Login
Subscribe
Recent Comments
- Lee Campbell on Uncovering the History of the Secret Garden
- Kelja on Uncovering the History of the Secret Garden
- Sylvia Walker on Irvine Housing by the Numbers - May 2012 Update
- Casual Observer on Irvine Housing by the Numbers - May 2012 Update
- Astute As It Comes on Open House Review: 35 Bella Rosa
- Sylvia Walker on Open House Review: 35 Bella Rosa
- Darin on Open House Review: 35 Bella Rosa
- Sylvia Walker on Investors Are Busy in Irvine's Low-End Housing Market
- Casual Observer on Investors Are Busy in Irvine's Low-End Housing Market
- irvine_home_owner on Tustin, but Irvine Schools
Recent Posts
- Open House Review: 34 Redwood Tree Lane
- Uncovering the History of the Secret Garden
- Closed Sales from 5/10/2012-5/16/2012
- Open House Review: 52 Secret Garden
- Irvine Housing by the Numbers - May 2012 Update
- Paired Living with Privacy in Woodbridge
- Beige Ruth Sisters
- Closed Sales from 5/3/2012 to 5/9/2012
- Open House Review: 35 Bella Rosa
- Investors Are Busy in Irvine’s Low-End Housing Market
Categories
Archives
- May 2012
- April 2012
- March 2012
- February 2012
- January 2012
- December 2011
- November 2011
- October 2011
- September 2011
- August 2011
- July 2011
- June 2011
- Rest of archives
Browse Homes
Irvine Homes
- Airport Area Homes
- El Camino Real Homes
- Northpark Homes
- Northwood Homes
- Oak Creek Homes
- Orangetree Homes
- Portola Springs Homes
- Quaill Hill Homes
- Rancho San Joaquin Homes
- Turtle Ridge Homes
- Turtle Rock Homes
- University Park
- University Town Center Homes
- West Irvine Homes
- Westpark Homes
- Woodbridge Homes
- Woodbury Homes
Newport Beach Homes
- Newport Coast Homes
- Crystal Cove Homes
- Corona Del Mar / Spyglass
- East Bluff / Harbor View Homes
- Lower Newport Bay / Balboa Island
- Balboa Peninsula Homes
- West Bay / Santa Ana Heights
- West Newport / Lido Homes
Other Cities
- Aliso Viejo Homes
- Anaheim Hills Homes
- Brea Homes
- Costa Mesa Homes
- Coto de Caza Homes
- Dana Point Homes
- Huntington Beach Homes
- Ladera Ranch Homes
- Laguna Beach Homes
- Laguna Hills Homes
- Laguna Niguel Homes
- Lake Forest Homes
- Mission Viejo Homes
- Orange Homes
- Rancho Santa Margarita Homes
- San Clemente Homes
- San Juan Capistrano Homes
- Santa Ana Homes
- Tustin Homes
- Villa Park Homes
- Yorba Linda Homes
Contact
.(JavaScript must be enabled to view this email address)
Foreclosures
Housing
- Talk Irvine
- IHB Forum Archive
- OC Housing News
- Coto Housing Blog
- Housing Kaboom
- Patrick.net
- Housing Chronicles
- Housing Doom
- Dr. Housing Bubble
- Manhattan Beach Confidential
- Burbed
- SoCal RE Bubble Crash
- Professor Piggington
- Real C'ville
- Westside Bubble
- Bubble Meter
- Portland Housing Blog
- Sacramento Land(ing)
- OC Register Blog
Econ/Finance/Other
- Calculated Risk
- The Big Picture
- Economist's View
- Mish's Blog
- Matrix
- Bakers' Stock
- ML-Implode
- Eschaton
- Best Mortgage Rates
- Crackerjack Finance
Latest REOs
- $199,900 :: 3125 Watermarke Pl, Irvine CA, 92612
- $349,900 :: 10 Greenleaf 16, Irvine CA, 92604
- $439,900 :: 61 Olivehurst, Irvine CA, 92602
- $889,900 :: 14 Upland, Irvine CA, 92602
- $429,900 :: 56 Great Lawn, Irvine CA, 92620
- $465,000 :: 212 Garden Gate Ln, Irvine CA, 92620
- $329,000 :: 1006 Terra Bella, Irvine CA, 92602
- $579,900 :: 8 Star Thistle, Irvine CA, 92604
- $398,900 :: 191 Lockford, Irvine CA, 92602
- $750,000 :: 69 Lakeview 6, Irvine CA, 92604
Looks like initial purchase was only land. $1.2M building the house?
