Angelica Maciel used to drive through the oak-shaded streets of Santa Ana wondering if she'd ever be able to buy one of the charming little bungalows she so admired.
But the real estate frenzy had overtaken even this hardscrabble Orange County city, and prices kept going up.
Not any more.
Last month Maciel paid a bit under $270,000 for a two-bedroom, 910-square-foot house. It had previously sold for $504,000 in 2006 and was foreclosed upon in July.
All told, 357 homes in Santa Ana were in escrow in October, almost 10 times the volume of a year ago.
They're selling fast because they're cheap. They're cheap because there have been so many foreclosures.
About 80% of houses for sale at the end of October in the city had been foreclosed upon, were in default or were listed for sale at less than their mortgage amount -- more than any other city in Orange County, according to an analysis by broker Steven Thomas.
But as one of the areas hardest hit by foreclosures, this heavily Latino, blue-collar town is leading a bittersweet boomlet, as people previously priced out of the market move into homes that others have been forced to leave.
There's still plenty of suffering, and more on the horizon. An additional 261 Santa Ana houses went into default or were foreclosed upon last month, according to ForeclosureRadar, a seller of default data.
Santa Ana, however, has long been a glass-half-full kind of place. Surrounded by some of the nation's wealthiest communities, Santa Ana may be viewed as a liability by some of its well-heeled Orange County neighbors. But for many of its residents, the town is the first rung in their climb to upward mobility.
A densely populated, older community, Santa Ana did not have space for the vast tracts of new housing developments that now lie vacant in the Inland Empire. As a result, the city does not have many neighborhoods with long rows of empty houses with brown lawns and broken windows.
Instead, many foreclosed houses are often tucked among occupied homes on busy streets, which has made Santa Ana more attractive to home buyers seeking lower prices but stable communities.
Cautious renters who waited out the real estate bubble are now buying homes they couldn't, or wouldn't, touch two years ago.
Graphic artist Jim Lee, 41, thought Santa Ana's fledgling loft district would be a good place to set up an office and live, but the prices when he was looking three years ago just seemed too high.
