Irvinecommuter said:
Kenkoko...I am not sure what exactly you are fighting about. There is a lot of things to love about East Asia (China, Japan, Taiwan, and S.K.) but there are also a lot of issues (most notably pollution, density, weather, and inflexible/outdated education system). Those issues are what immigrants are trying to get away from.
PRC has its own special set of issues as to why people want to leave there, especially if you have the resources to buy property in the US.
Irvinecommuter, I not sure why you think I am fighting. I agree with a lot of stuff that?s being said. I do disagree with using a big blanket statement like using a city to compare to a continent. I also disagree with you cherry-picking data. It?s already difficult to do a fair apple to apple comparison with set premises. It?s impossible when you decide to hand pick this stat but not the other.
I jumped in when IHO was being questioned by others for his take on Irvine only dropping 10-15% and you started listing numbers from surrounding cities showing Irvine being more price resilient. I felt using data from surrounding cities (also Las Vegas and Scottdale) were rather pointless because the demographics are so different from Irvine.
I felt we should be looking at cities with more similar demographics to Irvine and sure enough you see more similarities. You can cherry pick numbers for Irvine and Diamond Bar but even with the cherry-picked math, the downward price resilience in areas like DB/Walnut/Arcadia/etc still more very much mirror Irvine. Much more than MissionV/Aliso/LakeForest/etc.
We can at least agree that FCBs are big factor, right? IHO brought up a good question. How do we break down the demographics? It?s rather difficult and any analysis/conclusion will be anecdotal.
First you must decide what ?Chinese? includes. For example, I am from Taiwan and my wife is from Hong Kong we are both under the ?Chinese? category when it comes to any official stats but that?s hardly accurate for the discussion at hand. I started High School in Arcadia in the early 90s and school statistic would say we have 35% Chinese. But, we barely had 50 students that are really from China. (about 4000 students total)
Non-mainlander behaves drastically different from Mainlander when it comes to real estate.
Non-mainlander mostly came during the 80s,90s, and early 00s. Tends to have roots set down and raised families. Tends to treat Real estate more conservatively and cares about cap rate. Very conservative when it comes to homebuying power. Rarely buying up to LTV limits. Rarely see homes left empty. Very much affective by the state of the US economy. Enters and exits market like other Americans.
Mainlander mostly came after mid-2000s. Tends to be solo, just wife with kid, no extended family. Tends to treat RE as a safety deposit box caring about liquidity not cap rate. Often see homes left empty. Willing to buy wtf price homes. Not very much affected by the state of the US economy. Enters and exit markets completely different from other Americans.
You can look at different Irvine villages and get somewhat of a feel. Older villages like University Park, Turtle rock you have much more non-mainlander. From about Woodbury on, you get more and more % of mainlanders. Woodbury is famous in Chinese circle as the ?mistress village? where Chinese business men stash their concubines.
Up to this point, mainlanders have mostly been great for Irvine real estate. The only downside I can think of is the high prices pushing more non FCBs to buy close or at their financial limits. This and possible mass exit by Mainlanders could be the next instability factor when we do have a downturn.
The subject of the thread is when the next housing bottom would be. I think it?s more and more likely now that we will have a US slowdown that coincided with a China meltdown. The inverted yield curve and the recent china economy numbers are looking bleak.