I don’t know what the owners invested in the land. There is a $3,000,000 loan on the property, and I would guess the owners paid about $1,200,000 for the land, but I don’t know. Whatever the owners recover over $3,000,000 is how much of their equity they get back.
I can’t imagine what kind of a pretentious douche would want to live in something like this. This place is the Columbian drug lord’s house in every James Bond movie. Can’t you picture some drug boss with a white suit and a fedora smoking cigars on the couch ordering people be snuffed out? Either that or picture the king from Braveheart strutting through the living room screaming that he shall have William Wallace’s head!
It always amazes me how over the top Americans go with these projects. Whether it be building a Yin Yang palace to eat your Pei Wei in with your chopsticks or an Italian Chateau to drink wine and evoke the relaxed countryside of some other country while wanking yourself.
Whenever you see a realtor use the word ‘exotic’ - think ‘superficial’. That’s all this place is.
This is a $4M house. Maybe the pretentious and superficial comment is best saved for the real posers.
I never said that it could not be sold for 4M - I was just commenting on how superficial the style is.
It would be a great place to throw a Toga party, but as far as a place to live in for an extended period of time? It has no appeal to me whatsoever.
Would much rather spend 4M on something else.
When some of these coastal mansions get auctioned, prices will go haywire. For $4M you can get a property in Laguna Beach that is truly superb.
...and deal with all the traffic?
Actually, this property seems to be on the very god side of Shady Canyon. Looking over the valley all you need is a sheep herder, a dog and a bunch of sheep and you’d think you were in the foothills of the Pyrenees. In many ways the only places I can think in SoCal like this are up near the Reagan Library up in Simi Valley. But Shady Canyon is next to civilization.
LB, OTOH, is a traffic nightmare and it much more crowded.
Now, I don’t care much for the place myself. It does look too much like a place out of Colombia were some Dons smoke RyJ LE Robustos while they plan the next shipment to Miami.
Too much
Oh, Oh, I have a sale! You know what I’m talking about
The listing agent was totally showing the oh face on that one. Good lord, the thing almost reads like one of those porn novels. I felt like I was being molested with each creepy sentence.
“Private Shady Canyon estate evokes the relaxed elegance of the Italian countryside.”
For $4.3M I could get the real Italian countryside, complete with a new Ferrari 458 Italia to cruise in.
I like the analogy, but I kept thinking politician and taxpayer were an even better fit than lender and borrower.
I’d like to submit union pension recipient and tax payer, although S&P100; and taxpayer may be more inclusive.
“I kept thinking politician and taxpayer were an even better fit”
And the special interest group and politician is another.
Can you see a group of lobbyist lamprey descending on the capital to attach to the politicians there?
Some of the consumer debt can be productive - just not very often. For example one might say a loan for a good reliable used car for a new college grad is more useful than a mortgage if the car helps produce income (ie. Provide transport for the new grad to get back and forth to work, or to drive as part of their job).
I agree the car is a good example. Sometimes you need to buy something before you’ve been able to save up enough money to pay for it. As reliable of a car as you buy the first time around, even with good maintainence, you’re not entirely in charge of when it starts dying to the extent that the repair costs on a every six month basis are equal to the loan costs on a replacement. Buying the next car on credit allows you to productively get on with your work, provides a sale to the car dealer (i.e. adds to GDP directly) and the lender collects his cut for facilitating the transaction.
Ideally you want to get to the point where your car-fund is ready to go by the time you need another one, but that could take until your mid-40s to achieve.
Yes, the student loan debt and credit card addiction parts are part of what is keeping people from achieving this at a younger age, but even without those, at entry level salaries, if your first car isn’t free, it could take 6-7 years to save up for the next one, and that’s only if it’s a real priority.
I disagree. If you can’t pay cash for a USED car, you should be taking public transportation.
Public transportation is not plentiful here and it’s simply not an option for many people. There’s nothing wrong with a modest car loan.
