"my windows better be so clean, people would feel like they would fall out, because they can’t tell if they exist."   I imagine some of these "investors" will be trying to leap out of them soon so better put up some safety stickers just in case.  That is tooo funny LOL!!!

OK ,maybe I have been reading too many conspiracy theory blogs but I had been tracking several condos in the Airport area and suddenly there are NO listings on redfin for ANY condos at Marquee or any of the other towers down there. Am I missing something or did they all burn down last week?

I don’t think the fees include Mello-Roos. That was part of an earlier discussion I remember. Theoretically, if mello-roos fees are supposed to cover infrastructure in the development (roads, stoplights, etc.) then for a highrise, they should be particularly low since you have so many people sharing such little infrastructure. But apparently, its not set any lower. Maybe they’ll be paid off faster??  I went on a tour for the Plaza building and CPW and remember that the HOA fees for both were about $1,000 a month, plus taxes and mello-roos, but (at least at CPW) it was the Santa Ana School District.

Graph, I’m still laughing at your post…
For $1200 pm I’d expect:
1. The concierge to come up and make me a Cup of Tea when I need one.
2. Come up and help me find the Telly Remote when I lost it.
3. The Valet to give me a Piggy Back from the Elevator to the Car every morning, and back at night.
4. Pump the Tires on my Bicycle to the correct pressure, oil the chain and fill the water Bottles before each ride (and give me a Piggy Back to the Bike and back)
5. All of the Staff would be expected to call me "Master" or "Your Highness"....or something, especially in front of Friends (mine, not theirs).
Hey, maybe I could talk my Wife into getting a second Job so we could afford it…it all sounds pretty appealing to me!!

Petah,

Now, that is funny. But, I still do not think you are expecting enough…

1. The concierge to come up and make me a Cup of Tea when I need one.

I want freshly shipped coffee beans from Kenya or Ethiopia, roasted to perfection there, ground to exact the right way for the air pressure, to make a divine cup every morning.

2. Come up and help me find the Telly Remote when I lost it.
Not only do they find the remote, but they will sit there and listen for my commands of what I want changed on the remote.
3. The Valet to give me a Piggy Back from the Elevator to the Car every morning, and back at night.
The valet must be hawt, and have the ability to stop the elevator, without the alarm going off.

4. Pump the Tires on my Bicycle to the correct pressure, oil the chain and fill the water Bottles before each ride (and give me a Piggy Back to the Bike and back)
Since I am not into riding as much as I should… I would expect routine car maintenance, oil changes, filters, fluids, brakes, etc.

5. All of the Staff would be expected to call me "Master" or "Your Highness"....or something, especially in front of Friends (mine, not theirs).
That, and they would roll out the red carpet (literally) when needed. Every Friday, they would have the perfect Martini, every time. When I have a girl coming back to the graph pad, then the rose petals better be out, my place better be spotless, candles lit, and all the pr0n better be in storage, er maybe not.
BTW, I saw plenty on ZipRealty, so… no one burned them down, er yet. But, I do know there will be some foreclosures here. It is difficult to make your penthouse payments, when you are in jail, and can’t make all that much money.

I have been waiting with baited breath for those foreclosures. It stuns me we havn’t seen any yet. That bohemoth is one of the shining memorials to the greed, avarice and arrogance that was the housing bubble.

You know, $1200/month is basically $40/day.  Sure I would not pay that, but for folks with money, that’s not too much.  I know people who spend that much each and every day on food.  Others spend that much weekly for a massage.  For doctors or lawyers who make $500/day, that’s less than 10% of their daily income.  And for really good lawyers who make $500 in 2 hours, that’s chump change.  And for plastic surgeons who can make $5000 in  3 hours, that’s even a negligible amount.  I know a surgeon who easily spends 10K a night at a casino.  So I guess it’s all relative.

I would think that behemoth office building right in front of the Marquee Place North Korea Towers would subtract even more value for the condos facing that big blue box.  How the prices are not imploding with the high HOAs is beyond me.

