Lakewood Real Estate News

Selecting the right Lakewood real estate agent may be the most important single step to a successful home sale or purchase.

Of course choosing a competent, honest, experienced and diligent agent is always important for such a major financial transaction, but there are some unique things about Lakewood that make picking the right agent especially important.

To illustrate, let me go back to when Barb and I bought our very first home, in Lakewood, back in 1976 (I believe we were about 7 years old at the time. . . .)

A Child of Lakewood Moves Away. . . .

Actually, I’d grown up in Lakewood, so I thought I knew the city pretty well.  In fact my parents were original owners in Lakewood Park, the biggest new tract ever built at the time.  I went to school in Lakewood from Samuel Gompers Elementary through Lakewood High.   But after graduating from UCLA in 1972 I remained in Westwood. By 1976 Barb and I were ready to buy our first home.

. . . and Finds Out There’s No Place Like Home!

We started researching communities from Thousand Oaks to Garden Grove.  The San Fernando and San Gabriel Valleys were just too hot and smoggy, so we focused on the coastal plain.

The “West Side,” from Redondo Beach up to Santa Monica, was just too expensive for us, even back then.  We wanted to avoid the high crime areas, and decided against the warmer inland locations like La Mirada.  Eventually we ended up back where I’d started, in Lakewood.

My parents still lived in Lakewood, and as relative newlyweds I thought it might be a good idea to buy someplace else.  (Turns out I was wrong:  After we had kids, we were thrilled to have their grandparents nearby.)   But Lakewood was simply the best value for our money.  Turns out Lakewood’s still a great value 30+ years later:  Great location,  great climate, good parks, mostly decent schools all at reasonable prices.

Affordability Then and Now

Back then I was a school teacher, not a Realtor, so I asked my parents for a Realtor they’d recommend.  They referred us to Bob, a friend from their church.  He was an experienced agent, honest, nice guy, and spent a lot of time working with us.  There was one problem, however.

We wanted a three bedroom, two bath Lakewood home with a family room and a fireplace under $50,000.  To get a little perspective on that price, gas was about 40 cents a gallon back then, today it’s about $4.40–up eleven times.  Multiply $50,000 by eleven & you’ve got $550,000.  I just found out about a three bedroom, two bath, family room REO in an excellent Lakewood area neighborhood in outstanding condition. It even has a nice pool, and it’s hitting the market next week for $499,000.

So, with the dramatic declines in value of the past two years, Lakewood home prices actually have not gone up as much since 1976 as have gas prices.

“But wait, there’s more!”  Did I mention interest rates?  When we bought, rates were 9.25% for a 30 year fixed loan with 20% down.   Today they’re about 6.25%!  So interest rates have actually gone down about 33% since 1976! Maybe “happy days are here again for buyers!

About “Lakewood Schools”

On about our third househunting trip with Bob, we fell in love with one home.  There were only a few things we needed to clear up before making an offer.

Having grown up in Lakewood, I knew there was no such thing as “Lakewood schools.”  Lakewood was incorporated as the nation’s first “contract city,” to avoid being annexed piece by piece by Long Beach.  Contracting with the County for police and fire services made incorporation affordable for a “bedroom community” like Lakewood.   The area had already been divided up between four surrounding school districts.

Most people think there is a wide variance in quality between the four districts that serve Lakewood.  So, even though we didn’t have kids yet, I wanted to check to make sure we were in a good district.  Having gone to Long Beach schools myself, and knowing this home was close to the Long Beach border with Lakewood, I asked Bob, “This neighborhood belongs to the Long Beach School District, right?”

“Uh. . . I think so,” came Bob’s answer.

So we wrote the offer, negotiated the price, bought the home and moved in.  Only then did we discover that  the neighborhood actually didn’t go to Long Beach schools, but instead went to a district I felt was less desirable.

Our Mistake. . .

Bob was honest, caring, experienced, diligent, friendly, and a member of the local Board of Realtors, but he did more business in Long Beach and West Orange County than in Lakewood.   He actually was pretty  knowledgeable about Lakewood, but lacked awareness of some important details, like exactly where the school district lines were.

Knowing school district lines in Lakewood is trickier than it seems.  In our case, if the home was just three tenths of a mile to the south or to the east, it would have been in the Long Beach school district.  200 yards to the east, & we’d have been in a third district.  The lines were drawn sixty years ago, and are a little tricky.

In Lakewood, as in Cypress or La Palma, the school district can make a significant difference in a home’s value.  In addition, that difference can be greater for certain types of homes.  Often there’s almost no price variation for condos or two bedroom SFRs, but a huge variance for larger, multiple bath homes.  Whether you’re buying or selling, whether or not you have school aged kids, you need that information to make intelligent pricing decisions.  Unfortunately, I’ve met scores of Lakewood homeowners who were told by their Realtor that their home went to “Lakewood Schools” or “The Lakewood School District.”  Unfortunately, there is no such thing!

