What OC City Is the Hottest Residential Market in the US?

Irvine, an Orange County city miles from the beach, has become the hottest residential market in the nation.

Over the past year, the price of a median priced home in the central OC city jumped 20.8 percent to $1.56 million, the highest run-up in the U.S., the Los Angeles Times reported, citing a review by Home Economics based on Zillow figures.

Irvine has also outperformed other California cities in population growth and homebuilding.

While Los Angeles, San Francisco and other large cities have lost thousands of residents, Irvine has added more than 13,000 people in the past three years, the most in the state.

During that period, the city grew to 315,000 residents, leaping ahead of Santa Ana to become the state’s 13th largest city.

Of the nearly 100,000 net new homes built in OC since 2010, 35,000 sprang up in Irvine.

The popularity of Irvine is an affirmation of one of the nation’s largest master-planned communities, according to the Times.

Six decades ago, the Newport Beach-based Irvine Company led by Donald Bren began turning 100,000 acres of ranchland, beanfields and citrus groves into a series of self-contained suburban villages.

Over time, Irvine built a reputation for excellent public schools, low crime and parks.

The economic engine of UC Irvine and the city’s premium office towers helped create a haven for upwardly mobile families, especially those arriving in recent decades from East Asia.

“It’s such a clean, safe city that still has room to add more housing and jobs,” John Burns, CEO of Irvine-based John Burns Real Estate Consulting, told the Times. “Nothing else in Southern California is like that.”

That area includes Great Park, a former Marine air base of 4,700 acres. A lengthy debate over its future was settled in 2002 in favor of residential development. A quarter of the site is set aside for parks, and the city is planning for as many as 15,800 homes.

Construction in Great Park allows Irvine to continue to outpace surrounding communities in homebuilding. In the past five years, the 9,400 homes permitted in Irvine is double the next largest amount of any OC city, according to the U.S. Census.

Analysts say Irvine’s supply of new homes is still being outpaced by demand, especially since the city serves as one of OC’s employment hubs.

Adjacent cities have seen significant price appreciation. Besides Irvine, four other spots in Orange County — Laguna Niguel, Tustin, Lake Forest and Mission Viejo — are in the top 12 U.S. cities with the highest jump in home values over the past year, according to Zillow.

— Dana Bartholomew