SoCal78 said:
Thanks, CK. Any clues regarding whether the neighbors / orig. owners took out HELOCs or refi'd into larger amounts, though?
I doubt there is much HELOC abuse amongst Ivywood owners. It's a value oriented neighborhood with youngish families. Lots of 3-7 year old kids. Not really the type of place you'll find a concentration of speculative types. We almost bought into that tract, although I thought $425K was too much money to spend on a house back in 2001, so we went with our West Irvine condo instead. If we had bought, we'd be sitting on a $300K mortgage that we could afford on the lesser or our dual incomes by itself. That is probably pretty typical of the residents there. Make decent money and don't waste it on toys or lux items. The typical Ivywood resident is probably prouder of their 529 plan balances than their new car, which is likely to be a Honda or Toyota vs. a Benz or Bimmer anyway.
