Irvine Housing Blog

Citi re-started the jumbo MBS market back in April  However the weighted average LTV is less than 60%, and DTI’s are also much lower than bubble era levels.  You’re spot-on with this “the problem is that a huge mortgage is difficult to get because people don’t make enough money to qualify.”

I also like your mention of uncertainty in the new home market.  That is real uncertainty.  Whether my tax bill goes up by 1-2k (let expire/extend tax cuts) is not the level of uncertainty that drives major decisions.  I pray that there is something besides new home construction to pull us out of this unemployment situation (the real problem even if we are technically out of recession).

I wonder the degree to which undocumented workers were used in construction, what percentage of those workers that aren’t working anymore have gone back to their home countries.

I wonder what happened here.  They still have equity, in theory, and they haven’t HELOC’d too badly.  Yet it is a short sale.  Maybe this time there really was a ‘family problem’.

“Do any readers currently negotiating with the Irvine Company want to share what incentives they are currently offering?”

I noticed yesterday that the new-home development Santa Barbara at Woodbury has bulldozed their sales office and is putting their final homes on the site.  125 homes were sold in under 4 months, one of the fastest paces in TIC history.  No broker co-op and just minor incentives for going with their in-house lender.

Question of the day…

I’d say it’s ok to have your house work part time if you’re doing a reverse mortgage and are retired, any other time is probably not worth it.

30 year Freddie fixed rates are up 22bps in the last week.

10 year treasury is 2.95%, even though the Fed is buying through POMO every day.

People who think the Fed is in control or leads the economy are in for a heck of a surprise.

The fed is asleep!  Bernanke is being an academic.

“Klinge credited those cautious, well-informed consumers as partially to blame for the October sales slowdown….”

Blame the buyer who’s well-informed for the housing mess.  Better bring back the ignorant buyer who’s kept in the dark and fed alot of ....

The Fed are don’t control long-term interest.  By keeping the overnight rate low and pumping in money, they are acting like crack and meth dealers.  Supplying a quick high to get the economy going.  The Japanese used meth to have slave workers work for 3 days with rest.  Crack gives the feeling of invincivality.  But a high price is paid for long-term use. 

Paying rent but could of been squatting.

BTW:  TIC doesn’t have to give incentive because the new houses are properly priced.  New with more ammenaties and below the price of a used house.  TIC required a friend to put down 20%.  Very smart: The HOA can forclouse on squatters with equity.

Correction:  the slaves on meth worked 3 days without rest/sleep.

Congress is blaming other countries for the US mess that they, the Fed, business leaders have created.  If Congress wants to fix the economy they should have some real self examination.  The US has build the ecomony on paying down debt using inflated dollars, Ponzi schemes in all industries while selling off competative advantages on the cheap.

The latest house news has housing start in a new free fall.  Joblessness is increasing, while Congress is bailing out the banks to form new mergers and ship jobs overseas.  I can understand shipping jobs to India and Asian for lower cost, but to Western Europe for high cost is over the top.

“TIC doesn’t have to give incentive because the new houses are properly priced.”

Renters from Arizona might choke when they learn that “properly priced” in Irvine means low $600’s for an 1800sf attached product.

http://www.villagesofirvine.com/Villages-and-Residences/Woodbury-Overview.aspx?type=neighborhood&Id=54

What happened to Irvine inventory this past week? It seems like many properties were pulled off of the market. Does anyone know?

I thought it was supposed to be an apocalyptic 1000 by now, an earth shattering-super nova 5 months inventory.

IrvineRenter: “Question of the day. If the sustained rate of appreciation is $40,000 a year for your property, and if you have equity at the bottom of the market cycle, is it okay to add $20,000 per year to your mortgage to supplement your spending?”

There are 2 reasons to extract money:
- I see better investment opportunity.
- I have no choice because of emergency.

Sustained rate of appreciation is not one of these reasons. My answer is NO.

I think that the inventory is a bit more “shadowy” than that

I don’t know what kind of interest rate drops the buyer got by doing the first 4 refi’s but it doesn’t look like they kept any of those loans long enough to even recover the transaction costs of the refi’s.

They had some illusionary savings because they probably kept resetting the loan term to 30 years, so it kept stretching out the term.  But they probably p*ssed away $10,000-15,000 in refi costs in those 4 years.