Irvine Housing Blog

Nice place but $13 mil for Irvine? Hahahahahaha

wow. I’m buying this home. don’t you dare fight me on this.

Would this have been sold in a week at the asking back in the peak of the bubble?

Speaking of Castles, check out this one in Napa - Dario Sattui’s place:

http://www.castellodiamorosa.com/

Great wines there, too!

The costs of running a place like this must be way beyond what the average worker can imagine.  You’d need a staff and possibly a house manager to keep the thing in good repair, clean and manicured.  The costs of utilities would also be astronomical if you were going to keep the temperature optimum, the home lit, the landscaping fed and lighted, the pool maintained.

Hoa, Mello Roos, pool boy, property taxes plus all the daily operation costs makes this place affordable to just a sliver of buyers available.

I wonder what the cost would be to keep all those windows clean and the outside of this huge building power-washed?  This is not something that a typical family could do on the weekends.

IR, have you ever considered figuring out operation costs per sq/ft per month?  Most anyone I know that has a 3,500+ sq/ft place needs house keeping and yard maintenance services on some kind of regular basis.  I would bet this place would require real staff on a payroll each month to keep it up.

What is the cost per sq ft to build a luxury house like this?  It looks like the land cost about $2.9 million, so they are looking for $10 million (or about $910 per sq ft.) for the house.  Even with the high cost of their high end materials and their interet/holding costs it sounds to me like they are still trying to make a pretty good profit on this…..

Well at least they didn’t have to resort to quoting us the price per square inch (it’s $8.22).

Thanks, IR. Today’s video caused my eyeballs to burst into flames and now I’ll never be able to read your blog again. :(

I much prefer the house that IR pointed out awhile back as one that his wife loved (I think).  That one made better use of natural light and open space; this one relies far too much on (way overdone) lamps/ artificial light, at least as shown in the listing photographs.

If I had not lost all my money with Madoff, I would buy this…

I wouldn’t spend a dime on maintaining this place or maid service. I’d leave it exactly as it is right at this moment, let it decay in the most exquisite way. I’d be a 21st-Century Miss Haversham, sitting in that barrel-vaulted great room, wearing my crumbling wedding dress and surrounded by aging technology from Apple and B&O.

Oh wait. I’m already doing that in my IAC.

Mr. TurtleRidgeRenter and I wish you and Mrs. IrvineRenter a fun holiday season and a terrific New Year!

If I were going to drop 12 large on a shack…it would be on a really good beach, or at the edge of a really good ski resort.  Irvine?  What a joke.

If this place sells anywhere close to the asking price…the property taxes alone would be over 10K per month.  Add in Mello Roos, HOA, insurance, upkeep, utilities and the aforementioned staff needed to run the place and you would probably be writing checks for over 25K per month.  This assumes you pay cash and have no mortgage.

Even the filthy rich have their limits…I doubt this one will be sold anytime soon.  Yup, for 12M I better have a spectacular ocean view and my own private beach.  Not in Irvine, not in this lifetime.

Apparently the astute observer’s don’t understand, this is Irvine; the premium is justified.

Beautiful place.Should’ve built it in Newport Coast.
Would’ve made for a more pleasurable LO-BALL offer from there.

A twelve million dollar estate with parking for only four cars?  What am I supposed to do with the rest of my vehicles?

And get the gardener back here on the double, Jeeves….  He left clearly visible seams in the sod in the front yard!

Where DOES one find good help these days?

Funny, In mid-MO it would go brand new for about $1.2M custom made.  That person has a huge cost overrun of $400K.  He built the house on 10 A of land and two main floors.  The elevated stone patio was about 1000 s.f.  His kitchen was much bigger, double everything, stoves, 2 x twin ovens, dishwasher, etc.
$12M?  Who paying for the house?  Some public company?

I too would prefer a smaller place with a view that heads west towards Hawaii, but if I was in the market for a palace/castle, this might be on the list. 

To the commenter above concerned about the property taxes, I don’t think that’s a concern to whomever buys this.  I think biggest concern the buyer will hace is the apparent lack of servent quarters or a servent’s shack.  I mean, where are the butler, maid and cook going to sleep?