I apologize for our technical problems. Tomorrow’s post will be delayed until 9:30 AM to allow people to catch up on today’s post.
*** News Flash ***
Next Monday, we will be hosting an open conference call with Daniel Young, President of Community Development for the Irvine Company. This is your opportunity to ask whatever questions you want answers to; it is an open and unscripted call.
Perhaps you could ask about…
When the Irvine Company sold its first phase of Woodbury East, they reset the price structure for all of Woodbury. What are the impacts?
Asking Price: $515,000
Address: 91 Mission Irvine, CA 92620
{book7}
I am unwritten, can’t read my mind, I’m undefined
I’m just beginning, the pen’s in my hand, ending unplanned
Staring at the blank page before you
Open up the dirty window
Let the sun illuminate the words that you could not find
Unwritten — Natasha Bedingfield
When the Irvine Company set pricing in Woodbury east at $280/SF to $295/SF, they effectively reset property values all over Woodbury to a lower value. Why would someone buy a resale for $350/SF when they can get new across the street 25% cheaper?
Obviously, the Irvine Company wants to maintain resale prices at the highest value possible. People are choosing between new and resale, and although resale commands a premium, 10% is about as far as they can reasonably hope to stretch it. The higher the value in resale properties, the greater the revenue for the Irvine Company when they sell New.
So why did they price New so far below comps on nearby resales?
Short term impacts on the market are not their overriding concern. They must establish a pattern of brisk sales at increasing prices in order to keep sales momentum throughout the project. People must not believe they can wait for lower prices, or they will.
In the short term, pricing New properties so low will disrupt the market, but they will steadily raise their prices (to the degree that the market will allow), and fight against the current of the receding tide. They may fight languishing sales at the end of the buildout, but it will not be as problematic as the total freeze on new sales in Woodbury or Portola Springs. Momentum there is zero.
I think The Irvine Company is taking a wise course of action, and it will be a qualified success — it will be as successful as market conditions will allow. New will bottom before resale, but I still believe we have another leg down to revalue the market. I may be wrong.
Is this The Irvine Company calling the bottom? Creating the bottom through force-of-will? They sure hope so….
Asking Price: $515,000
Income Requirement: $128,750
Downpayment Needed: $103,000
Purchase Price: $685,000
Purchase Date: 12/27/2005
Address: 91 Mission Irvine, CA 92620
| Beds: | 2 |
| Baths: | 3 |
| Sq. Ft.: | 1,824 |
| $/Sq. Ft.: | $282 |
| Lot Size: | – |
| Property Type: | Condominium |
| Style: | Santa Barbara, Spanish |
| Stories: | 2 |
| Floor: | 1 |
| View: | Park or Green Belt, Treetop |
| Year Built: | 2005 |
| Community: | Woodbury |
| County: | Orange |
| MLS#: | S578078 |
| Source: | SoCalMLS |
| Status: | Active |
| On Redfin: | 33 days |
through a very cool passage that opens to a small private courtyard.
Downstairs has an office/den/study space and a powder room. Upstairs is
HUGE LOFT LIKE LIVING SPACE. Very open floorplan, with paver flooring,
arched transitions, sandstone fireplace surround, MORE GLASS THAN WALL
facing the outside. Off the kitchen is a long, large usable deck with
views of hills, trees and rooftops. MASTER BEDROOM,Master bath are
tastefully done LARGE WALK-IN closet. Unique double vanity bathroom
with pass through shower. Second bedroom is very large with a full bath
just outside door. Laundry is upstairs, in living area, big, cabinets.
Kitchen is very useable with GRANITE counter tops, warm dark wood
cabinets, under cabinet lighting, all the usual great stuff. Very TALL
CEILINGS, give this home a great feel. Carpet is rich and lush, high
quality upgrade. Fantastic Woodbury Location: walk to school, parks,
shopping and resort.
useable?
This was the least offensive use of ALL CAPS I have seen so far. At least the technique was used to emphasize some important items in the description.
This is one of those sad cases of lost equity. This property was purchased for $685,000, and the owner used a $548,000 first mortgage and a $137,000 downpayment. That money is gone and the owner’s credit is shot. What did this guy do wrong?
