I met my girlfriend, who's from LA, in Barcelona, and it's the only other place she says she'd ever live. 

I had some realtors send me some potential investment homes (multiplexes) for rent in LA in my price range (600k) but they all looked trashy.

Greetings LA Biggerpockets Community,I am currently beginning my real estate investing journey on the East Coast, and have plans to move out west to LA in August.

I would imagine Seattle is like LA in that there is a bigger factor in appreciation than cash flow.

Case Shiller has San Diego and LA in top 3 overall returns for buy n hold RE for this century and I have to believe OC cannot be far beneath San Diego.

Thanks for the responses.I just wanted to make sure its not language/culture barrier that is causing me to dismiss some of these- that would not be cool for lots of reasons- but here in LA in the LA rent control/tenant friendly environment- MTR hosts are pretty paranoid (that is because as alot of you probably already know- 30 days creates a legal tenancy)Invariably though these people act weird, wont be vetted, never have reviews, etc., so I'm glad others feel as I do.

@Michael Jones I'm in LA in lower rent areas for sure.

People have been calling for the demise of Vancouver, GTA (in Canada) and NYC, Boston, San Francisco, LA (in USA) for a long-time.

So when you see the movie stars and big time sports celebs flying form new York to LA in their G 4 they spent a cool 100k one way or tad more. 

Now that same area is pretty much the center of LV, and it's kind of shocking to me having that first hand knowledge of what it looked like before, in such a short time span.I agree with everything you posted, in fact Vegas right now reminds me of LA in the 1980's when it was actually affordable to live there and places like Hollywood and the Sunset Strip were areas of blight and crime and poverty and basically a wasteland other than the nightclubs.