Hi! I just bought on the west side and need to do some cosmetic work. My midcentury was stripped of its charm over the years, and I want to add wood paneling and tongue and groove wood ceilings. All interior work. Would love a reco. Have had nightmare experience with the contractor my realtor recommended; hoping this group might be able to send me in the right direction. Thank you! 🤞🙏
Hey everyone,
I’m trying to find a reliable home appraiser in California (Los Angeles area), and I’m not totally sure what the best route is.
I’ve seen a mix of options like (i.e. through lenders or using appraisal directories) but I’m not sure which helps for the most accurate and fair appraisal.
For those of you who’ve gone through this recently:
Appreciate any advice or experiences you can share. Thanks!
Been pulling fresh data specifically in Los Angeles County.
Includes properties like vacant, pre-foreclosures, zombie properties, tired landlords, high equity, and more.
If you’re looking for new deals or buyers in the LA area, feel free to send me a message.
We're torn on putting a counter offer on a $1.1M asking price home, which is at our max budget. We can afford the monthly payment still if we add a few thousand more to the counter and still have enough savings for closing, maintenance, etc.
But we're getting hung up on:
Any advice?
Anyone (Physician seeking practice) looking to purchase an Urgent Care Facility in Corona, California. Los Angeles Arrea Please DM me. Listed for 700k. Price is negotiable
Trying to understand how this works in real life vs what all the “rules” say.
If you’re texting or emailing leads:
The more distressed properties I look at around LA, the less I think this niche is about finding hidden gems.
It feels more like an exercise in spotting problems before they eat your time.
A deal can look solid on Zillow, Redfin, or Auction, then you start digging and suddenly the occupant situation is fuzzy, the title looks questionable, the repair scope grows, or the timeline stops making sense. I have been using a mix of those plus ForeclosureHub and checking public county info, and honestly that process has been more useful than the listings themselves.
Feels like the real skill here is not being the first person to find a deal. It is knowing which ones deserve to be ignored.
Hey!
I'm looking for individuals within the real estate space that are interested in getting access to hundreds of thousands of property listings in exchange for feedback!
This is free, we will work to build a relevant workflow for you that benefits you and shouldn't be much work to get started!
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Hi there,
I am an editorial and commercial photographer based in LA and want to start shooting real estate photography. I am able to offer discounted rates as I build my portfolio. I am looking to shoot organic, warm and natural real estate imagery.
Feel free to DM me and I can share more details about my existing work and talk further. Thank you!
They are of Indian decent and would like a strong Indian community around them. They frequent temples an have a huge community of friends currently. They have a home in Boston that they would sell for 700k-750k to buy in LA. At max they’d like to pay 850k. The idea is to retire in a year or two and then they would e on social security.
What are some areas that can match this price affordability and cultural need? I live in east LA but anywhere would be closer than Boston to visit them.
Also do yall think the market to buy will get better or is this a good time?
Family of 3 in Long Beach. Considering moving to Temecula area. Is there any area we should consider for our budget regardless of our job? Kid is in high school.
been tracking SoCal numbers pretty closely lately so figured i'd drop another real breakdown for anyone trying to navigate this market right now. lot of noise out there so let's just talk data. I've done these before: write up on Q1, and end of 2025/early 2026.
Quick transparency: YES some Ai is used. Good job. That's how I pull a lot of my research. I run multiple deep research prompts simultaneously, then filter out all junk, and then write up the post and edit it. I'm sure there will still be some that want to call me out, but want to get this out there.
The big picture
LA County median sale price is sitting around $910k as of March 2026, down 1.6% YoY, at $593/sq ft (down 3.3%). That's not a crash. That's just price discovery finally happening after two years of insane compression. Expected market time SoCal-wide is around 91 days with about 34,771 active listings. Compare that to 2021-22 and the vibe shift is real.
OC is a completely different animal. $1.26M median, up 4.9% YoY, moving in 36 days with 100% sale-to-list ratios in a lot of spots. Still cooking. But the yield math for investors there is rough, and i'll get to that below.
Inventory — improving, but don't get too excited
LA County active listings are up about 15% YoY, sitting around 10,900 in January. SoCal-wide we're at roughly 3.2 months of supply, which is technically "balanced" but nowhere near a true buyer's market. Pre-2019 inventory levels were way above this. We're just normalizing from extreme lows.
Days on market is creeping up across the board: LA at 45 days (+3 YoY), Riverside at 54 (+1), Ventura at 47 (+5). Things are taking longer to move. Buyers have a little more room to breathe. Sellers anchoring to 2022 peak pricing are sitting and collecting dust.
The insurance situation — stop glossing over this
Around 400,000 policies have been canceled in CA since 2021. FAIR Plan enrollment is up 43% in 15 months. Premiums are up 30-50% in many areas, and LA construction costs are up roughly 44% over five years which makes replacement cost exposure even worse.
Wildfire losses in 2025 alone topped $40B in claims. Insurers have been pulling back even from some "low risk" neighborhoods now, not just fire zones.
