irvinehomeowner said:
Wow... so 10 years later people finally believe the Legend of the FCB.
I think Larry's (IrvineRenter) first paragraph is a bit exaggerated:
Chinese investors buy a significant number of homes in Irvine. Anecdotally, 80% of sales in some new home communities are sold to Chinese Nationals. In fact, Irvine homebuilders depend on Chinese buyers to purchase their overpriced houses, which becomes a problem when this flow of money dries up.
Not sure if he still lives in Irvine but he does like to predict scenarios where Irvine will end up a desolate ghost town where you can buy real estate for pennies.
For those who don't remember, he was the main author for Irvine Housing Blog (IHB) which turned into TalkIrvine, and there was supposed to be an Option ARMaggedon followed by a Foreclosure Tsunami. These were all predicated on the idea that the government would not interfere and that interest rates were going to go up instead of down. Prices did drop, but in Irvine, it wasn't as bad as surrounding areas... and certainly not the predicted "40%" across the board.
I don't think this will have as huge an effect as Larry does. Chinese are not the only FCBs who buy in Irvine and there are many non-FCBs who buy here (I think most of TI are non-FCBs).
Long live Irvine!
I read larrys other blog on a daily basis. I can tell you he is not gloom and doom. He is probably the most fair and balanced real estate blogger I have seen.
I do not believe he exaggerates when he states that a significant part of homes in Irvine go to Chinese. That is fact. He cites an anecdotal "80%" based on what bloggers on his site have written, hence he specifically states "anecdotal".
I'd love to see anything recent he has written where he is predicting Irvine will be a desolate ghost town where you buy on pennies on the dollar, as I have never read that. I think you might be exaggerating yourself a bit.
Most of TI may not be FCB, but isnt picking out TI readers to represent the Irvine demographics a bit of selection bias? Just look around your neighborhoods... that is a better likely representation of who lives here. To me, I see a lot of asians, many of them that look like they did not grow up here.