Westside Story

This from an agent trying to sell me a $1.9m top of hill in Mar Vista... "from where I stand the Real Estate market is humming along and although the pace may have slowed there are plenty of willing buyers and willing sellers. Many people in the Los Angeles area are buying upwardly and using the equity in their existing homes as their deposit or have saved over the years. I think this speaks to what most people hope and strive for and that is their own home. Because to most people a home is a commodity like no other and is more than just an investment it is an investment in the future as well as a place where people build and make their lives and memories. Also, in relation to the house on Inglewood and what a good opportunity this could be, a developer built the beautiful Craftsman in the 3700 block of Inglewood earlier this year. It sold within two weeks for just about $2 million. Can you see the potential and possible opportunity?" Am I really missing something? From where

I'm not pretending to represent ALL house hunters, I'm just representing OUR family. For those of you who are curious or confused, my husband and I each have a previous marriage and we are now consolidating two households into one large home. My much loved house with the unusual roof line is now sold and we are now all sharing my husband's house. The schools attached to this house are fractionally better than the schools near my little gray cottage but still leave much to be desired. Our personal banker called this week (we never knew we had one). Apparently, when you have enough money in the bank, you get someone who wants to help you invest it. Back when I was turning in my $500 paychecks I couldn't get lousy overdraft protection, but now that I've deposited the money from the sale of my house "Hector" is always available to assist us with our banking needs. OK Hector, does "Fells Wargo" want to prequalify us for a loan? What a surprise! So we

Thanks to the hundreds of real estate sugggestions from LA Land helping us search for a new home, here are the latest prospects... 11821 Wagner: 4/2 $789K- teeny, tiny yard and all of it is in front! 3900 Stoneview: 4/3 2440 sq.ft., pool, city view $989K- used up the entire yard for the pool- no room for swingset 9059 Carson: 4/2.5 $875K same problem as Wagner 3329 Sherbourne: Spanish,4 bdrm + guest house $999K- non permit rental unit in back, teensy yard, 1920's Spanish with bad re-muddling (no that isn't a typo) that removed the front door and replaced it with access from the driveway only. 9833 Vicar 4/3 $1.299M , MLS #: 07-215595 9066 Airdrome 6/2.5 1$.329M , MLS#07-201985 3121 Castle Heights 5/3 $1.315M MLS#07-203231 3159 Purdue 5/3 $1.495M MLS# 07-181923 2720 Dunleer Pl 3/2 $1.150M http://www.redfin.com/stingray/do/printable-listing?listing-id=1119343 - The yard is perfect! The house is too small. The price is laughable considering the current owner purchased in 2005 for

TUITION PER STUDENT (private highly competitive ) Pre -K Full Day(2:30 p.m. dismissal) $18,800 Short Day (1 p.m. dismissal) $18,100 Elementary K-1-Level 5 $20,745 Middle School Level 6-Level 8$22,075 Parochial (local Catholic) $7,700 + books and participation uniforms, lunches, transportation- all extra... sports.... extra art, music, drama... extra

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 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 n

Someone wanted to know what kind of buyers pay $1 million for a lousy post -war box on a postage stamp... well that would be us. While we both understand that we could live in Olathe , Kansas or somewhere off of U .S. 1 for less than a quarter of what we pay here, our jobs, families and friends are located in Los Angeles and here is where we are staying until our jobs move elsewhere. We both purchased homes we loved in our single years and now that we are married with kids, those homes in lousy school districts and "transitional" neighborhoods with no parking and endless parties are not exactly the place for us.So my house is currently in escrow for what feels like the 170 th day for $50,000 less than asking price and the ten of us -- my husband,three children, one exchange student and four cats -- are crammed into one of those 3 bedroom 1 bath post-war boxes in Culver City that everyone seems to love.We are seeking a home within a 30 minute commute of Santa Monica