Anyone here have a Data Quick subscription that you wouldn’t mind sharing with me? 🙂 Until then, I’ll have to rely on what I can find from MLS. I’ve gone through and performed counts of the number of closed sales in Irvine (SFR, condo, and total) for each month since September 1998.
A few notes about the data. The data is from the MLS Alliance database which aggregates listings from the 8 various MLS systems in Southern California. Because of the multiple MLS systems (go figure!), sometimes properties are entered in more than one MLS system and it appears twice in MLS Alliance. But this doesn’t happen too often with listings in Irvine. Also, for the most part, these numbers do not contain new home sales since builders in Irvine do not usually put their homes into MLS.
Yes, I know these charts are fugly as hell. Does anyone have any tips on making better charts?
I’ve also made the raw data available in case anyone is interested:Irvine Sales Trends.xls
I went ahead and used moving averages to smooth out the monthly changes. The actual monthly data is in the XLS file.
The downward trend is clearly visible; especially in the SFR chart. It’s just a matter of time before prices follow.
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You can clearly also see the bounce which occurred after the inventory buildup in the summer of 2004.
Friends of mine sold their home in Irvine in May 2004, I sold mine in the same development almost 2 years later for only about 5% more. From what I can see on the MLS, the homes in this development are now listed about 5-10% less than what I sold for.
I moved back to UK (to another bubble market – still frothing) where I’ve owned a home since 2002 and I’m watching what’s happening from a distance with much interest.
I know of quite a few others who lived in Orange County (Irvine, Aliso Viejo to name 2) who have either moved out-of-state or to their home country after selling up and banking the tax-free profits from their homes.
There is a realtor who lists weekly sales in Irvine on the web. The bookmark is on my other computer. There isn’t much analysis, but the average DOM has been steadily increasing. With the relisting game, true DOM is probably significantly longer.
Here’s the site link OC
http://www.orange-county-real-estate-coach.com/weblogirv.html
In West Irvine 171 Topaz sold for $565K. It is a 3BR/2.5BA in the Andover development built by William Lyon Homes. This floor plan was listed at $650K in the spring and I saw price reductions to $620-$635 by the summer. So we are down $95K from the spring’s wishing price to an actual closed sale in two seasons. The $95K figures is coincentally about the same figure in incentives listed by Pulte for SoCal in today’s OC Register.