Is this a good time to buy?

Mawesome Sauce said:

Irvine is designed and marketed towards rich Chinese. There are people in mainland China that aspire to live here because they have sales staff there to sell homes here. Thats why it is on par with coastal cities. The moment we have an excuse to make it not appealing to Chinese, it will perform just like an expensive OC city. I like Irvine, but I don’t think I will ever be able to afford a family home here, so I would need to look elsewhere if the depression ever hits.

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just come to Lake Forest, you get a huge discount for slightly less good schools and slightly sub optimal city planning.

If I had a $3 million budget and was thinking of starting a family, I would be looking for something under $2 million in a neighborhood with young families. I wouldn’t want to buy in a neighborhood with empty houses whose owners live overseas or a block with rentals that changes tenants every other year.

Loco_local said:

If I had a $3 million budget and was thinking of starting a family, I would be looking for something under $2 million in a neighborhood with young families. I wouldn’t want to buy in a neighborhood with empty houses whose owners live overseas or a block with rentals that changes tenants every other year.

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I think this is why even resales are high priced because people want lived in hoods.

Personally I wouldn’t mind if my neighbors were empty houses.

Loco_local said:

If I had a $3 million budget and was thinking of starting a family, I would be looking for something under $2 million in a neighborhood with young families. I wouldn’t want to buy in a neighborhood with empty houses whose owners live overseas or a block with rentals that changes tenants every other year.

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If $3m is the budget, why not a $3 million neighborhood with young families?

Loco_local said:

If I had a $3 million budget and was thinking of starting a family, I would be looking for something under $2 million in a neighborhood with young families. I wouldn’t want to buy in a neighborhood with empty houses whose owners live overseas or a block with rentals that changes tenants every other year.

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Pretty much narrows it down to Great Park and Portola if looking in Irvine to be around higher density of new/young families. Just go to the Great Park playground or Portola Community Center on any given day and see for yourself @EatatAnteaters

irvinehomeowner said:

I think this is why even resales are high priced because people want lived in hoods.

Personally I wouldn’t mind if my neighbors were empty houses.

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I wouldn't mind if some of my neighbors were empty houses either. More quiet neighborhood and not so many cars on the street. My street consists of 10 houses, so it would be nice if half of them were empty.

My friend who lives up in Orchard Hills says the parks and pools are pretty empty (he lives on the Groves side).

I'm happy that I can just walk 10 houses over to an enormous park and there are always a buncha kids for my sons to play with.

If I had 6 million I'd be tempted to buy a bigger Toll Bros house in Hidden Canyon, but i'm not sure there are near as many families over there.

Personally love a neighborhood that’s walkable (retail, restaurants, coffee shops that’s a 10-20 min walk, a lot of young families live in these areas) and has a mix of housing- apartments (yes apartments), condos/townhomes, SFRs. You then get to see young families, kids, a nice mix of people in terms of ethnicity, income (to an extent, it’s Irvine after all and there are outliers but if most renters are paying $3k+ rent, they must have a decent income). Though for many being in a bubble is a feature and not a bug. Seen many comments on here that how a certain area even if it has plenty of SFR’s is “high density” housing (as if it’s Singapore or Hong Kong ha) because of the apartments or condos in the same area and there was a negative connotation in those comments where if you read between the lines it’s clear what’s being implied.