Living in LA - Tell me your favorite area and why

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Yeah op here - deal with Encino is found a very cool modernist similar to A Quincy Jones design house that's been completely updated and is awesome would be over twice as much in Brentwood - we were not planning on looking there but we wntualku will live there part time but not be working in LA so commute, schools etc not a big deal.

You'll just have to check out the house and see if you like the area. It would probably be 4x as much in Brentwood.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our family has a place in Inglewood. We love it. It's been in our family since the late 40's. While the neighborhood around it is kind of sketchy, it's close to the airport and the beach, and the 405 is like half a mile away. We've rebuilt the home that was on site about 10 years ago, and use this place as an AirBNB host site and we stay there when we're in LA. There's a wall all the way around it, and it's like a private compound.

The property is HUGE (by LA standards) almost 7 acres, and has 3 wells that are yielding almost 11 barrels of LSC daily. The oil revenue alone has put 9 kids through college since the 60's

Everyone should own an oil well. It's like a license to print money. And when the barrel price falls below your desired profit point, you just turn it off and wait for the price to come back up. The oil will still be there!

Holy sh#t, that is nuts. I'm originally from Long Beach, so many questions for you. I had no idea people were privately pumping oil! I assumed all the mineral rights were owned by large companies.
-Who installed the equipment and how much did it cost?
-Where the hell does one even have 7 acres in Inglewood?!?

Kudos to your family. Talk about a smart investment!!!

It's near Florence and La Brea. Grandfather bought it when he left the Navy and started working for the airport. There was almost nothing there back then, there were still farms and fields all over the place. The mineral rights were easy, since ARCO considered the wells "panned out", meaning they weren't pumping enough oil to be worth the trouble of keeping the pumpjacks going. Hillcrest-Beverly has 40-some years left on a 99 year exclusive purchase contract to truck the pumped oil away a couple times a month. Some years it's almost not enough to be worth the fuss, other years it's pretty great. We've only "lost" money on it a few times, and back when oil was $150+ a barrel, it was making us almost $300,000 annually. Not bad for three little holes that are too small for anyone to be interested in, lol. The neighborhood is not great. Everyone still talks about the riots, but nothing happened to us. The area is starting to gentrify, but I don't know if it'll ever be a place worth living full time in. The main feature is being next ot the airport and the freeway, so it's a great spot if you're passing through. I can't ever see it being worth the trouble of pulling the wells and subdividing the lot, because the environmental rules are so draconian about cleaning up the site after the wells are closed. We'd have to truck away hundreds of loads of dirt and replace them with "clean" dirt in order to meet the rules. So we'll just keep it in the family for now, it'll be my kids/grandkids problem one day, haha.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Yeah op here - deal with Encino is found a very cool modernist similar to A Quincy Jones design house that's been completely updated and is awesome would be over twice as much in Brentwood - we were not planning on looking there but we wntualku will live there part time but not be working in LA so commute, schools etc not a big deal.

You'll just have to check out the house and see if you like the area. It would probably be 4x as much in Brentwood.

Yeah we love the house great indoor outdoor spac pool etc and way more room for guest and our kids and family down the road we are five years from bring empty nesters and we have one child wanting to live in la

[Anonymous]

Being sorry for typos

[Anonymous]

Pasadena

The rest sucks.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:Our family has a place in Inglewood. We love it. It's been in our family since the late 40's. While the neighborhood around it is kind of sketchy, it's close to the airport and the beach, and the 405 is like half a mile away. We've rebuilt the home that was on site about 10 years ago, and use this place as an AirBNB host site and we stay there when we're in LA. There's a wall all the way around it, and it's like a private compound.

The property is HUGE (by LA standards) almost 7 acres, and has 3 wells that are yielding almost 11 barrels of LSC daily. The oil revenue alone has put 9 kids through college since the 60's

Everyone should own an oil well. It's like a license to print money. And when the barrel price falls below your desired profit point, you just turn it off and wait for the price to come back up. The oil will still be there!

Holy sh#t, that is nuts. I'm originally from Long Beach, so many questions for you. I had no idea people were privately pumping oil! I assumed all the mineral rights were owned by large companies.
-Who installed the equipment and how much did it cost?
-Where the hell does one even have 7 acres in Inglewood?!?

Kudos to your family. Talk about a smart investment!!!

