Irvine Housing Blog

The redfin link comes up as this having already gone off the market. Did someone snap this “bargain” up that quickly? Or is someone that unhappy with IHB publicity? Or is the listing just being revised? Hard to say.

70K haircut in a matter of months.  Not bad.

That can’t make last year knife catching crowd feel very good about their purchases.

The original builders of these apartments must have made out like bandits on the original FB’s.

This place still has quite a way to fall, but it’s good to see that your prices are on their way back to reality.

For almost a half a million bucks, it *should* be upscale living!

Is it 2 bathrooms or 4 IR?  I think you have a typo.

I think the next big milestone is when QH falls below 300 a sq ft.

Another 25% haircut will do on a property like this.

$250 per sq ft ... probably worth around the $350k area when all is said and done.

“START LIVING THE ORANGE COUNTY LIFESTYLE TODAY. Has anyone else noticed this statement appearing in REO descriptions lately?”

A number of times, yes. Perhaps this is the agent’s trademark?

Man, Ghost Town!

I used to listen to this song when i was playing Text Based MUDs on AOL back in the early to mid 90’s.  I slayed many a text based cave gnome to this song.

This seems like an excellent deal.  Looks like the kitchen is all upgraded. I doubt you will find much better deals in the future as this is already a big drop from ‘04 prices.

Also, it’s a few steps away from Shady Canyon.  You start in QH and move up to SC!

Long-time lurker, but I just had to post today for two reasons:

Reason #1: The Specials! What a great call, IR. Used to love listening to this stuff in the early 80’s during my OC childhood.

Reason #2: Anyone see the NAR’s press release this morning? It was full of the usual suggestions that the market will stabilize any minute now and that we should all jump in and buy, but it also had two quotes that were noteworthy:

1) The absurd comment from the head of the NAR that blamed slow sales on lenders requiring unnecessarily high down payments. This is a guy who clearly thinks that 5% down should be the maximum limit. Not gonna happen, friend. Banks have to shrink the liability side of their balance sheets any way they can right now, and they are simultaneously going through hugely dilutive capital raises in order to shore up their finances. In this environment, higher down payments will become the norm (as IR has pointed out). Get used to it, NAR.

2) The first intelligent comment ever to come from Lawrence Yun, who pointed out the risk to inflation from further Fed easing, and the likelihood of increased long-term interest rates (and mortgage rates) as a result. Congratulations, Lawrence, for being one of the few to realize that Fed easing will NOT save the housing market. Yun suggests the gov’t offer tax credits to home buyers. Not sure I like this answer either (I’d rather just the market work things out), but at least I appreciate that this is the first time someone has pointed out that the answer is NOT to pander to the debtors who are in are over their heads (bailing them out will only delay the inevitable). No, if you want to make something happen in a hurry you need to pander to the people who actually have cash – those rare savers sitting on cash, the ones who will be most hurt by inflation as it erodes the purchasing power of their carefully saved cash. So Lawrence is right on this count: if you want to boost the market, don’t keep lowering the Fed funds rate, which will degrade the value of our savings through inflation. If you want us savers to save the real estate market, you’re gonna have to make it worth our while. A tax credit might help.

Check out 51 Appleglen, 92602.

I guess when every SFR is described as an estate in the RE listings, it probably makes sense to refer to a 2 bed 2 bath condo as an upscale home.

“Start living the Orange County life style” sounds like it was written by an out of towner who watches too much reality TV.

400 THOUSAND DOLLAR LOSS-

Didn’t we talk about how bad people were underwater in Woodbury…..

http://www.redfin.com/stingray/do/printable-listing?listing-id=1163873

Ahh..“Ghost Town” from the Specials, that song was written about my hometown in England where the Specials are also from.
Actually, Coventry is doing pretty well now even though they have no Manufacturing Industry left.
It was the Home of Jaguar, Triumph, Rolls Royce Aero Engines and one very famous Person who lived there, Lady Godiva.
Sorry, this has nothing to do with Blog, just a little side-note.
They did however go through a massive recession during the late 70’s-early 80’s.

YES! This is it!  This is the property I was saying I used to walk by all the time.  In its garage was an E 500 Mercedes Benz and a 6 series BMW.  120k worth of automobiles.

Ahhhh the schadenfreude is flowing this morning!

Quail Hell?

That row after row of yuppie-pink flipper condos that metastasized that hillside on the 405 near Irvine Spectrum?

Die.
Flipper.
Scum.

So I went and read that link to Quail Hell the thing that jumped out at me was.

WTF are people in Irving doing paying San Francisco prices for housing?