Irvine Housing Blog

Given the choice of :

renting 3 bed 2 bath apartment with a washer/dryer and refrigerator in a unit that was build in 2002 for $2350

or

buying an 1100 sq foot apartment for $429,000 that looks like a crack house and is in a 30 year old building.

I think I will rent for a while longer.
——-

Look, I know nothing about what rental rates in Irvine but honestly, unless you’re getting some kind of ridiculous financing who wants to buy what is basically a mediocre apartment for almost half a million dollars?  No matter what Irvine may be, it’s ain’t that nice, or lucrative.

I think it demonstrates how far the market has shifted from reasonable and sustainable towards the fantastic and utterly pretend.

On and Nano, absolutely no disrespect intended but if that newer apartment you’re talking about really rents for $2350, it had better come with a manservant, valet parking and a masseuse.  $2350 a month on *rent*, for an apartment?  Once again, I would politely suggest that unless median income figures are wrong, that’s a lot of rent.

Ok, I’m taking my granpa Simpson act and shutting up now.

Oh, and IR, you’re absolutely right.  These Realtors (tm) are losers.  The one disappointment I’ve had in the market is that more of that utterly dreadful marketers have not given up and gone back to bagging groceries or staying home and spending someone else’s money yet.

Soon though, soon.

Looks like in that first property that the “HUGE backyard” is so versatile that it can also be an “entertainer’s backyard” - with those four folding chairs, they’re all set to have a party!

This is the kind of housing that upper-middle buyers are now expected to settle for. What a sick joke.

These two featured condo units have everything: minimal private outdoor space, cheap junk construction, small rooms, standard floor plans, junk developer grade cabinets and bottom-of-the-line appliances.

The kitchen cabinets in unit 2 are tragic. Did anyone tell this Realtor that Maytag appliances are nothing to brag about?

Ice Wesel,

Your comment is well taken. Yes, it costs 2350 for a three bedroom two bath apartment . If your are not from California, that probably seems nuts. What is really strange is that the renters drive Lexus’s, BMW’s and MB’s. When I first moved here, 25 years ago, i was really shocked.

As for realtors(tm) they are going to go away just as travel agents and other types of brokers have. It is only a matter of time.

“half a million dollars is a lot of money to spend on a crappy apartment.”  is my mantra.  And two more examples right here.

We rent a house in Laguna Beach, CA with 180 degree ocean views, 4 bedroom, 3 baths… less than 1000 feet from the beach itself.  Costs 3200/month or about the same as taxes and insurance if we were to buy the place.  I guess in this context the house is utterly free and we aren’t losing 10K/month worth of equity or more.  Whoever buys these places for 2 million and up are idiots….  No maintenance, no worries if it falls of the hill or burns down, no 15K/month equivalent mortgage or putting my cash into it.  Beautiful.  I can’t understand how a single house sells around here.

Quite amusing to watch the REA’s sling this crap. Why would I need one of them to take me to look at it?..they all look the same. With more agents than transactions, it seems to me for the most part they have given up. Places not cleaned up, flyer holder always empty, never pick up phone or return calls, etc.

Well, at least the microwave they brought from the old country still works in the first unit.

Prop 1 has carport parking and prop 2 has detached 1-car garage. BZZZZZ! No thanks!

It was only a few months ago when a homeless person could qualify to buy these places. Those days are over and all of a sudden, 400-500k seems like alot of money.

1100 sq ft is with 3 beds is a little tight. These places should be under 200k.

How long has your landlord owned the house?

How big is the house and garage?

A rent of $3200 for a 4/3ba in Laguna with a view sounds really low.  Perhaps you should count your blessings and try to get a 10 year lease.

There is more than one way to “pay-the-rent”!

Nano, thanks for the reply.

And please do not misunderstand me, I’m from California (though I haven’t lived there in almost ten years).  So while my perceptions are dated they’re not founded on some, “hey, here in North Dakota I can rent me a 10 bedroom house on five acres for $500 a month” or some such nonsense.  I spent the thirty years of my life there and I love the state.  As much as I love where I live now, it pains me to not be in California.  I was back in home (San Diego) in June and got the fever to move back in a bad way.

That said, I won’t give up owning a nice home, in a nice city for literally 25% of what it would cost me to live a hell zone in SoCal.  That’s my decision and I pray (or what passes for prayer) that someday, maybe in the next couple of years, I can come back.  But it won’t be to live in a converted, half-million dollar apartment.

Back to your point.  The last eight years I lived in California I was in San Francisco which, if there is an argument for ridiculous RE prices, SF should be the paradigm.  Limited land, a world class city and jobs that pay well.  Wow, did I just kill my argument?  No, wait, here it is.  So in SF I can, to a limited extent, understand stupid RE prices.  In SoCal where there really is a lot of land, not so much.  If we’re not talking about the beach or something else exotic it seems to me that prices in California really shouldn’t be as much as they have grown to be for quite some time.  This myth that somehow California land was “going away” smacks of early 20th century Florida RE marketing.  There’s no arguing that it worked but is it sustainable?  And who benefits from it?

It is my hope that this current bubble pop will force most of us to re-examine how we look at real estate.  What does home ownership really mean and what part of that American Dream is owning a home?  And in a diverse economy what place do we make for those who aren’t in the top ten percent of earners?  How do rents and mortgages relate to that?