It's near Florence and La Brea. Grandfather bought it when he left the Navy and started working for the airport. There was almost nothing there back then, there were still farms and fields all over the place. The mineral rights were easy, since ARCO considered the wells "panned out", meaning they weren't pumping enough oil to be worth the trouble of keeping the pumpjacks going. Hillcrest-Beverly has 40-some years left on a 99 year exclusive purchase contract to truck the pumped oil away a couple times a month. Some years it's almost not enough to be worth the fuss, other years it's pretty great. We've only "lost" money on it a few times, and back when oil was $150+ a barrel, it was making us almost $300,000 annually. Not bad for three little holes that are too small for anyone to be interested in, lol. The neighborhood is not great. Everyone still talks about the riots, but nothing happened to us. The area is starting to gentrify, but I don't know if it'll ever be a place worth living full time in. The main feature is being next ot the airport and the freeway, so it's a great spot if you're passing through. I can't ever see it being worth the trouble of pulling the wells and subdividing the lot, because the environmental rules are so draconian about cleaning up the site after the wells are closed. We'd have to truck away hundreds of loads of dirt and replace them with "clean" dirt in order to meet the rules. So we'll just keep it in the family for now, it'll be my kids/grandkids problem one day, haha.

Very cool story (at least to me). I grew up running around the oil pumps in Long Beach and Signal Hill. Thank you for following up and sharing!

[Anonymous]

Post listings!

[Anonymous]

https://m.trulia.com/property/3246530715-4311-Noeline-Ave-Encino-CA-91436

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Pasadena

The rest sucks.

I agree!! Great city-But it's super hot in the summer.

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:https://m.trulia.com/property/3246530715-4311-Noeline-Ave-Encino-CA-91436

Awesome house!!1

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:https://m.trulia.com/property/3246530715-4311-Noeline-Ave-Encino-CA-91436

wow

this is the house you're buying OP?

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:

Anonymous wrote:https://m.trulia.com/property/3246530715-4311-Noeline-Ave-Encino-CA-91436

wow

this is the house you're buying OP?

That's beautiful! I still wouldn't want to live in Encino.

OP, since this is essentially going to be a vacation/retirement home, you have to decide what is important to you in terms of lifestyle and location. If this house is in your budget, clearly you can live anywhere in the LA area. Do you want to be at the beach or more in the center of things. Do you want to be close to outdoor recreation (hiking, mountains, lakes) or is your priority theater, museums, shopping? When you get away for a weekend, would you want to drive up to Santa Barbara to down to San Diego or are you a Palm Springs person? Be aware that the further inland you get, generally the hotter it is.

A city person who looks forward to regularly going to the Hollywood Bowl, going to museums, I'd lean toward Pasadena
https://www.trulia.com/property/1044891-645-S-San-Rafael-Ave-Pasadena-CA-91105

Want to be at the beach? Malibu if you want to be away from things a bit, Santa Monica/Marina del Rey/Venice are busier. If you are drawn to regularly visiting San Diego, you might want to be in one of the more southern communities.

If you are an outdoorsy person who is more inclined to weekend in Santa Barbara, want lots of space, and not be in the hustle and bustle of the city, look in Calabasas or maybe Lake Sherwood:
https://www.trulia.com/property/3231776663-20-Lower-Lake-Rd-Lake-Sherwood-CA-91361
https://www.trulia.com/property/38862052-5602-Winton-Ct-Calabasas-CA-91302

Personally, I grew up in Westlake Village (between Calabasas and Lake Sherwood) and love that area but I know for a lot of people it's too much of an exurb. We rarely drove into LA for things but that was fine because we'd rather spend the weekend hiking and my dad liked the local golf course.

[Anonymous]

San Marino, or Los Alamitos.

[Anonymous]

LA poster here- Stay on the west side!! I live in Sherman oaks (next to encino) and 6 months of the year it's a raging inferno. It's so hot in the valley, I wish I could afford to leave!!

[Anonymous]

Anonymous wrote:Pasadena

The rest sucks.

I like Pasadena and when we lived in LA we visited it often (Huntington) but its 45 mins from the beach which is a long ride.

And it gets REALLY hot like 10+ degrees hotter than near the coast.

Also there is only one good school district, South Pasadena which is about 50% US Asian. Which is great if you're Asian but you will feel out of place if you're not there and multi lingual. And young. The families up in Pasadena skew younger, whereas the Palisades, Santa Monica, Brentwood etc are all a little older (having kids in 30s and 40s instead of 20s).