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Hey everyone,

My parents are moving from Houston to the LA-area and they are still looking for a house to rent. I was wondering if any of you guys had any idea's on which area's are interesting/ to be avoided. My dad will be working in Irvine, SE of LA in Orange County if I'm not mistaken. One of their problems with living in Kingwood, a 45 min drive from Houston proper was that there was never very much to do. Now they would rather live somewhere in between LA and Irvine, so going to LA in the evenings is still possible. From doing some quick searches and looking at Google maps it seems Fullerton and Brea are interesting. The house will at least be partially paid for by the company, so rent is not a huge factor. So, any opinions?

Thanks a lot!

Dana Point, Laguna Niguel, and Laguna Beach are all great places to rent South of Irvine.

Wrong direction.

And also spectacularly expensive, at least LB. 

But so worthit if its iin the price range, my asshole friend sends me pictures from his patio whenever he hears its snowing here :oh_i_see:

Look, if he really wants to go to LA he can take the train, I don't think Metrolink has killed anyone yet this year.   :why_so_serious:

If you're going to live "near LA", you'll be using the highway system (405/605/5/110); it's functional and only busy during rush hours, so pick a nice area and just figure on driving everywhere; it's the lifestyle there.

I used to live in Huntington Beach; relatively cheap apartments for rent, quiet, nice area.  The biggest consideration for people living in the LA area is how far from the beach(es) you are.  I was 5 minutes driving, city streets.  Going south on the Pacific Coast Hwy (PCH) (Newport Beach, Laguna, Dana Point) it's nice but probably expensive, whereas going north (Seal Beach, Long Beach) it's probably less.  Long Beach is a decent-sized city, complete with some tall buildings downtown and a university.

My uncle lives in Palos Verdes Estates (in an apartment, though), and that whole Rolling Hills area (it's a hill) is decent, and continuing north to Redondo and Hermosa Beach.  If you go inland (Carson, for example), it's less so.  There's a shopping area / huge-ass mall in the Redondo / Torrance area.

I know some people who live in San Dimas - that's in the mountains, ok little village, but rather far and HWY 10 is always crowded and accident-happy.  Cheap housing though.

When you say "not much to do", is that for you or your parents, and what types of activities?  You keep saying "LA" and I'm imagining nightlife, dance clubs, bars, stuff like that.  On the other hand, Laguna Beach for example would be more like shopping for art and other quaint little shops, spending your day at the beach or walking up/down perusing beach-front shops.  You also have Disneyland, Hollywood Studios, a bunch of very large zoos, aquariums, museums of art, museums of science, presidential libraries and other stuff like that within driving distance, in several places from San Diego all the way north to Santa Monica.  There's Mt. Wilson observatory (they have several nights where they open their telescope to the public and you can spend hours watching stars).

Also, you can hop in a car and drive for 6 hrs and you're in Vegas.

IMO it doesn't really matter that much where they live in terms of access to things, unless it is very specific things like "Dodger Stadium". It will take an hour to get anywhere regardless, and LA is so spread out that there's going to be something like a downtown of some kind in a reasonable radius of just about anywhere.

South Bay is a pretty decent haul to Irvine, though.

The thing about LA is that most places have some things to do, but you'll almost certainly have to drive significant distances to do many things. No matter where you live. It's a bit like Houston in that way, a very dispersed landscape. I can think of only a few areas where you could pretty much just deal with being there and getting around by bike or foot for almost anything you'd want, including leisure opportunities. Most of those areas are very very expensive to live in.

Newport Beach or Huntington Beach would probably be my first choices if I were working in Irvine and I had a bit of money so that I could be down closer to water. Laguna Beach too, but it's more expensive. If I had the scratch and I didn't mind driving, I might look up towards Modjeska Canyon and environs, but those are big $$$$ houses generally and relatively isolated. Also vulnerable to fire.

Ha, looks like I was wrong about the Metrolinks, apparently is has killed already this year.

One thing to remember, the further away from the Pacific you go, the hotter the general climate. So if you want 72 all year round, stick close to the water.

San Dimas High School football rules!

