I (along with most of you, I would presume), have engaged in a lot of "water-cooler" discussions regarding Orange County real estate, and something that I’ve never heard before came up…

"I don’t want to ever buy in Irvine because you don’t own the land…you lease it from the Irvine Company"

This is new for me…is there any truth to this?  I’ve tried to search for this topic, but I’ve come up empty so far.  As far as I’m concerned, it seems to me like an urban legend…

OCR

Don’t know for sure, but I remember hearing that somewhere too and it turned out to be false. It may come from the fact that some areas near the university are subject to resale control to keep them in the UCI community.

Urban legend. It may feel like renting because TIC has numerous controls of what you can and can’t do in the CC&Rs. You would know if you were in a lease contract. Huntington Beach has a few places and you actually pay a lease fee to the owner of the land plus the mortgage on your property. The owner can raise the lease just like rent. Getting a loan on a land lease is not exactly easy either.

Some of the homes in university park are on land lease.  They are up front about it on the MLS.

i’ve heard this urban legend before and always thought that it came from the fact that you’re technically buying land, in a sense you still have to make payments to some dark overlord stay on that land even beyond your mortgage.  around here, that overlord is the Irvine Company but in other places the urban legend applies to the government or hoa (a lot of people seem to think hoa means TIC, but then again, aren’t most of the architectural and community guidelines really an extension of TIC’s master plan?).

it makes sense in a way… even if you had no mortgage, on the property you own, you still have to pay up or they take it away from you.

I believe that TIC leases land for homes in Laguna, as well.  I am also aware that someone leases land to homes on Balboa.  I recall seeing ads awhile back for the homes.  The homes were inexpensive for the area, but I don’t know how much the land lease was.  There are also several condo complexes in HB near the beach that are on leased land.

in many of the beach communities, it is definitely a land lease.  esp for enclaves like balboa island where people lease the land and then build small cottages or bring in manuf homes onto the site.

Guys, do everything you can get the word out that nobody in Irvine owns their land, OK?  Tustin homesellers implore you to act!  Save the Tustin FB’s!