lostkitty – I remember you from a couple years back indicating that there was indeed life after San Diego. Seems like your timing of leaving southern CA and returning will be pretty good wrt the housing cycle.
Anyway, we suffered through a similar move several years ago, moving to LA (west side) from San Diego (in body but not in mind). There are some great neighborhoods and pockets of LA that until we moved here I didn;t really appreciate (It always just seemed like a big sprawling concrete jungle … well because mostly it is).
You didn’t give any indication of price range, which is pretty important.
Assuming that you desire to be reasonably close to the coast (e.g. 5-8 miles), here are my favorite livable areas. These are biased to the north and west of Gardena since that is what I am more familiar with.
Manhattan Beach – Some semi-reasonable areas in terms of affordability to the east. Extremely pricey near the coast.
El Segundo – pretty decent schools, kind of its own isolated community surrounded by industry/commercial on three sides.
Palos Verdes – Expensive enclave, similar in some respects to La Jolla and upper parts of Point Loma.
Upper parts of San Pedro – ON the same hill as Palos Verdes, there are some nice sections of San Pedro, that are directly proportional to altitude. But, I think you would probably have to take the private school path here.
Long Beach – I have no clue other than an observation that the area around the Aquarium was pretty nice when we visited there. There may be other decent options to the south
You also might want to consider the following areas :
Westchester – Just north of the airport. The elementary schools are good here. You might need to consider private school beyond that though (which is actually a general rule of thumb for the nicer parts of LA that fall within the LAUSD).
Culver City – The city has revitalized its downtown. Homes are affordable. Elementary schools are good. AFter that ? It is also going to be the first community on the west side with real transit to/from downtown (which I guess you don’t need). Lots of excellent programs for kids.
If you have some Cash …
Santa Monica – Very good schools. Coastal. Prices are just now starting to recede a bit. It will take you about 30 minutes in the morning to get to Gardena, but might take considerably longer in the evening because of traffic patterns.
