Need Apartment Advice in South Bay Area

[Adam Richter]

Alright, well I start work for ExxonMobil at their refinery on 190th st in Torrance in Aug, so I'm in the process of trying to figure out where I want to live. I'm just curious if any of you guys are familiar with the area and can give me some advice on where to look. I'm looking for a basic one bedroom apartment or large studio that's close to work and in a decent area. At a minimum I'd want to have some type of assigned parking, but I'd really like to find a place where I'd have my own one car garage. I don't have a real firm price limit, but I'd like to try to keep it under $1600/month.

I found one place that's about two miles west of the refinery in Redondo Beach that has a one bedroom with single car garage for $1325, but the kitchen and carpeting are really in need of an update, so I'm a little hesitant. I've also found a few places that are a bit nicer in Redondo Beach, Hermosa Beach, and West Torrance but they all have assigned parking in a parking structure. That wouldn't be terrible, but I'd really like to have the garage so that I could use it to store things like race tires, tools, and a tire tail or maybe a small harbor freight type trailer. Now that I might have some money to afford these things I've got to have a place to put them.

So if any of you guys know of anyplace that you think I should look into please let me know. I've driven around the area and checked online on places like craigslist and apartments.com, but I know that there are a lot of apartments out there that I haven't found yet. Any advice is appreciated.

[Jeff Shyu]

how do you feel about renting a room in a house?

my house will have a vacant room as of late this month, and as soon as i get a replacement title from DMV, the MR2 in the garage will either get sold or donated, making more room around the house.

maybe aaron or marshall will chime in on the house.

anyways, if you're interested, send me an e-mail (oredith@gmail.com) and i'll forward you the specifics.

ps, aaron, what's the BBCode for mailto? i tried [url=mailto:__]text[/url] and [url]mailto:__[/url], and neither worked.

[David Avard]

how do you feel about renting a room in a house?

my house will have a vacant room as of late this month, and as soon as i get a replacement title from DMV, the MR2 in the garage will either get sold or donated, making more room around the house.

maybe aaron or marshall will chime in on the house.

anyways, if you're interested, send me an e-mail (oredith@gmail.com) and i'll forward you the specifics.

ps, aaron, what's the BBCode for mailto? i tried [url=mailto:__]text[/url] and [url]mailto:__[/url], and neither worked.

Looking at the street view, which house doesn't belong on that street?

[Jeff Shyu]

you should see an updated one.. with housing the way it is, there's a lot of that "mansionization" going on.

the house up the street went from a 1100 SF 2 bed to a 5700 4 bedroom..

[Tin Bui]

I actually work down the street from ExxonMobil at Toyota. When I looked for my apatment I found that westsiderentals.com by far has the best listings for apartments.

Basically the South Bay areas I looked at were as you stated, Hermosa, Redondo Beach, and West Torrance. Hermosa is fun, but too loud and wild for me to live. Redondo Beach is nice, but rather save some more money. West Torrance you'll get more space per dollar which is nice (I'm trying to save for a house).

I actually moved farther east to Crenshaw and Lomita, 1100 sq ft single bedroom with assigned gated 2 car tandam garage (but no door). I pay $1050 a month.

There's some good deals out there, just take your time.

[Adam Richter]

how do you feel about renting a room in a house?

my house will have a vacant room as of late this month, and as soon as i get a replacement title from DMV, the MR2 in the garage will either get sold or donated, making more room around the house.

I wouldn't mind living in a house with other people as long as I knew the people before hand. I don't necessarily want to live by myself, because of the extra cost and boredom, but I would like to try to live as close to work as I can. I also hate driving in traffic and I'd like to avoid spending to much money on gas. Most of my friends live further north around Santa Monica and Brentwood so I haven't really been able to work anything out with them. Commuting on the 405 just seems like a bad idea.

Your house might be a little farther away from work than I'd like, but I wouldn't mind finding out some more details. I'll send you an email.

[Adam Richter]

Thanks for posting that website, Tin. I found a few places on there that look like they might be good deals. I'd like to save as much money as I can, but I'm just worried that I'm going to cheap out and then end up regretting it later. I guess I've been living in low budget apartments near USC for too long.