Suburban living does not have to be dull. Today we will look at the exciting Turtle Rock Speedway and an interesting suburban hike.
Irvine Home Address … 2 Queens Wreath Way Irvine, CA 92612
Resale Home Price …… $500,000
{book5}
Walking down the hall
Like a soft heartbeat
I won’t wake up
Cause by the time that
I do you’ll be gone
I won’t look back
On a past so long
I won’t look back
On the things gone wrong
I won’t look back
Cause by the time that
I do you’ll be gone
Gone — Melody Gardot
Fifteen years, and $350,000 later, these owners have spent their home. Their equity is gone, spent on who knows what. Perhaps they bought some video games?
I have been playing far too much Mario Kart Wii lately. My entertaining family diversion inspired today’s post….
Turtle Rock Speedway
Tucked away in a quiet corner of Irvine is one of the most exciting racing circuits in the country. It doesn’t accommodate motor vehicles, and it probably would not stand up to a pack of bicycles, but if you are looking for a great place to race your children on bikes, scooters, rollerblades or even on foot, then Turtle Rock Speedway is waiting for you.
If you don’t have two cars to coordinate dropoff and pickup, you will
either have to park at the top of the hill, race down, then walk all
the way back up, or you can park at William R. Mason Park, walk up the
hill to the starting point, and finish near your car. I personally
would prefer the latter.
The course itself is 1.62 miles, and it drops significantly in elevation from start to finish. If you are on wheels, you can complete the entire course with minimal effort.
It starts at a park at the intersection of Sycamore Creek and Turtle Rock Drive. There is a neighborhood park there with private pool and tennis for Turtle Rock residents. (They will probably be annoyed if you park your car there, but too bad, that is where the track begins.)
First, as a disclaimer, I am not encouraging anyone to go flying down this hill at breakneck speeds. If you go there, race too fast and hurt yourself, you are a fool who needed no encouragement from me.
The course starts in a district I call the “Suburban Slalom.” It is characterized by gently falling terrain, eucalyptus canopies, and…
numerous entertaining corners.
This part of the track presents the best viewing opportunities for spectators, particularly on the open lawns elevated above the track.
Once you wend your way ’round the perilous slalom, you will be heading steeply downhill into Heaven’s Gate.
Once you have exited the tunnel, you will circle the Catholic Church at the corner — hence Heaven’s Gate. (Also, if you hate this post, you can use the Heaven’s Gate reference to the worst movie ever made.)
From there, the course moves back between the condos in another tree-lined avenue. This is the location to make your move. The track begins to drop off more steeply as you make the final decent from the hillside down to the Creekside Flats.
You can pick up too much speed if you are not careful, and when you emerge from the trees, there is a sharp right turn at the Devil’s Elbow, then there is another sharp bender to the left. From there it is a race across the Creekside Flats to one of three good finish-line locations.
The intersection of Culver and University is as far as the path can
take you without crossing any streets, so it is a natural location to
stop. The first finishing location is where a small tributary crosses the main creek. It is a low point just before an important fork, and there is plenty of time to stop before getting to the streets. The other finish lines are closer to the street. You should decide in advance in case you have a photo finish.
Suburban Hiking in Turtle Rock
Turtle Rock, like most Irvine Villages, has wonderful nieghborhood amenities. The three-mile long walking trail is part of a larger network that ties together William R. Mason Park with Turtle Creek Community Park. This is one of the more interesting suburban hikes in our area.
If you start in either park, you will have an uphill trudge to begin your journey. The drop to Turtle Creek Community Park is steeper, but a bit less interesting to travel. The starting point for Speedway Turtle Rock is a park at the half-way point on this hike. If you plan to walk, I would allow an hour each way. There are public restrooms at the parks at each end of the trail.
{book}
Let’s take a look at a property near Speedway Turtle Rock in University Park.
Irvine Home Address … 2 Queens Wreath Way Irvine, CA 92612
Resale Home Price … $500,000
Income Requirement ……. $92,027
Downpayment Needed … $100,000
Home Purchase Price … $206,000
Home Purchase Date …. 4/22/1995
Net Gain (Loss) ………. $264,000
Percent Change ………. 142.7%
Annual Appreciation … 9.9%
Monthly Mortgage Payment … $2,147
Monthly Cash Outlays ………… $2,830
Monthly Cost of Ownership … $2,120
Redfin Property Details for 2 Queens Wreath Way Irvine, CA 92612
Beds 3
Baths 2 baths
Size 1,741 sq ft
($287 / sq ft)
Lot Size 4,753 sq ft
Year Built 1967
Days on Market 2
Listing Updated 10/8/2009
MLS Number S591952
Property Type Single Family, Residential
Community Westpark
Tract Othr
According to the listing agent, this listing may be a pre-foreclosure or short sale.
