Welcome to San Fernando Valley

Just north of the West Hollywood and Hollywood Hills, via either Laurel Canyon, the 405 San Diego Freeway or 101 Hollywood/Ventura Freeway, is a large, flat land called the San Fernando Valley, wonderful group of middle and upper-middle-class neighborhoods.

San Fernando Valley (although connected to Los Angeles) does have a distinctive personality: lots of flat land, warmer temperatures than the LA basin and endless boulevards and streets crossing its length and width, emphasizing its dominant car culture.

For guests from the East Coast or Europe, the spread out of the Valley could be intimidating: When on 22 May 1915 the City of Los Angeles annexed the San Fernando Valley, it added 177 square miles to its existing 108 square miles.

Until the early 1900s, land use in San Fernando Valley was limited to ranching and non-irrigated agriculture. Then speculators, anticipating the arrival of the Owens River Aqueduct in 1913, began to buy up thousands of acres of Valley property. To share the water brought by the aqueduct, ranchers voted to joint the municipality of Los Angeles. Property values soared, and people savvy enough to invest in real estate profited handsomely. Boom succeeded boob, and hundreds of thousands moved into the Valley, encouraged by jobs in the nearby aviation, electronics, and entertainment industries.

Several decades of accelerated development made the area famous for rapid-start tract-house neighborhoods and instant shopping centers. The vast spaces quick filled up due to low-density development pattern: only 7.2 people per acre here compared to the Wilshire district’s 38.9 persons per acre.

San Fernando Valley today, is predominantly residential, with an increasingly diverse population.

The west and south sides are more affluent than the east, and heavy industry is almost exclusively concentrated in the northern are around San Fernando, Sylmar and Pacoima. With these few exceptions, the Valley is basically all of one fabric, very middle class, and extremely mobile. Single-family ranch-style houses outnumber multiple dwellings nearly two to one, leaving this a place where it’s still possible to maintain a semblance of the American dream : to own a home with a spacious yard and a two-car garage.

I, Gary Rapoport, look forward to serving you in San Fernando Valley and these amazing areas of Studio City, Sherman Oaks, Encino, Tarzana, as well as Woodland Hills and West Hills.

Feel free to call me with your Real Estate questions at 818-399-9981.