Commute .. Irvine'ish area to Downtown LA -- Non-rush hour times? (Santa Ana: second mortgage, houses)

[Fantasm]

Hi,

I live in Woodland Hills now and tired of the lack of newer housing at an affordable rate or a good neighborhood.
A nice house, surrounded by lower end houses, is not a nice house.
Everything I can find in LA area is old and over priced.

OC, to my surprise (as there's all that hyper about the 'OC') actually has nice, newer houses for affordable prices... I'm looking for a house, with a small yard, 2car+ garage, and possibly a pool for around $3k/month~

I work in downtown LA but I don't really leave my house until 10-11AM'ish.
If I dont leave DT LA by 3.30PM, I stay until 7PM at least.

What do you imagine my commute will be like? I tried searching but couldn't find anything specific to what I'm asking.

Thanks guys! Much appreciated!

[Fantasm]

BTW, I saw that there are some realtors on the board. If you have any houses you want to show me, feel free to PM me.

[EscapeCalifornia]

With the construction of the 5, there's no such thing as non rush hour. You could take the 405 to the 110 but its longer. Count on an hour if you get lucky and there's no accidents or any other random slowness.

[Coldjensens]

I commuted from Santa Ana to LA with some regularity for a couple of years. Leaving after 10 is hit and miss. What you need to do is to leave before 6 a.m.

After 10 you should leave yourself 1.5 hours to be reasonably sure that you will arrive on time. During rush hour I had to leave 2.5 hours. Usually that was too much, but all too often it was barely enough.

Better bet - take the train. You can work, read the paper or socialize instead of driving. You will even make some new friends.

[Charles]

Originally Posted by Fantasm

What do you imagine my commute will be like? I tried searching but couldn't find anything specific to what I'm asking.

Can't help you too much....I'd just suggest checking out Sigalert.com - Personalized Traffic Reports during the times you might be driving.

Are you dead set against not living closer to work?

[Fantasm]

Is there an area that has newer housing closer to DT? I don't know LA that well, only moved here about 8 months ago.

[OCinvestor]

I've gotten from Irvine to the staples center in 1 hour in medium - light traffic.

There also always Metro Link into union station, about 45-50 minute from the Irvine transportation station.

[slang75]

Originally Posted by OCinvestor

I've gotten from Irvine to the staples center in 1 hour in medium - light traffic.

There also always Metro Link into union station, about 45-50 minute from the Irvine transportation station.

The Metrolink takes 1 hour and 5 minutes on the train alone. It takes me 1 hour 40 minutes to commute by train on a normal day. Driving at any time is not worth it. Gas cost alone will like a second mortgage.

We are going the opposite way and moving to LA county. Look around LA. There are great communities for raising families or just living a laid back life. Go to the LA message board and ask around.

Irvine is not worth that commute. Not even if it was a great as people say....which it's not.

[kturbe]

Charles has a great suggestion, track it for a while to give you an idea. I went up to Thousand Oaks on Friday, left South OC at 12:30 pm and got to Thousand Oaks at 3:15 pm. The traffic was crazy - South OC fine, 101 pass the 405 fine, everything else ughhh.

Came back Sunday at 8:30 am and got back to town by 10:00am.

Ya, just never know.......