{book3}
Daniel Young, President of Community Development for the Irvine Company
Dan Young is president of Irvine Community Development Company LLC
(ICDC), an affiliate of the Irvine Company responsible for all
residential development on The Irvine Ranch®.
As president of ICDC, Mr. Young guides all facets of the Irvine
Company’s community master-planning and development process, which
began more than 45 years ago. From the villages of Woodbury, Northpark
and Woodbridge in Irvine, to the coastal communities of Crystal Cove
and Newport Coast, the residential communities on The Irvine Ranch have
won many national awards and are admired for their unique character and
livability.
Mr. Young came to the Irvine Company in November 1999, after a
20-year career as a real-estate developer and a consultant to the
industry. In his previous role with the Irvine Company, he served as
executive vice president of Entitlement and Public Affairs, overseeing
the company’s entitlement on The Irvine Ranch.
His community involvement includes 11 years on the Santa Ana City
Council, including eight years as mayor. In his official capacity as
mayor, Mr. Young also served on the board of directors of several
regional agencies, including the Metropolitan Water District and the
Orange County Transportation Authority.
Mr. Young received his bachelor’s degree from California State
University, Fullerton, and his master’s degree in public administration
from the University of Southern California.
The Irvine Company is a 140-year-old privately held company known
throughout the world as a best-of-class master planner and long-term
owner, investor and operator of a large and diversified real estate
portfolio. The company also is known as a steward of some of the most
beautiful, permanently preserved land in California. In addition to its
master-planned communities on The Irvine Ranch® in Orange County,
Calif., the company also is known for its portfolio of high-quality
investment properties — office, retail and apartment — it owns in San
Diego, Orange County, West Los Angeles and the Silicon Valley. The
company traces its roots to the 1860s with the assembly of The Irvine
Ranch from Mexican and Spanish land grants. The Irvine Company was
incorporated in 1894.
The IHB is back. 2:38 PM.
Clock is still wrong, though. 😛
Fixed? 😉
Zoval, thank you for all of your effort!
Thanks, Zovall
It bombed yesterday just as I was about to make the point, much more profoundly, that median incomes are relevant when lined up with available housing and the standard deviation of incomes.
Woodbury 92602, for instance, has a ton of apartments and quite a few “upscale” stucco boxes marketed at the $300k+ household crowd. Saying their home is worth less because IAC plopped a number of apts nearby, thereby dragging the median income, would be foolish. This means you, AZDavidPhx, as you’re creating your next cheesy MSPaint-derived creation.
Rental parity, IMO, is a much more accurate means at deriving value.
ps. IrvineRenter, was it overload on space? Mis-configured web server? Database error? Inquiring IT minds want to know.
It had something to do with an upgrade (to PHP) that our hosting provider conducted.
This means you, AZDavidPhx, as you’re creating your next cheesy MSPaint-derived creation.
That’s it? You’ve been waiting anxiously and frothing at the mouth for almost 24 hours to take your shot and that’s all I get?
Saying their home is worth less because IAC plopped a number of apts nearby, thereby dragging the median income, would be foolish.
How do you know that the people living in those apartments have a significantly lower income than the average fakehomeowner? It sounds to me like you are letting your personal bias toward people in apartments cloud your judgement. I live in an apartment and my income is higher than the Scottsdale, AZ median.
My proposition was to limit what lenders will lend on houses. I said nothing about the values. If people want to spend more then they just have to do it with their own money. If the houses really are so fantastic then that shouldn’t stop people from coming in with a larger down payment.
If banks used this type of reasoning, bubbles would not cause a fluctuation in housing values unless the bubble were in income (that’ll be the day)
“I live in an apartment and my income is higher than the Scottsdale, AZ median.”
I’m glad your anecdotal evidence reflects your reality, but the point is the standard deviation is more important than the median.
“My proposition was to limit what lenders will lend on houses. I said nothing about the values. If people want to spend more then they just have to do it with their own money.”
Your asinine proposition would result in more homogeneous housing than we already have — if lending were only available to a certain limit by area, homes would be built for similar square footage (to reflect the mystical median income you so love) with similar styles and similar dispositions. As if we didn’t already have that in spades in the stucco-box jungles of Americana. It would also perpetuate the median — there would be a disincentive to gentrify. Fullerton is a good example of successful gentrification where the incoming residents often outpriced the outgoing residents.
