Buying a decent house in LA when you're not rich - a pipe dream?

[ryanms3030]

Originally Posted by jm1982

Homes in West L.A were available for around the 300s in 1997. I remember posting about this once and people didn't believe me , but it's true. Hard to find something in West L.A around under about $1.2million or so now.

Unfunded liabilities are a real concern. Pension expenses have skyrocketed relatively recently.
Pension costs are now 20% of the general fund.

I moved here 10 years ago and my friends rented a 3 bedroom house in Santa Monica walking distance to the beach for $1800. Try doing that today. Another had a 1 bedroom luxury apartment that was literally on the beach in SM for $1500/mo. Had some other friends slumming it in Venice with even better deals.

[victorhernandez]

Originally Posted by jm1982

Homes in West L.A were available for around the 300s in 1997. I remember posting about this once and people didn't believe me , but it's true. Hard to find something in West L.A around under about $1.2million or so now.

Unfunded liabilities are a real concern. Pension expenses have skyrocketed relatively recently.
Pension costs are now 20% of the general fund.

How about the wages back then? Weren't they lower as well?

[ryanms3030]

Originally Posted by victorhernandez

How about the wages back then? Weren't they lower as well?

Unfortunately wages in LA haven't gone up half as fast as housing cost. We are paying almost SF/NYC housing costs now and making 50% of the average wage in those cities

[jm1982]

Originally Posted by ryanms3030

I moved here 10 years ago and my friends rented a 3 bedroom house in Santa Monica walking distance to the beach for $1800. Try doing that today. Another had a 1 bedroom luxury apartment that was literally on the beach in SM for $1500/mo. Had some other friends slumming it in Venice with even better deals.

Wow yeah can't imagine what a 3bed house would cost in rent now in Santa Monica .

It was just not really as big a deal to live in nicer areas like that back in the day .

[jm1982]

Originally Posted by victorhernandez

How about the wages back then? Weren't they lower as well?

Wages were lower , but the economy was actually strong due to the tech bubble .
People were making money with internet stocks and day trading .
Housing has definitely gone up a lot more than wages .

[BayAreaHillbilly]

Originally Posted by sendmorecops

So, like a lot of people, I would like to move to the greater Los Angeles area. I'm 36, married, no kids but we have two dogs. I work remotely, so my job will come with me. We absolutely would not move until my husband has a job secured.

I know that housing is expensive, and being from Illinois it's hard for me to get past the sticker shock. So I want to know from people who live there and have bought a house/could buy a house: how much do you actually need to make to afford to buy a house in a decent neighborhood/suburb? I know to expect smaller houses with smaller yards, all I need is a back yard big enough for my dogs to poop in, and at least two bedrooms because like I said, I work from home. Right now our combined gross income is ~100k, if he finds a position equal to what he's doing here, his income will go up, but mine won't since i'll be taking the job with me.

Also, where would you actually buy a house? If my husband is looking for a job, obviously it would be better for him to apply to jobs that are semi-close to where we would want to live. We don't drink and don't care about nightlife, currently I live in the middle of nowhere so I have thoughts like, "It would be nice to live within an hour of a Whole Foods.", so i'm not really set on anything except not getting stabbed.

There are barely any suburbs of the type you are no doubt familiar with, in our coastal urban megacities. Places like that are limited to parts of BH, WLA, and equivalents here in the Bay Area etc. Our "suburbs" are simply overflow from the main cities which are themselves a mixture of urban and "less urban" (typically sprawl that grew out from the old street car suburbs of the early 20th Century).

On top of that, with land prices being what they are meanwhile home most improvements are negative ROI due to contractor gauging coupled with generally overpriced everything, there is very little incentive for us homeowners to create wonderful up to date homes. People who do that are either caught up in keeping up with the Joneses or are so aesthetically driven they don't look at the ROI.

There you have it, welcome to (coastal) California.

[BayAreaHillbilly]

Originally Posted by ryanms3030

I would imagine IT. Most bloggers don't even make $100/month. There are a lot of IT jobs that can be done remote. The only downside is that they can also be done remote by someone in India who will work for $5/hr

Plus some companies no longer invest in office space. Easier and much, much cheaper to set a person up with laptop, company smart phone and VOIP.

[jm1982]

Originally Posted by BayAreaHillbilly

Plus some companies no longer invest in office space. Easier and much, much cheaper to set a person up with laptop, company smart phone and VOIP.

I imagine eventually a lot of office .. and probably retail space (kmart ,sears ) will be repurposed as housing mixed in places like L.A .

Example here of 2 developments in the works in Panorama City

Faded Panorama City neighborhood set to get two mixed-use developments

Tons of crappy little strip centers around the area too on Roscoe blvd , Van Nuys blvd etc .

[Western Urbanite]

Its possible to find places like this, but they're in outlying areas. You should really consider something more urban (*cough cough a condo/townhouse with one bedroom and no yard*.)

What I found:
Long Beach:
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1...21233705_zpid/
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1...21233075_zpid/

Eagle Rock/Highland Park:
https://www.zillow.com/homedetails/1...20772719_zpid/