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It's not that bad if you are making decent money.

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What would you consider decent money for that area? I have a job offer for $95K + bonuses and the fianc and myself are considering relocating. It's in Huntington Beach and primarily work from home.

Could we be pretty comfortable on ~130-140K?

I spent at least 80 hours of research on moving from TX to Southern California. For my situation I determined that there was no way I would consider moving to the area for under $150k. I have 2 children so my situation could be different from hours. I turned down $140k and they raised it to my bare minimum....and I accepted.

I did a cost of living comparison in excel that I don't mind sharing with you if you want. Like I said, I spent a ton of time gathering data. As an example of the cost of living change, I drove a car out here this weekend. I paid $2.25 in Tx, $2.60 in Az and $3.47 a gallon in SoCal. For housing, I will be giving up 1,700 sf, .15 acres, home ownership as I will be renting due to the signicant prices....and I will be paying $800-1,000 more a month.

Yeah any information would be great.

My situation is a little different from yours in that we have no kids. My new job would also primarily be work from home, so I would save money there as well.

Expect rent to be 2.5-3.0k a month easily. Expect everything else to be 20-25% more expensive than texas. That should be easy to figure out if you can afford it.

Bumping this thread as it appears we will be moving to Orange County from our current location outside of Philly this summer.

Through the ever joyous internet search, we seem to be narrowing our choices to Huntington Beach or Irvine. We understand that those are quite different from each other, but will need more feedback and a visit to help determine the better location for us.

We have a 3 year old son, and 7 year old daughter and will be renting for the first year for sure. I was trying to keep the budget near $3,500/mo but realize that we will most likely end up closer to $4K.

Any advice would be great. My office location sucks (Santa Fe Springs) but I won't be in the office everyday so the location of the housing is more important for family life than it is for the commute. I am already used to a hour + commute now, and I will be traveling regionally between CA, AZ, CO, and UT quite a bit anyway.

I am piggybacking a quick trip to CO next week so I can spend Friday/Saturday in the area before I bring the wife out for the real house hunting trip later this month.

We are house-hunting (rental) right now in Huntington Beach, CA in addition to a few other areas. It's a crazy market. We removed Irvine from our list and will probably soon remove Huntington Beach. I will be looking at a couple of homes in Huntington Beach on Sunday. It's tough....the good homes that are reasonable go fast and have 15 plus applications on the table that you have to compete against. In many cases, the homes are gone before you can view them. We put our app in on a house a few days ago in another area....and were beat out by somebody willing to sign a 3 year lease.

Advice:
1) Don't believe the story that you have to pay an agent $750-850 a day for their services. There are agents out there that will do it for free and get money from the landlord. Some landlords won't work with agents but we haven't ran into that much. Some agents wanting to charge you will tell you different and scare you.
2) Put together a letter about your family to present.
3) Have good credit
4) You are correct that if you want something that is nice in HB, you're going to pay close to $4k or above.
5) If you're serious about HB, and you have kids, the Huntington Harbor area is probably where you'll want to focus on.
6) Get ready to be shocked in Huntington Beach....(other than Huntington Harbor) you drive to these $4k/month homes and you're driving through areas that don't make you think it should be that expensive...then there is a little pocket of nice homes. **This is the main reason we are probably removing HB from our search. Just didn't like the surrounding areas.
7) We removed Irvine from our list. Schools seem to be too competitive and it just didn't seem to be a fit for us coming from TX. There is a ton of home rental availability though. However, they all look the same for the most part.
8) We have heard that Yorba Linda is a good area. You can find rentals for $3k to $3.5k that are decent size. It would be "relatively" close to Santa Fe Springs. However, given that I'm brand new to this area, I' only giving you what I hear...and am not real sure about anything. We are more focused on South County...so Yorba Linda isn't on our list (right now).


If you want a very nice real estate agent who has worked hard for us in the HB area, let me know and I'll send you her contact information. I will be looking at homes with her tomorrow.

Please send the info my way, we are still waiting for the relo company to provide a local recommendation, so I will take one here.

email is my username at mac dot com

If you have removed HB and Irvine from your list, where are you looking? There are some areas of Irvine we are eliminating, but if we can find something near Bonita Canyon Elem (Southern Irvine) it seemed like a decent fit.

We did just experience the quick turnaround on a house in HB we wanted to see. I was the second person to contact the owner, and she did a quick "interview" on the phone. She did seem interested, but said there was one family ahead of us; it was gone by that afternoon. It was on the east side of HB and fed into Ralph Hawes Elem.

I will put together a letter that is not something I had considered, but after our experience and your recommendation it seems to make sense. Other than timing, I think we are positioned well; we are on a Corporate Relo, good credit, willing to sign a multi-year lease, and have flexibility on timing (other than needing to get a permanent address for school registration purposes).

Thanks for your help.

Email sent.

We have expanded our search further out which probably won't work for you due to your work location. Rancho Santa margarita area.

Moving to studio city area next month!

I don't think anyone lives in LA, they just drive around all day, every day. The traffic jam is from Bakersfield to San Diego, 24/7/365.

Hows the commute from downtown LA to say Culver City?

Not bad at all. Go to google and use the typica traffic feature. I'd say 20 mins tops.

Might as well drop a reply on this thread as I am moving to West LA next week.

Congrats. Near which intersection of area?

Westchester, just north of the airport. A couple of blocks east of the city border with Playa Del Rey.

Awesome spot. Live and work there in area and you won't go east of the 405 often. Won't be many days over 80 degrees each year in that spot. It isn't too expensive there either.

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Awesome spot. Live and work there in area and you won't go east of the 405 often. Won't be many days over 80 degrees each year in that spot. It isn't too expensive there either.

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Yup, the office is also near the airport, so less than a 10 minute commute with no freeways. I agree that I probably won't venture east of the 405 very much except to play poker at Hollywood Park or the Bike. However, as a renter, I think the area is fairly expensive. Perhaps not as pricey as Manhattan Beach or Santa Monica, but it is more than I pay now living in the East Bay area of NorCal. Still, it's a fairly new complex and I will be close to work, the airport, and the beach, and as you said, the weather is great, so I guess I am getting what I am paying for.

I've learned there always is a lot of demand to be west of the 405. It is where everyone wants to be. It will be cheaper there than the areas you mentioned (Hermosa/Manhattan Beach/Santa Monica). A little pocket on the west side that gets overlooked I guess.

I guess cheaper is all relative, but since you are coming from CA already, it won't be too much of a shock. There are pockets around there with houses you can buy for less than $1.5 million. Cough cough!

Are rents there closer to $3 a foot?

The unit I rented came out to $3.50 per square foot, which is about market price.