A more sane thing to do (and I know this is like letting out a stinker in a crowded party) is rollback prop 13. It stifles supply of homes (which artificially inflates value) and creates budget nightmares like the one on our hands now, all in one fell swoop. Yes, Prop 13 is rent control for homeowners — essentially fixing the home price for good — and I say this as a homeowner. Only problem is the unwinding of the thing will be UGLY.
if lending were only available to a certain limit by area, homes would be built for similar square footage (to reflect the mystical median income you so love) with similar styles and similar dispositions
Not at all. If every single house in the area were a clone of one another then it would have a negative effect because most people would not want to live in that kind of an area.
A single person may not want a house and prefer a lower priced condo instead. Builders would have an incentive to serve this type of buyer as well since not everybody is in the market for a house.
You are right – the amount that the lenders would be willing to lend would be the same for all of the houses, but that does not mean that everybody would be willing to borrow that much to live in them.
For you to hop up on that soapbox and label the idea of valuing homes based upon local incomes as ‘asinine’ while California is broke and paying its debts with IOU’s and our economy tips back and forth from the brink of economic destruction is amazing to me.
I’m sorry you do not like this common sense approach. Perhaps you are one of the fakehouseowners whose equity would be leveled if your bank’s house were valued between 3x to 4x your average income. In that case, I would be very angry too at someone for suggesting a way to not overpay for a house like I did.
Still haven’t addressed the point on standard deviation of incomes.
Lenders value risk based on the borrower’s ability to repay. What f’d the whole process up was securitization of loans and introduction of exotic products, which opened a borrower pool and exaggerated buying power.
If lenders simply remain on the hook for the risk, values will adjust accordingly.
This idea of lending to a median income ignores diversity of incomes.
Let’s put it this way: if a neighborhood is full of wealthy people, but there is a small amount of low income housing, your proposal would allow the low income residents to borrow up to the higher median. Common sense indeed.
Housing would not be completely homogeneous. Most builders do an analysis of the market to determine a mix of products to hit different price points. You will sell out much faster if you provide multiple products targeted to different buying demographics than if you provide only one product line that hits the median.
IR, the concept of limiting lending to a median is stupid at best. There’s the aforementioned issue of standard deviation, which can distort the median. And there’s the issue of gerrymandering the population. Housing would indeed become homogeneous as the builders would solve for a value to determine the product, only even more than they do at present.
You can’t deny that builders are changing the mix of housing RIGHT NOW to solve for the conforming limit.
I would love to see Prop 13 eliminated.
That’ll be the end of CA as we know it 🙂
Can you spell ‘bankruptcy’?
Prop 13 elimination, along with an amendment to fix the Proposition loophole (thereby curbing spending), would resolve much of what we’re dealing with.
BS. Typical liberal crap.
Curbing spending is “liberal crap.” Got it, Turtle Rock.
And rent control for homeowners … that’s conseravative alright. Because you’re ENTITLED to a fixed housing payment, right?
Tony, think about it. Ending Prop 13 would at least serve the purpose of ruining CA housing market as we currently know it.
Frankly, I was kinda sad to see Demos cave in on the cuts. I would’ve thought they have the balls to force more taxation to help those retired firefighters/police officers/etc.
Rent are highly tied to medium incomes. There is distortion when rents are regulated, taxed excessively or subsidized, ie govt intervention or by parents (student housing). If rent goes too high, people move.
Apartments usually signal lower SFH price except when lots are large or can be combine to build HDH in premium location, eg, beach, resort, etc. The building of a HDH in these are show increasing population and scarcity of land. Thus a conversion from SFH to HDH.
Rents are tied to what people are willing and able to pay. Median income does not reflect the standard distribution of those incomes and can therefore be misleading. In the case of Woodbury, there is housing for a whole host of incomes. In 92602, there is a nice trailer park where someone can live at a lower income. There is an abundance of apartments, allowing a number of people making $60k or so to live amongst people making quite a bit more. Does that skew the median? Definitely. That’s why I’ll repeat my mantra…. rental parity is a better indicator of value than median income.
