Address: 20 Avanzare, Irvine, CA 92606 (Westpark)
Plan: 1876 sq ft - 4/2.5
MLS: S452340 DOM: 80
Sale History: 6/03/2005: $753,000
7/30/1999: $343,000
10/30/1996: $228,000
Price Reduced: 08/26/06 -- $795,000 to $775,000
Price Reduced: 10/05/06 -- $775,000 to $759,900
Current Price: $759,000
This Plan 3 in the Trovata tract built by K Hovnanian was purchased with 10% down last summer for $753k. The price has been reduced a couple times and now the asking price is almost the same as the purchase price from over a year ago. It looks like a nice, clean, well kept home and 4 bedrooms at this price sounds pretty competitive. Any Westpark residents care to chime in? After 6% in selling costs, this seller will lose over $40,000 when all is said and done. That doesn't even take into account the carrying costs of this vacant home which could be pretty substantial depending upon how long it's been empty.
A quick look in the neighborhood reveals an identical Plan 3 for sale at 731 Paseo Westpark:
Address: 731 Paseo Westpark, Irvine, CA 92606 (Westpark)
Plan: 1876 sq ft - 4/2.5
MLS: P525054 DOM: 101
Sale History: 10/01/2001: $415,000
Price Reduced: 08/15/06 -- $825,000 to $789,000
Price Reduced: 09/02/06 -- $789,000 to $770,000
Price Reduced: 09/26/06 -- $770,000 to $759,000
Current Price: $759,000
The private remarks for 731 Paseo Westpark say 'VERY MOTIVATED SELLERS. MAKE AN OFFER!'. It'll be interesting to see how this plays out with both plan 3's priced exactly the same.
UPDATE #1 - November 4, 2006
Our non flipper at 731 Paseo Westpark made the first move by lowering their price on November 1 to $742,500. Now we wait and see if our flipper at 20 Avanzare chases the market down.
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 City of Irvine is conducting a Residents' Survey to see what residents think of how the city is doing, the website, fake grass, etc. I believe they did a similar survey last year.
If you're an Irvine resident, I encourage you to fill out the short survey:
Irvine Residents' Survey 2006
One of the topics in this survey is about affordable housing in Irvine. Did you know "that the City has set a goal to ensure that approximately 10% of the total housing in the City by the year 2025 is affordable and remains so in perpetuity?"
As I understand it, affordable housing can be one of two things
- homes that are sold at below market prices
- apartments that are leased at below market prices
Let's discuss affordable homes first. Would you like it if you paid $600k for your home and someone purchased the unit next door on the same day and paid only $300k? Believe it or not, scenarios like this have already occurred.
What about affordable apartments? Did you know that Woodbury contains some affordable apartments (here)? I think that any residents of these Woodbury apartments also have access to the Woodbury Commons - an area that Woodbury homeowners shell out mucho $$$/month for maintaining.
There are many things about the City of Irvine that I like but affordable housing is NOT one of them. I believe housing in Irvine is overpriced but I also believe in a free market. I may not make 200+k/year but I don't have a family of 8 with an income under $25,000 either.
Anyone else feel this way?
