[IHB] How Healthy is Irvine?s Housing Ladder?

NEW -> Contingent Buyer Assistance Program
This is just yet another example of good government intentions gone wrong.  Low rates, in addition to driving prices up by giving more buying power across the board, has skewed what investors deem to be acceptable ROI.  When bonds are paying 2%, a 5% cap rate, in addition to any equity building, seems pretty nice.  One thing I did not see mentioned is that income limits on affordable housing, by themselves, will not necessarily deter investors, who may be able to shell-game their incomes into whatever they need to be to get under the bar.
 
City's goal is different from the developers' goal. it does not make sense to build affordable units on Irvine's expensive land. Developers may bargain with the city to trade favors. City may get the developers to build a few affordable units but has to grant variances and density increase for market rate units. Developers may transfer the affordable burden to the apartment rental entity and set aside a few road or freeway adjacent units for affordable renters when asked or rent out these units as market rate when the government is not checking. City of Irvine has no money to build affordable units. They can only beg the local developers to build them but the developers obviously want a lot in return. City owns the land at the Great Park and the idea is to sell the land to Lennar and Lennar will get a break with zoning and density leniency in exchange for providing affordable units on the worst part of the land typically near the jail.  Lennar is dragging its feet so the dream is postponed indefinitely.
 
ihs, by your logic, we should have affordable housing in Lambert Ranch not million dollar homes.

irvinehomeshopper said:
City's goal is different from the developers' goal. it does not make sense to build affordable units on Irvine's expensive land. Developers may bargain with the city to trade favors. City may get the developers to build a few affordable units but has to grant variances and density increase for market rate units. Developers may transfer the affordable burden to the apartment rental entity and set aside a few road or freeway adjacent units for affordable renters when asked or rent out these units as market rate when the government is not checking. City of Irvine has no money to build affordable units. They can only beg the local developers to build them but the developers obviously want a lot in return. City owns the land at the Great Park and the idea is to sell the land to Lennar and Lennar will get a break with zoning and density leniency in exchange for providing affordable units on the worst part of the land typically near the jail.  Lennar is dragging its feet so the dream is postponed indefinitely.
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