When was the last resale?
Is it possible that the gap between buyers and sellers has imploded so bad that no resale transactions have completed?  Have any closed since August?  How many sold all of last year and when?

That big box is a see-through. No tenents so you can see right through to your previous views of the lovely 405 freeeway. What a joke

Irvine Renter

Do what you can to write up a piece on the “High Rise Irvine” disaster. You sure know we wont read it in the Register.
Lansner should get off his dead a** and look at doing something like a multipart story on this very subject. But nobody over at the Register has half a brain. We will see it in the OC Weekly first.

Now with the new Lennar Astoria going up across Jamboree and the HUGE hole in the ground next to it. There is a story in itself. I guess thats the parking for Central Park West. This urban blight on the city of Irvine will take years if not a decade to fix itself. In the meantime the city and the business around this urban mistake just sit and wait for the market to turn or Lennar and its Co-investors to go belly up.

blt, short term memory problems?  Odd definition of urban blight, that site used to be a huge industrial building run by parker hanafin.  Sure, it’ll take time to build, not uncommon with any construction project (this ain’t sim city ya know), but I don’t see why you would consider high end condos with public open space areas a blight, especially when the original use was a manufacturing plant.  Urban mistake?  What was the alternative on this site, dog park?  Great Park Jr?  sports park number 29?

Hmmm, interesting “guess” about the hole in the ground and it’s use as “horseless carriage parking”, but I personally think it’s for either an a) underground skyscraper or b) a sweet skate park.

Ha, much bitterness in this forum i do sense.

Anybody have any info on that macarthur place high rise - I think prices were top of the market there and hoa’s were just as high, if not higher.

Long term and short term memory is excellent. So is my spelling of the company that used to be on that site. I used to call on Parker Hannifin years ago as a sales rep. Yes a mistake. That property is going to sit empty for years. Unoccupied. Not bitterness but the fact that the city expects a development and Lennar to finish a project. Lennar just gets to walk away and leave the developer and the city in the lurch. All the while we look at an empty HOLE. So we should let Irvine start looking like Chandler Arizona ??? Thats the issue IMHO. That Parker Hannifin building was better looking than that POS that Lennar has erected. Just what we need Cental Park West. More tiny rat holes for $600K Plus and unoccupied high rises.

This isn’t arizona, this is litigous california and there are completion bonds in place with the city and a completion guarantee with the lender.  Lennar can sell for cents on the dollar, but walk away? Your scenario is not well thought out.  For one, Lennar knows it leaves itself open to a signifigant amount legal exposure by leaving a half completed project, two it will never do business in Irvine again (including great park), three as this is a jv, it’s financial partners would never let the company walk away from the several hundred million dollars already spent on land, fees, and construction.  And if you think the jv protects lennar from the exposure of the spent money, that’s not the case as no bank would loan this much money unless they had some recourse to collect if the deal fell through and that the company had the financial capability to repay.  And if Lennar does somehow walk away, great, an opportunistic developer will come in, grab the property on the cheap, and quickly finish off as apartments, i’d even say that’s the best case scenario (which would never happen).

If the project is completed but unoccupied, why do you care?  There will be sales staff and security on site, it’s not like this is detroit or an exurb where there’s nothing around or the land values at zero.  This was no mistake on the part of the city, as this is clearly a higher and better use, parcer ghanuhfen needed to move as the building was outdated. The mistake here was the timing of the developer.

Haha, you’re bothered by that empty hole are you?  Hmmm, since that’s fenced off and you only really see it in two places one being for three seconds as you exit on to jamboree and the other being a condo in marquee place, i’m guessing you’re blaming that hole as the reason you can’t’ sell your investment property in the hi-rise. I sense conflict of interest.

