Sep 30, 2008
Email from my sister
So I recently received an email from my sister who is considering moving from Orlando to Los Angeles. She is a well-to-do doctor and is a bit older, so I am not sure if she knows the project I am working on. Interesting enough, she sent out a mass email to all of us California goers and thought the topics and questions she asked was very interesting.
1) How extravagant is the cost of living near UCLA? We have a 3500 square foot house filled with furniture in Florida. I’m assuming we would have to sell/donate/cry over not being able to move everything to LA. What’s the going rate on at least a 3 bedroom house down there?
2) How bad is the traffic on a daily basis? You all know how impatient I am. Will I go crazy driving there?
3) What are some nice neighborhoods to live in near UCLA proper and UCLA-Olive View?
4) Are the amenities of LA worth the inflated cost of living?
5) Do any of you have a grasp of the schooling system out there and the pros/cons or private vs. public near UCLA?
Here are some of the responses so far:
2. Traffic is bad. From UCLA to OVMC, it’s fine in the morning (25 minutes) because you are going the opposite direction in traffic. If you are trying to get from OVMC to UCLA at 6pm, it can take up to 1.5 hrs. I’d budget 1 hour on average during traffic. Yes, traffic is THAT bad. That’s why everyone says LA is nice except for the traffic. It’s like asking someone in China whether or not there are THAT many people there. Yes and yes.
2) Traffic is absolutely horrible around westwood — especially after work takes 30 hour to move about 2-3 miles. My suggestion if you’re covering olive view is to live in westwood, commute to olive view as you’re doing reverse commute (takes only 30 minutes to get to olive view). commute back is fine until you land in westwood when it gets hard to get anywhere between 4pm-8pm.
I agree with Tina, don’t plan to commute into to UCLA in morning and out of it in the evening– it’s impossible. i’m quite trafic tolerant but i would go crazy doing that for more than a month.
Apparently LA traffic is bad… any other issues that you think movers would find most important?