Open floorplan, large kitchen, dining room area opens to patio and rear yard. 3 bed, 2 bath, home in desireable Irvine area on cul de sac near UC and fwys, needs TLC. Beautiful tennis facility, pool, spa and park
- This house was purchased for $264,000 on 4/22/1995. The owners used a $185,300 first mortgage and a $78,700 downpayment. Not to worry, they got their downpayment back and then some.
- On 8/30/2005 they refinanced the first mortgage for $405,000 and opened a HELOC for $125,000.
- Total property debt $530,000.
- Total mortgage equity withdrawal is $344,700.
Foreclosure Record
Recording Date: 06/04/2009
Document Type: Notice of Default
Document #: 2009000286409
Where is all that HELOC money? Gone. Where are the owners going to be soon? Gone.
Wow. I know comments are superfluous but — this wasn’t a risk taking trying a quick flip. They lived in the place for almost 15 years, apparently. And now they walk away, muttering, “where did all that money go?” Actually, they are probably blaming the problem on the banks, like most people nowadays. Anyone but themselves.
Apparently their money tree died, and they’re blaming the fertilizer.
I can fertilize their tree for free 🙂 Sorry just couldn’t pass it…
Isn’t Heaven’s Gate that cult that killed themselves all in Rancho Santa Fe?
Yes, it was.
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/3/38/Heavensgatelogo.jpg
Heaven’s Gate was an American UFO cult based in San Diego, California and led by Marshall Applewhite (1931–1997) and Bonnie Nettles (1927–1985).[1] On March 26, 1997, police discovered the bodies of 39 members of the Heaven’s Gate cult, all of whom had died by apparent suicide. [2]
The group’s end coincided with the appearance of Comet Hale-Bopp in 1997.[3]
Weren’t they all wearing Nike shoes when the bodies were discovered.
That’s the only weird part I remember.
I was living in L.A. at the time, and remembering hearing the local morning jocks on KLSX come up with a parody of “Saturday Night”, based on the Heaven’s Gate cultists. I don’t remember all the lyrics, but this couplet stuck in my head:
I, I, I, I can sing this way
‘Cause I got castrated the other dayyyy!
Woops, sorry–they weren’t local, but syndicated (Mark & Brian), and on KLOS, not KLSX.
BTW, where does Redfin get off calling this a SFR? That whole block is all condos or duplexes. How can they describe it as a SFR?
Further BTW, those old townhomes are terribly ugly (flat roof = “French, Mansard Style”). But they are roomy and comfortable, and the neighborhood is pretty nice.
The MLS listing calls it a SFR, although it is in fact an attached property.
It is single-family residential; it is not single-family detached. SFR is technically correct, but SFD would be inaccurate.
It’s all used to confuse the general public.
Well, the listing also says no common walls, which is most certainly incorrect.
Nice park.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BxuCeHUxoBY
Here’s my theory on where the money went. They heard about their neighbors and friends who were taking equity loans on their primary residences to invest in real estate in other parts of the country. They, like many other Californians, got sucked in and leveraged the crap out of their home. Now investing in real estate is not a bad idea, but investing without expert help can be a formula for disaster. Now their home value has dropped. Their rental properties are vacant, and if they bought in Vegas, FL or some other area with large price declines, their investment is worth much less now. Their equity money is gone. They have exhausted their reserves. So they walk away and start over some place else. Sound familiar?
Great point. They might have invested in CA also, as I know of a lot of this happening in FL with people buying properties either in their neighborhood or elsewhere in the same county.
They love their pastels. I like the Speedway story. I’ll bet my 17 year old son has done that on his skateboard. He has enough injuries and goes through shoes like crazy. >:(
Here come the knife catchers:
New investors swoop on battered U.S. housing market
Oct 14 (Reuters) – Avid golfer Bob Cano came to the Arizona sunbelt to buy his dream getaway property and ended up picking up three more distressed homes as prices fell to half of 2006 levels.
Corporate investor Bob Schulman has set his sights on Las Vegas where his new fund is buying stylish homes in bulk, while mortgage industry veteran Peter Paul is scouring the national market for troubled home loans he thinks can be fixed.
U.S. property investors these days are smaller and say they are more willing to wait it out — a stark contrast from the fervent flipping and reckless borrowing that characterized housing investment a few years ago.
