Irvine Housing Blog

Irvine Council Members Differ on Inclusion of Set-Aside in Housing Element

My name is Sylvia Walker, and I am the writer and publisher of the Sweet Orange Housing blog. I grew up in Orange County; however, at the age of twenty I decided to venture out and see what the rest of the world looked like. Eventually, I ended up in the Silicon Valley area and spent many years there. While in the Silicon Valley, I worked as a freelance writer for high-tech companies such as Applied Materials, National Semiconductor, Applied Biosystems, and Oracle Corporation.

I enjoyed my time in the San Francisco Bay Area and working in the high-tech industry; however, fate intervened, and I returned to Orange County. Currently, I am pursuing freelancing, but I am shifting my focus to public policy, sustainability, cleantech and land use issues.

There is this thing out there called the California housing element. This document plays a decisive role in determining what gets built in California cities and counties. Since this document is so influential in shaping local housing policies, understanding how the housing element works is worthwhile. Therefore, I will give a more in-depth description in an upcoming post. At this time, knowing it is out there is enough. Now on to Irvine’s latest encounter with the housing element.

Closed Sales from 1/26/2012 to 2/01/2012

To Catch a Falling Knife

January 1, 2008
The race to the bottom had begun, and house prices were dropping in thousands every week, even in Irvine. On one side, there was Irvine Renter writing blogs with titles like “Speculation or Investment”, profiling the properties with an asking price totally out of tune with the market, and graphs that showed the shadow inventory as well as the current REOs with no sign of bottoming till 2012. It was doom’s day. Great Housing Bubble was bursting.  On the other side, there were Realtors, convincing you that this was the bottom, and Irvine will never see these prices again. Opportunity was knocking, according to them, and you would be a fool not to pick up the keys to open that door.

Amidst all this certainty, an impending recession and growing unemployment, there were a lot of houses on the market, and there were buyers and sellers, including us. We decided to catch the falling knife, and buy a house.

All we wanted was a small three bedroom/ two bathroom house with an attached garage in an excellent school district. We saw a lot of houses, and wrote a lot of offers. Most of them were rejected. Some got better offers than what we quoted, and some just waited for the right price. Some were short sales that took forever to materialize. Today I will profile a few houses that we had put offers on, with the price that we had offered.

$775k in Northwood or Northwood Pointe - What would you do?

What a difference a Pointe makes...If you had $775,000 to spend on a home in Irvine and were debating between Northwood and Northwood Pointe, what would matter most to you?  I did a quick search of homes sold in the Northwood and Northwood Pointe villages in Irvine and saw these two homes, similiar in size and price, but very different in age and features.  Let's do a quick comparison.

Buy or rent at Tiempo in Westpark

166 Alicante Aisle is a 2bd/2ba condo in the Tiempo tract in Westpark.  Tiempo is bounded by the San Diego River Trail, Alton Parkway, Harvard Ave and San Marco Park.  Click the picture below for a closer view.  The streets in this tract are Alicante, Costero, Abrazio, Marbella and Giovanni.

There are a number of floorplans here and it looks like this property is a plan D.  It looks like there is another Plan D listed currently at $389k: 132 Alicante.  The only recent sale I found for a Plan D looks to be 164 Alicante which closed on 12/29/2011 for $300k.  We'll use that price in the analysis.

A Review of the Las Ventanas Tract at Portola Springs

Las Ventanas (Community Overview) is the first tract I’m reviewing in the Portola Springs Villages. Portola Springs is bordered by the Great Park and the Irvine Ranch Land Preserve in a seemingly remote pocket in Irvine. The closest schools are Stonegate Elementary, Sierra Vista Middle School and Northwood High School. The villages have direct access to the 133 and 241 toll roads with the 5 freeway nearby. Residents living in the Portola Springs Villages are privy to community parks, a lighted soccer field, playgrounds, basket ball and tennis courts, as well as access to hiking trails. It’s truly a self contained private community that appears to be far removed from the busier areas in Irvine. Las Ventanas will have a total of 86 homes in the development.

I instantly saw the huge contrast between Stonegate and Portola Springs. It’s almost as if the builders (Taylor Morrison) fixed all my complaints about Stonegate and Laguna Altura. The ambiance in all three tracts was inviting and I immediately felt like I was “home,” which is important to me. Unlike Stonegate, I was highly receptive to Las Ventanas. Portola Springs is a family oriented neighborhood. In fact, most of the visitors viewing the models were young couples with small children, or very pregnant women looking to move into a larger space to accommodate a new baby. I am none of the above, so these homes were too large for me, but I’m still excited to share with you my observations about the properties.

Closed Sales from 1/19/2012 to 1/25/2012