Big drop in Ashton Green in Turtle Ridge

Address: 108 Coral Rose, Irvine, CA 92603 (Turtle Ridge)

Plan: 1398 sq ft – 2/2.5

MLS: S445098 DOM: 150

Sale History: 3/31/2005: $619,990 ??

Price Reduced: 08/23/06 — $750,000 to $725,000

Price Reduced: 10/06/06 — $725,000 to $689,000

Price Reduced: 10/13/06 — $689,000 to $669,000

Price Reduced: 11/03/06 — $669,000 to $595,000

Current Price: $595,000

MLS Description: CONDO GIVEAWAY! THAT’S RIGHT $595,000. GORGEOUS MODEL HOME BY SHEA BUILDERS. 2 BD, 2.5 BA. ALL THE GOODIES AND HAS A VIEW. WAS PRICED AT $750,000, AT $669,000—-AND NOW YOU NAME THE PRICE!

This is a Plan 7 in the Ashton Green tract in the village of Turtle Ridge. So what’s going on here? Your guess is as good as mine! Let me tell you what I’ve found so far:

  • No prior sales history in Zillow or the Title database

  • The last plan 7 (actually a 7A which had 1426 sq ft) sold for $815,000 on 5/24/2006 – an all time high for this tract

  • Property taxes are listed as UNPAID

  • Title lists the owner as “SHEA HOMES LTD PARTNERSHIP” and thus no loan information

I actually found an old listing in MLS (P422498) that shows the property listed by Shea Homes and sold to a buyer for $619,990 on 3/31/2005. The agent representing the buyer in that transaction is the same agent that is listing the property now. **IF** we assume the MLS info for the purchase is correct, then this flipper will lose $60,690 (assuming 6% in selling costs) if they sell at $595,000! They are selling for LESS than what they bought the property for FROM THE BUILDER!

Could Shea possibly still own this home or is the title information just not accurate? Is the seller in default? Why are the prior year’s taxes still unpaid? Is the ‘low’ price an attempt to generate offers after probably receiving none for the last 5 months?

Trovata – Another Westpark Casualty – UPDATE #1

Address: 20 Avanzare, Irvine, CA 92606 (Westpark)
Plan: 1876 sq ft – 4/2.5
MLS: S452340 DOM: 80
Sale History: 6/03/2005: $753,000
7/30/1999: $343,000
10/30/1996: $228,000
Price Reduced: 08/26/06 — $795,000 to $775,000
Price Reduced: 10/05/06 — $775,000 to $759,900
Current Price: $759,000

This Plan 3 in the Trovata tract built by K Hovnanian was purchased with 10% down last summer for $753k. The price has been reduced a couple times and now the asking price is almost the same as the purchase price from over a year ago. It looks like a nice, clean, well kept home and 4 bedrooms at this price sounds pretty competitive. Any Westpark residents care to chime in? After 6% in selling costs, this seller will lose over $40,000 when all is said and done. That doesn’t even take into account the carrying costs of this vacant home which could be pretty substantial depending upon how long it’s been empty.

A quick look in the neighborhood reveals an identical Plan 3 for sale at 731 Paseo Westpark:

Address: 731 Paseo Westpark, Irvine, CA 92606 (Westpark)
Plan: 1876 sq ft – 4/2.5
MLS: P525054 DOM: 101
Sale History: 10/01/2001: $415,000
Price Reduced: 08/15/06 — $825,000 to $789,000
Price Reduced: 09/02/06 — $789,000 to $770,000
Price Reduced: 09/26/06 — $770,000 to $759,000
Current Price: $759,000

The private remarks for 731 Paseo Westpark say ‘VERY MOTIVATED SELLERS. MAKE AN OFFER!’. It’ll be interesting to see how this plays out with both plan 3’s priced exactly the same.

UPDATE #1 – November 4, 2006

Our non flipper at 731 Paseo Westpark made the first move by lowering their price on November 1 to $742,500. Now we wait and see if our flipper at 20 Avanzare chases the market down.

More Irvine Sales Trends – Home Grown

Anyone here have a Data Quick subscription that you wouldn’t mind sharing with me? 🙂 Until then, I’ll have to rely on what I can find from MLS. I’ve gone through and performed counts of the number of closed sales in Irvine (SFR, condo, and total) for each month since September 1998.

A few notes about the data. The data is from the MLS Alliance database which aggregates listings from the 8 various MLS systems in Southern California. Because of the multiple MLS systems (go figure!), sometimes properties are entered in more than one MLS system and it appears twice in MLS Alliance. But this doesn’t happen too often with listings in Irvine. Also, for the most part, these numbers do not contain new home sales since builders in Irvine do not usually put their homes into MLS.

Yes, I know these charts are fugly as hell. Does anyone have any tips on making better charts?

I’ve also made the raw data available in case anyone is interested:Irvine Sales Trends.xls

I went ahead and used moving averages to smooth out the monthly changes. The actual monthly data is in the XLS file.

Affordable Housing – Irvine Residents' Survey

The City of Irvine is conducting a Residents’ Survey to see what residents think of how the city is doing, the website, fake grass, etc. I believe they did a similar survey last year.

If you’re an Irvine resident, I encourage you to fill out the short survey:

Irvine Residents’ Survey 2006

One of the topics in this survey is about affordable housing in Irvine. Did you know “that the City has set a goal to ensure that approximately 10% of the total housing in the City by the year 2025 is affordable and remains so in perpetuity?”

As I understand it, affordable housing can be one of two things

  • homes that are sold at below market prices

  • apartments that are leased at below market prices

Let’s discuss affordable homes first. Would you like it if you paid $600k for your home and someone purchased the unit next door on the same day and paid only $300k? Believe it or not, scenarios like this have already occurred.

What about affordable apartments? Did you know that Woodbury contains some affordable apartments (here)? I think that any residents of these Woodbury apartments also have access to the Woodbury Commons – an area that Woodbury homeowners shell out mucho $$$/month for maintaining.

There are many things about the City of Irvine that I like but affordable housing is NOT one of them. I believe housing in Irvine is overpriced but I also believe in a free market. I may not make 200+k/year but I don’t have a family of 8 with an income under $25,000 either.

Anyone else feel this way?

Columbia Square – University Town Center Investment

Address: 14 Columbia #6, Irvine, CA 92612 (University Town Center)

Plan: 980 sq ft – 2/1

MLS: S459193 DOM: 42

Sale History: 9/7/2005: $483,500

8/21/1986: $131,000 <- per Zillow

Price Reduced: 10/10/06 — $498,000 to $475,000

Current Price: $475,000

We had some good comments on the other University Town Center condo so here’s another one. This condo in the Columbia Square tract was purchased as an investment about a year ago. It was subsequently rented out and will be tenant occupied until the end of November (according to the private remarks in MLS). The ‘investor’ (flipper) purchased this property with 100% financing and get this.. the lender’s name was Zero Down Mortgage! WHO ARE THESE PEOPLE?!?

I’m pretty sure the rent received on this property won’t be anywhere near the monthly cost of owning this home (this is clearly a negative cash flow situation). This ‘investor’ is losing money every month and since prices didn’t increase 15% in the last year, he’ll be losing money on the sale as well. If the condo sells at the current asking price (and assuming 6% in selling costs), he’ll have to bring about $37,000 to the table to get rid of this property.