Several people thought it was laminate.This is the Stainmaster Washed Oak/Dove Gray from Lowe's (don't know why it uploads sideways!)...

I left LA 12 years ago lived in Sherman Oaks then west LA.

I recommend trying to get all parties to try to chip in more money towards the HOA.

I am looking in the Ferndale, Hazel Park, Oak Park, Madison Heights areas since I am most familiar with them. 

You might print the Web page to a PDF, and either keep those PDFs in folders on your computer/phone for each property, with folders named like "101 S Main Long Beach", or "1217 W Oak Huntington" or similar, OR name the PDFs like "101-s-main-county-taxes.pdf", "1217-w-oak-old-mortgages.pdf", so you can find them again later.I hope this helps!

And lastly the town I live in https://altos.re/r/15fd2d9 you can see this is upper end for the PDX area and things are softening on the 1 mil plus.I am thinking of taking my chips off the table pretty soon...

Chip Cummings' book on Zero Risk Real Estate is a possible place to start.

Now, it doesn’t hurt to ask them - it is possible that they agree to chip in, but in MY experience, they rarely do.  

That is totally fine as obviously this is entirely new to you, but you can choose to chip away on the internet and lead yourself on a long and not entirely well directed chase, or you can get to the point. 

You can even use this as a bargaining chip to ask for a price reduction.