Neighborhoods for families?

[JohnG72]

Originally Posted by UB50

A 3/4 bedroom house in Burbank will cost more than $500K.

Yeah this^^^^^^^^^^^^

At least right now. OP's price range will not buy in a "excellent" school district anywhere within reasonable commuting distance from Burbank except for Santa Clarita area. It might in the future, but prices haven't fallen that far yet. Everywhere that $500K buys a 3 or 4 bedroom 1600 sq ft + house within an hour morning commute of Burbank also features less than "excellent" schools.

The other places I can think of that will suit OP(but only if they rent) is La Canada and South Pasadena. Purchasing will be far out of reach.

BTW, the only reason I didn't suggest Burbank is that I'm under the assumption that the schools are merely good, rather than excellent. I could be incorrect as I'm partially basing this on my assumption that the schools are majority Armenian and suffer to some extent in language/grammer/english because of that. Like I said though, I could be wrong.

[uptown_urbanist]

I think the decision is going to come down to commute versus price; I'd personally go with renting something nice in or near Burbank, rather than buying a long way out. Your money will go much farther if you rent than buy. That's not true of many cities, but in LA it often makes more financial sense to rent. I'd also reconsider size; that's pretty big for the area, and with the indoor-outdoor living you could probably get by with less space. Many families in LA, at least those who arrived after housing went up in price, choose to rent.

South Pasadena is great, too, and we LOVED living there, but there's no way one could ever hope to buy something that big for that budget. You could probably afford to rent something decent, though. And Burbank would be more affordable, although I, too, was under the impression that the schools were good, not great. They may well be good enough, though, or at least good enough to consider.