Irvine Housing Blog

Maybe if this purging process would be allowed to continue, the current group of Ponzis can be replaced.

Or does a city’s status improved once the posers take over?

I was just pressing PR’s buttons.  Actually I think Irvine is a nice place and a nice class of people.

The posers are pervasive.  We have our share.

I would love to meet one of these ponzis, the only people I know and associate with in irvine have very high paying jobs and put down at least 50% cash.  I would shake one such ponzis hand and say thanks for playing.

Please name their companies in Irvine.
Do they hire for “very high paying jobs”?

I’ve worked in Irvine since 1986. The new so called “middle-class” must include large down payment or all cash buyers. If middle-class is household incomes of $100,000+, then yea, Irvine is a middle-class city.

It *used* to allow ordinary middle class earners to buy and raise a family in Irvine…that is no more. The middle-class in Irvine went out at about the same rate Bren could bulldoze all existing Orange trees from the face of Orange County…well done Mr. Bren, well done. Let’s change our name to Cement Streams, CA 92619 or maybe, just maybe, have the name “Corporate Jizz USA”

Dude that’s the entire 92603 zip code with over 6400 households and 86% population growth since year 2000.

There are very high paying jobs, plenty of them, deal with it.

“There are very high paying jobs, plenty of them, deal with it.”

Has anyone ever said otherwise?

Never mind trying to address the points that people who disagree with you actually make. It’s so much easier to pretend they believe in things that are obviously false, and then wrap yourself in a smug sense of superiority when you point out that falsity.

PR just got bitch slapped there.  But, but, but…Irvine has high paying jobs.  Keep telling yourself that bud.  Everybody wants to live in Irvine because it’s so special.

It is special to PR. He once told me that Atherton is **nothing** compared to Irvine.

Screw Larry…we got Donald here.

I see I will have to create some additional graphs.

I only put a few cities in the OC on the graph because any more, and the lines become unreadable.

The beach towns have had higher down payments since 1988, and I suspect for much longer. It used to be the destination of high wage earners who also were thrifty and saved money. During the bubble these communities were opened up to anyone who could convince a lender to give them $1M+.

Irvine down payments are above the Orange County median, but Irvine does not stand out like the beach towns, and it isn’t consistently above many other nice OC communities, particularly from South County.

As for the charts, I didn’t show the full history back to 1988 because the information gets lost in the lines. During the first 5 years of the graph, you can see down payments dropping. This is characteristic of a rally. The down payment compression came from a combination of exotic financing and people with less savings entering the buyer pool.

After loan balances abruptly fell 20% in late 2007, transaction volumes fell off significantly, and the only people who could buy were the few who had lots of cash. Prices have been falling as the people with cash buy their properties and more supply comes on the market. Without rising loan balances, the only way to liquidate inventory is to push prices lower and take buyers with smaller and smaller down payemnts. That is why down payments are compressing back to historic norms.

Irvine has maintained a 22.8% down payment average since 1988. Our current reading of 26.4% is 3.5% over (about 15% higher) the long-term average, and this percentage has been declining steadily from a peak of 32.1% in November of 2008 when prices were falling at their peak rate.

With the low transaction volumes, there is little hope of down payments beginning to rise. In fact, as sales pick up, I would expect to see down payment percentages drop back below 20%. Down payments in Irvine were below 20% from 1993 to 2000, and during the bubble rally in 2005 and 2006.

I have a typo as well… I meant “27%”, not “37%”.

Unless more lenders offer sub-20% loans, I don’t see the percentages dropping below 20% again. The sub-primes are gone and since 3.5% FHA financing in Irvine is in the minority, 20% or higher is going to keep that line above the benchmark.

I would be interested to see what it was in more non-FCB areas like Ladera Ranch.