Irvine Housing Blog

Looks like the owner is trying to absorbe the additional loss bisides downpayment at the moment.

It is not listed as a short sale - not yet.

I agree that it is still asking at least 1/2 m too high at which point this might turn into a short sale and then foreclosure.

IrvineRenter,

Have you seen this one?

6 Cedar Rdg Irvine CA 92603

.35 acres is not a “postage stamp lot”-especially in Irvine.

I second that.  I think the days of cramming a 4,000 sq ft home on less than 1/2 an acre are over.

At this price, the owner is competing for someone who either loves his house and has to have it or is going to buy dirt and build custom.  Considering that you can build a beautiful house for 1 mil - 1 1/2 mil and these lots will probably drop to $250-$350k I see a long way to fall.

Oh, and I hate the “$750k in upgrades”.  Whatever, you never recover dollar for dollar on improvements, maybe 50 cents.

If by “nestled” they mean “your neighbor’s house towers over your backyard” then I’ll believe it.  $3mil and you can’t even have a little privacy in your backyard.  How are you supposed to have your coke-and-naked-hookers parties with your Nosy Nelly neighbors leering over you?

Oh, and nice Photoshopping, dick.

It is a postage stamp sized lot for everywhere but Irvine.

This area isn’t so remote like your description of SoFL.  There are many office towers within 10 miles of Turtle Rock.

Irvine contains more than half of the ‘downtown’ of orange county, and the other half is across the freeway in Costa Mesa. 

The total office space is equivalent to a large downtown like Seattle or Pittsburgh although it lacks any kind of memorable skyline.

You can commute from this house in 10 to 15 minutes to most of the office towers, not to mention all of the low rise industry in Irvine which is substantial.

I think it’s the Jaguars, Hummers, and Ferraris that will be out, along with the high end Mercedes. 

When I bought my last car, I chose a Mercedes over an Acura with similar characteristics.  Got a great deal and probably paid less than if I’d bought the Acura.

On your in list, don’t forget Walmart, Target, Sears, and other places people from OC either didn’t shop in 2006, or didn’t admit to shopping.  On the out list Macy’s, Tiffany, and those clothing shops with about one item for sale per ten square feet of retail space.

If you look closely, you’ll see that policies and anger are targeted toward certain types of rich people, not the rich generally.

Warren Buffet isn’t suddenly hated.  Larry Ellison isn’t getting slapped by the women he tries to pick up. 

However, Dick Fuld of Lehman got punched.  He was perceived to be a major part of the problem.  Still there haven’t been many stories of that type.  It may be an indication of the level of security, or the lack of face and name recognition.  Could you pick out a picture of the former head of Washington Mutual?  IndyMac?  Most people couldn’t.  You might have had dinner next to them, or walked right past them at an airport.

I don’t like or use any of these sites. They all do a decent job in stable markets, but they do a very poor job in a market as volatile as ours.

For the areas where I’ve been looking at homes, Cyberhomes has been somewhat better.  Still, in this kind of market the automatic estimates can have great difficulty anywhere with high volatility or low transaction volume.

Actually, it was Louis XVI who found out that it wasn’t always good to be rich. For Louis XIV, it was always good to be rich. Especially since his wealth came from taxing the peasants’ salt and not from, you know, labor of any kind.

I’m surprised nobody mentioned this gem that showed up over the past week.  It almost strikes me as BULL, but if it is true then man is this guy a waste of space.  BOO HOO HOO!  I love reading about these rich trouser stains blowing all their money and then crying hardship when they fall off the gravy train.

http://abclocal.go.com/wpvi/story?section=news/national_world&id=6721411

From hedge funds to pizza delivery

Friday, March 20, 2009

Ken Karpman, shown here with his family, said his financial downfall has been a lesson in humility. The family is now on food stamps and a friend is paying the kids’ school tuition.

Ken Karpman Plummeted From a Six-Figure Salary to Earning $7.29 an Hour 

For the first 45 years of Ken Karpman’s life, everything was close to perfect.
He graduated from UCLA with a bachelor’s degree and M.B.A., then got a high-paying job as an institutional equity sales trader. He married his dream girl, had two children and traveled the world on expensive vacations.

Over the span of Karpman’s impressive 20-year career as a trader, he climbed the company ladder, reaching a salary of $750,000 a year.
“Life was good, we were making a lot of money—and why wouldn’t this just continue on?” Karpman said.

From all appearances, Ken and Stephanie Karpman were living the American dream in Tampa, Fla., nestled in their 4,000-square-foot home that sits on a golf course. “I had no idea what anything cost in a store,” he said. “I’d just put it in the cart and buy.”

Karpman was so confident in his good fortune and the strong economy that he left his job in 2005 to start his own hedge fund. To pay for the new business and their standard of living, Karpman quickly burned through $500,000 in savings and, like so many Americans, took a line of credit against his house.
But in the reversal of fortune that followed, Karpman was unable to attract investors and was forced to dissolve his hedge fund. He found himself jobless in a job market that had collapsed.