If you're underwriting a deal anywhere in LA County, Ventura, or foothill IE and you're not stress testing your insurance line item hard, you're going to get a rude awakening. Budget an extra $200-500/mo depending on location and property type. It's not optional anymore.
Where cash flow actually works (and where it doesn't)
Coastal LA and OC are basically appreciation-only plays at today's prices. You're not cash flowing on a $910k property at 3.5-4% gross yield with mid-6% rates. The math just doesn't work.
Inland Empire is where the yield story holds up:
Compare that to LA at 28-32x GRM and OC at 30-35x. Night and day.
IE is still absorbing the migration from coastal counties and that demand story is intact even with some near-term rent softness from new multifamily deliveries. Occupancy in stabilized IE properties is still above 95%.
Rental market breakdown
LA County average apartment rent is around $2,736, down about 0.3% YoY overall. But the submarket splits are wild:
OC rentals are holding much better. Workforce and mid-market product is more stable than the headlines make it sound. It's really the luxury end bleeding the most right now.
Measure ULA — still baked into every high-ticket deal
LA city's transfer tax is still in effect. 4% above $5.4M, 5.5% above $10.9M, and it's being legally challenged but hasn't gone anywhere yet. New thresholds kick in after June 30, 2026. If you're buying or selling anything high-ticket in LA city, this needs to be in your exit assumptions from day one. Not a footnote, an actual line item.
Where I'd actually put capital right now
For people just trying to buy a home
If you've been sitting on the sidelines waiting for prices to crash, that's probably not coming. But the good news is you actually have more leverage right now than you've had in years, just not in the way most people think.
More homes are sitting longer. LA County is averaging 45 days on market. Sellers are cutting prices more often, over 13% of active listings had reductions as of March. Bidding wars still happen, but we're talking 3 offers on a well-priced home in a good school district, not 15 offers at $200k over ask like 2021.
What that means practically: you can negotiate again. Ask for credits. Ask for repairs. Walk away from homes that don't feel right because there are more options coming.
The catch is affordability is still genuinely brutal. At today's rates in the mid-6% range, buying at the LA County median of $910k requires roughly $198k in annual income just to qualify on the front end. Orange County at $1.26M median is closer to $274k. So the market isn't easier because prices dropped a ton, it's easier because sellers have finally had to come back to reality a little on expectations.
A few things to watch out for that people are sleeping on:
Get insurance quotes before you fall in love with a house. Seriously, do it early in escrow. Premium increases of 30-50% are not unusual right now and some properties in certain areas are nearly uninsurable through standard carriers. This can blow up deals or add hundreds per month that weren't in your budget.
If you're looking inland in the IE, your dollar actually stretches a lot further. Riverside median is around $615k, San Bernardino around $535k. The commute trade-off is real but so is the payment difference.
Spring is showing more buyer activity as rates have eased slightly, so don't expect this slightly calmer window to last forever if rates keep drifting down.
Q2 2026 outlook
Base case: prices flat to +1.5% QoQ, inventory stays in the 3-3.5 month range, rates hold mid-6%. No crash, no major rip. Just a slow grind market where location discipline and underwriting precision matters way more than it did a few years ago.
Bear case only gets ugly if rates spike back toward 7%+ or the insurance situation accelerates further. That hits luxury urban condos and overbuilt Class A hardest. Entry-level and IE SFR hold up better in that scenario because of the affordability migration dynamic.
Happy to dig into any specific submarket if people have questions. also been running a lot of these analyses through an AI underwriting tool I built called Dealsletter if anyone wants to check it out, but hopefully the breakdown is useful either way.
Asking here because LA is a different market when it comes to visual presentation.
Your photo is not just on your business card. It is on yard signs, Zillow listings, Instagram, Google My Business, luxury brochures, and your agency site all at once. Keeping that image current and consistent across all of those touchpoints is its own ongoing job.
Traditionally that meant booking a photographer every year or two, which is fine but adds up fast especially when you just need a quick refresh rather than a full rebrand.
Started looking into the best AI headshot tools in 2026 as a way to stay current between shoots. This AI headshot tool keeps coming up because it trains on your own photos rather than generating a polished face that does not quite look like you. The output is clean and consistent enough for professional use without looking artificially generated.
For LA agents here, are you using anything like this to keep your image updated across platforms or are you still going the traditional photographer route every time?
QUESTION for the fire rebuild areas?????
Do you think owners of the fire rebuild properties would benefit from buying or selling their homes to have a feasibility report? Prepared specifically for each lot, so new buyers would know exactly what is allowed to be built on their lot. Our feasibility study protects your investment by showing exactly what can be built before purchase or design. AI is not accurate and cannot give an in-depth report compared to mine. You have to be very experienced in prompting AI to get just the basic answers. The cost would be $1,500 for a typical flat lot and $2,500 for hillside and oceanfront properties.
Opinions Please,