There’s a lot of big questions there but I think it would help if we really attempted to tackle them.  We’ve created this idea that home ownership is a sign of success and make no mistake, as a society we reward those who do own and, generally speaking, look down on those who rent.  Whether it makes personal fiscal sense or not, that would seem to be the ideal we’ve created but to whose benefit?  Certainly not to the benefit of those who bought homes in SoCal in the three or, maybe four years.  This blog has proven that time and again.

Enough rambling.  Thanks Nano and thanks, as always, to IR for what I think is the best RE blog going.

I am realtor and recently rented out some rentals in Irvine.  a 3 Br, 2 Ba, townhome 20 years old, with a yard, rented for $2450/mo. 3 applications in 3 days, all eager to move in.

Also, landlord tends to go easy on good tenants,or they may just be lazy.  Don’t treat your good luck as granted.  If you ever have to look for a reasonable rental in OC in the future, you may not be so luck.

“Also, landlord tends to go easy on good tenants,or they may just be lazy”

tents (your clients) might be lazy too:

http://orangecounty.craigslist.org/apa/428713491.html
http://orangecounty.craigslist.org/apa/428959134.html
http://orangecounty.craigslist.org/apa/429359189.html

just 5 minutes web search

Dear Irvine Renter, what is your email address? I will send you a sheet on a Chicago WTF house in my lakefront neighborhood that makes all your featured WTF places in Irvine look like flaming good deals.

But never mind, just check out the listing here:

http://homes.realtor.com/prop/1089002124

It is only one example of Chicago’s housing lunacy. This is my area, in the zip code 6 blocks to the south of me on the north lakefront. I could show you many more.

Check it out, SoCal buddies, and tell me your sellers are any crazier than ours are.

Wow, that is pretty crazy. At least they priced it under a million…

That is truly amazing.

Craigslist shows 247 listed for $2400 or less.  http://orangecounty.craigslist.org/search/apa?query=Irvine&minAsk=min&maxAsk=2400&bedrooms=3

Craptacular!

I love that word “craptacular” and will add it to my vocabulary.

Yeah, that’s just what it is. Plus, the public schools suck. The house needs reno, and it’s 6 blocks from the lake, in a nabe where the median income for families is about $60K.

Here are two more surpassingly, bubbliciously craptacular Chicago Houses of Mirth for the amusement of my SoCal buds.

These two palaces are in 60626, Rogers Park, my nabe, which has everything you could want in a city ‘hood: crap schools, HIGH CRIME, shortage of retail, GANSTER DISCIPLES, bums sleeping and doing other things in the el stations, LATIN KINGS, in addition to nice beaches on Lake Michigan and lots of beautiful apt buildings, which do NOT make this area exactly comparable to Malibu or someplace.

http://homes.realtor.com/search/listingdetail.aspx?zp=60626&ml=3&typ=7&sid=22200a5005664c579720a2842d4fd39e&pg=82&lid=1079494024&lsn=818&srcnt=819#Detail

I mean, I won’t walk on this block of Jarvis.

Then,there is this delightful little villa:

http://homes.realtor.com/search/listingdetail.aspx?zp=60626&ml=3&typ=7&lid=1087291441&fhv=1

Both properties are zoned single family- no multifamily development possibilities here.

Now that I’ve made my town the laughingstock of SoCal, off to bed I go. Enjoy.

Builders pulling back in O.C.
Good morning, Matt Ryan.  News item from this morning’s LATimes: “In Anaheim, city officials were alerted last week that Lennar Corp., one of the nation’s largest home builders, will halt construction on A-Town for up to a year, slowing progress on the centerpiece of what some are calling the city’s new downtown.”

More: “In Irvine, Lennar’s plans to build thousands of homes around the planned Orange County Great Park have been pushed back, and the city has not received an updated timeline from the developer since 2005.”

Our take: It appears planners in Orange County have put a lot of eggs in one basket, the basket known as Lennar Corp. As an aside, this is an example of how interest rate cuts by the Fed aren’t likely to produce the classic stimulatory effects right now: do you think Lennar is going to change its mind about these projects because the cost of money just dropped by 50 basis points?

Who is the bigger idiot? The realtor, or the idiot who listens to him/her?

Cromulent words like “craptactular” help embiggen ones vocabulary.

Chicago is everything that Irvine wants to be. Walkable, with trains, neighborhood oriented, with great culture and off the beaten path. Home of the ultrarich old money.

On the other hand if you want rats, blight, slums, pollution, and homeless eating out of garbage cans, then I recommend Huntington Beach.

Yeah, I love this old burg passionately, which is why I hang around and hope not to become one of the homeless eating out of garbage cans, given that you have to be Paris Hilton to pay the prices some folks around here want for dwellings that you can see are pretty quotidian at best- the term “worker housing” comes to mind- and tear-downs at worst.

I brought y’all these palatial dwellings in my area to show that the whole country has gone insane. The three dumps featured are NOT the best housing or the best architecture this area has to offer, and they’ve been sitting on the market for a loooong time.

Yet, in 2005, they sold this high.

Convincing the sellers around here that 2005 is going to take a big shakeout. Chicago has more adjustable mortgages than any other city in the country, did you know?

We will see what happens when all these loans reset in October and after.

“Craigslist shows 247 listed for $2400 or less. “

That’s actually 15 properties listed 16 times each.  Yo (heart) craigslist.

I hope that was a joke.  Slums in Huntington Beach?  Where?  Slater and Beach?  Hardly the slums I remember growing up in Oakland.  And homeless?  Nothing compared to the number of homeless people hanging around civic center park in Santa Ana, or in Venice, or downtown LA.

Huntington is an awesome place, and only looks bad compared to Irvine and Newport.

Carl