The better way to look at it is what % of income is a homeowner paying towards their mortgage, on average. A 300k homeowner paying 9k a month would yield the same 36% as the 60k homeowner paying 1800/mo. I saw this breaking down in FL as there were people buying >800k homes with family incomes lower than mine (our home is < 200k), and >400k homes with incomes in the 50k-75k range. I saw a statistic on either Broward or Dade county saying that homeowners, on average, put > 40% of their incomes towards house payments. Obviously that was unsustainable.
There definitely should be a relationship between incomes and home prices, but it may not be captured by median inc. & median hp.
Rents are tied to what people are willing and able to pay.
So what? Plenty of people are willing to “pay” 50% of their income to rent. While we may agree that “paying” this is very foolish – there will always be someone willing to stretch a little further than the next guy.
If you use this model to determine the value of a house then all you are doing is figuring how far the biggest fool will stretch his personal finances. You are just encouraging your neighbors to be mortgage slaves and maximizing interest revenue for the bank.
Aren’t you ashamed of yourself for being such a tool for “the man”?
The landlord is taking a risk renting to someone paying 50% of income to rent. An apartment a friend and I were going to rent in Austin had some ratio – less than 50% – and they said trust-fund income did not count. That wasn’t a problem for me…
However, when a lender makes loans at 50% dti, they are making a capital risk as opposed to a cash-flow risk.
I saw one of these units late last year. The realtor mentioned that they’d sell for 500K, which I thought was too high.
The downstairs “room” is tiny. Might as well blow out the garage and make the whole downstairs the perfect OC garage band dwelling. (Insulate the side walls).
The upstairs is pretty much one big room. Theres’ wasted space at the top of the stairs. The bedrooms are not that large. The second one is small. The “patios” are tiny.
I did like the entry courtyard, but it’s dark in the winter.
All in all I don’t really like the design. Instead of the standard townhome design with two shared sidewalls -that you could sound insulate- the neighbors sort of wrapper around you and above you. God forbid you get noisy neighbors in such a design.
I can’t say that I am very excited to see an interview with a suit from your Irvine company.
From what I can tell, they are extremely greedy. Perhaps you can ask about how those North Korean Towers are working out. I assume that the company had to give some kind of blessing for that Phallic Demonstration of humility.
Welcome to capitalism. Actually, they designed the whole city very well. Designing a city so that it would have the lowest crime in the country, as well as excellent schools, is a difficult task. Those are not accidents-they were by design.
As for the North Korean towers, they are harming nobody except the suckers who overpaid for the condos in them.
Designing a city so that it would have the lowest crime in the country, as well as excellent schools, is a difficult task
Indeed. Perhaps some of these Saints could give up their day jobs and impart some of their divine wisdom to our government. The only problem is that the government has to contend with all these pesky poor people and does not have the luxury of excluding poor people.
I’m sure the lack of poor people helps a lot in keeping crime low. I think the confusing street layout does as well-makes it more difficult for outsiders to commit crimes (and get away successfully).
This is a very interesting thesis, Geotpf. Very interesting indeed.
So interesting that we should get one of your local professors to write a research paper on the correlation between the invention of GPS Navigation systems and the Irvine crime rate.
I bet you that crime has increased since criminals started getting their hands on this technology.
Maybe California should outlaw them just like they have outlawed firearms.
I would like to hear about the Irvine Company’s plan to develop low income affordable housing within the city limits. How is that coming along?
They could design some red/green/white banners that read “Viva Irvine” and post them around the Barrio.
It’s already there. We call it Santa Ana.
Years ago Larry Agran -then the mayor- decided to bus the poor people. We all thought he mean bussing them in from Santa Ana.
LOL! Now if the Irvine Company could just figure out how to get credit for those “affordable” units in Santa Ana…
Maybe they can do a “cap and trade” or “cash for clunkers” deal where they buy distressed properties in Santa Ana, convert them to low income housing, and shift their quota to those properties. It would be more cost effective than building these units in Irvine and losing all the land profit.
“cap and trade”?
