LAX-Adjacent Westchester is Getting Super Popular and Pricey

The neighborhood best known for sitting next to LAX is seeing a surge in interest, a lot of it from people looking for a single-family living situation who have been priced out of nearby Venice or Santa Monica, according to the LA Times. A local real estate agent sums up the 'hood's appeal: "You can have a lot more house for your money. You can get a single-family home and good-sized yard." What about those airplanes, though?

The area's been rising strong for at least a couple years. Housing prices in Westchester havegone up 25 percent in the last two years, and in the third quarter of 2014, the median price for a single-family house hit $795,000. It's becoming more common for houses to sell for more than $1.5 million, though the top of the area's market sits at about $2 million. As one Westchester resident tells it, the neighborhood is so hot, even people from Brentwood are hoping to move in. Brentwood!

Those high prices are usually commanded by newer houses, so a lot of the older stock in Westchester is getting razed. Many of the 1940s- and 1950s-era one-story houses are being replaced by "fully updated two-story affairs" with open floor plans. But there's yet to be the kind of anti-mansionization uprising that other Westside 'hoods have seen. "There've been a few homes that have popped up and they really kind of max out the lot, but it hasn't gotten bad," says the president of the Westchester/Playa neighborhood council.