Beckoning the First-Time Home Buyer : North Long Beach: You have to pick your spot carefully, but there are affordable dwellings built 40 or 50 years ago with detailing not found in tract homes.
When Ken and Marla Lunde began house hunting, they had specific needs in mind.
“I knew I wanted to live between where I and my wife work,” said Ken Lunde, who grew up in Long Beach. His office is in Encino and his job as the project manager for a high-rise development company has him driving throughout Los Angeles. Marla works in Cypress as an administrative assistant for an electronics company.
“I didn’t like inland--I wanted to live within 10 miles of the beach,” Ken Lunde said. “Long Beach is the cheapest beach community that still has beach as the name of the city. . . . The prices (in North Long Beach) were really good for the type of house. In Redondo (Beach, where the couple was renting) you get an outhouse for $200,000.”
So the Lundes bought their first home in North Long Beach about 1 1/2 years ago. It’s a two-bedroom, one-bath house with living, dining and breakfast rooms tucked into 1,079 square feet.
On a quiet street that dead-ends at an elementary school, the 62-year-old house has had only two previous owners. It was in excellent shape, the Lundes say, with hardwood floors, an enclosed front porch and new roofing, plumbing and heating.
And they bought it for $163,000.
Cash-strapped first-time buyers opt for North Long Beach--whose boundaries are Artesia Boulevard on the north, Cherry Avenue to the east, Market Street to the south, and, depending on whom you talk to, Atlantic Avenue or Long Beach Boulevard and the Los Angeles River to the west--because the price is right.
For $150,000 “you can easily find a two-bedroom, possibly three-bedroom home in a relatively safe neighborhood,” said Sarah Solis at Century 21 Landmark Properties. “North Long Beach is one of the last affordable places left. . . .”
Prices under $140,000 for a two-bedroom home are pretty rare, but it’s equally hard to find any selling for more than $175,000. If you need three bedrooms, they are plentiful between $170,000 and $180,000, with just a sprinkling for under $155,000.
What you get is a house built 50 to 60 years ago, when 800 to 1,100 square feet was the norm. Frequently Spanish- or bungalow-style, these dwellings tend to have the kind of detailing (tiled kitchens, oak floors, quaint moldings, built-ins) that you don’t find in tract homes.
More good news: The city has been down-zoning portions of North Long Beach from R-2 to R-1, so buyers are increasingly assured that their block will not be invaded by apartment buildings.
The Artesia (91) and Long Beach (710) freeways are nearby, and the San Diego (405) Freeway not too much farther.
But there is a downside. North Long Beach has acquired a bad reputation for gangs and the drugs, crime and graffiti they bring, as well as for low-income renters who crash, trash and move on.
That’s in addition to the notoriously bad record of the Long Beach Police Department--in 1989, they solved only 18.2% of serious crimes reported, placing Long Beach near the bottom of California cities.
(In 1990, the city’s crime-solving rate increased to 25%, however. And last November, deputies from the Los Angeles County Sheriff’s Department began patrolling North Long Beach, relieving the understaffed city department.)
“People live in North Long Beach not because they want to, but because they have to,” says blunt-spoken realtor Steve Schroeder at Re/Max Elite Realty.
Added Solis: “I get people calling to ask, ‘Where’s the property located? What area?’ When I tell them, they say, ‘Never mind. I don’t want that.’ Click.
“If they’ve got that stereotype in mind, it’s almost impossible to change it,” she adds.
“I’ve explained that owning a property is 100 times better than renting--the tax benefits, no landlord--and you have to think of it as (a series of) steps. You (may) start out in an area you don’t care for much. But properties always will appreciate in Los Angeles County.”
And it is possible to find happiness as a first-time buyer in North Long Beach. The trick, say realtors, is to select your precise location with care. The city of Long Beach is known for its checkerboard of different neighborhoods that sometimes change radically from block to block. So you have to know the territory.
Schroeder has some firm opinions in this department. “Orange to Atlantic Avenues, from 54th to 61st streets is a good part,” he says. “In-between Atlantic and Long Beach Boulevard you do have a lot more problems. . . . Market has some problems--you’re close to (low-income housing project) Los Carmelitos. There are some good things on the west side of Long Beach Boulevard--a couple of dead-end streets.
“Between Long Beach Boulevard and Atlantic is bad. A few sections of DeForest Park are not that bad. Ideal? From the 6000 block north on Lewis, Lemon, Cerritos, even California, avenues.”