Or a motorcycle…
The new college grad might do even better to eschew the car loan in favor of the bus or train, and if there aren’t any of those, live VERY close to work…especially when gasoline hops back into the $3-4/gallon range (or worse).
One of the best ways to keep your living costs in line and thus reduce debt dependence is to keep energy consumption to a minimum, because energy is going to take a bigger chunk of our paychecks, directly or indirectly (higher costs for everything) than it has until now.
“The value of lending to borrowers is debatable ...”
I know one country with broken banking system. No lenders. None at all. How do people buy houses in that country? All cash transaction, and it takes approximately 150-230 years of median income to accumulate money. Their typical landlord behaves like medieval baron in family’s castle. So rent is out of control too.
The Italian Cypresses lining a drive, like the one at Maximus’s home from Gladiator is a nice picture. That was a modest farmhouse…on a farm.
Please tell me the putting green isn’t Maximus’s? I can’t see him golfing…
IR - have you heard about Dave Ramsey’s Financial Peace University? I think you would like it. My wife and I went through this late last year and we are working on getting ourselves out of debt. Once you commit and begin the process it actually becomes sort of painful to use the card because you’ve worked so hard to get to the point where you are and paying debt off becomes self-reinforcing.
Check it out - you may want to recommend it to your readers.
Cheers!
(Disclaimer - I have no stock in Dave Ramsey and reap no financial reward from this posting. Only the satisfaction that I might help another soul avoid the lamprey.)
Yes, I originally had a section recommending him, but I cut it out for brevity. I strongly agree with what I have read and heard from Dave Ramsey.
Ain’t Irvine grand? Like 4,200 grand?
Just think, Sand Canyon was supposed to go directly to the Pacific Coast Highway so EVERYONE could have another access road to the coast. The only other routes are Jamboree, MacArthur, or Laguna Canyon.
Yes, this snobbery serves the community much MUCH better than a road that would have relieved congestion and saved fuel for anyone that has to go to the coast.
On the positive note, there are many, many famous and extremely wealthy people that live in that community. I’m surprised there isn’t a line of women waiting to hike into the “shady canyon”, who knows, it could be the gold digging rush of 2010. Instead of panning for gold, you could MAN for gold.
Consumer debt is a stupid tax just as the Lottery is. I’ve never bought a Lottery ticket, not that stupid, but I did have credit card debt in my 20s - yes, that stupid.
Yuck! And I thought the only problems the Great Lakes had were the Asian Carp and Zebra Muscles. I wonder how these ocean critters manage to survive in the cold, fresh water? Anyway, I totally agree with IR about debt. I’m still stuck with my 15 year mortgage, but I have no other debt. My wife’s (used) vehicle was purchased with cash. Once the mortgage is paid off, I plan to borrow nothing for the rest of my life. The leaches will have to find someone else’s blood to suck. My #1 motivation these days is to sock away cash. The more I can save each month, the happier I am. When I am forced to spend money on something, it brings me down. The dilemma is, where do I keep the cash? I’ve been using an ING money market, which currently pays 1.2%. I kinda feel dirty contributing to a big bank’s bottom line. But I’m not really inclined to stuff $100s in my mattress. And the local banks pay more like 0.0%. I still need a checking account, too. It is painful to me that I am still reliant on banks for these services. I wish I could be done with them for good.
I have considered renting a bank deposit box and stuffing it with cash. Safer than a matress and it would deny them the ability to perform their fractional reserve voodoo on my cash. Would have to pay some rental fees and get no interest, but with interest rates so pathetic right now it might be worth the statement. At least if they start denying withdrawals to people I would assume the folks could still get their vaulted cash.
I would question the example of a car. If I buy a nice, safe and new $40,000 car, pay $3,500 in tax, $800 in registration (even if I get to write off the tax per the Obama stimulus package…so deduct $1,200), the vehicle still totals $43,100. By tying up that amount in a depreciating asset, you lose the interest (say 2.2% after tax) of about $1,000 per year. Your car is worth about 60% of its original value after four years…so $24,000. So, even when you pay “cash”, you lose about $630 per month total. I leased my last vehicle for less than that several years ago. The oil line blew up one month before my lease was up and the dealer couldn’t completely fix it. I’m glad that I didn’t own that one!