The missus used to live in Malibu and I've got friends in Pasadena and Brentwood. There's plenty of shit to do in LA, from the previously mentioned trips to Vegas to a run up to Big Bear. Beaches up and down. Anything to get out of LA proper. Still, as everyone has said, get used to driving if you're not.

Thanks for the responses everyone!
Just to make a few things more clear. I'm not moving with them, though I'd like to ;).
My parents are both 50-ish European expats who have been living in Houston for the last three years. They are used to driving around for getting where they want, but a 45 min drive to go to a (nice) pub was a bit too much in Houston. My father is wild about jazz, so some places where they play jazz within driving distance (30 min) would be nice, and my mom would love some more european style shopping opportunities.
My dad also plays the saxophone, so a house is a must. I think their current rent is about $ 2100/month, and they can spend at least as much for their new place. I have no idea if this is a lot or not, but compared to EU-prices that's a lot of money and should be more than enough for a house were two people and occasional guests will stay. Anyway, thanks for all the information!

Ah, 2100 in any of the places I mentioned might get you a two bedroom apartment.

If they are ok with heat, I would suggest looking further inland as prices drop off quite a bit as the temperature goes up.

Out of the frying pan and into the fire.

Yeah, $2,100 will get you about a ~350k loan at 5% for 30 years.  (Do your parents really want a 30 year mortgage?)  That puts you in a nice 4-bedroom or 5-bedroom in Compton, East LA or Inglewood from what I'm seeing on Realtor.com.  :awesome_for_real:

It should be plenty possible to rent a decent house for $2100 around there somewhere.

Being in Irvine and going to LA for something to do... uhm, I'd treat that as "a special occasion" sort of trip, honestly. You want to be near Irvine and have things to do near Irvine. :)

Driving into, through, over, or around LA is a pain, and Irvine is basically the edge of the black hole.

That's about right.

Maybe your dad would enjoy hearing the faux-Dixieland jazz at Disneyland or something.

Though I'm sure there's jazz somewhere in the vicinity that's a bit more interesting. Newport or Laguna, very likely.

The thing is really, don't pay any attention to how far shit looks on the map. Irvine and Downtown LA as the car drives are roughly like Philadelphia and New York City--you can travel between the two when the impulse strikes, but planning to do it a lot would mean you had a lot of money, time and patience.

It helps if you live 'out of phase', the few months I lived in LA I didn't leave the apartment before 8pm, and tried to make sure I was back before 7am.  Life as a night owl in LA is living in an entirely different city.

--Dave

LA is one of the worst fucking cities on Earth.

First of all, that's spot-on.

But Orange County is a little better than the blackhole.  I had a friend that was living in Huntington Beach and commuted to Irvine; he had a 3-bedroom apartment that he shared with a roommate that was about a block from the beach (and he was making maybe $70K a year).  

I think that your parents should be able to have sufficient amusement opportunities in the Orange County area.  I don't remember the name, but there was a pretty cool outdoor mall in that area.  

On the bright side, LA gets approx 3200 hours of sunshine a year.

I'm not going to disagree.  My line for LA is that it isn't a place, it's a condition, and I never want to find myself in that condition again.  If I found myself working in LA, I'd live in an RV on the office parking lot.

--Dave

Do you mean South Coast Plaza, the best mall in America? 

(Also pretty much the home of the Orange County Classic Jazz Festival)  http://www.oc-classicjazz.org/ (http://www.oc-classicjazz.org/)

Long Beach is a gang-infested shithole. Laguna Beach is a pretty cool place, though. There are a few pockets of awesome, but you still have to deal with all the shitty parts and the pockets are extremely expensive.

Our old rule of LA: everything is approximately 45 minutes away.

My personal feelings about LA: I will never live there again, I will never visit. I had some great times there, but the place is a pit. I refer you to this: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=uCEeAn6_QJo

edit: it's also the place where your experiences can range from being propositioned for gay porn, doing drugs with 'rock stars', being held up at shotgunpoint, seeing dead people in the road, seeing a burning car on the way to the corner store, experience riots (I was there during the Rodney King riots), and on more or less a daily basis have helicopters tell you to stay in your house because they're releasing k9 in your area. Seriously, why would your parents want to live in LA? We were paying $1700 for a three bedroom condo in 1990, so good luck with $2100. Our 5 bedroom house in gangland was $1200/mo, though. Then again, that house was raided by the DEA because the landlord had killed a couple people when he burned a motel down with his meth lab, so....San Francisco is a really nice town, and close enough to visit LA if you feel the need.

