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After frequently placing in the top 5 among the country’s best-selling master planned communities for the better part of a decade, the Irvine Company saw a steep decline in new home sales on its land the past few years.
In John Burns Real Estate Consulting’s January listing of 2024’s top-selling communities, the Irvine Ranch didn’t crack the top 50 for home sales, let alone the top 5.
Rancho Mission Viejo was OC’s most active community for the year, with 476 sales in 2024, placing it No. 32 on the John Burns list. The Great Park Neighborhoods ranked No. 38 with 441 sales.
Part of Irvine Co.’s decline was due to timing: large projects like its forthcoming 520-home Summit at Orchard Hills hadn’t started sales, and grading work just began at its long-awaited, 1,180-home Orange Heights project off Jamboree Road. A recent focus on rental projects by Irvine Co., rather than for-sale housing, also had an impact.
Anyone thinking the area’s dominant real estate firm was getting out of the housing market, or running out of land to build on, can rest assured that’s not the case. This month, Irvine Co. announced plans for a new village replacing the Oak Creek Golf Course and adjacent land.
A total of 3,100 housing units, in a mix of for-sale and apartments, are being considered for the 235-acre site just off the Santa Ana (5) Freeway. See last week’s edition for more details on the project.
The Oak Creek development is just one of several large infill sites that the Irvine Co. has identified for housing across its local portfolio. In some cases, the projects would go up on vacant land, in others the housing would replace office and retail sites.
Significant projects—primarily apartment complexes—are being planned or under construction at UCI Research Park, Newport Center, The Market Place, Tustin Legacy and at undeveloped sites it the Spectrum area of the city, to name a few.
By the Business Journal’s count, there’s nearly 15,000 new rental and for-sale housing units that the Irvine Co. currently has its eyes on across OC.
With the median household in Irvine running a little under 2.5 residents per home, the Irvine Co.’s proposed developments could hold close to 40,000 people when built out. That’s roughly the population of Stanton, OC’s 26th-largest city.
The City of Irvine’s population stood at nearly 319,000 residents at the end of 2024, up 0.8% year-over-year, according to data from California’s Department of Finance, released this month. Irvine remained No. 2 among OC’s largest cities. Anaheim remained No. 1 with 341,773 residents, which was down 0.1%.
Irvine’s roughly 2,500 jump in population year-over-year was the most of any city in OC last year, and its 1,629 boost in housing units ranked No. 7 among all cities in California, according to the state’s data.
So much for that exodus.