House hunting adventures in LA
Since I relocated here, I am in a continuous house-hunting mode. But during the past month or two, it really picked up speed as my lease is coming to an end.Did I tell you that housing market is crazy around Los Angeles ? Anywhere you can feel an ocean breeze, mind you, I am not talking about ocean view or anything like that, house prices start with the word million or sometimes in millions as in plural. These are not mansion that I am talking about. These are your standart 1500-1800 squarefoot houses built on postage stamp size land.
As a result, we ventured into 'the valley' and found this house offered initially at 499,000 in Canoga Park. God only knows how long has this house been on the market, gracious owners decided to chop a 10K off the asking price and put the magic word reduced in the MLS listing, which made the asking price 489K. House is about 50 years old. it is about 1575 sqft big. Other than a huge master bedroom, it had no redeeming quality. Kitchen needs to have the ugly wallpaper stripped off and repainted, both bathrooms need to be updated very soon and last but not the least, it will need a new roof in a year or two at the most.
For some reason, unexplicable to me, my wife liked this house. She ignored all my negativity and started a gruelling haggling with the homeowners including the buyers', i.e., ours and sellers' realtors. At the end, I personally, was looking into a mortgage payment of $3100/mo or so, in interest only mortgage payments. At the last minute, I said to my wife I do not want this house. She was and stil is mad at me, but I could not care less. I refuse to spend that amount of money and still having to spend another 15-20 thousand dollars to update and repair the house. In addition to a lovely almost 1 hour long commute from this location to my work, using the 101 and 405 freeways with world known traffic jams every friggen day. No way Jose...
I hit the pavement again. I was in Palmdale/Lacaster area. New housing prices are out of this world. You are expected to live 1 hour away from the civiliztion and still expected to pay close to 500K for a standart issue track home. It is called begging for trouble. Situation is no different in Victor Valley, also known as Victorville/Hesperia/Adelanto cities. Due to its 100 miles distance to Downtown LA, prices are a alittle lower but 400K over there is not cheap by any means, especially if you consider putting 200 mile round trip to your odometer reading everyday. City website for Adelanto indicates its name Adelanto being in line with the Spanis meaning of the word, progress. Yeah, right, sureee... progress into oblivion. Everybody is expecting a sharp price drop and guess where the biggest drop will be ?
Now, again I am looking for a house in the I10-I210 corridor before hitting the I15-I215 triangle and my price range came down quite a lot. I am not paying any more than 300K tops. I will be required to spend money on an old house anyways, so, why pay the high price along with it.
If you have a house to sell, in this area, please do let me know !
posted by Legal Alien @ 11:15 AM
