Westside Story: It's about a yard

We miss diarist Kate in the Valley -- she's been crazy busy and we hope she'll be back soon. In the meantime, Westside Story is picking up the slack, and explains this week how she narrowed her house-hunting search to the Westside:

"Why the Westside? Because the person with the highest paying job and the most erratic hours wants to spend the maximum number of non-work hours with his children.

"After a long and painful conversation with our friendly banker (Hi Hector!) and a decision to sell my much beloved house in a lousy school district (a place with a Great Schools score of 2/10 that was NEXT TO MY JOB) we started the process of narrowing the search area.  We used the search tool at http://www.greatschools.net/ to find schools of the type we wanted within 5 miles of each of our jobs, then we used the intersection of the two sets (think Venn Diagram for those with kids) to narrow us down to a subset of neighborhoods. Then we tossed in the price filter, number of beds and baths and size of yard. There are tradeoffs- if the price and the lot size are right, we can go with a smaller house and add on. If the house is perfect and there's a park close by, then we could trade off lot size. School quality and commute time are non-negotiable.

"My dream yard has room for at least one large avocado tree, some citrus, and the ridiculously large swingset/sandbox/clubhouse given to the kids by their doting grandparents. Now attach a 4 bed 3 bath home in a superior school district, in our price range and geographic desirability and you will have a deal!"

Thanks, Westside.
Thoughts? Comments? Be polite.

Comments

[Steve]

Hang in there and you will find it. Wish you the best.

[James Toney]

Thanks for such a nice article. I really appreciate your work

[TeacherMan]

wa wa... I am a teacher at one of those crappy schools you speak of and I can't even afford a house NEAR the area.

P.S. If you put a tree-house in your avocado tree, I'll give you 600 a month plus utilities....

[I just threw up]

Oh brother: "give me everything I want at a good price and you have a deal." What an illuminating post.

I think this guy's worse than Kate in the Valley.

Peter, why can't you find a blogger who's a little more down to earth and average? The travails of the upper-upper middle class are not really revelant to most of us.

[Toby]

Sorry, but I can't take ANYONE seriously who's looking for a house right now...no matter WHAT tool they're using...

In fact, it almost makes me think that people who are "looking" for a home are only doing this to "pretend" to others that they are so rich, that the money they will lose by buying a home now...means nothing...cause they're so rich.

And the truth to be told, they're not. Because anyone who's wealthy enough not to care, does still care very much.

So please stop boring me with this "We're still looking even when the world thinks I'm nuts" house buying blog.

[scwolf]

Let's face it. That swingset should be the most negotiable of all your priorities, if it means the house would be more affordable on a smaller lot.

[Ace]

I just threw up said 'Peter, why can't you find a blogger who's a little more down to earth and average? The travails of the upper-upper middle class are not really revelant to most of us.'

But it is revelant. These are the people who are buying houses. In this case, I think she made a bunch of money from the sale of her last house and is looking to buy a house to live in for the next 20 years of her life.

This is the average house hunter in this market. They have money, know what they want and are picky as hell. It would be pretty boring to read a blog of a first time home buyer. 'I went to 200 open houses this weekend and could not afford a single one of them. Stay tuned. Next weekend, I go to more open houses!'

[Jonah]

I have the money to buy a house...but I'm not crazy. I don't mind reading posts about market trends but the ones with people actually looking to buy just make me shake my head.

[T]

"It would be pretty boring to read a blog of a first time home buyer. 'I went to 200 open houses this weekend and could not afford a single one of them. Stay tuned. Next weekend, I go to more open houses!'"

Haha - that's me exactly over the past year! I've got the downpayment but prices are just too high and most likely declining. Give me a small house or townhouse for 500k and I'm there. Maybe in a year or two in the valley. Meanwhile I'm relatively happy renting on the westside.

[Adolfo]

What I don't understand why somebody is looking for a house based on the school district. If you get a house somewhere else for 200k less you can send your kid to private schools for the next 35 years.

[CD]

Maybe we should stop commenting on this blog," the rich lady with the play set" blog, with the huge entitlement problem. Who is her shrink? Jane Alexander on " tell me you love me?" Can't she get her own Hancock Park blog so she could talk to other entitled ladies with play sets.
_Please Peter help me find a five million dollars home where my kids could go to a public school with other white nice kids ,well, asians are ok too bust just a trinkle...Also could you help me with my gardeners, they are so hard to find, and maids and nannies....what about my play set, guys, where will I put my play set Peter? You guys really don't care about me, I'll tell my shrink.

[Westside Story-Just call me Maria]

Luckily, the exchange student doesn't cost tuition money, but our three children do. At just over $7000 each (average) plus all the extras that's nearly twice the property tax on a $1 million home annually.

[Westside Story- Just call me Maria]

The ladies in Hancock Park with real mansions don't send their children to public school- and they definitely don't have swing sets in their front yard. I should know, I work in the neighborhood.

As I have mentioned in my blog, this will be my 4th home and my husband's second. Both of us bought back before the bubble. In fact, my first home was purchased at the top of the last bubble in 1989 with a down payment from a $5 Keno ticket.

