Orange County, CA first purchase

[Rob Painter]

Hi all, new to REI and Orange County. I've been renting for 6 months now and have started to get curious about buying property as my medical training will lock me in to SoCal until ~2026 anyways. Not being from the area, I've loved living near the beach and really would like to continue doing so. However, as I'm early in my career, I don't have a ton of liquidity to work with right now. My big question is if it's realistic to find something reasonably close to the water between Newport and Long Beach from <$500k or if I should be shifting my mindset. I've been on CRMLS and it looks like there are a few options but the vast majority seem out of my price range so I wanted to reach out to the community for somebody with more experience in the area.