Careful there, ‘capping’ has an entirely different meaning to the impoverished ghetto dwellers struggling to stay alive in the mean streets of Santa Ana, South Central, etc. 🙂
Uhhgg. I here we go again with the “where’s the low cost housing…” If I’m paying hundred’s of thousands of dollar, why would I want to import an inner city sh*t hole next door? I’m paying – as is most people in Irvine – to get away from South Central.
There is low income housing throughout the city of Irvine.
http://www.cityofirvine.org/depts/cd/planningactivities/affordablehse/default.asp
There are also a few trailer parks.
How nice it is that they have such an abundance of low income housing available. Here I was thinking that they just build McMansions and overpriced condos since that is where all the money is at. Had I known that they were such philanthropists building all this affordable housing everywhere, I would not have spoken. I stand corrected. Pass the Kool-Aid, NickelDime.
as the grumpy one so nicely put it, there are trailer parks for people like them – and university housing for the more upwardly mobile ones.
Irvine Renter: will a complete transcript of the call with Mr. Young be available online in IHB afterwards? Might make for some interesting immediate and retrospective reading down the road.
Yes, how will this work? Vid conf. Online in real time? Recorded WebEx? Recorded Conf Call with transcripts to follow? Will there be technical difficulties? 🙂
Oh yeah, WHEN is this going to happen? Monday at what time? And for how long?
We will see if we can get a transcript and a recording.
That money is gone and the owner’s credit is shot. What did this guy do wrong?
These are without a doubt the home-debtors I have to the most sympathy for. Most of them bought late in the housing cycle, they didn’t have time to withdraw perceived equity, and to top it off, they not only lose their down payment, but they also get their credit destroyed. I don’t know how long these people will have to wait before they can buy again … BUT, if the govt wants to design a new mortgage plan, it should be one that allows these people (who never participated in the housing ATM) to get another mortgage (with damaged credit) when they prove the ability to repay.
To answer IR’s question above — this guy did ABSOLUTLY nothing wrong, other than have a strong desire to buy a home, and fall in to a sucker trap that stole his money. It makes me sick … honestly makes me sick.
You have to look on the bright side, Lee. This person got to live in the holy land for a few years. I am guessing the rent on this place would have been maybe 2000$ per month? Over 3 years the equivalent renter would have paid 72,000$ in rent that nobody would be shedding a tear over on move-out day. They paid the Irvine premium. Unfortunately, it didn’t quite work out in terms of speculation, but it is what it is.
I don’t think everybody who bought a house in Irvine was speculating. Some people just don’t understand (or refuse to understand), the economics of real estate. Whenever somebody dishes out $137k, and losses it all, I have sympathy for them. Not only do I have sympathy for them, I think they should be able to write it all off their income taxes within the first 5 years.
BTW, I’m feeling generous today. I did well in the markets.
I don’t think everyone was speculating either. I was just saying that it did not work out from a speculation point of view. Nevertheless, they did get to live in a nice area for a few years. That has to be worth something, right?
Right!
🙂
Say he got a 6.25% loan, on 518k gives a monthly cash cost of ~$4500. At a 25% DTI gives a $216k income. That owner would prob. be fine. At 40% DTI, you’re at $135k, which will be tougher to recover from. It also depends on the % of someone’s savings that went into the dp. If a person stretches to an unmanageable DTI and/or puts all their savings into a DP, they’ve set themselves up for a problem. Hopefully they did not do this and can absorb the loss.
The lost dp is the cost of buying a leveraged ‘investment’. Few people lost > 100% of their money in the stock market because most do not use borrowed funds. I’m not trivializing the current losses but to compare an investment being completely wiped out, vs. one that is reduced by 1/3 or 1/2.
RE’s returns are multiplied both positively and negatively by the leverage commonly used.
“this guy did ABSOLUTLY nothing wrong, other than have a strong desire to buy a home, and fall in to a sucker trap that stole his money. It makes me sick … honestly makes me sick.”
Yes, I agree. We have focused much attention on the 80% who bought for greed, HELOCed out their equity and gamed the system. There is that 20% that put 20% down, behaved responsibly and still got pulverized in the market meat grinder.
All the MSM stories that try to paint a sympathetic face on the foreclosure crisis so far have profiled the wrong people. The stories would be more effective if they found people like the family in today’s featured property.
