Lake Los Angeles, CA

Lake Los Angeles was laid out as a planned community in the nineteen sixties and seventies, out on the eastern side of the valley. The lake it was named for has been dry for a long time. What that history leaves behind is unusual and genuinely useful to know: a large share of the housing went up inside a fairly narrow window.

Houses of one generation

When a lot of homes are built at once, they reach the end of things at once. Water heaters, original fixtures, interior doors, sliding tracks, cooler units and the first generation of anything electrical all come due within a few years of each other, across a whole community rather than one street.

That is why a job here is so often a list rather than a single fault. If the taps in one bathroom are original, the ones in the other usually are too, and the sensible thing is to price them together.

Distance, and what it is worth

It is a long way out. Not too far, but far enough that nobody should be paying for the drive twice. Anything that can be looked at in the same visit should be, and it is worth walking the house before we come out and writing down every small thing that has been ignored, including the ones that feel too minor to mention. Those are usually the quickest to put right once somebody is already there with the tools out.