The Most Expensive Home For Sale in Orange County - What You Get For a Paltry $37mil

What is the most expensive home for sale in Orange County? At this moment, it is this one: Villa del Lago, at an asking price of ONLY $37,000,000. :)

Villa del Lago has been a development project that started back in 2003 when the land was purchased from the Irvine Company. The property has been the subject of much controversy as the developer is allegedly in default with the bank who offered the construction loan of roughly $20,000,000 (which developer claims was never lent in full). The property has come down from the previous asking price of $57,000,000 and is considered to be at risk of foreclosure.

All that stuff aside, the property itself is amazing. 3 levels, 8 bedrooms, 11 bathrooms, parking for 17 cars, and over 18,258 sqft of living space. Sitting on nearly 12.5 acres of land in Newport Coast, the grounds include private lake with fountain, equestrian ring, tennis courts, private wine vineyard, pool pavilion. wine cave, and guest house.

 But what about the price and is it right?  I'm guessing if you're like me and have to ask, it probably doesn't matter for you either. But just for fun, we did some research and the results are interesting. We looked at the most recent sales in the area and found that the most expensive home sold in the past year was right around $18,000,0000. This was a cliff side home in Corona Del Mar with dramatic ocean views, 7,000sqft of living space, and under a half acre lot. If we go back to 2009, we can find one of the highest sales to ever take place when a Harbor Island Estate in Newport Beach sold for $26,000,000 giving the buyers about 11,000 sqft of living space.

How much per month? Don't worry, you (or anybody else) can't get a home loan for this kind of money but if you could finance the entire thing, the monthly payment would be a very reasonable (wait for it...) $219,000!

While the price of this home is certainly out of scale for most of Orange County, an asking price like this is nothing out of the ordinary in places like Beverly Hills or Malibu. Do I think its a little high. Yes I do, especially given the fact that its twice the price of the last most recent comparable and we're not in Malibu. Still, it is definitely more home and a much larger lot in an area where land is insanely valuable. So to be fair, it really is hard for anybody to judge the value on this home given that nothing similar may have ever sold on the market. But if I were pressed, I'll bet they get about $28 million in the end for this one.  

   

Property listed by McMonigle Group, Inc

New EPA law affects OC Homeowners

As of this week, a previous law is now in effect regarding construction and renovation and lead based paint. Owner/sellers oflder homes, built prior to 1978, must jump through a new hoop if they plan on doing any repairs, renovations, or construction that will affect the paint in their home. We already have a lead based paint disclosure in place for owners of homes of this vintage but here are the new changes:

1) Owners who hire contractors and repair tradespeople must insure that they have been trained and certified by the EPA (Environmental Protection Agency) to prevent household contamination of lead based paint.

2) Contractors must also give owners an EPA lead brochureAdditionally, renovators must deliver EPA's lead renovation pamphlet to an occupant within 60 days before a project begins.

3) Owners must sign off upon reciept of the lead based paint hazard pamphlet.

4) This rule does not apply homeowners doing work on their primary residence but still must disclose any known hazards.

What kind of work requires this extra hurdle?

Any work that disturbs the painted surface (such as sanding, removing hardware, stripping, or light demo) over a 6 square foot area of internal surface or a 20 square foot area of external surface.

Orange County Home Sales in the Median Range - Dec 09

Our last couple posts dealt with hot market for entry level homes in Orange County. If we took those same home requirements and bumped it up a bit to be between $400,000 and $500,000 we see something very interesting happen. To refresh, the basic criteria is a single family residence with at least:

3 Bedrooms

2 Full Baths

1000 Sq Ft

2 Car Garage

6000 sqft lot

In all of Orange County, this buyer would now have an additional 175 homes to look at!

If they were to take the price point up to between $500,000 and $600,000, that would mean yet another 200 houses that would fit the price range!

