Irvine Housing Blog

$250 per sq foot sounds about right… maybe a bit too high assuming the “TLC” the home needs will run to $50K.

This home is coming down to reasonable levels.  I would imagine that this is what Northwood homes should run:  about 250 sq/foot.

Of course, this also means financial death for all those “1MIL++” homes East of the Santa Ana Fwy.
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At $200 PSF this house would sell in a few days. At this price, it will be interesting to see how long it sits on the market.  In down markets, the speculators tend to leave and all that are left are buyers that want perfect properties.

WOOF WOOF WOOF WOOF!

What a fugly house!  May be one of the worst profiled on here in the last six months.  This place has the curb appeal of a dumpster.  The steep roof is okay, I guess.  Anything to pull the eye away from the stark yard, and flat facade.  Basically, this looks like you are living in a garage. And 700 K?  Uh, no.

I was on a tech call yesterday and an employee told me their neighbor thought that since their mortgage broker went bankrupt they get to keep the house and now are not worried about a reset.

Yes…people are that stupid.

I’ve saved at least three employees at this company from buying the last couple years thanks to IHB and they have all thanked me.

I believe her neighbor will be singing this song.

Wow what a pull back.  I am seriously thinking that 250 / sqft might be a high number now.  Does anyone think we could sqft prices in the high one hundreds?

Well…  as the pendulum swings… but no, I don’t think it will go below 200. 

The reason is that at 200 bucks for a house in Northwood in GOOD CONDITION, you’re looking at 500K for 2500 sq feet, a two car garage and a reasonably sized lot.  I think that Northwood may see 200 as the pendulum swings but it will settled somewhat above.

Why do I say so?  Because the disaster in NortPark and those communities will take a while to play out.  Those homes will also drop to near parity with Northwood ( smaller lots and the newer homes not being a measure of better quality ) and those places will see declines of 60% or so.  It will take a while for the banks to realize that everything East of the Santa Ana Fwy is worth no more than 250 per square foot.  Right now they still want way north of 400 right?

Oh, I forgot to finish.

By way of comparison, Northwood at 250 will seem like an incredible deal when compared with the new neighborhoods until they all drop to parity.

What would you want to buy?  A Northwood home with a big lot and 2700 5b/3ba at 750K or a cheaply built, tight as sardine Northpark McMansion with 3000 sq feet, 4b/3ba, no living room and a price of 1.2MIL?

Northwood will win.  It’s the larger development and it will eventually set the norm for ALL housing in the area.

Another Ski Slope home!  It’s good to see that there are some homebuilders that possess the wherewithal to build homes with significant climate change in mind.

Oh don’t be so nasty.  That type of roof is fairly common on Northwood.

Should banks hire real estate agent, pay them a fixed fee with a little comision and keep the 6% for them? If you have enough home for sales it would make sense.  At least they muist have some kind of deal with RE agents.

Maybe I need to look at a dictionary again, but I can not imagine living on the streets of Rampage would make very good feng shui.  Is there a Rampage Street in Anytown, USA?

Some TLC needed is an understatement.
I think a wrecking ball would be more appropriate.
This house wreaks 70’s. Only thing missing is the disco ball

Banks pay real estate agents a fixed fee???

Agents only can make commision if they remain independent contractors.

With all the agents projected to lose their jobs due to the slowdown, I’ll wager that if I ran a bank, I’d just hire an agent and put him/her on small salary with bonuses tied to production.  They should be able to cut their commision costs in half or less and also keep more control over their expanding portfolio of forclosed properties.

My guess is that this house will bottom out at $450,000 in 2 years.

Great song choice today man… Couldn’t be more appropriate… I’m constantly amazed at both your creativity and analysis…  Keep it up…

I was reading recently that Lennar are putting ALL developments in Orange County on ice until “pricing returns”.

It’ll be interesting to see how long that lasts…  i’m guessing sometime between now and when they go bankrupt.  These guys are a perfect short play now.

There is only one rule in homebuilding:  1.  Build.

Central park west is already priced at something like 500/sq ft for some places.  This will not turn out well.  Like I always asked, are there enough people in the entire state of California, or even the United states that are interested and willing to buy a crappy tract home for 1.2Mil?  Personally, I don’t think such a group of people exist.  And, frankly, if they do, they already own a home or two.  Rents on a home like that are what, 3K/month?  If holding costs are 9K/month, not including maintenance, how can you justify that?

