Frequently Asked Questions

Homes in Irvine went into escrow in a median of 29 days from the day they were listed over the last twelve months, across 2,056 closed sales. Those homes closed at a median of 96.4% of their original asking price.

Timeline is driven mostly by price positioning and condition rather than by season. The 96.4% figure is the more useful of the two numbers for a seller: it means the typical Irvine home sold slightly under its first asking price, so homes priced correctly at launch tend to move inside a month, and homes that need a price correction absorb most of the extra time.

Sellers in Irvine typically pay their listing brokerage's commission, escrow and title fees, an Orange County documentary transfer tax of $1.10 per $1,000 of sale price, an HOA document and demand fee, and any negotiated buyer credits. Irvine levies no additional city transfer tax, so the county rate is the whole transfer tax.

On Irvine's median close price of $1,510,000, the documentary transfer tax comes to roughly $1,661. Since the 2024 NAR settlement changes, buyer-agent compensation is negotiated separately rather than assumed, so total seller cost varies more than it used to. HOA document and demand fees in Irvine's association communities usually add a few hundred dollars.

Almost every Irvine home carries an HOA: 1,964 of the 2,056 homes sold in the last twelve months had an association fee, a median of $251 per month. What surprises buyers is the second fee — 762 of those homes, about 37%, carry a second association assessment on top of the first, at a median of $193 per month.

For a home with both, that is roughly $444 per month in association dues before any Mello-Roos special tax. When you compare two Irvine homes, ask specifically whether there is a master association and a sub-association, because a single quoted HOA number often covers only one of the two.

Mello-Roos is a special tax levied by a Community Facilities District to fund local infrastructure and schools. It is billed on your annual property tax statement in addition to the base rate, so it does not appear in the HOA figure and is easy to miss when comparing two otherwise similar homes.

Two things matter more than the dollar amount. Mello-Roos has a defined term rather than running in perpetuity, so the number of years remaining is part of what you are buying. And the amount is set per Community Facilities District, not per city, so it varies between Irvine villages and even between phases of the same village. Ask for the specific CFD number and its payoff schedule on any property you are considering — that document is the only reliable source, and we will pull it for you.

Orchard Hills is one of Irvine's newest master-planned villages, built from 2014 onward and positioned at the top of the city's price range. Across the 70 Orchard Hills resales recorded in the California Regional MLS since 2014, the median close price is $2,360,000 against $1,510,000 for Irvine as a whole, and the median time from listing to accepted offer is 37 days.

Because the village is young, very few homes have resold yet — only a handful in any given year — so village-level averages move sharply from one year to the next and citywide figures are the steadier guide. That scarcity is also why community-level experience matters more here than citywide sales volume when you are choosing an agent.

Lee Liu Vu Real Estate Group is a Compass-affiliated team specializing in the Orchard Hills community of Irvine, led by Veronica Lee (DRE #01165633), licensed since 1993, and her daughter Glara Lee (DRE #01938180). Across the four agents on the team, the California Regional MLS records 559 closed home sales totaling more than $533 million. The team is a RealTrends Verified Team from 2016 to 2025, and ranks in the top 1.5% of REALTORS® nationally by RealTrends, 2000 to 2025. Veronica Lee has been a RealTrends Verified Agent since 2000, and Glara Lee has been a RealTrends Verified Agent since 2016; Glara was also named to the South OC Real Producers Top 500 from 2019 to 2025.

When you compare agents in Orchard Hills specifically, ask three things: how many transactions they have closed inside the village rather than in Irvine broadly, whether they have represented both the detached-home and attached product, and whether they can speak to the HOA and Mello-Roos structure phase by phase. Because so few Orchard Hills homes resell each year, direct experience in the village is genuinely scarce.

Nearly all of Irvine is served by Irvine Unified School District, which is consistently among the highest-performing districts in California — but not all of it. Over the last 36 months of recorded sales, 5,052 Irvine home sales listed Irvine Unified as the high school district, while 401 listed Tustin Unified, 397 listed Santa Ana Unified and 181 listed Saddleback Valley Unified. That puts roughly one in six Irvine sales outside Irvine Unified.

So the useful question is not which district but which attendance area, and the city on the mailing address will not tell you. Attendance boundaries are also redrawn as new villages come online, so verify the current assignment with the district for the exact address rather than relying on a listing sheet. In Tustin the split runs the other way: 1,254 sales in Tustin Unified against 55 in Irvine Unified.

Yes. Veronica Lee works with clients in Korean, Amy Liu in Mandarin, and Nicole Vu in Vietnamese, all in addition to English.

Amy Liu is also reachable on WeChat and LINE at @AmyLiuHomes for buyers overseas, and Nicole Vu gives Orange County's Vietnamese-speaking buyers and sellers direct access to an agent in their own language rather than through an interpreter.

The median Irvine home closed at $1,510,000 over the last twelve months across 2,056 sales. Newer construction runs higher: homes built in 2010 or later closed at a median of $1,700,000, and Orchard Hills resales sit at a median of $2,360,000.

A median is a starting point, not a valuation. Price in Irvine turns on village, attendance area, whether Mello-Roos applies and how many years remain on it, lot position, and condition relative to the newer inventory a buyer is comparing against. Call us at (949) 241-2596 for a comparative market analysis on your specific address.

Yes. Amy Liu (DRE #01931780) handles leasing and rental representation for the team, working with owners of investment and second properties in Irvine and Tustin.

Irvine's lease market moves considerably faster than its sale market, so owners deciding between selling and holding should ask for both a sale valuation and a lease valuation before committing.

The team specializes in the Orchard Hills community of Irvine and works throughout Irvine and greater Orange County, from an office at 1600 Newport Center Drive Suite 250, Newport Beach, CA 92660.

Individual agents carry their own service areas: Nicole Vu transacts across Irvine, Tustin, North Tustin, Newport Beach, Garden Grove, Fountain Valley, and Lake Forest, and Amy Liu covers Irvine and Tustin for both sales and leasing.