[quote author="IrvineRenter" date=1243377998]<a href="http://www.ocbj.com/article.asp?aID=81682706.169974.1786148.9082109.6509588.987&aID2=137387">Irvine Condos Draw Interest, Sales; To Open in Summer</a>
Local Brokerages Picking Up Sperry Van Ness Brokers; Irvine Spectrum Office Park Sells
By MARK MUELLER
Orange County Business Journal Staff
RESIDENTIAL
The lights are starting to be turned on at Astoria, a condominium tower complex built by Canada?s Intergulf Development Group at Lennar Corp.?s Central Park West development in Irvine.
Top floor units at one of the towers, which overlook the San Diego (I-405) Freeway near Jamboree Road, were recently used by the American Society of Interior Designers for its annual Orange County home tour, which benefits the OC Performing Art Center.
Nearly 40 designers decorated four penthouse lofts and two other units at the building for the home tour. That added plenty of traffic?said to be 20,000 people during the month?to the 40-acre development that?s been in limbo for more than a year.
Lennar still hasn?t decided on a date when it will be ramping up sales for the low- and mid-rise homes that have been built at Central Park West, opting instead to mothball the project until the market recovers.
The 240-unit Astoria complex, which sits on the back corner of the Central Park West property near the freeway, isn?t waiting out the market. Sales are now in full go mode, according to Michael Chious, general sales and marketing manager for Intergulf.
The company?s made a few dozen sales, and move-ins are expected to begin early this summer, Chious said. Among other incentives, the developer was offering a new Lexus to the first buyer of one of the fully-designed penthouses on display the past month.
Prices have dropped to the $400,000s for the most-affordable units, which are seeing plenty of competition from re-sales at another nearby condo tower.
Some 35 units in Bosa Development Corp.?s towers at the Park Place campus, located on the other side of Jamboree Road, are listed for resale according to brokerage data. About a dozen of those listings are short sales, with the lowest-priced unit now being offered at $350,000.</blockquote>
Wow, I can't believe they've already found buyers...errr suckers for this place. I wonder what these things will appraise at given the carnage over at the Korean towers. haha