Annablanco

I am a 35 year old moving to LA with my two children (aged 4 years and 18 months) this month. My husband has been relocated to his company's Calabasas office so we are looking for a place to live that is within a 45 minute drive.

Of course we have been doing some research and asking around his colleagues for suggestions. We also have a relocation agent who is strongly recommending the thousand oaks/westlake village area (which also happens to be where she lives so we are not sure whether she is thinking outside the box!)

We are looking for somewhere family friendly with decent schooling but still want something that appeals to us as adults! We are both into design, art and food and we are looking for an area with a neighbourhood feel if it all possible. Suggestions have been Santa Monica, Sherman Oaks, Studio city, Valley Village, Woodland Hills and West Hills, comments and advice would be much appreciated!

thanks in advance!

Sally Redux

Welcome to the site.

There was someone on here recently with similar questions about moving to Calabasas, the answers might be applicable to you:

http://britishexpats.com/forum/showt...ight=calabasas

I live in Calabasas and it's very suburban, however if your husband's working here I would say it has as much to offer as Thousand Oaks. We are in the Las Virgenes School District, which is considered more desirable than the LA school district, although we also have severe school budgetary problems. Santa Monica is nice but a lot more expensive to live and he would then have a fairly long commute.

I would say it's very different from London and you will have to adapt to a different way of living, kind of forget the neighbourhood feel thing, and culture unless you want to drive into LA a lot.

SanDiegogirl

Never been to Alabama, but I have lived in Missouri and suffered through its hot and sweaty summers.

Alabama summers are even worse I hear so it would be LA for me.

Bink

Sorry OP, can't help, but welcome to BE!

Think you may have meant to post that in this thread... http://britishexpats.com/forum/showthread.php?t=773311 (easily done )

Sally Redux

PS Re: schools, if you live in the other areas you mentioned, you should be able to send your kids to Calabasas schools if you want to because your husband will be working in the area. Santa Monica has its own school district.

SanDiegogirl

Oh good grief ..... another senior moment I am afraid ......... hope the other poster reads it

goldenstate31

we just drove there last weekend its beautiful. Although it did seem a bit religious with lots of churches and stuff like that.

N1cky

It really depends on how you want to live your life. Valley Village and Studio City are quite nice, with some independent shops, restaurants and cafes. Santa Monica is lovely, but extremelly expensive and very busy with tourists all the time. Woodland Hills is ok (I used to live here), it doesn't have much of a 'feel' to it, just lots of houses, chain restaurants and a huge mall, it gets extremelly hot, this is considered the hottest place in the San Fernando Valley, if you don't like the heat rule it out. West Hills is where all the medical centres are and not much else.

Westlake Village (I worked here) and Thousand Oaks are nice, have a few more independent stores, but much more Suburban, you will add an extra 40 minutes onto your journey if you want to spend your weekends doing things in LA itself. Weather wise it's much nicer than the valley, being around 15 degrees cooler in the summer. House prices are also much cheaper out here.