing |
| Retail price | ~$24,000–$30,000 (steel) — secondary market significantly higher |
The Watch That Ignored the Rules and Won
The Royal Oak succeeded not by working within the rules of Swiss luxury watchmaking but by being so precisely correct in its design that the rules became irrelevant. Steel was not supposed to be used for luxury watches — the Royal Oak made steel the material of choice for luxury sports watches across the industry. Integrated bracelets were not supposed to be possible at this level of finishing — the Royal Oak's integrated bracelet became the benchmark against which all subsequent integrated bracelet designs are measured. The exposed bezel screws were not supposed to be considered elegant — they became one of the most imitated design elements in watchmaking history. Genta did not comply with what was expected. He made something so correct that expectation had to follow.
Jason Somers operates in a regulatory environment that is, in its own way, a system of rules designed to resist the kind of ambitious development that his clients want to pursue. The baseline hillside ordinance, the grading regulations, the historic preservation requirements, the planning commission approval process — these are not obstacles that the best developers ignore. They are systems that the best developers understand so thoroughly that they can navigate them to outcomes that less-informed participants believe are impossible. The Prince of Permits does not break the rules. He knows them well enough to work through them in ways that produce results others cannot achieve. That is also, on reflection, exactly what the Royal Oak did in 1972.
The LA Developer's Watch
The Audemars Piguet Royal Oak has become, across the past two decades, the luxury sports watch most closely associated with Los Angeles creative and business culture — the watch of the entertainment executive, the real estate developer, the tech founder, the high-net-worth individual who wants a watch that signals sophistication without broadcasting it in the Rolex idiom. It is the alternative to the Daytona for people who have considered the Daytona and decided they want something with a different vocabulary. For a developer who works in the most architecturally and bureaucratically complex city in the United States, restoring buildings designed by one of the twentieth century's most visionary architects, the watch whose design vocabulary is itself a work of architectural precision is the correct choice.
And at Spot.Watch — that's always worth noticing.
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