It all sounds pretty confusing. But with knowledgeable guidance, you can luck out. Asked about crime and graffiti, Ken Lunde says he hasn’t seen any graffiti on his street (“Not like on Artesia”) and the theft of his car radio a few weeks after they moved in is his only direct experience of crime.
Not that there aren’t some drawbacks to living in North Long Beach. For decent restaurants “you have to go to Lakewood or downtown,” Ken Lunde said. Ditto for movie theaters.
Yet the immediate neighborhood has proved congenial. The woman next door--a longtime resident in her 80s, who used to keep horses and chickens on her property--keeps an eye out for suspicious-looking strangers.
And the neighbors “are pretty much young couples with kids between 1 and 10,” Ken Lunde said. “About everyone on the street owns. If they rent, it’s from a relative.”
Jose and Candaleria Mosqueda bought their two-bedroom, one-bath bungalow on 53rd Street for $144,000 about a year ago. They used to own a duplex with another couple just a few doors away, but jumped at the chance to own their own place.
“The main thing I like here, west of Long Beach Boulevard, is that the streets end up at the (Los Angeles) riverbed, so there’s no through traffic,” said Jose Mosqueda, a warehouse supervisor. “That’s probably the best thing.”
To the Mosquedas, the main selling point of the house was its price, lower than houses nearby (the one next door simultaneously sold for $155,000) because it needed some work. Jose Mosqueda figures he’ll be putting in a new roof, a fence and either repainting or stuccoing the exterior.
He said “most” people are friendly, and his family--the Mosquedas have two young daughters--haven’t been the victims of any criminal activity. There isn’t any graffiti on his block, and “just a little bit,” closer to Long Beach Boulevard. But he does hear the ubiquitous police helicopters late at night. The house was sold with bars on the windows, and the Mosquedas haven’t removed them.
Raymond and Fay McVeigh also live west of Long Beach Boulevard. They bought their three-bedroom home on a corner lot for less than $15,000 in the early 1960s. But they’re not happy with the changes they see.
“It was a real nice, friendly neighborhood,” Fay McVeigh said. “You didn’t have to worry about locking your doors. Now you don’t dare walk out at night.”
The McVeighs cite boarded-up stores on Long Beach Boulevard, churches with barred windows, the two break-ins experienced by a neighbor.
So they’ve put their house on the market, in the hope of spending the remainder of their retirement years in Hemet. Last spring, the asking price was $178,000. Although the McVeighs dropped the price to $165,000, there haven’t been any takers.
“They ask where it is, and when you tell them, they’re not interested anymore,” Fay McVeigh said. “Or they come and they look and they’ll tell me (they might buy it) if I come down to $150,000 because they probably won’t qualify for more for a loan.” But the couple claim they can’t afford to lower the price further.
Bev and Al Wilson, who are retiring and moving soon to their vacation home in the mountains, have been living on California Avenue, in a four-bedroom prefab home she and her former husband bought new in 1970 for $26,000.
Even back then, North Long Beach was “a little more affordable than some areas” with residents who tended to be either retired people “or young families buying out the retired people as they died or left,” Bev Wilson says.
But, she adds, the area “has changed considerably in the last five years. There are a lot more rentals, more transient types. I don’t feel as safe after dark as I did. At one time I wouldn’t feel the least bit concerned to fall asleep (in the living room) with the (front) door unlocked. I wouldn’t do that now.”
She attended a community meeting last fall to discuss the impact of the new sheriff’s patrol, and said she has seen more officer activity in recent months. The Wilsons’ tree-lined block, which organized a Neighborhood Watch campaign last year, still looks and sounds peaceful, even at night.
And Bev Wilson said she knows of no burglaries in the immediate neighborhood. (“We’re not ritzy enough for (burglars) to be as (active) as in Bixby Knolls or Lakewood.”)
Realtors say the way to approach buying a home in North Long Beach is with the attitude that you won’t stay there forever. Newer arrivals--most of whom have been renting in the South Bay, according to Schroeder--tend to stay three to five years before moving on. He says people often move to Orange County or elsewhere in Long Beach.
As for sellers, be patient, was one realtor’s advice. “There’s more to choose from in the same price range,” said Kimberly Rouse with Re/Max Real Estate Specialist. “It may take a good four to six months. (In 1988) if a house was priced right, it sold within the first month.”
Schroeder also warns against getting carried away with renovating a home in North Long Beach: “You can have a mansion and it won’t sell for over $200,000. One (seller) had done $100,000 in upgrades and it’s listed at $195,000.”
Realtors agree, however, that even in a bad housing market, North Long Beach is “bread and butter”--retaining its appeal to first-time buyers because the prices remain within the average person’s grasp.