There are places to live in Southern California that I think are really nice, but basically you'd have to be one of the very few who either exclusively telecommutes or has a very good job that just happens to be right where you live, and the thing is, none of the very good places to live are places where there are very good jobs next door. Living down on the water in Redondo or Torrance is nice. Living in Topanga Canyon or Rustic Canyon is nice. Living further up PCH beyond Malibu (around Pepperdine, say) is nice. Culver City isn't bad as far as slightly inland areas go. I sort of like Pomona/Claremont. Most other places can die in a fire; anything really well inland especially so.

And the real issue with Los Angeles is that it has bred a big population of people who leave because they hate it but go somewhere else and do their damndest to turn wherever they are into Los Angeles.

And you can get a really nice house in Oakland for just under a million bucks.  Well, you could probably get it cheaper now. 

Well, it not like my dad has a choice at this point. And it looks like they won't be living there much longer than a year. Keep the advice coming though. Apparently the current idea is to find a place somewhere in Santa Anna, but they are still looking at all their options.

@Khaldun: Most of those places are at least a one hour drive for my dad, so not really an option. Thanks though!

Your parents will have to really be careful about where they pick.  They may think "Oh this is 5 miles away, this'll take 8 minutes!"..... oh it'll take 15... sometimes 20... sometimes 45 if there's something whacky going on.  I recommend that they definitely go visit and scout the area and then make the morning drive before they choose a place.  They might really regret it if they don't.  The traffic situation is probably much worse than Houston (granted I've never been there before).

Tell your parents to forget LA, Orange County has plenty of culture, clubs and other things to do.

An hour drive is preferable to living in a shithole and paying a half million dollars to do so.

Houston traffic really sucks.  Coming from Kingwood it's possibly the best of all the major highways, but it's really bad.  (Then again, there are parts of Dallas where you have to get over five lanes in the span of 100'...)  I refuse to get on our freeways nowadays.

They shouldn't expect the driving situation to change much though.  It'll be as bad or worse than what they're already used to.

I lived in Long Beach about 10 years ago (admittedly near Belmont Shore instead of near downtown) for 4 years and I didn't see any gang problems or any of that other stuff.  I really enjoyed it there, especially the weather living near the beach.  Of course, I knew enough to be able to avoid the bad areas.  It was a hell of a lot better than Miami.

FWIW, my sister used to live in LA.  She told me she longed for Houston traffic after living there for a couple of months.

I could live in LA, but it would have to be on the beach, or within easy walk/cycle distance…

Could even deal with the smaller space, again, as long as there is beach nearby…

But I have long forgotten what a work commute of >5-10 minutes feels like and I am afraid that accumulated unbearable pain would eventually transform into outright rage.

Perhaps that is why LA is like it is.

There are commutes and there are commutes. I used to commute a half hour, but most of it was driving in the country and I loved it. A half hour of city driving with the retards populating said city is not anywhere near the same thing.

I was living on PCH in a college dorm in Long Beach. Wasn't the worst part of gang-infested hell but I still mostly hated it when I would look up from the naked women.

Even better, tell the parents to skip that entire hell hole of an area and move to San Diego, if they must live in Southern California.

Yeah San Diego is great.

I live in Orange County and know all the surrounding areas really well. If you want to talk about areas PM me and ill give you my AIM.

The short of it is that basically Living in LA and commuting to Irvine will suck. You are looking at 45 minute to 2 hours depending on time of day and location in LA. Southern Orange County is a pretty nice area. Basically draw a line from Irvine to the coast and any area below that is a decent area. Some much more expensive than others.

I went to high school in Laguna Beach and it is a fantastic area. I would move back there if it didnt cost a fucking arm and a leg. The best "bang for your buck" will be in San Clemente or Dana Point. Both decent areas, with San Clemente being sort of the worse area (and cheapest) in southern OC, but constantly getting better. Irvine itself is not horrible, actually its really clean and safe, just soulless.

