Irvine Housing Blog

That very first property description encompasses almost everything that a realtor can do wrong.  It’s basically one long run-on sentence with no structure.  Is everything in that sentence part of the $300,000 upgrade? 

Why did the realtor lead off with “7 (foot) crown molding”?  Wouldn’t the kitchen, or the master, or the jujube be a more important selling point to start with.  It’s like the realtor just has a list of notes and starts tossing random data into the description. 

What is a “chandelier lighting system throughout”?  I see mostly recessed cans throughout.  Does the realtor mean dimmers?  Dimmers installed throughout?  Or maybe it’s a typo…maybe Chandler from Friends will come by and turn on your lights for you.

For the first one, someone with a $400k DP, and income of $500k/year won’t flinch about getting speakers installed themselves, or getting their own ‘custom’ paint.  Custom to you is not custom to me.

WTF - for the tax values, the lot in Irvine is 300k more than the lot in LB?  I understand the purchase date p13 effect, but still.

The descriptions of the two $2M’s are also noticeably different in sentence structure.  The LB makes you want to see the home, while the Irvine one is just a list of stuff, which is probably an apt comparison of the two.

Is there any reason for the third property to sell for more than ca. 539,000?

1st house: Who has a chandelier in their bedroom? I mean really, who?
2nd house: Gorgeous, no complaints. okay the cielings look a bit low, and the pure white makes it hard to judge the room sizes from the pictures such that yu need to see it in person, but that’s not a bad thing
3rd house: $500/sq foot for a condo? Really? A condo that you didn’t even take an outside picture of?

I’m really enjoying your new tone, IR. Less combative, more analytic. However, I would like more explanation for how exactly the prices on the “$800k” condos effect the price of the “$1.9million” houses. Which one drops which? I would say, (1) you need a few more rungs there. (2) It’s more that as nicer homes become available to the same buyers demand for the lesser home slackens pushing those prices down. People on the market for a 1.9mil home aren’t going to even look at the $800k condos, especially not once they’ve fallen another $200k or so.

Or are you refering to the move-up equity part of the equation? One can go from a $300k home to a $600k home after only having paid down a good chunk the loan, and getting to keep $150k from a mix of inflation and principal payments, such that you go from say a $200k mortgage to a $450k mortgage, if you have also in that time gotten sufficient raises and job advancement. But going from $800k to $1.9mil isn’t exactly the same math. Percentage-wise sure it is. But I percieve there to be more of a step-jump there, in that a lot of professions max-out at an income of around $250k/year or less.

Looks like a similar home two streets over was able to fetch $2.445, but most of these seem to have found a floor at $1.7-$1.8.  Substitution works both ways.  For every buyer swapping out Laguna Beach, you’ll bring in one from Northpark or Quail Hill.

Laguna Beach house, no doubt at all. Hopefully it won’t slide down that cliff when the rains come. The staging on the couch (Irvine house) looks like the daughter’s cotillion or the other thing when they are presented to society. Dang, what is that called?

It amazes me that people put a high premium on Irvine.

For your money Irvine is one of the worst communities to live in. Irvine epitomizes cookie cutter community. There is no style in Irvine. There is no uniqueness.

Being born and raised in West LA, I’m applauded that anyone would consider Irvine desirable. The only thing it has going for it is a quality University and Jobs. Authenticity is lacking.

Laguna Beach on the other hand is far superior in uniqueness, authenticity and lifestyle. Laguna Beach has the restaurants the views, the beach, and the people.

Hey, don’t knock jujubes just because the house is wtf priced!  I think most asian households have them when they’re in season.  That’s actually a pretty solid set of fruit trees for attracting a taiwanese buyer.

IR wrote: If this property sells for its current asking price and a 6% commission is paid (it will probably only be 5%)...
I’ve often wondered how often a realtor’s fee reduction occurs in times like these when a home sells for, say, $1M or more. $60,000 is a whopping amount of money and, in my experience, realtors have reduced their commission to bring a deal together. I know, it’s split between the listing and selling agent, etc., but, nevertheless, it’s huge. Anyone know?

I’d love to have a Jujubee tree!