Of worthwhile note is also the fact that the highly desireable cities like Tustin, Fountain Valley, Orange, Rancho Santa Margarita, Fullerton, Yorba Linda, and Mission Viejo start coming into play at this range.

While we wouldn't consider this an abundance of homes by any means, especially when you consider many people will want 4 bedrooms, 3 baths, 2000+ sqft, etc, we think the numbers reveal a much different inventory of homes available to buyers.

Most of our clients are summing this up best with statements like, "Wow, I'm really liking the bang for my buck better at these price points!"

We would have to agree, atleast for now. You can see what is available at these price points by using the quick home search on our Orange County Homes For Sale page

Entry Level Home Sales - The Hottest Selling Market in Orange County CA (part 2)

By now you've read the market update in part 1 so we'd like to change it up again and profile a second buyer. Same exact criteria, only they have a maximum budget of $300,000 for the same area. This is a very typical buyer today and one that we run across everyday. Often times, they will be looking at getting an FHA loan which will further reduce the available inventory open to them. When we run this buyers criteria (not counting FHA limitations) according to the following criteria:

3+ Bed
2+ Baths
1000+ sqft living space
5,000 sqft lot
2+ car garage
max price $300,000


here is what we get:


(16) Anaheim
(3) Buena Park
(2) Fullerton
(2) Garden Grove
(1) La Habra
(1) Orange
(25) Santa Ana
'(1) Stanton
(1) Westminster


That's right, only 54 homes in all of Orange County that fit this!!!!!

Now if you start factoring in area, neighborhood, home condition, floorplan, and loan type it becomes quite obvious why MOST Orange County home buyers are frustrated with the process.

Still Not Convinced?

Here's another angle that really helps to put it in perspective. Right now, in most of these cities we are working with more buyers than there are homes for sale that fit the criteria!! That's right, just us alone! Now take into account all the other agents and the buyers they represent and the picture starts to become crystal clear as to why we are having bidding wars in the middle of a recession!

2 Possible Solutions For First Time Buyers

Ok, we are not trying to be negative here, we want to work towards a solution. Here is what needs to happen. Buyers with similar criteria need to loosen them by dropping city/bed/bath/sq ft/etc requirements or put the home search on hold. They may never get a house that fits their criteria and their current price threshold but this doesn't mean they'll never own a house.

In the meantime, most of them need to be saving some money for a downpayment (hopefully 20%+) to reduce the potential mortgage payment and increase their price threshold. If the market happens to drop later, we'll, they'll be in an even better position! Either way, they're working towards a position of increased buying power by having more downpayment in the current maket, or working their way up into a less competitive price point with more bang-for-your-buck options available.

The tough part of this is that they'll have to come to terms with not owning a home in the near future. Again, many others will still feel it is their time to buy and for them it will take the simple, but often painful, process of reassessing wants vs. needs and ultimately coming to some sort of compromise.

If you want to reasses your wants and needs, you can search through the homes for sale in Orange County to see if there are any new areas that you may be able to consider.

Entry Level Home Sales - The Hottest Selling Market in Orange County CA (part1)

Many homebuyers are under the impression that the current down market is just begging them to be in it. In many areas and price points this is truly the case; however, it is currently not the case in Orange County, CA at the entry-level single family home price point. The main reason.......Inventory (or rather a lack thereof). Here's what we mean:

Going off our most popular search criteria given by our clients in the last 6 months to a year, we profiled the following hypothetical buyer looking for a single family house with:

3+ Bedrooms
2+ Bathrooms
1,000+ sqft of living space
5,000+ sqft lot
2+ car garage
up to $400,000 max

Here's the Results across ALL of Orange County

# of homes fitting criteria in

(1) Anaheim Hills
(80) Anaheim
(13) Buena Park
(2) Brea
(2) Costa Mesa
(14) Fullerton
(28) Garden Grove
(1) Lake Forrest
(10) La Habra
(7) Orange
(6) Placentia
(84) Santa Ana
(10) Stanton

For a Grand Total of Only 262 Homes in the ENTIRE COUNTY!!!

