<p>This question is for those experts in Ecomony, Finance, and RE.</p>
<p>I know money from Asian countries has been coming to So Cal, especially Irvine to gobble up many houses and other real estate properities. Recently I heard that South Koreans would no longer need to have a visa to come to US starting 09/2008. This is only tourists visa so no immigration issue there, however, the RE in South Korea is out of whack. 1500 ~ 1800 sq ft high rise apartments can go up to $1mil. If they sell their apt and homes and come here, they can buy a same size condo in irvine for about $600k with cash and start a small business with left over money. There are also a big rumor that US will attack North Korea this year for not keeping all the promises to clean up their nuclear weapon stuff. With that threat, I'm pretty sure many well to do Koreans will try to escape to US. </p>
<p><strong>My question:</strong> Since RE is very local, if big money start flowing into Irvine (while the rest of US may suffer from further down turn of housing market), would we still see 30 to 50 % additional reduction and housing market bottoming around 2011 or 2012? I know this is a big IF question and may not even put a dent but since I have no background in such a forecasting, I would be very interested to hear others' opinion. </p>
<p>I keep heraing the inventory being 13 or 14 months, but not sure if foreigners purchasing these homes would or would not make any differences. I myself am an asian american (naturalized) who went through tough early immigration phase (our family wiated many years back in the home country and got the green cards at LAX when we arrived). We worked very hard and paid a lot of taxes to save and accumulate enough to get a good home for our family. I honestly would be ticked off if foreign big hands "mess" up the housing correction and ruin it for many who's been patiently waiting for sanity to come back in housing market.</p>
<p>I know money from Asian countries has been coming to So Cal, especially Irvine to gobble up many houses and other real estate properities. Recently I heard that South Koreans would no longer need to have a visa to come to US starting 09/2008. This is only tourists visa so no immigration issue there, however, the RE in South Korea is out of whack. 1500 ~ 1800 sq ft high rise apartments can go up to $1mil. If they sell their apt and homes and come here, they can buy a same size condo in irvine for about $600k with cash and start a small business with left over money. There are also a big rumor that US will attack North Korea this year for not keeping all the promises to clean up their nuclear weapon stuff. With that threat, I'm pretty sure many well to do Koreans will try to escape to US. </p>
<p><strong>My question:</strong> Since RE is very local, if big money start flowing into Irvine (while the rest of US may suffer from further down turn of housing market), would we still see 30 to 50 % additional reduction and housing market bottoming around 2011 or 2012? I know this is a big IF question and may not even put a dent but since I have no background in such a forecasting, I would be very interested to hear others' opinion. </p>
<p>I keep heraing the inventory being 13 or 14 months, but not sure if foreigners purchasing these homes would or would not make any differences. I myself am an asian american (naturalized) who went through tough early immigration phase (our family wiated many years back in the home country and got the green cards at LAX when we arrived). We worked very hard and paid a lot of taxes to save and accumulate enough to get a good home for our family. I honestly would be ticked off if foreign big hands "mess" up the housing correction and ruin it for many who's been patiently waiting for sanity to come back in housing market.</p>