Wall Street — blamed for much of the bubble at the heart of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression — is mostly watching from the sidelines when it comes to homes. But it still dominates the market for bad, or distressed, loans.
For those with cash, time and room for risk, prices now are too good to pass up, providing incipient, albeit possibly temporary, relief for a market key to economic recovery.
‘From May of ’07 to May of ’08, the real estate market continued to plummet. So, I thought, this is a really good opportunity for me,’ said Cano, 57, a title and escrow industry executive from Washington state.
He has put his money in Maricopa, a desert city south of Phoenix that grew furiously during the housing boom to about 45,000 residents from just over 1,000 in 2000.
Offering a cheaper, more spacious alternative to Phoenix, Maricopa also has a high proportion of subprime loans and subsequently foreclosures.
The average home sale price in the Phoenix area, including Maricopa, hit a decade low in April of $125,000, according to MDA DataQuick, and has ticked up month by month to reach $134,000 in August.
‘Investors have started to return … they see prices have fallen so far below the trend that they consider Phoenix housing to be a good investment,’ said Karl Guntermann, the professor of real estate finance at Arizona State University.
Across the nation, home prices rose for a third straight month in July, encouraging investors to buy property. The S&P/Case-Shiller index of house prices in 20 metropolitan areas rose nearly 4 percent in the period.
While much of the renewed housing market activity is being driven by first-time buyers lured in by low interest rates and an $8,000 federal tax credit, absentee buyers — investors and second-home owners like Cano — made up 41 percent of all purchases in the Phoenix area in August.
So intense is activity in some areas in the Southwest and California that distressed homes often receive multiple offers as first-time buyers compete with investors.
‘Two years ago, there were five people at auctions … today, there are 70 of us,’ said Todd Kaufman, who turned investor in California real estate after 23 years on Wall Street, where he ran last ran the mortgage securitizations unit of failed bank Washington Mutual.
IR, keep up the good work. It’s quite sad nowadays to see new bubbles being propped up by the entire world governments.
If the Fed has any balls left, it would, pardon my French, freaking raise the rates at this point back to 2+%. Why is it still in 0-.25% range? Unemployment? Give me a break. So I’m unemployed and I need to borrow at 0-.25% interest plus whatever the pigs, um I meant the banks, would get with a markup. Try doing that with unemployment or partial employment.
The Fed as well as most of the f**ed up developed countries (EU is another great example) know that, with ZIRP, cash will be flushed out of the system (as your examples shown above). Stimulus is another leg that’s propping up this anemic economy…whatever is left of it.
Once all private cash has been flushed out….game over.
“‘Investors have started to return … they see prices have fallen so far below the trend that they consider Phoenix housing to be a good investment,’ said Karl Guntermann, the professor of real estate finance at Arizona State University.”
I hope the prop tax and no tenant will eat them alive.
“I hope the prop tax and no tenant will eat them alive.”
That is the fate that awaits many of the vultures in fringe markets. Maricopa, Arizona, and Lancaster, California, will have empty houses for years.
If the Fed has any balls left, it would, pardon my French, freaking raise the rates at this point back to 2+%. Why is it still in 0-.25% range? Unemployment? Give me a break. So I’m unemployed and I need to borrow at 0-.25% interest plus whatever the pigs, um I meant the banks, would get with a markup. Try doing that with unemployment or partial employment.
That’s not the point of low interest rates. The point is to have a business be morely likely to be willing to get a loan to expand their business and hire more people if interest rates are low.
He has put his money in Maricopa, a desert city south of Phoenix that grew furiously during the housing boom to about 45,000 residents from just over 1,000 in 2000.
Offering a cheaper, more spacious alternative to Phoenix, Maricopa also has a high proportion of subprime loans and subsequently foreclosures.
**snort** Good luck to him on that. Unemployment is high, wages are low, and any real, paying work is in Phoenix. When gas prices go back up, nobody’s going to want to make the commute from Maricopa to Phoenix.
Oh–and since the state budget has slashed funds to Arizona’s public works, the commute anywhere around Phoenix is going to get worse, as potholes and cracks go untended.
U.S. property investors these days are smaller and say they are more willing to wait it out—a stark contrast from the fervent flipping and reckless borrowing that characterized housing investment a few years ago.
This sounds like a marketing ad planted into the media to reel in a few more fresh fish for the slaughter. If that is not the case, then this author clearly does not understand the difference between investing versus speculating.
Speculating on housing in Maricopa in 2009 is an incredibly foolish venture. This speculator is going to be waiting a very very long time. I suppose that whoever inherits his assets will not mind the 50% haircut.
