A friend of mine called me last night to talk to me about a business proposal. She wanted to get together a pair of business partners (me being one and a Columbia Law grad being the other) to buy a rental property home in Irvine CA. The plan is for each of us to put up 35K up front with monthly payments around $800 to buy a 500K home. To be honest, I was incredulous that a home in Irvine would cost $500K. I mean, this isn't the Bay Area. When I was in college, I looked into buying a 2 bedroom condo in Irvine and I found out it would cost about $175K... and a house would go for about 240K but apparently, the housing prices in Irvine have gone up significantly as dot-comers who were up in the Bay Area have moved down to Irvine. Yikes.