Irvine luxury towers foreclosing as Santa Ana plans for more towers

The towers are falling. Well, not literally, but the prices of the condos at a pair of luxury towers in Irvine are crashing. Here are some excerpts from the O.C. Register:

Orange County’s first luxury high-rise tower project now has its first foreclosure.

A unit in one of the twin 18-story towers in Irvine has been repossessed by the lender, the first foreclosure in Marquee Park Place, according to two Web sites that track foreclosures, foreclosureradar.com and foreclosures.com.

And that’s not all.

Veronica Hicks, head of brokerage Condos etc.in Newport Beach, said she is marketing a unit on the 16th story of one of the towers for $950,000 to $1.1 million, which is less than the debt owed to the bank. Such deals are dubbed “short sales.”

While only two of the 232 units are under duress, a total of 42, or 18 percent, were listed for sale last week in the Southern California Multiple Listing Service. The towers are a little more than 2 years old.

So what is going on in Santa Ana? Glad you asked. Robert Bisno, the developer who gave thousands of dollars to the fraudulent Measure D, has some towers in mind for north Santa Ana. The project is called the City Place Sky Lofts (pictured above). It is described as a “27-story residential tower extends approximately 365 feet eight inches above street level and consists of 333 units ranging from 804 to 2,000 square feet.”

A housing expert quoted by the Register said, “the market is showing very limited demand for high-rise living. Orange County residents prefer traditional housing.”

It is my understanding that there are two more luxury condo towers planned for south Santa Ana.

One of our readers put it best, “Santa Ana is always a day late and a dollar short in planning and execution.”


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