My brother "owns" one of the properties through UCI, he is a professor. The rules are very complicated and technically he owns the home but there are extreme limits on the amount of money he can make if he chooses to sell. The rules require that it can be sold to another qualified UCI employee and he will essentially make the same profit irregardless of the current housing market. He is waiting for the market to bottom out a bit and he is going to get the hell out of dodge. In his case, this has worked out well since he will be taking about 80K in equity whereas he would have been underwater if he had bought outside of this system at the time he did. I guess if he liked living in Irvine, it would be a good deal for life (although he would never see any real appreciation). I don't know about those built in Fullerton but whoever the builder is in Irvine, they did pretty shoddy work IMO. No matter what he does his grass in the backyard is essentially a pile of mud, very poor drainage. I guess it's like any new home, looks good the first few years, then starts to fall apart.
