Looking for a house within 50K-150K price range

[Dub D]

Thats a lie. I just drove to Pasadena from Rialto, took me about 40 minutes at 6 pm. Unless you are driving 80 the entire time and your destination is right off the freeway, its not impossible. Traveling in LA takes 15 minutes by its own.

Victorville to LA = roughly 85 miles
Palmdale to LA = roughly 63 miles

Two biggest cities in the High Desert. Victorville, you have to be traveling at least 90 miles the entire time to make it to LA in an hour. Enjoy that ride.

Palmdale is much closer but that ride is mostly uphill from LA to High Desert and there is usually some type of traffic unless you are driving after midnight and before 5am...that is unless there is construction which that portion of the 5 is known for.

More importantly, the word "desert" is literally the exact opposite of being near a beach in this portion of the world.

[xani]

Originally Posted by ruskyline

if you don't have more than 1 min just read the last paragraph, otherwise read the whole dam story :]

hi all, I'm from Glendale CA single guy who is working on his Civil Engineering masters. i already got few job offers one was 40K, 45K and 47K but i rejected all of them because i wanted to first finish school and then go to work.

so now im thinking about getting out of Glendale because here everything is dam expencive! if you are an engineer YOU NEED to drive the nice BMW or Mercedes otherwise people will look down on you, you have to buy a house around mountain area which is darn expensive, you got to weal all Louis Vitan or Gucci. basically the average person in here has a 400K house, drives a beemer or benz and wears over 300$ cloths.

i hate this stupid lifestyle in here. everyone is always try to impress their neighbors. i don't think the purpose of life is to look wealthy rather than be it. i'd much rather invest all that money in stock market, buy gold and few apartments and increase my asset than buy items that will loose 20% of their value as soon as i purchase them.

so i'm wondering is there any area in SoCal that i can buy house for under 150K? it would be great if they are less than an hour away from LA and from the Beach..
I also want this city to be safe of course

THANK YOU SO MUCH!!

Totally agree with you about Glendale. People who're telling you here that you worry too much about what others are thinking, either are offended Glendale residents or never been to Glendale and have no idea what they're talking about.

Yes, you can buy a house for this price range in Riverside and San Bernardino Counties, you need to go to Trulia website and use search by county, setting your price range. If you want a nicer area, this will be a house that needs some work, most likely. Make sure you filter out mobile homes and go with single family home with lot size more than 0.2.
You will see that quite a bit of houses are available to chose from.
As to being one hour from beaches--this'd depend on time of the day, not in traffic, obviously.

[xani]

Originally Posted by Dub D

To answer the OP question, nope. No way you can buy a house for that price and be within an hour of any beach or LA during peak times. Possibly a townhouse or a condo but many of those have a huge HOA fee which equals more than a 150k mortgage. I looked into it in OC and the HOA's fees equaled about an extra 35k on the mortgage. Real BS.

HOA fees are not that bad. Plenty of condos have low HOA fees from $150 to $300 a month. If you had a house, you'd end up paying for insurance, maintenance and repairs just as much, ultimately, especially if you wanted the safety of the gated community condo, plus some people enjoy having a gym or pool on the property.

It's easy to buy a nice townhouse for the price range listed by the poster (I'm on the same budget)--provided you got cash or can get a loan (not so easy now). As to houses--just do searches on sites like Zillow, Trulia, MLS, and get in touch with local real estate agents, start talking to them.

And you definitely don't have to go as far as High desert/Palmdale/Victorville, that's way too far. You can do Riverside and SB county areas that are close to LA. There's also tons of cheap houses in Palm Springs, which is a beatuful area but too far away. And remember, more foreclosures are coming in 2011, so prices will go further down.