Houses generally appreciate over time.
Houses generally appreciate over time.
Usually the house depreciates and the land appreciates.
IR, Like gonorrhea?
More like syliphis—harmful, contagious, can show no symptom for long periods, harder to treat if left untreated or improperly treated, can be passed on to your spouse and unborn children, but syliphis get into the brain and causes a variety of mental illness’. The latter points are more like unrestrained borrowing.
Thank you, with better research, I could have picked a more appropriate venereal disease.
LOL! I really like the sexually transmitted disease analogy.
The host (debt-slave) often times contracts the disease (indebtedness) after getting excited by, what appears to be, an attractive mate (bank) to consummate what the host believes to be a mutually beneficial act (take out a loan). Inhibitions of the host are reduced by plying the host with mind-altering substances (Realtor Kool-Aid). Initially, the transaction can be exhilarating (I now “own” a house! / [you can figure out the sexual analogy on your own]), but thereafter realizes the transaction was not worth it (“Top Ramen for dinner again, kids.” / “What is this growth coming out of my [beep]!”)
Furthermore, societal acceptance of unprotected casual sex leads to wide-spread sexually transmitted diseases, much like societal acceptance of unregulated casual borrowing leads to a nation of debt-slaves.
Educating the participants about the risks and using safety precautions is the most effective way to reduce the disease from spreading. So I guess this makes the IHB my condom.
Great analogy. A+
Preach moral restraint against uninhibited borrowing? How prudish, what made you the morals police? Poor people (or fill in the race) just can’t help themselves…. You just need to have protected borrowing/lending with the proper use of a nothing down loan and govt bailout for the banksters.
:]
A free society can not exist without moral restraint.
Without moral restraint, govt’s need to rule by fear and guns (i.e., large army and police force) plus lots of entertainment and amusement.
Owning beats leasing if you plan to own the car for more than 5 years. In addition you can buy a used model that tends to appreciate slowly (Nissan, Honda, etc?) to further reduce monthly cost of ownership. In the end it all comes down to how important it is to you to get a new Mercedes every 3 years.
These days its best to own your car outright.
No one can ever report you for theft because its yours.
You can drive wherever you want - no 12k mileage restrictions.
You can live out of it if you have to - just remember to tint the windows.
You do mean “depreciate slowly”, I hope. Unless you have a Bugatti Royale, you ain’t getting any appreciation on your vehicle.
That’s why I buy them pre-depreciated. I got my wife an ‘06 Town & Country with 28K miles for $12K cash. I figure we’ll put 100K miles on it over 7 years. If we spend $8K on maintenance and repairs, that comes to about $0.20/mile. About $0.35/mile including gas. Not too bad for a newish 7 passenger vehicle. We’ve always kept our cars to 100K+, so leasing doesn’t make sense. Also, she tends to back into things, so a brand new vehicle would be wasted on her.
I agree with you about owning a car long-term. I’ve owned all of my cars for an average of 8 years, except for that one lease. The main problem that I have with owning is that the repairs can be incredibly random and expensive as the car gets older, as well as frustrating and time consuming. Not that I speak from experience. I bought my current car and plan to keep it for 8 or 9 years. I’m under no illusion that it’s a monthly expense, however, no matter how I slice it.
I should clarify…houses that sit on land appreciate over the long term, lol. I knew that would ruffle a feather after having read this blog for a few weeks. I agree with most of the analysis here. It’s a great service.
But honey, I. R. told me to get a massage on the plastic, and he even suggested there might be a “happy ending”!
Obama May Prohibit Home-Loan Foreclosures Without HAMP Review
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=ahuuwBS8KYq8&pos=1
Another pretend and extend:
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=ahuuwBS8KYq8&pos=1
Why not just have a damn title “Obama May Extend 0% Financing on All Homes in the Country” and get this charade over with. Geesh…
It’s better than your regular 0% loan. It is a 0% interest only loan.
Renters that need help paying their rent get help too, right? No, renters are low life scum? Rats.
I have an issue with your characterization of massage. Sometimes, yes, it is a luxury, but sometimes it’s not. I’ve been getting it semi-regularly for the past few years and it seriously is one of the few things that helps me keep my stress to a manageable level. It also has other health benefits.
I use my own cash for it though, I never use credit.