Yeah, I think that's about right. The problem is that Orange County isn't bad, but it's not bad in some of the ways that Houston is not bad. When I lived in Atlanta, a lot of it sort of reminded me of Southern California, especially Orange County inland. Phoenix is sort of like Southern California, especially inland Orange County. It's a style of urban development that's prevalent in cities that had big growth after 1940, especially in warmer climates. Parts of Johannesburg in South Africa, actually, look like Orange County. Nothing exactly wrong with it, but nothing that gives you a strong sense of place unless you're down on the water or up in the mountains. You could do a lot worse, but also a lot better, and for someone tired of Houston, I don't think there are many options to mix it up except to pay the premium to be down near the water.

The word you're looking for is "Generica" (http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=Generica).  I can go almost anywhere in the country and find the same stores, the same houses, the same architecture and freeway designs.  Most pronounced in cities that got most of their growth after the 70's, but there are pockets (or rings) of it almost everywhere.

Houston and OC are certainly textbook Generica.

--Dave

Please, like Khaldun, you need to include Inland Orange County. The beach cities are pretty awesome and fairly unique.

There's not much you can do with a city built on a plain.  We have to import our hills.

One thing I will give our generic looking highways is thoughtful design.  Exit markings and access are almost universally better than any city I've visited.  We've also gotten rid of almost all the troublesome merges.  Our HOV system could use updating in places (open lane instead of the closed-off we have), but they were designed 25-years ago.

Driving in other big cities can make me crazy.  "Did they just put our exit sign ten feet after the exit, with only 100' of exit lane to merge with?  WTF California?"  [Excerpt from real conversation going to Long Beach convention center.]  Or Dallas' I-45 to I-35 get over five lanes in 100 yards exit during rush hour.  There are some confusing ones in Baton Rouge, too, when just trying to stay on I-10.

Been a few years since I spent any time in the area, but from my experiences-

Anything south of Seal Beach along PCH is wonderful
anything north of Seal Beach along PCH is hit or miss, and much more miss if you go more than about a mile east
Culver City is a shithole
Ditto for Riverside (dear god, the traffic trying to get to or from Palm Springs)
Costa Mesa was pleasant (at least it was a fun place to get drunk)


There is at least one In N Out Burger in Irvine, so what else do you need?

There are houses in decent areas of the City itself going for substantially less than a million bucks right now.  Which I know because I'm doing a refi and am acutely aware of how far in value my house has fallen.   :cry:

Culver City has actually improved a lot recently, tons of new restaurants, some nice developments. But it's quite a ways from Irvine.

Even with that table ??

Damn that sucks.  Hopefully you bought it before the bubble. 

It DOES tie the room together.

During the decline, but not at the bottom.

Well you can bet that in San Francisco it certainly won't stay in that trough for long.  San Francisco is one of the few truly awesome cities in the States. 

I'm not counting on any such recovery in Tucson.   :awesome_for_real:

The housing bubble detonating here really tanked a bunch of neighborhoods, especially those not centrally located. 

My wife's aunt and uncle just bought a place in Scottsdale for almost nothing.  I'm a bit worried they are going to see the surrounding area start to disintegrate a bit, but I don't know exactly where it is in Scottsdale. 

~5-10 years ago, N. Scottsdale was the hub of a lot of economic bustle and startups galore. Big corporations launched IT centers and planted offices. Now, it's eerie as most of the office space is empty -- it's like ghost town mini-malls, though there are still thriving outfits here and there.

And real estate prices have crashed down into reasonable and sane marks, especially compared to Boston / San Francisco / Seattle equivalents.

A big part of Arizona economic engine was simply construction and real estate -- rate of development growth with all the ancillary commercial support organizations -- realtors, titling, insurance, roads, etc.…

The downward dive seems to have halted, and there are still pockets of economic activity -- though one, oddly, is all the hail damage from storms last year that really propped up roofing industry and even brought imported roofers here.

But malaise in metro Phoenix will result in a different look than Detroit. More like a badly filmed Planet of the Apes sequel mini-mall set.