Living in the San Fernando Valley
Can anyone give me some insight into what it's like to live in the San Fernando Valley, near Los Angeles? My husband has a potential job opportunity in West Hills. As much as we love it here, we're actively looking to move out of the Bay Area because we can't afford to buy a house here and that's important to us as we start our family. Our salaries there would probably be about the same as they are here. We want to live someplace where we can buy a house (less than 500k). We're also looking for somewhere that has a lower cost of living, good public schools, is liberal, diverse (racially, economically), has walkable neighborhoods, a sense of community, and locally owned shops and restaurants. Can we find this there? My pre-conceived notions about the area are that it's huge and generic.
Northridge looks like it might have some potential, but what would the commute to West Hills be like? Are there any other areas we could target?
Thanks for any insight you can provide into this area!
Parent Replies
The stereotypes are useless, ignore them. I lived 20 years in LA after 9 years in Berkeley. It seems generic from the freeways, but it's phenomenally diverse (more so than the Bay Area). I lived closer to downtown, in hipster neighborhoods with lots of character, but my parents lived (20 years ago) in Chatsworth (in the SF Valley), which still had horse ranches.
You'll enjoy living in Los Angeles if you find the right village/neighborhood for you AND it's a reasonable drive to work. Generally the SF valley is thought of as being more white, more suburban, more affluent, and conservative than the rest of LA, but that's a very broad generalization. LA is Democratic and liberal, so "conservative" there is like "moderate" everywhere else.
There are a lot of online resources to start with: Neighborhood Scout, City-Data.com, and Area Vibes are the ones I know best:
For traffic, use Google maps as a guide.
Los Angeles has a bunch of neighborhood councils, also a good way to get a feel for potential neighborhoods. Here's the map so you can see which council covers which neighborhood, and then look at the neighborhood council websites:
You can search for properties using Redfin, Trulia, etc. but be aware a lot of these websites are not always up-to-date (that's especially true for Zillow).
A realtor will have more up to date info and is likely to know neighborhoods better. Interview some agents, check websites. I found houses below $500,000 in West Hills and Northridge at http://www.judygraff.com/ under Properties>Property Search. I don't know if Ms. Graff works in that area, but if not, she may be able to refer you to someone who can.