Sweet Orange

As I stated in the past, two types of areas were particularly appealing to flippers: low-end homes such as many found in Santa Ana and newly built tracts with high price tags. Northwood II is in the second category. Larry Roberts (IrvineRenter) highlights this in one of his post (S.O.S The Market is Sinking), and a discussion on the Redfin Orange County forum also highlights this. I have also highlighted this in past posts.

The Northwood area has some of the lowest priced homes in Irvine. These are homes found on Streamwood, Pineview, Lakepines, Monroe and Remington. A few examples are 25 Streamwood, 76 Lakepines, 217 Pinewood, 69 Remington, and 460 Monroe.  (Note: Orangetree is another area that has some of the most affordable housing in Irvine.)

With an asking price of $1,799,000, the most expensive home on the Northwood market is 20 Canyonwood, which is in guard-gated Northwood Point. Right behind that is 22 Purple Moor, which is  in newly built, highly flipped Northwood II and has an asking price of $1,497,000.

Although many of the older Northwood homes have homeowners association fees, some do not. In other words, if no HOA fee and no HOA restrictions are important to you, the older homes in this area might give you this option.

When it comes to the more newly built homes, count on an HOA fee and the restrictions that come with them. On the other hand, if you like the idea of the extra amenities and reduced amount of maintenance that you will have to deal with, Northwood has those options available in the new and some of the older developments.

Finally, Northwood has a mix of detached homes and condos. There are currently a little more than double the number of detached homes on the Northwood housing market than there are condos.

In the queue: a look at a sample of the Northwood housing stock