We aren't first-time buyers or sellers. We are looking for our HOME together, not a five-year investment. We plan on a good two decades-long run at a minimum. That is why our focus is on good schools and good commutes.

[ProblemWithCaring]

Angry commenters – Please stop warning Peter Viles away from his choices of guest bloggers.

Peter knows what he is doing. At the end of each post, he beseeches us to “be polite.” He understands that he is offering a particular perspective that will confuse, disgust and/or irritate most or all of us.

Somehow, I guess, he understands these women who care about mysterious school internet rankings, but don’t account (don't even know how to account) for the diversity or experiences of the administration or the student body. He understands her sense that the only comparable other option, besides a “Great School.net” seal-of-approval, is THE MOST expensive private school in existence (That one will clearly be the best, natch).

He understands a woman’s urgent need to shop for a $1 million grassy outside-storage facility to house a “ridiculously” extravagant play-set for her children (“Most importantly”!) and why he should then bring this prospective to the nationwide LA Times readership.

So when he calls on the "Just call us the Hopelessly Bourgeois" to guest blog, I sense he knows exactly the point he is trying to illuminate. For God’s Sake, people- give it a rest. He knows what he doing.

(Aside: Peter, what are you doing?)

[Hula Girl]

Wow - 21k a year + ?!! That's more than I pay for my son's tuition and board at Medical School. For 21k you can start your own private or charter school.
Good luck saving for college.

[planetmort]

Yeah, and any homeowner looks whiny and entitled to someone working minimum wage (or close to it) jobs.

We all have what we want in a house, and what we don't want. I see people who post here saying "I can't wait for condos in my area to drop below 500k!" or similar. Where I live, they've stayed below that even through the bubble. I love where I live -- I got a 4 bedroom house with a decent yard with mature fruit trees and a local public school with an API score over (okay, barely, but still) 800. I got this house for 575k, 2006. Bonus that the neighbors are nice and there are lots of well-behaved nice neighborhood kids for my daughter to play with, and she does, with great joy.

But it's in .... wait for it...... Sunland!

So that leaves it right out for probably most of the readers here. Oh my Dog! I can't live there! (for a whole host of reasons)

And you know what? That's just fine. When we were looking for a house we could have paid less and bought a condo. We could have paid less and gotten a much smaller yard. Or a smaller house, or done both and paid a *lot* less. We could have moved further from our jobs and paid less. We could have moved out to Palmdale and paid substantially less for a much newer house. What mattered to us was commute, reasonable schools, and a good yard, with a side of wanting a bigger house than the place we were renting, though that was negotiable.

That's what mattered to us. What matters to other people is entirely different, and I just can't see why that matters to anyone.

If price were all that mattered, we'd all move to Pittsburgh.

[Ken P.]

I have an avocado tree, and all I can tell you is that you'd better love rats. Its their favorite food.

[Westside Story- Just call me Maria]

Ok- so there are people who feel strongly about our house hunt.

We are living in a too small house with a big yard and a poor performing elementary school, a marginal middle school and a poor high school. We own this house and I just sold my house.

Are the angry commenters advocating that we suck it up and the six of us continue to live in a 1300 sq ft place with one bathroom? That we move to a 2hr commute point? That we stop being so picky?

[sean]

Hula Girl,

Off topic. Seriously, where do you send your kid for med school? tuition and board for only $21K? Even UCLA (a public school, but for professional schools, it shouldn't make too much difference) charges $22K just for tuition alone. I figure if I send my kid (he's only 1.5 right now) to med school in the future, the total cost for 4 years now (a lot of my friends are MDs) would be over $200K, that's $50K a year (similar to what UCLA Med school lists on its web site for perspective applicants). So, at $21K, that's truly a bargain.

Regarding this topic -- I see nothing wrong with buying houses near good school districts. I am not sure why, but it seems property values tend to be be more robust in these areas. I bought where I live this year precisely because it has the second highest API score among LA County High Schools (second to Whitney), and third in S. Cal (1 point behind Troy High).

[Dr. JwB]

1. If this family is going to be in the house for a decade or more, then it's not completely crazy to buy now. They can weather a 50% drop in price and the subsequent long term build up. They may also have some tax reasons for wanting to buy a house (since they just sold a house, right?). In any case, they obviously dont want to rent a bigger house (plenty out there that would fit their family, but I am tired of making that argument). So they want to buy. Accept that and move on.

2. Their priority is to have a place for their giant swingset. Some people like to be within walking distance of restaurants/bars/clubs, others like views of mountains or beaches. For every taste, there is always someone who thinks it is stupid and a waste of money. These people love their monster swingset. Accept that and move on.

3. They want the best deal they can possibly get, and they even have a list of things they would love to have in a perfect world (like rats, er, I mean avocados). You, reader, have a similar list, and I bet everyone's dream house list has one thing that would seem stupid to everyone else. Accept that and move on.

There we go. Hopefully some of you will accept these things and continue to comment on these posts. For the rest of you, "move on" means just stop reading Westside Story.

And Pete, adding one new blogger was a good start, but some additional diversity wouldn't hurt. I'm not a candidate because my story is not very exciting, but there must be someone out there who can provide a different perspective. And the more perspectives, the better.