Why was the population 1,000 in the year 2000? What has changed there since other than a bunch of farm land has been turned into houses?
It’s very isolated and if you are not retired then you are most likely commuting very long distance to work every day. Why is there going to be another boom in this city when there is plenty of affordable housing closer to Phoenix where the actual (few) jobs are at? He is clearly hedging his bet that a large segment of the retiring booomers are going to rush Maricopa. Good luck with that. I suppose it could happen – the only problem that isn’t mitigated is how much these houses will bet fetching by then when a huge oversupply of exurb homes are selling for a dime a dozen.
Real-estate is a huge portion of the Phoenix metro area’s economy. With unemployment running high – there are a lot of people sitting around out here with nothing but time on their hands to come up with new gimmicks and schemes to make money the only way they know how which is hustling. The local radio stations still continue to pump the “Secrets to Making Money in Real Estate” on a regular basis. The “tax credit” is also being interpreted as “free money” by those who are comfortable living in ignorance. Local marketing ads are also beginning to pitch the (predicted) “buy now before interest rates go up” to create the urgency element to jump start another mania.
Across the nation, home prices rose for a third straight month in July, encouraging investors to buy property. The S&P/Case-Shiller index of house prices in 20 metropolitan areas rose nearly 4 percent in the period.
Hopefully these “investors” are cash buyers lining up to give back their bubble money and not borrowers who will be upside when mortgage interest rates begin their ascent.
Our central bank has doubled the money supply since everything hit the fan. Notice how none of it is making its way into the economy? The banks are telling us exactly what is going to happen through their actions; real estate is going to continue to decline. They are sitting on their piles of bailout money to pay for the future losses that they know are on the horizon. In the meantime, they are all going to pretend to be solvent and compete with each other to snag the remaining borrowers with incomes and down payments.
The Government is clearly going to have to raise interest rates if they want to prevent a run on the dollar by foreign investors and in order to do that, money will have to be removed from the system which means mortgages are going to cost more. Anyone buying today without a sizeable down payment will be going underwater instantly when this happens.
Anyone who (foolishly) bought a house because of an 8K “tax incentive” will eventually (and hopefully) pay it all back (and then some) via interest payments over the life of the loan. There is no free lunch and many of these people who are buying using 30 year mortgages will be getting into their new houses only to find that the pride of ownership wears off after about 6 months and 29.5 more years seems an eternity.
I see the present condition in Phoenix as untenable for the forseeable future which is why I shall be continuing to rent even though I could purchase a house and stretch monthly payments to be half what I pay in rent each month. If you step back and look at the cost in the long run versus a one month granularity – the proposition is clearly a loser.
Don’t fall for the tricks being peddled. Keep saving your money and wait for interest rates to bring down prices even lower.
Hi David!
Yes, we haven’t had a good AZDavidPhx rant for far too long.
Speculating on housing in Maricopa in 2009 is an incredibly foolish venture.
Depends on the price. If prices are low enough, he can rent out the houses and make a good profit. Lots of fringe areas have rents greatly exceeding monthly costs to own. In prime areas, the situation is reversed.
A quick flip through Zillow (Redfin doesn’t service Arizona) shows things like a two year old, 2,300 sq ft house with 4 beds and 2 baths for $100,000. A quick flip through Craigslist shows asking prices for 4 bedrooms in Maricopa are between $825 and $1,200 a month. The potential for profit is there, IMHO. Taxes and HOA fees might be the deciding factor.
My friend the realtor says housing is the only safe investment left. Don’t you guys know that?
Buy Buy Buy!!!!!
If prices are low enough, he can rent out the houses and make a good profit.
::dies laughing::
You don’t live here, or you’d never make that remark about renting houses in Maricopa, of all places. The knife-catcher couldn’t do worse unless he started buying property in Florence.
There are houses being torn down right in metro Phoenix for lack of buyers. I predict that once this round of knife-catchers find their fools’ gold is just that, the bulldozers will be lining up in Maricopa.
Do you have a link for the Phoenix teardowns? That would be interesting. AFAIK, that’s only happened once before, with some incomplete, vandalized models in Victorville.
In any case, there have to be people willing to trade a 45 minute to 1 hour commute for a two year old, 2,300 sq ft, 4 bedroom, 2 bath house for $900-1,000 a month. In Southern California, people are willing to pay twice that for that commute.
Like Jim the Realtor says, there’s nothing price can’t fix.
And that’s the rental price. If they have decent credit and 3.5% down for a FHA loan, it would be closer to $550-600 a month (plus taxes and insurance).