I would tentatively agree that 200 would be an excellent buying point, but there’s no guarantee it won’t go lower than that.  It’s all about supply and demand.  We just killed several tens of thousands of OC jobs in the past 6 months with the lending unraveling.  We just haven’t seen the effects of it yet.  We won’t begin to see it for at least another 4 to 6 months as many are hanging on by liquidating other assets.  Homes are last to go.  Then, it’s a vicious cycle.

Chuck Ponzi

It’s pronounced RAHMPAAHHJ.  Get it right noob.

We’re too cool in OC to have a stupid name like rampage.

Chuck

Tonye….I see your point and they are very good.  However, what concerns me is that nobody would have ever imagined that a price correction of this magnitude would of happened so quickly. 

I really think this is a good probability that we could see $175 sq/ft prices.

This one doesn’t look too bad. Not sure why only 3 pics on redfin. I would be curious what the noise level is from Culver. The thing that I find somewhat appealing is the fact that this house actually has what appears to be a yard. I don’t know about most folks on this blog but I would prefer a home with an actual yard that might need some work over something new with zero yard and my neighbors 18’’ away. I would think 400k in 2 years would be a fair price.

The TLC will run $150,000 to $200,000 easily.  You find lots of goodies when you dig deep enough.  Amazing what Irvine builders did in the 70s, from aluminum wiring that needs to be pigtailed with copper to walls that are not insulated to popcorn ceilings.  The list goes on forever.  Plus, I would add a couple of dormer windows to break up the ski slope.  New windows throughout because the old aluminum ones are pitted to hell, complete demo of two baths and a kitchen. 

So to be a half-million dollar house in which you really want to live, it’s going to have to sell for $300,000 - $350,000.  I know that sounds crazy cheap right now, but would you really plunk down 1/2 million for popcorn ceilings, brown tile with broken grout in the bathroom and a kitchen from the Brady Bunch era?  Not me….

First finance jobs, then real estate jobs, now home construction jobs…

Next it will be retail.  Remember all the retail developments that have gone up during the housing boom?  I wouldn’t be surprised to see many stores/restaurants going out of business due to depressed sales over the course of the next 3 to 4 years.

What is after that?  This will get interesting.

Agree with you, but I would also add the 5 freeway noise!  And guess which way all of that pollution blows 95% of the time.

“If you submerged this house in water, it would make a great ski jump.”

ROTGDFLMFAO!#$!@@

Thanks for making me spit my coffee all over my laptop

Bank’s can’t legally hire a RE agent as an employee.

Yep, it always blows east (I road-ride ride along the newport backbay trail), unless we have santa ana conditions, in which case the wind is so strong the freeway pollution is carried immediately out to the ocean.

$169/sf.  $449,000 at bottom.  Provided it’s in okay shape.  Needing TLC… maybe less.

Sound crazy?  Sound insane?  Sounds like 5%/year for twelve years from the profitable flip in 1996? Yep.

that roof needs a billboard with a picture of Richard Nixon and a peace symbol to complete the time capsule effect.  This fossil is what all the young things with tattoos will look like in 30 years:  comically out-of-style relics.  OC will be a funny place by that time: bunch of grandmas “sleeved-out” with tattoos and still-gigantic implants. 

719K for all the mold/termites you can ask for.  wow, we have a long way to go yet.

our friends live right on Culver:  the street noise is deafening, with all manner of trucks and buses destroying the enjoyment of their patio.  oh, but at least you don’t have neighbors on that side, gotta think positive.

Agreed

IR: By the way, that ain’t fine art, this is OC: we don’t like liberal law school deans here let alone some painting picturing a naked dude biting another naked dude on the neck (from the back, no less).  That there is sinful!

Why not?

I found that the sound of traffic whiffing by to be very soothing…almost like a fresh spring running through an open creek.

I think they call that ‘noise parfum’.

I love the sound of traffic in the morning.  It sounds like .... like Culver.

absolutely,  I have been saying this and sometimes laughed at even here at IHB   Nanowest has also been close to that guess,  I believe houses will range from 175 to 200 depending on condition, upgrades, location .....ect. but this will take a couple of years, I think IR posted a very nice timeline a while back(though I think it will happen faster than he predicted, but his analysis was good as usual).

Another song from the same album for the FBs out there:

Sorrow
Sweet smell of a great sorrow lies over the land
Plumes of smoke rise, merging into the leaden sky
Man lies and dreams of green fields and rivers
But awakes to a morning with no reason for waking

There’s an unceasing wind that blows through this night
And there’s dust in my eyes, that blinds my sight
And silence that speaks so much louder that words,
Of promises broken

The ski jump on Rampage is now in escrow…