We Live In A Boomtown

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I just came back after driving to the store. Look left or right, construction is nearly everywhere. We are living in a boomtown. It’s such an unusual situation, I’m not quite sure how to deal with it!

An elementary school planned for this part of town has been pushed ahead by two years. The Orange County Register reports:

Portola Springs Elementary will be the district’s 22nd elementary school and the second of six school’s the district plans to open by fall 2020.

IMAG0010-w1200-h1200The demand is crazy–as are the prices. Million dollar plus homes on postage stamp lots don’t merit an eye blink! Neither do developers who only entertain cash buyers.

Before we closed on this home our real estate agent was offered money for our place in line!

Construction in our development is nearly complete, but a half mile away 726 additional homes are going up. There are literally thousands more in the planning stages in this very planned city of 230,000.

IMAG0013-w1200-h1200I drove through “Pavillion Park,” a few hours ago to take some photos of the works-in-progress. It looked like Black Friday at the mall! There were people going through model homes as if they were the last homes on Earth.

I understand the appeal. Irvine has excellent schools, plenty of shopping and an exceptionally low crime rate. Oh yeah–no winter either.

I worry. Boom can bring bust. It wasn’t long ago this city was in the doldrums. There were plenty of short sales and repos.

Memories are short. Builders don’t want to slow down while there’s so much money to be made. It will be interesting to watch.

4 thoughts on “We Live In A Boomtown”

  1. You should have lived in So. CA back in the 40’s & 50’s. San Fernando Valley were just fields, where varies different things were grown. They started building & building & building, it didn’t stop until every piece of land was covered with either a building or street. The same thing with Orange Co. They started building a lot when Disneyland was opened back in 1956.

  2. Yeah, and it was like that in the Palos Verde area in the late ’60’s. My friends were building there when I was leaving. they moved twice after that—and are now in a gated community in San Clemente. You and Myra are still reasonably young–I wonder if you won’t find yourself moving in another 5-8 yrs.
    with the government closed down, it will be interesting to see how that affects your area, with all the furloughs. Sikorski and Pratt will be furloughing 2000 people, beginning Monday, if the our fine congress doesn’t grow up and get its act together.
    thank God I payed off my mortgage last year—I can manage for a while if they delay my monthly SS check.

  3. When we moved to Healdsburg CA in 1988, the town below us – Windsor – was a sleepy little town of 5,000+ people. By the time we left in 1995 there were over 27,000!!
    It had been a dusty little town with shacks and vineyards and the developers and realtors came in and just built that town up and up.
    We’ve been back a few times and what a shock to see the “town” they created! Some of the buildings look like they’ve been there for 100 years (but well maintained!). Even a town green.
    Our Healdsburg on the other hand had a building moratorium which you’d think it was great until you realize all the people buying up the houses for sale are from SF and Marin and are buying them for 2nd homes and the people who lived there all their lives can’t afford them.

  4. The pics of those developments always remind me of the movie Poltergeist…….Did you check to be sure your street did not replace a cemetery? It was boomtown in that movie too !

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