Since you are more bullish than I am, you are generally on your own defending your position here, but this time, I have to agree with you; there is a price discount where any asset has value.
There probably are some teardowns in these fringe markets, but most of them will end up being lived in by someone. There will be people in Lancaster paying $800 a month to live in a McMansion, but as long as there are people with an income — even State assistance — then there will be cashflow from the available housing stock. That cashflow has a value.
Personally, I would buy investment properties in the Phoenix area or Las Vegas because they are inexpensive cashflow. Prices in Las Vegas are back to the mid 90s before there was even a hint of a housing bubble. There is money to be made there. You can find immediate cashflow and real potential for appreciation after the inventory is worked off. That is the risk/reward of a fringe market. It all depends on the price.
To defend the other side, the amateur investors — like the people who get profiled by news reporters — probably has overpaid in the wrong market. They will not be happy with their long-term result.
Here’s an amusing piece detailing the current status of the Las Vegas market:
http://www.cnbc.com/id/33310096
Here’s what I’ve found:
A NY Times on foreclosures and teardowns, with this note: “As properties stay vacant for longer periods of time,” says Joe Schilling, a founder of the National Vacant Properties Campaign, “it’s inevitable that even in some of the fast-growing communities, they’ll have to look at demolition.” Phoenix, for instance, has set aside a quarter of its grant money to tear down abandoned homes.
Derided Housing Fix Catches On: “Besides Cleveland, Minneapolis, Youngstown, Detroit and Cincinnati also have plans to use at least one-third of their neighborhood-stabilization funds for demolition, reports indicate.
List of cities now bulldozing and rehabbing:
Flint, MI
Detroit, MI
Saginaw, MI
Cincinnati, OH
Columbus, OH
Youngstown, OH
Buffalo, NY
Indianapolis, IN
Victorville, CA
Little Rock, AK
Des Moines, IA
Minneapolis, MN
Phoenix, AZ
I’ll need to get my camera fixed, but there are quite a few empty lots where 1200 – 1400 sq. ft. houses used to stand. Just this week I passed another teardown. In another week, I may see another one.
And it happens with such depressing regularity that you can predict each stage. Phoenix rode the last boom and hit bottom so hard that properties were practically given away, for pennies on the dollar. One of my mother’s best friends bought a 1700 sq. ft. house for $5000, with a $500 down payment, in 1990.
I’m not sure if housing in Phoenix and the surrounding regions will ever go that low, but we’re still too early in the “bust” part of the cycle for speculators to aim to make a killing in real estate here.
Yeah, that’s all we need. You’ve gotta love the government. Throw another $8k tax incentive at buyers to get into a housing market already wildly distorted by the existence of the home mortgage interest deduction, which probably inflates prices 20% above their natural market value. What a massive distortion of the economy — and one that more or less directly results in periodic housing bubbles as more and more capital to allocated from productive uses to real estate.
Actually, Turtle Rock Drive gives Laguna Seca a run for its money.
True, there’s no corkscrew, but you got great changes in elevation, turns of decreasing radii, straightways, Camry LEs, you name it.
I’ve always thought they should close TR Drive once a year and give us the Irvine Grand Prix.
Unfortunately my neighbors and the IPD have a hair up their a$$ about such things.
So sad… imagine an open wheel race car going full tilt going up the hill from the intersection of TR and Campus to the park…. I’ll bet they could hit 200 mph on that stretch.
I’ll bet I could put seats on my roof and make money too. 😉
That would be a great track. I would do a post on that one, but some teenager would probably want to see just how quickly he could make a lap….
Back in the day… and maybe still today, the Turtle Rock portion of your track is/was Uni High’s Cross Country course.
Still is. My kid has been running Uni xcountry for four years and they do those runs.
I just hope that the family did, in fact, waste the money and are now losing the home for lack of financial responsibility. I would feel terrible if they felt forced to use the money to cover some sort of long-term illness. My schadenfreude would dry up pretty quick if that was the case….
Off to pay my bills (medical bills, being unemployed and cobra payments now quickly draining my savings).
–soon to be University Park Renter. 😀
IR, How do you know how much HELOC money they used of the $125,000 available. Does OC recorder’s office publish what was used or/and what is available?
My under-aged children are no longer receiving weekly credit card offers nor HELOC offers. From the other post, the offers may be starting again.
AZDavidPhx, Welcome back. What no picture? :-}
Anybody to write about the storm drain run to the ocean? No view but a fast and dangerous adventure.
AZDavidPhx – Good to know your OK.