Monday is our big day. The IHB Community has been invited to an open conference call with Daniel Young, President of Community Development for the Irvine Company. The time is 7:00 PM. The call-in number is 877 269-7289. Callers will be asked to enter a
PIN, which is 13113. That allows them to listen to the conversation.
If they want to ask a question — and Dan will remind people of this
periodically — they need to hit *3. They can also e-mail questions to
Dan at info@cardinalhq.com.

We have two threads going in our forums What do you want to ask the Irvine Company?, and An Open Invitation to The Irvine Company. You can also use this open thread to pose questions.

This will be meeting between the makers of our community and the residents who live within it. An opportunity for both parties to learn from each other; you can make your voice heard, and and you can hear from the inner sanctum of The Irvine Company.

Let’s keep this encounter respectful. This kind of direct contact is rare, and if we make this a positive experience for everyone, it will happen more often. This is one of the unique opportunities opened by social networks.

Daniel Young, President of Community Development for the Irvine Company

Dan Young is president of Irvine Community Development Company LLC
(ICDC), an affiliate of the Irvine Company responsible for all
residential development on The Irvine Ranch®.

As president of ICDC, Mr. Young guides all facets of the Irvine
Company’s community master-planning and development process, which
began more than 45 years ago. From the villages of Woodbury, Northpark
and Woodbridge in Irvine, to the coastal communities of Crystal Cove
and Newport Coast, the residential communities on The Irvine Ranch have
won many national awards and are admired for their unique character and
livability.

Mr. Young came to the Irvine Company in November 1999, after a
20-year career as a real-estate developer and a consultant to the
industry. In his previous role with the Irvine Company, he served as
executive vice president of Entitlement and Public Affairs, overseeing
the company’s entitlement on The Irvine Ranch.

His community involvement includes 11 years on the Santa Ana City
Council, including eight years as mayor. In his official capacity as
mayor, Mr. Young also served on the board of directors of several
regional agencies, including the Metropolitan Water District and the
Orange County Transportation Authority.

Mr. Young received his bachelor’s degree from California State
University, Fullerton, and his master’s degree in public administration
from the University of Southern California.

The Irvine Company is a 140-year-old privately held company known
throughout the world as a best-of-class master planner and long-term
owner, investor and operator of a large and diversified real estate
portfolio. The company also is known as a steward of some of the most
beautiful, permanently preserved land in California. In addition to its
master-planned communities on The Irvine Ranch® in Orange County,
Calif., the company also is known for its portfolio of high-quality
investment properties—office, retail and apartment—it owns in San
Diego, Orange County, West Los Angeles and the Silicon Valley. The
company traces its roots to the 1860s with the assembly of The Irvine
Ranch from Mexican and Spanish land grants. The Irvine Company was
incorporated in 1894.

I have emptied my Reservoir of Schadenfreude. How about you? Are you over it?

Asking Price: $1,069,000

Address: 6002 Sierra Siena Rd Irvine, CA 92603

{book4}

Suckers walk, money talks!
But it can’t touch my three lock box!
Uh! Oh, yeah!
Mysteries of the days of old.
You find the key, you got the gold.

Three Lock Box — Sammy Hagar

I had lunch with a friend yesterday who is not a fan of 3-car garages — can’t touch my three lock box! Perhaps we should ask our guest on Monday if the Irvine Company will be creating more product with 3-car garages (we don’t want them). I don’t believe there are any in the communities of the 00s. Today’s featured property may become rare and valuable….

{book}

The Great Housing Bubble made me angry (see The Reservoir of Schadenfreude). It drove me to write for this blog for 2 1/2 years and put together a
book. Anger can be very motivating, but over the long term, it eats
away at me, so I am letting it go.

In our collective unconscious which
manifests in our dreams and our mythology, water is often symbolic of
our emotions or our emotional state. Have you noticed people are often
categorized as deep or shallow? If you are in debt you often feel
“underwater,” etc.

Anger is much like water: if not given an outlet, it will fill a
reservoir until it reaches a breaking point and is expressed in a flood
of emotional rage. Each encounter with a pathologic, kool-aid
drinking housing bull over the last few years has added to this
reservoir, and reveling in failed flips is an outlet for this pool of
toxic emotional waste.