About the Santa Ana highrise off MacArthur, last time we were there was summer 2007,the buildings were going up, about 4 floors were done, have no idea how much progress if any has been done since then, but I do remember whistling at the prices, how high they seemed, for an "urban highrise condo" where you couldn’t walk to anywhere remotely interesting.

morekaos,

Trust me, the foreclosures are coming to this lovely project. I know of someone who owns a few of these "luxury" condos, and $1200 a week went up his nose. Needless to say, things are not going so well, and it looks like the bank will now be a proud owner of a penthouse in Irvine. And, judging that anywhere between 10%-20% of these units are behind on their property taxes, then I would imagine things are not going well for many of the those "owners" too.

I am a patient man

People still do cocaine?

I can just imagine Tony Montana (John Mcgonogal, Gary Watts, Mozillo, insert your favorite villian) hold up in the penthouse with a gawdy globe fountain that says "The World Is Yours" in lights rotating around. Head burried in a mountain of white powder mumbling to himself "Say goodnight to da last of da bad guys!!!"

1st REO there.

I think this is the first NOD at The Plaza (high rises down the street), 8144 Scholarship

I work in the Irvine Towers complex, the former home of New Century.  I get to watch all day as they build the housing development that couldn’t (Central Park West).  What an astonishing monument to the housing bubble.  As if an “urban lifestyle” is do-able in the archetype of suburbia Irvine.  Try walking down to Michelson to the airport if you think it is so urban-pedestrian-friendly.  Ain’t no sidewalks as you get past that new office tower (now only partially occupied by Wachovia).  Gotta trudge through the mud and sod or walk in the streets.  Plus John Wayne Airport ain’t friendly to pedestrians either, you must then cut through the parking garage, no clear right-of-way.  The corner of Jamboree and Michelson is no mini-Manhattan.  Not by a long shot.  And now the foreclosures come. 

So the story is plain:  a developer built Marquee at a lucky time, when fool flippers grew on trees.  They infested and swarmed the towers whereupon it was sold out.  Johnny-come-lately Lennar says he can do it too but unfortunately the timing was off such that “central park west” is to be mothballed:  Fools.  There can be no bottom, there is no going back to such insanity.  So now Lennar’s fingers are stuck in the cookie jar:  only their future BK trustee can extricate them.

"If one waits long enough by the river he will see the bodies of his enemies float by"
Sun Tzu

Foreclosure in the sky.

Walter Hahn, a real estate economist in Irvine who has followed the project since its development, said he is not surprised about the foreclosure because builder Bosa Development did not prevent or cap sales to investors. Hahn said he believes many of the original buyers were speculators,who hoped to resell quickly.
"I expect more of them to go into foreclosure," Hahn said.
And that will put downward pressure on prices, since the owner of the loans on the foreclosed properties will try to get rid of them quickly, he said.
OMG! I never thought I would say this, but ever since Walter pulled his head out of the sand, he sounds a lot like a bear.
Veronica Hicks, head of brokerage Condos etc. in Newport Beach, said she is marketing a unit on the 16th story of one of the towers for $950,000 to $1.1 million, which is less than the debt owed to the bank. Such deals are dubbed "short sales."
Hahn said the market is showing very limited demand for high-rise living. Orange County residents prefer traditional housing, he said.
Developers who try to prevent investors from buying have a tough time policing their policies, said Dennis Serraglio, director of sales and marketing with Bosa. For example, some developers require that buyers live in the units for at least one year. But he said the contracts allow for job loss or other hardship, which can be difficult to verify.
He said Bosa has had a few foreclosures in some of its other properties – the company builds in San Diego and Vancouver, British Columbia, where it is based – but the numbers are small.
"I don’t think we will see any big numbers in terms of volumes on short sales and bankruptcies," Serraglio said.
Eventually interest rate cuts by the Federal Reserve coupled with a highly anticipated government boost in the conforming loan limit should spark housing sales, he said.
"It’s definitely a buying opportunity right now. It’s very rare that you have prices come down and interest rates as low as they are," Serraglio said.
He said the big question is when consumers will feel confident enough to start buying, whether in three months or nine months.

With a $1,200 a month HOA fee, I can’t imagine why anyone would want to buy one of those places.