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Three bank owned homes in Turtle Ridge (“The Ledges”) sold for $1.1 million this year. Homes listed for sale by home owners are listed at nearly twice that amount. The lowest priced listings are around $1.7 million.

I can’t help but think the reason behind this is that the debt on the homes is higher than the market price.

There is a stalemate.

Are large numbers of OC residents going to make it big this year and flock to Turtle Ridge to buy these homes?

What needs to occur before there is a dollar amount at which the buyer and seller can meet?

“…although cash buyers can float things for a time, the lack of financing creates a vacuum that sucks the air out of the housing bubble.”

I would change that to “the lack of Ponzi financing creates a vacuum that sucks the air out of the housing bubble.” For those who have high credit score, 20% down payment, proof of income with reasonable DTI, they won’t have problem getting financing.

All fundamental elements helping support a stable housing market in OC are still largely missing: unemployment rate is still going up, wage income remains down or stagnant, mortgage rates have no where to go but up ….

Was the buyer who snatched up that 1,665 SF condo for $817K in April 2008 (I really got some laugh out of this) a large cash buyer? Just how many more of those who itch to toss their money down a toilet like this?

No one mentioned that one home has $400+ HOA dues and the other one doesn’t.  Isn’t that a comparable item?  For $2mil I would like to also be able to paint my house any color I want etc..

Check out this article from Barrons.com. Looks like USD has replaced Japanese Yen to become the currency of the choice for global carry-trade thanks to Fed’s QE policy that fueled another round of speculation and asset bubble.  Instead of trickling down to benefit the real economy, the cheap money Fed pumped into the system has more likely trickle up and become the catalyst for more asset inflation. 
http://online.barrons.com/article/SB125115029648154985.html#mod=BOL_hps_dc
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“ .... The process by which cheap money—and the Federal Reserve’s 0-0.25% target for its key interest rate, overnight federal funds, certainly qualifies—is through financial alchemy called a “carry trade.” The term derives from the commodities world, referring to the cost of keeping, or carrying, a stock of a good such as copper or wheat.
For financial assets, that cost of carry is the interest rate at which investors can borrow to fund their holdings. At ultra-low borrowing costs, they can invest in higher-yielding assets and reap the difference. Therein lies the attraction of the carry trade.
The risk, of course, is that the cost of borrowing rises—either because of higher interest rates or an increase in the value of the currency the carry trader used to fund the trade. For instance, borrowing yen at near-zero interest rates had been a favorite financing for the carry trade since everything in the world yielded more.
That’s no longer the case. Every major central bank around the globe has pinned its policy rate to 1% or less. Now, borrowing in dollars appears to have become the favored way to finance the carry trade, both because the rate will remain low and the greenback’s value is more likely to fall than rise.
......
Borrowing dollars to buy something else means that a carry trader has a short position in the currency. During the darkest days of the financial crisis, the dollar shot higher, not only from investors’ seeking a safe haven, but because carry traders had to buy back greenbacks to repay their borrowings; that is, they were forced to cover their dollar shorts.
Since March, the carry traders appear to be putting those positions back on with increasingly confidence, even impunity. That’s been borne of the bungee jump in risk assets, from stocks to emerging markets to junk bonds, as well as the declining cost of borrowing. They could be certain the Fed would not be raising rates any time soon, as confirmed at Jackson Hole. Moreover, it seemed clear the downward course of the dollar had resumed after having been interrupted by the forced short-covering during the credit crisis.
… Howard L. Simons of Bianco Research ……  concludes: “These low rates represent the fuel for a renewed asset bubble, the manifestation of inflationary pressure from monetary creation transmitted via the carry trade.”
......
But the asset-backed securities market (aka, the Shadow Banking System) remains moribund. And in the formal banking system, credit continues to tighten—albeit more slowly, but still not easing (“Still Exiled on Main Street,” Aug. 17.)
In simplistic terms, this means that the Fed’s efforts have gone primarily to stimulate the financial markets rather than the real economy, and to drive down the dollar and push up commodities such as crude oil.
…….”

I live in this community and the location on this house is awful. Good luck parking in front of your house when the clubhouse is being rented out. This condo is not worth $800K? What a joke, we had a similar plan (Chantory) sell for $638,000…58 Clouds View.