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1 of 6
Riverside, CA 92501
4581 Brandi Ln.
Listed Price: $279,900
Starting Bid: $112,000
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SOUTHERN CALIFORNIA NEIGHBORHOOD PAGES
Click on the cities and neighborhoods below for descriptions of life in these Los Angeles areas.
Torrance is in the South Bay, about 10 miles south of LAX, east of Redondo Beach and north of the Palos Verdes Peninsula. The city is named after Jared Sidney Torrance, a real estate developer who in the early 1900s envisioned a mixed industrial-residential community on the empty land between Los Angeles and the peninsula and hired Frederick Law Olmstead Jr. -- the landscape architect who designed New York's Central Park -- to create a city plan.
Olmstead made his mark throughout the Old Torrance area, in the grand, park-like grounds that lead up to Torrance High School (which television viewers might recognize as the setting for "Beverly Hills, 90210") and the gently curving roads that wind through the original residential area. The streets of Old Torrance are lined with quaint small-town specialty stores and ice cream parlors and seem oblivious to the ExxonMobil Corp. refinery and strip-mall commercial zones that surround it.
In addition to industrial operations such as the oil refinery, ironworks and railway companies, which formed the industrial base of Torrance's businesses community for many years, the range of commerce has broadened to include automakers Honda North America Inc. and Toyota Motor Sales U.S.A. Inc., footwear companies Lakai and Globe and electronics manufacturers such as Panasonic Corp. These global corporations have attracted a large and diverse population with a high concentration of Japanese expatriates and Japanese Americans.
Housing in Torrance is equally diverse, ranging from small apartments to sprawling mansions, but prices have risen across all sectors and in all neighborhoods during the last several years. In 2002, the median price for a single-family home in Torrance was $355,500, according to DataQuick Information Systems, and had risen to $600,000 in March 2007.
The city's more desirable areas include the upper Hollywood Riviera, which was founded by movie stars seeking seaside escapes in the 1920s, west Torrance, Seaside Ranchos and Southwood. Although hillside homes in the Hollywood Riviera area generally sell for $1 million to $2 million, homes in the newer Southwood neighborhood sell in the $600,000-to-$800,000 range.
On the opposite end of the scale, in north Torrance and Harbor Gateway, for example, housing prices are lower due to their proximity to the industrial corridor. In Harbor Gateway, a three-bedroom ranch house will usually sell for about $540,000. In these areas, many of the residents are zoned for the Los Angeles United School District instead of the Torrance Unified School District.