Many of those that put 20% down were still counting on appreciation and looked at their home as an investment. I would also guess that many of those people:
(1) stretched to hit the dp – either took loans against 401k’s, or cashed out other retirement plans to make the 20%
(2) stretched their income to hit the payment.
Those two behavior were both causes and effects of the bubble. Seeing RE as more of an investment than as shelter encourages people to stretch and eventually bids up prices.
This is a major difference between a specuvestor, and I would not fault a homeowner for taking that route. It is something that has been reduced by the bursting bubble, and regulating what the NAR can say about RE as an investment vehicle would be a good start.
Looks like the open invitation was a success? Bravo.
Yes, ditto on the bravo
Questions for
1) Dan Young: What is your personal feeling as to when the bottom of the market will be?
2) What is the Irvine company using to value it’s homes?
3) What have rents done to the house prices around your new developments?
4) Why have you accepted this interview?
5) To the best of your knowledge, have blogs like the IHB made a difference in the average questions that the average home buyer is asking these days?
6) What is so special about Irinve?
7) Where do you live? What community?
8) What does it cost the ICDC to build a building in Irvine on a $/SqFt basis?
Ooops, that SHOULD read
Questions for Dan Young:
1) What…
New Jersey woman bakes to make mortgage payment, tastes success beyond expectations.
http://articles.moneycentral.msn.com/Investing/Dispatch/market-dispatches.aspx?post=1200178&_blg=1,1200178
Glad IHB is back. I was going through withdrawals. I kept checking for the site like a crack monkey.
Is the market heating up more or does it seem to be cooling off? I can’t tell anymore…
I ask the question because the wifey and I saw two properties we liked and were still for sale. Two days later when we wanted to put an offer in, both were already ‘sold’ and one acutally had five offers put in the day before. I could swear this was 2009 and not 2005.
I know I posted about this before but the same ‘outbid’ thing happened to us again and it is frustrating and confusing.
Yeah, and inventory is very low..Shadow inventory not going out yet it seems? What’s the deal?
IR: I think you should give Loan Zen some more coverage as they seem to be going nowhere. 🙁 … To true shame as the info on there is very useful and the idea is very very nice. I remember you mentioning them sometime back and I have been reading their info ever since but it has really died out 🙁
Congrats to you IR, and to the Irvine Company for being willing to talk to what will probably be an astute but tough audience.
Woodbury East is not that important to me since these new units are outside the confines of Woodbury (you have to cross Sand Canyon to get the town center and further into Woodbury for school. The development that I am much more interested in is the area along Vintage where supposedly they will be building larger ‘California homes’ that will compete directly with the 2,000 to 2,500 sq ft of homes that make up the core of Woodbury’s housing. With so many of these homes in various states of distress what does TIC expect the new inventory to do to the struggling homeowners? What would he say to the homeowner who would rather see TIC develop that space into the once-promised Middle School or other common attraction that would have been supportive of current home prices?
How big are Mongolian Yurts?
http://www.mongolian-yurt.com/yurt-size.html
Easy to put up, lots of them per acre and if the economy goes belly up you can fold them back down and turn the land back to pasture until the next bubble.
Welcome to Woodbury California Family Yurts.
It’s all about diversity (and money).
PS- I wonder if you can get granite in them?
Well IR I am impressed, good job! getting the division prez of the “for sale housing” group the Irvine Company is special. As a private development firm the Irvine Company is very quite with there plans, has something changed? I think any new product will be within agency paper financing, is this in their plans? Will there be any change to the lot take downs with merchant builders? How will Lennar’s problems with El Toro base influence their plans?
Mr. Young: Why do you think that people want to live in alleys? Why are there not enough sidewalks in Irvine? Where is the “urban” anywhere near your condo high rises that you claim to be in the middle of? Why does everything the Irvine Company do seem to benefit the company’s bottom line rather than the human beings that live there? Do you really think that you can paper-over all of your company’s bad planning with another round of marketing?
There’s no special place in my heart for The Irvine Co., but other than the comment about living in alleys most of these criticisms are way off base.
Sidewalks? There are sidewalks and paths everywhere here. Have you ever been to a suburb in the midwest or the south? People who live there can gripe about a lack of sidewalks.
