Irvine Housing Blog

Maybe we should help out the realtor and send some suggestions for a description.  I am thinking something like this:

“STEEL OF A DEEL! GORGEEYOUS HOME in the HIGHLY SOUGHT AFTER Irvine community!!! Incudes granite kitcen (with SINK) with SLAB counters, STAINLESS STEEL refrigerator, PERGO floors, COZY fireplace with same desert camouflage pattern as used by United States ARMY!! Wall above fireplace is PRE-WIRED cable ready for your FLAT-PANEL TV! Retreat upstairs via beeyoutaful raven black iron stairway with mahogeny rails to relax in your futon! Extended back yard (great for lighting up after a hard day of more price declines and broken dreams!) with non-built in BBQ (great for entertaning!) with private WALKWAY to front of property!!!! BIG GARAGE for your H2 to protect your chrome rims from theft! Seller to clean carpets and paint walls prior to move in.  Highly motivated seller!  WONT LAST LONG! HURRY! Make an offer and come home to START LIVING THE OC LIFESTYLE TODAY!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!”

Rental Parity.  I like the sound of that!

On the plus side of things, there is no mello roos and it is even questionable if there is an HOA.  If there is, I’d like to know how much.

Personally, this type of property attracts me.  If it pencils out to be lower than actually renting, then I’d be a buyer, if I were qualified.

This property reminds me of the one we raised our kids in.  Mine’s nicer, imho

My focus is on getting the best deal for the money.  I don’t don’t “need” new when raising a family.  I don’t like high associated fees.

Call me crazy, but I just bet this one sells pretty darned fast if the sellers are flexible in bringing it down to “deal” status.  They didn’t need a MLS description- the square feet, the price/sq. ft, location would be enough to get some attention from value investors.

$550k is still way too high to pay.  The closer it gets to $400k, the better.

(The proximity to the train IS an issue.  However, the silencing of the train by the current roadwork on Jeffrey will help this one out).

There is a house in west irvine that is under 250 per sq ft and been on the market for approx 6 months but still hasn’t sold…

I don’t think being close to 300 is going to be enough for people to flock to this.

How about what looks like the same unit for sale one block over at 709K?

OK will someone please explain the appeal of a house where pretty much the only thing people see when they pass is the big honkin’ garage? Seriously. I know I am spoiled in the drive by appeal after growing up in New Orleans, but this is just plain ICK!!!!! I cannot fathom why someone would pay $700,000 for a house - no matter the location - if a good bit of the front is taken up with the monstrosity of a garage.

I remember seeing Tiny Tim on the Tonight Show!  Has there ever been a “WTF” moment on such an epic scale?

When I see a house that close to a freeway it makes me sad to think about the children that live there. Children living close to freeways may have slower lung development between ages 10 and 18 than those living farther away. I would not put my child at risk no matter how cheap the price of the home is, and 550 is nowhere close to being cheap. Sure the sound wall may help with the noise but think about the pollution going over it.

By the way, I know of a few of people who are buying foreclosed homes right now. They seem to think prices in OC will be rising again soon. Boy do they have something coming next year. I have tried to tell them what I have read in the news and the blogs but they seem to think a cabinetmaker doesn’t know anything about the economy. I am in the cabinet business, we sure have slowed down this year, lots of shops are out of work and its only getting worse. Hopefully this will weed out the “blow and go” type of guys out there and the ones that do quality work will be here when we get back to a normal economy. We did have a great time during the boom, plenty of work out there, money was no object to a lot of homedebtors, now things have changed.

IrvineRenter, your site rocks! Thank you for keeping us up to date on the state of the housing market in Irvine and OC. Without out you and people like Ben Jones, the Dr. and Patrick we may have all made the mistake of buying into the hype and using our homes as ATM machines.

“Tiptoe Through the Tulips” was written in the ‘20s and at the time the nasal tone and exaggerated vibrato were hip. If you listen to old recordings you hear a lot of it. It was a very popular song at the time. When Tiny Tim did it it probably sounded old and anachronistic - grandmother’s records, as it were (and of course outrageously inappropriate for a burly 6-foot+ man). Now it just sounds bizarre. I expect your great-grandkids will have the same reaction to the current scream-singing style.

It is about 70 yards to I5, not even long enough to make a short par 3. Is the base ball field behind equipped for night games? I5 noise, pollution and flooding lights from the ball filed—once the price gain potential is removed, all I see now are the drawbacks….

Wouldn’t this be a first time buyer type home or at the very least a move up from 1-2 bd apartment?  Forgive me if I am wrong.  From a marketing standpoint, who would this home be marketed too?  Retirees?  Young couples?  Do those two focus groups have $140K down and make $174K?  What’s the likelihood of that?

If you guys look at the different redfin views, this property does in fact seem to be newly built in 2005, some pictures still show a bare field.  Are there any other “pockets” of new neighborhoods in old communities such as El Camino Real?  It’s nice, but too close to the freeway…

This is a very interesting area. These homes were built in 2005 and they are right near Irvine High School. You don’t see too many new homes in that area - most of the surrounding homes were built in the 70’s or so. I walk my dogs in the area behind the baseball field (there are no lights on the field so no night games) and next to the 5 freeway. The freeway noise is so loud there that the dogs con barely hear me whistling for them (or maybe they are just pretending not to hear me..). In order to live in one of these homes you’d better have triple thick windows and some great air filters to keep the pollution out. I wonder how quickly the windows get filthy? Well at least I would guess they don’t have to pay any mello roos since all the infrastructure was already built in that part of Irvine.

Dano

Some new homes will be built soon on the site where Alderwood Basics Plus Elementary school now sits in Woodbridge. It will be small development since the school site is not that large. This will be like that home that was profiled a few weeks ago on Nighthawk - that was a development that was built on an old school site. It seems the Woodbridge population is aging and there are not enough school age kids living in the community to support all the existing elementary schools.

Dano

Um, guess it’s all about hallucinogens… at least we had a good excuse for listening to Tiny Tim.  I’m not sure what explains the peak home prices.

I was tiptoeing through the Library of Congress this past weekend and came across the Bob Hope Collection. In an exhibit vitrine is the sheet music from “Gold Diggers of Broadway” and an accompanying note that says no known movie edition or anything else apparently exists. The only thing now known about the production is that it featured “Tiptoe through the Tulips” which - of course - did survive the decades.
It’s a mystery to me as to why this would featured in the Bob Hope Collection.

IrvineRenter,

I will forever curse your name for getting this song stuck in my brain. “Tiptoe…through the tulips…through the tulips…through the tulips…Tiptoe…”

Who needs a driveway, or daylight for that matter.

Or to ever open your windows.

This is the third (fourth?) blog post of these condos right next to the 5 fwy.

what PigBenis said is right.  No knowledgable parent would buy this for their kids health.

what that means is investor owned rental.  $2300, -$200 HOA = $2100 x 120 = $250k

so I guess I agree with DavidPHX rather than jhill

that video makes me want to blow my brains out.  oh yeah, and the property is still way overpriced.

Irvine Condo Blog.