Of this, there are only 90 or so homes meeting the criteria that are in Orange County and not in Anaheim or Santa Ana!!!

These numbers are rather shocking and the biggest reason we have seen the Orange County CA foreclosure real estate market get scorching hot.

The Best Way To Use The Internet For Finding A Home

Recently we stumbled across something, an old listing book, that really made us realize how far we've come in the home buying business. For those of you who never experienced the home buying process pre 1995, you might be startled to hear about the way it used to be done.

A Little History

Every week the real estate brokers local association would publish and distribute a new set of paper sheets containing all the new home listings in a particular area. The various real estate offices would gather these new listings and add them to the office listing book. If you were to look at these sheets according to todays standards, they would be considered very crude. No pictures, very little description, and very little detail.

To make things even tougher, every time anybody wanted to investigate a property they had flip tediously through the big book and hope they didn't miss it. Then they had to hope it was still available for sale and that the book they were using was accurate. Even if you had an idea of what you wanted, there was no way to narrow the search down to a handful of likely prospects. The only search feature was a pair of eyeballs, fingertips, a sharp memory, a plethora of local knowledge, and a healthy dosage of patience.

While we do see some advantages to these older ways of doing business (local knowledge, inventory familiarity, etc) we are in no way hoping for the return of the "good old days." Todays Southern California home buyers have so many advantages in their search for real estate that it'd be foolish not to take advantage of the various tools at their disposal. With this in mind, here's the best way for todays home shoppers to research, find, and ultimately buy real estate with the help of the internet.


Researching The Area You Want

We've said it before that real estate really is a "boots on the ground" type of business and when searching out an area to live, there really is no substitute for actually visiting the area. However, we think it is better to have some idea of areas you might like before driving aimlessly around the County. Orange County home buyers will be suprised how much information they can gather about a city, county, school district, or neighborhood from our local area home buyer guides and we encourage them to use them, possibly even before looking at a single home for sale. Some prime examples of this would be our Anaheim California real estate and Yorba Linda California real estate guides.


Researching The Homes For Sale In The Area You Want

Recall for a second the above example about the old crusty listing book which agents and buyer had to flip through just to get an idea of prices in a specific area. Now visualize a new modern listing book that is instantly searchable, provides multiple full color property photos, contains 99% of all homes for sale in a particular area, can issue email alerts, uses interactive property maps, and contains more property info than you could ever need. Now you'll have an idea of the benefits available within our home finder map search. This and some of the internets more helpful home hunting tools can also be found at local sites like Brea CA homes for sale and Fullerton CA homes for sale, which specifically deal with property listed in the local market.


Upgrading To Premium Service With The Help Of A Professional

So you've done a little homework and found a few different areas that you would consider calling home. You've got an idea of what homes in these areas are selling for and are reasonably sure of what type of home will fit into your budget. Now is the time to enlist the help of a real estate professional in custom tailoring you a home search around your specific needs. Not only will you be notified by email when new homes come to market but you'll also be alerted to any homes that drop in price and are now down around your comfort level. The kicker is that all of this information will be available within your email inbox so that you may access it at your convenience!

Some home buyers are ready to just dive right in and tell us agents all about what they are looking for and our premium home finder service will let them do this. By telling us what they are looking for, there is an added bonus because we personally review hundreds of properties a week and can quickly contact them when a hot deal comes to market. Still, some are not ready to "open up" about who they are or what they are looking for and we completely respect this. We'd just like all to know how having a true real estate professional can be an unfair advantage over their fellow home shoppers.


How Lucky We Are

Anytime we become frustrated with slow downloads, spotty internet connections, annoying pop ups, or internet spam, we really should count our blessings and realize just how much better the internet has made shopping for a home. The last ten years have brought us leaps and bounds forward in the real estate business and its exciting to think just what is in store for the next ten years. Until then, happy hunting.