Orange County Register USC beat writer

average rent is right around $1,500, yes?

 

I lived 45 minutes (non-rush hour drive) from USC campus and paid $1250 for a two-bedroom, two bath. In the city, in the Valley, it can be more, it can be less. Friends of mine share a two-bedroom in Venice that is $1600.

 

I know a family in Newport that has some space opening up now that the kids are going off to college. (They also have a track record of taking in struggling young people.)


Empty nesters?

 

In Orange County, that's probably true. But there are a lot of communities. The other point is that unless you were rather daring, you probably wouldn't live close to the USC campus so you are talking about a drive. Somebody said $1,600 on Venice Beach, but if you go 10 miles east of the beach you are talking about something more reasonable. One though might be communities around Pasadena.

 

Hey, Dwayne Jarrett lived there for only $650 a month! Reggie Bush's parents lived there for free! Can't be that expensive. 

 

A good number of Register staffers (and not just in sports) don't live in Orange County. Many live in Long Beach, which is more affordable and in this case closer to USC.

 

I made pretty good money in Southern California, but also paid a lot in child-type support.

I had a fine one-bedroom apartment in Costa Mesa, but literally across the street from the city of Newport Beach, that wasn't that much, and the rest of the cost of living wasn't that much worse than anywhere else I've lived. There is a state tax (as there are in most states, but not my current one).

You can find plenty of places, in decent neighborhoods, in OC. You want to live in one of the places you see on TV all the time, the prices gets steeper in a hurry. As far as owning, well, that's a whole different deal.

 

Good call. North OC isn't bad either, but yeah, if you want to buy a house in the OC, try median price of $633,000 (as seen in the OCR back in June).

 

How many clips for this one?

 

SF, rents have increased by a good bit over the last three or four years as housing prices have increased. Rents haven't increased by as much as housing prices, but they have gone up.

 

50k in Orange County will not go a long way.
Even decent lofts Downtown (near) USC are in the $1500 range. It's a tough market right now.

 

I don't care if you live 50 miles from campus to get price down on a rental or whatever, I can't imagine taking this job for less than 75K a year. I realize that kind of salary does wonders to the payroll across the board, but I would think the same forces that drive up living costs in L.A. would also mean a corresponding rise in ad revenues. Or am I wrong?