There is an element of tragedy in every disaster, but financial
bubbles are some of the most interesting because they are completely
man made. They are created by the individual decisions of buyers who
are motivated by greed, foolish pride, and a false sense of security.
Each of these people should have known better. Many of them were warned
of their impending doom and chose to go down the path to the Dark Side.

My reservoir is empty.

I am over it.

Well, I may not be totally over it, but I am ready to move on.

The social media is a fascinating phenomenon. Traditional media outlets are being displaced, and citizen journalists and analysts are stepping into this void and providing real content. Have you been over to Calculated Risk lately? It is amazing the quality of the posts and the speed at which he produces them — and he is unpaid; he is doing it for the joy of the activity. How cool is that?

This blog reaches thousands of people each day. I am a citizen journalist. When we all look back on this era, the bubble blog community captured the Zeitgeist of the Great Housing Bubble. The archives of blogs like this one and Housing Panic encapsulate the Age. Keith walked away from Housing Panic and started a new blog. I am not that radical.

Many people come here for the analysis and information, and I hope I make it fun. 🙂 (we have to cut back on the schadenfreude) 🙁 I like to write about the local real estate market, and you like to read it, so I will carry on. I don’t know what changes you will see, but I have to be who I am.

My new goal when I talk about a property is to be accurate. If I have the time, I may do more in-depth analysis on properties like this one: (IHB Opinion_of_Value_14802_Devonshire_Ave_Tustin,_CA_92780.pdf) I will purchase better data to create better analysis posts. I will stay in Irvine on profiles during the week and make sure the IHB will always be the Irvine Housing Blog.

One of the pleasures of the blog are those moments when I can express myself on a personal level. The social media make that a part of the program. We shared this unique cultural event — the Great Housing Bubble and the ensuing recession — the emotions are part of the cultural experience. Back in December 2007, I put it this way in Balance:

In many ways blogs are uniquely personal things. The personalities
of the contributors and commenters shapes the conversation and gives
the blog a personality all its own. The Irvine Housing Blog is a
community — a community of like-minded individuals (and recovering
kool-aid addicts) who have come together to make sense of the very
unusual events we have witnessed in our housing market.

…

Discussing and expressing the emotional side of the bubble is part
of my mission as a blogger. I know I am not the only one with a Reservoir of Schadenfreude. I must confess that I enjoy going over to Housing Panic and reading the unbridled emotional release you find there. I couldn’t
maintain the level of intensity Keith does and stay sane, but there are
times when letting loose is appropriate, and Housing Panic is a place
to do it.

…. I do not want to ignore my emotions nor do I want to
discard my intellect. More of one side or the other may come out during
any given day, but over the course of time, I hope I achieve a balance
in my posts just as I hope to achieve a balance in my life.

Life is about balance; it is about being aware of your intellectual
and emotional intelligences and being able to manage both. During a
financial mania people allow their emotions to override their
intellect, and the results are not pretty. It is only through the
interplay of the intellect and the emotions that we can gain a deeper
understanding of what really happened in the Great Housing Bubble.

I am over it. It is time to rebalance.

Asking Price: $1,069,000

Income Requirement: $267,250

Downpayment Needed: $213,800

Purchase Price: $380,000

Purchase Date: 11/26/1996

Address: 6002 Sierra Siena Rd Irvine, CA 92603

You know the housing bubble has not deflated yet when you still see homes sporting 300% gains in 13 years. A house should double in twenty not triple in thirteen. There is still a long way to go.

I am not sure how to close on a Friday now. The old catchphrase doesn’t feel right anymore.

I don’t know if this will become a tradition, but I will share an experience I had recently that sent me a message.

I was driving down to Laguna Beach last Sunday morning to meet a friend, have a cup of coffee and talk about life. On the way there, I passed a group of bikes clustered together in a tight pack. As I drove past, I could see one bike in the distance breaking away from the pack and peddling hard. I found myself asking, “Who was that guy?” Then, the more I reflected on it, I realized that I wanted to be that guy.

The message? Be your best and lead the way.