@Irvinehomeseeker: I was under the impression that the high appreciations were mostly limited to new builds. It's quite a common practice for builders to price the earlier phases at lower numbers to test the market or generate excitement and once the people keeps coming in, they jack up the prices. I don't usually see annualized appreciations around 20% or so in existing homes in Irvine in the past few years. We bought a relatively new single level SFR in North Park with USCTrojan back in 2012 (a short sale) for around $900k and looking at the comps today, I don't think it goes for more than $1.3M now, so that's around 45% appreciation in 6 years or 7-8% annual.
@Kenkoko/Inc: Thanks for sharing the info on Eichler homes. I'll look into them. I thought I knew a thing or two about RE but I guess I still have a lot to learn. I know the 4BR/2Bath single-level SFRs were quiet the norm in the 60s here but not sure why someone rebuilds a house from the ground up now and doesn't add an extra bathroom or at least a powder room.
@meccos12: Thanks, I think I'm not ready for OOS investment yet, but do you have links to a few sample listings there? Just want to get an idea of the type of the products you're referring to.
@woodburyowner: Thanks, I did buy a commercial plus a few multi-units (10-20 unit properties, some section 8) in South Bay/Hawthorne/north OC area in 2010-2012 and they have been generating solid >9-10% cap plus nice appreciation (comps more than doubled in today's bubble). But I cannot find anything with caps over 4-4.5% today. If you look at their numbers, they commonly take the inflated pro forma rent and not the actual ones, artificially lower the expenses (e.g. take the current tax bill vs. the newly appraised value after the sale) and then multiply the "net" by 20-25 to be able to claim a 4-5% cap while in reality the cap is much lower. At least that's what I'm seeing now in this market...