Those aren’t the only Lakewood nuances that many agents know little if anything about.   Some neighborhoods are downwind from polluting refineries.  One tract has an optional homeowner’s association  with a neighborhood pool and clubhouse available for just $15 per month association dues.   Some residential streets that you wouldn’t expect are parked up when school is in session.  Or AYSO.  Or Lakewood’s annual Pan American Festival.  There are blocks where you can plan on staying up late six Fridays every fall during football season.

Then there’s my pet peeve–the areas the So Cal Multiple Listing Service divides Lakewood into.  They are more complex than almost any other city I’m aware of, and lots of agents just can’t seem to be bothered to spend $5 for the MLS map to learn them.  The areas are actually based on the original tracts, back when Lakewood was developed from 1940 to 1962, with names like “Lakewood Park,” “The Mutuals,” “Mayfair,” or “Lakewood Gardens.”

“Lakewood City” was the name of a tract on both sides of Carson west of Bellflower Blvd.  Two thirds of the “Lakewood City” tract and MLS area are actually in the city of Long Beach.  Yet dozens of listing agents list dozens of Lakewood homes as being in “Lakewood City” when they’re actually miles away from there.  That’s only one of the most common mistakes.

When a home’s listed in the wrong area, it’s invisible to any agent who’s searching for it under the area it’s actually in.  Yet I routinely find that about 35% of Lakewood homes are listed in the wrong MLS area of Lakewood.  You’d think an agent who was going to make thousands of dollars if his listing sold would spend $5 for a MLS map to be sure it was listed in the right area. . . but you’d be wrong!  That $5 mistake could cost his seller thousands of dollars, or even a sale.

. . . and How You Can Avoid It:

Perhaps now you can see why, whether you’re buying or selling in Lakewood, it’s critical to have an agent who’s not only honest, experienced, and diligent, but who also knows Lakewood inside and out.

So how do you know how well your agent knows Lakewood.  There are some clues:

• The agent’s office address.
• Where the agent lives.
• How long the agent’s been licensed.
• Ask the agent to tell you about the “Lakewood School District.”
• Ask, “By the way, what schools did your kids go to?”
• Ask “How many Lakewood homes have you sold in your career?”  (Under 30, keep looking.)
• Ask the agent for an MLS print-out of all his Lakewood listings for the past 6 years.  (Not his office’s, but his.)  All of them–sold, expired, cancelled.  (Then ask another agent for the same thing for both his listings and that first agent’s.)
• My favorite:  Ask the agent where 4820 Briercrest is and see if she can tell you off the top of her head or needs to look it up.

Some Inside Info on Lakewood’s Addresses:

(West of the San Gabriel River, Lakewood addresses are fairly easy, and most experienced agents should have a fairly good idea of them.  Address numbers there are a continuation of Long Beach’s street numbers.  The north/south numbers start from Ocean Blvd., so they’re all north.  East/west street addresses are numbered from Long Beach Blvd. and are all east. I think of Carson as Blvd as 41st Street and Del Amo as 49th St., although there are some variations.  South St. is 58th St. west of Bellflower Blvd. and 56th east of Woodruff to the San Gabriel River.

East of the river, the numbers run from downtown Los Angeles, as in the city of Cerritos, so Del Amo would be 203rd St.  The homes are generally newer, but some of the neighborhoods are rougher.  (I told you Lakewood was nuanced.)

In part of central Lakewood (zip 90713)  the north/south streets are in alphabetical order moving east from Bellflower Blvd.  (Adenmoor through Eastbrook), then skipping past Palo Verde Ave., where the alphabet resumes with Josie through Quigley.)

Briercrest not only is the “B” street that’s the second street east of Bellflower Blvd., but it’s also the street Lakewood’s largest high school sits on.  (Yup, that would be Lakewood High.  In the Long Beach Unified School District.  Give me a call (562-822-SOLD) & I’ll sing you the alma mater.  Class of ‘68, along with 1,400 of my closest friends.)  So 4820 Briercrest is on the second street east of Bellflower Blvd. in the first block south of Del Amo (which I think of as 49th St.)

If you now know more about Lakewood Streets than your Realtor, you probably need another Realtor!

Selecting a Lakewood Real Estate Agent

The above questions should at least get you an agent with some knowledge of Lakewood’s nuances.  To avoid other mistakes in picking an agent, regardless of area, you might want to check out ”Top 5 ways NOT to pick an agent“  in our regional blog, SoCalRealEstateNews.com.

We think it might be a good idea to give us a call so you’ll at least have a standard to compare other agents against.   After almost 30 years of working in the Lakewood area, I pretty much know every experienced, active agent.  Blair and I aren’t the only honest and competent agents with a close knowledge of Lakewood, but there are probably 10 - 20 inexperienced or dishonest agents for every one that I’d recommend.  They may be counterfeits, but many of them are very good counterfeits that are very difficult to identify.  If you don’t do your homework, the odds are definitely against you.

As always, we appreciate your questions and comments and will try to respond.  If you want us to contact you by e-mail, just ask in the comment, otherwise we won’t bother you.

If you’re interested in Lakewood real estate, we’d also encourage you to click on the RSS logo on the right just below our masthead and above the wide photo.  We intend to put up informative posts about Lakewood, its real estate market, and market trends regularly.

And best wishes on your Lakewood real estate endeavors!