In the past, Karpman had found it easy to get a job. It wasn’t so this time around.
“When I used to go into a job interview, I probably came across as a jerk because I was like interviewing him to see whether this firm was worthy of me,” he said. “Now it’s kind of like you almost feel like you’re coming in with your hat in your hand.”

After a lengthy and fruitless job search, the Karpmans were shocked to find themselves in financial dire straits, with zero savings, hundreds of thousands of dollars in debt and their home in foreclosure.
Desperate for quick cash, Karpman tried to find a job bartending but came up empty. Finally, he drove his Mercedes to Mike’s Pizza & Deli Station in Clearwater and applied for a job.

Karpman’s salary plummeted from six figures to $7.29 an hour—plus tips—but it’s money that he’s grateful to earn, even when it means delivering to neighbors or his old office building.

The stress has also taken a toll on their marriage. Stephanie Karpman said she didn’t want her husband to leave his trader job in the first place and wishes he would have put more in savings.

The Karpmans are now on food stamps and a tight budget that doesn’t nearly cover their children’s $30,000 private school tuition<B>. But thanks to an anonymous donor, the Karpmans children’s tuition has been covered through next year and they are deeply appreciative
“It’s just something that kind of makes you a little misty every time you think about it, that somebody would do this for our kids,” he said. “But we’ll have a chance at some point to do that for another family.”

As Karpman counts every penny he earns, <B>he still hopes he can come back from the financial brink and reclaim a lifestyle he, like so many Americans, never imagined he could lose.
“I need a couple of wins,” he said, “and I think that, hopefully, it’ll mushroom up like it caved in.”

Is this like “There are no bad beers, only good beers and better beers”?

What you say is true, and I thought to make those distinctions when I wrote the post; however, since the general public does not make those distinctions, and since the anger of the populist mop is what is driving tax policy, I blurred the distinction just like everyone else does.

Fermi,

I agree, but please let me know how I would not have to pay any tax the day I have millions to invest…

Warren Buffett has a famous quote about this. 

“Speaking at a $4,600-a-seat fundraiser in New York for Senator Hillary Clinton, Mr Buffett, who is worth an estimated $52 billion (£26 billion), said: “The 400 of us [here] pay a lower part of our income in taxes than our receptionists do, or our cleaning ladies, for that matter. If you’re in the luckiest 1 per cent of humanity, you owe it to the rest of humanity to think about the other 99 per cent.”

Mr Buffett said that he was taxed at 17.7 per cent on the $46 million he made last year, without trying to avoid paying higher taxes, while his secretary, who earned $60,000, was taxed at 30 per cent.” http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/money/tax/article1996735.ece

I built one of those.  It’s clear crushed glass with a gas flame hidden under it.  Looks pretty cool.  It seems like the glass should be melting.

Perhaps the owner confused price with value.  My wife and I once had a conversation with a very difficult jeweler about mounting a diamond on a titanium band instead or gold or platinum.  By any standard we could come up with, the titanium was better.  Almost impossible to scratch, very strong, less expensive, easy to clean, etc.

The jeweler asserted it could not be valuable because the metal was not expensive.  I suspect he also was opposed because it takes very different techniques and machinery to handle titanium, and he specialized in gold and platinum.

It all depends on if the fat cat can expense thing to the company.  Regular working folks can not expense thing out.  Everything is on the W-2.  Even a minor reimbursement for a security clearance process (fingerprinting)was include on my W2.

I’ve read where corp. jets, 6 houses/condo/apts., $10K per day in food allowance are part of the package and likely not taxed because the company was to pays directly to the vendor.  Regular folk get paid as regular income.  Hollywood folk’s pay is a capital gain rates and lots of stuff is corporate expenses—limo, food on the set, promotion parties, promotion clothing that’s returned to the company after usage, etc.  High exec. can also take income as delayed compensation or structure it as options to reduce the tax rate, almost unlimited retirement plans.  I’ve even read financial where the company paid the taxes on their bonus, which is most of the pay.

Financial rags have reported that WB pays only $10,000 per year property tax on his CA mansion because of prop. 13 and the above 65 year old rule.  He also won a long legal battle to with the IRS on lowering his taxes or for his MF.
As for inheritance tax, any good tax lawyer can get around it with good planning and forming a trust.  Have a good laugh or cry by looking up what your elected officials pay in taxes.

Corporate income - expense = near zero to tax at 35%

“This also excludes state income taxes which are typically graduated and would further favor the secretary.”
For CA, almost everybody above an income of $45,000 is at the max. marginal rate of 9.5% state income tax.

Uh, Fermi… contrary to your assertion, employee wage earners do NOT pay 15% Social Security taxes. They only pay half that amount through withholding, and their employer pays the other half.  Which in the secretary’s case is Mr. Buffett.  He, and you fail to mention that. Be intellectually honest now…

Fermi,

I didn’t “pretend” the Social Security tax does not exist, I noted that it is the responsibility of each individual.  In making a fair comparison, we should consider that the person paying the Social Security tax RECEIVES a pension in return, so there is zero net tax if the pension is paid as promised.  Thus, it was appropriate to exclude the pension contribution/tax from the computations.

It is likely future benefits will be cut, though means testing is less likely to hit those in the lower income levels such as the secretary in Buffett’s example.

David