Foreign investors in Southern California: Over half of new homes in Irvine purchased by Asian buyers.

Dr. Housing Bubble reports:

There is still a large amount of foreign money flowing into targeted markets for the direct purpose of purchasing real estate. Not cheap real estate but trophy properties. Usually when people get angry about the money flowing into some of these communities there is an underlying perception that they are being priced out. There is certainly a factor driving home prices up but are you going to buy that $1 million home when it hits $800,000? Most don’t have the funds to purchase $700,000 crap shacks let alone these trophy properties. A few readers sent over the data on Irvine new home sales where a new community sold roughly 80 percent of its properties to what appears to be foreign buyers.

The Federal Reserve's war on the middle class: California edition.