Ill-conceved high-rise condos? McGuire, Lennar and the City of Irvine are responsible for those.
Bottom line focus? It’s The Irvine COMPANY, not The Irvine Take Care Of The Human Beings Public Service Organization.
Bad planning? I dare you to visit Costa Mesa. Or Huntington Beach. Or practically anywhere else. Irvine is not perfectly planned, but I’d wager that it’s planned noticably better than every other 200,000-person (with 50,000 more jobs than residents), 30 year old city on earth. What would you do differently?
Damned if you do or don’t.
Build large homes on large lots and there are cries of “suburban sprawl!”
Build homes new-urbanism style (which is really old urbanism, if you think about it) a la Woodbury and people complain of “alley living.”
I lived in Burbank. The town was built up 60+ years ago. Let’s just say there are lots of alleys, but you can walk anywhere to anything and the streets are all grids, so spillover traffic doesn’t clog the main arteries.
I miss Burbank.
NickelDime –
Why are you so in love with this company?
You really seem to have something at stake by the way you staunchly defend.
Do you work for them? It would be nice to have a context to try to understand why you take such pride in charging the hill waving their flag.
??? Burbank isn’t anything close to Irvine. Can’t think of one single thing they have in common, except possibly for Irvine’s attempt at imitating the mid-century village ‘feel’ with their master planning, especially evident with recent stuff.
Irvine is a sterilized mound of suburban hell. Wife lived there 20 years and misses it. I prefer “real” neighborhoods with homes that have some character.
At the end of the day, Irvine has jobs, safety, schools, and medeterranean climate. That’s why the wife wants to move back.
Re-read my comments… I’m not in the tank, as it were, for TIC by any stretch. I believe Irvine has a serious correction on the way that will put housing in line with rents, but it won’t be as severe as many think so long as there are jobs. I think the “bottom”, when it arrives, will be around for a very long time to come, and I think you have very little concept as to what the “value” of these homes really is. I have no idea why you spend your life here but think it’s hilarious. As for me, I’ve been in IT for about 14 years and don’t work in anything close to the housing business, much less live in OC. LA is home but I lurk on these boards as the wife wants to move back… and a happy wife is a happy life.
House plans and city lay out don’t cause crime. Nor does good planning reduce crime except in very rare circumstances. People are the ones that commit crimes. Good planning can make the opportunity for successfully committing a crime less by removing the routes of escape. I don’t see Irvine’s streets laid out to lessen the escape routes.
Irvine has low crime, good students, clean streets, etc., because of the people that live and work here. I’ve lived in a city that had trash pick up twice a week, daily street cleaning, but looked and smelled like a pig stile.
Interview questions: What is the time table for your new construction, location, type and number of unit and dates? Target prices?
I really got a laugh about how the Irvine company planned the community to have very low crime. It’s the closest that I have seen someone seriously come to associating this Corporate Animal with God.
Of course the stupidity in this claim is that wealthy people tend to not commit crimes against each other. Sure, they steal money from the middle and lower classes and an occasional Madoff, but overall, they tend to leave each other alone and not piss in their own backyard.
And while not everyone in Irvine is wealthy; many perceive themselves as wealthy or “in the club” which has the same crime deterrent.
I probably sound like a broken record, ’cause I have said it so many times…but over $500K for a two-bedroom home in Irvine is OUTRAGEOUS. Manhattan, maybe that’s OK…but people in IRVINE don’t make the kind of dough that justifies more than $500K for a two bedroom home.
Plenty of people disagree with you-otherwise said condo wouldn’t cost $500k.
Plenty of people disagree with you-otherwise said condo wouldn’t cost $500k.
Hold up there, Dittohead.
If 40 year mortgages became the norm then this place might “cost” a million.
Seems to me that 500K is not a true reflection of cash value but more a reflection of the type of monthly payment schedule that a buyer is willing to hang himself with.
but people in IRVINE don’t make the kind of dough that justifies more than $500K for a two bedroom home.
No they do not. But lenders are more than willing to milk these prime cows for every penny they can as they tend to make better slaves and pay their bills more often than those subprime cows over in Santa Anna since they tend to have better makework jobs than their subprime counterparts.