Irvine Housing Blog

Great post.  You nailed it by saying that it was not a confidence issue.  The problem was once home prices turned, in summer 2006.  At that point you started to get defaults, because the option to refinance was diminishing.  Kocherlakota fails to note that it was not just falling home prices that would cause the securities to fail, but stagnant prices would also cause them to fail.  I wonder why he leaves that point out?  To bolster his weak ‘confidence’ story?

There are lots of non-mortgaged owners of homes that are not connected at all to their neighborhoods or communities.  Areas with vacant unmaintained homes (I know those don’t exist in the HOA land of Irvine) or slumlords would be two.  I would also say that people who buy real estate solely for the speculative capital appreciation are less connected to a community than occupants, renters or owners.  Do you think the people who used 100% financing to buy a speculative Miami condo care that when they stop paying their condo fees, they’re stiffing their neighbors?  This is a real serious problem in SoFla.  As for others not connected to their community, you can put massive property developers who use tainted products in their homes (Chinese drywall?).

Communities existed before common people owned land, and they exist in pure rental areas.  ‘Ownership’ is neither a necessary or sufficient condition for building a community.

“My strongest feelings of home still reside in my home town in central Wisconsin. It’s not a place I can indulge my entitlements, so I find myself wandering the globe looking for a place I can have the closeness of community and the conveniences of modern society. Irvine is as close as I have come.”

Have you tried the surrounding town 5 to 15 miles from Irvine?  I think you’ll find these areas as being a lot more communal than Irvine.  I view Irvine as a cold place that has become somwhat segregated racially.  I agree with you though, this general area is tops for finding good long term opportunity and balance in life.

Someone actually paid 900K for this box in early 2004.  Don’t even know what to say about that…

This place gets a 2.5 on the curb appeal 1 to 10 scale.  I’m sure the FCBs are foaming at the mouth to scoop this baby up!

I love that the re-litter can’t even get the year the box was built correct.

Houses in this tract (and this is the definition of tract housing, imho) appear to have been built in 1998, and sold around300k.

How in the world are they “worth” $800k now?  Not that it won’t sell for that, but is that a long-term sustainable price?  (ie a lawyer or physician earning $250k/yr wants to live here?)

A $250K salary ought to buy a person a much better lifestyle than this. What a sad, degrading way to live for anyone who makes a good income. This house looks like it was built from a cardboard kit.

I make far less, and I wouldn’t settle for this. And I don’t have to settle it as Chicago’s wrecked condo market is offering up truly beautiful condos well within my price range.. and the prices are still falling in this overbuilt market.

Irvine seems to have a lot of price resilience due to the affluent demographic there, but I’m betting that you all will see more price breaks in choice housing as the recession grinds on to its second leg down. We are NOT out of the woods yet, grasshoppers, and there is still a lot of shadow inventory in every housing market in the country, including “flyover” places that were supposedly unaffected by the bubble.

The facade of the garage and bedroom windows reminds me of Fredo Corleone, with his pencil moustache.

PR, I’m no angrier over paying for CA’s problems than I am about paying Target to build a store 2.3 miles from an existing one for the sake of “economic development” in Uptown Chicago, or $400K a unit for “affordable” subsidized rentals in an area where the city could pick up dozens of perfectly nice and livable condos languishing on the market under $100K in this worst of all condo markets.

Never mind the multiple bailouts for the auto makers and banks and Donald Trump, or the subidies for casinos, or for NOT GROWING ANYTHING on a 1000 acre spread in Iowa you inherited and never worked an acre of, or for our airlines, or to induce United Airlines to rent all that vacant space in the Sears Tower ($37M), or for faith-based initiatives, or the highway Walmart wants to build a store 80 miles from anywhere, or whatever.

We have so many people and entities so dependent upon so many subsidies that it has become impossible to tell who pays for what, and what truly pays its own way. I no longer have political axes to grind about this subsidy or that, so much as I would like our economy to be desubsidized as to restore honesty and transparency.

Crazy gal in New York pays 700.00 a month to live in a virtual < a href=“http://www.fox4kc.com/news/wdaf-woman-rents-90squarefoot-apartment-in-new-york-20110405,0,1602721.story”>prison cell </a>

Hilarious and sad at the same time.

Must be some DAYAM good weather over there!

Wow, looks like the smart, and financially available men are dogging single irvine women who lease their Irvine lifestyles…LOL

http://www.match.com/profile/showprofile.aspx?ortp=1&TP=U&uid=kQda+aZVg78z+e7reQ/BBQ==&lid=21

“I am looking for someone who is asian, down to earth, with a warm smile, intelligent, healthy, caring, well educated, and kind, financially responsible (no more HELOC abusers(pretenders who lease everything), who live in Irvine! Geessssh WTF are YOU thinking! Im not looking to bail you out of your debt problems!). Someone who appreciates a man going downtown. Someone who can hold an intelligent/stimulating conversation, and no mental baggage. “

HAHHAHAHHAHHAHAH LOL!!!!! TOO FUNNY TO even comment!!!!!!

But he likes going down… LOL

uh, no, it has been changed.  You’ll notice the person is now shown to be currently online…