No sooner do I announce to friends and family that we're putting an offer on a house, than we receive word that we've been outbid. That's been the story four times since March. The housing market in L.A. is brutal. The very first house we bid on in February (before losing out on the subsequent 4) was actually accepted, but inspections found issues and we weren't comfortable proceeding. You can't get attached to houses here.
Our search is made all the more difficult by ME! I want a private yard where I can garden and keep a few chickens. That's not such a tall order in L.A., where many houses have sizable backyards and many homeowners keep chickens. If you're interested in backyard chicken keeping, the site Backyard Chickens maintains a list of many citys' ordinances. Here is the Los Angeles chicken code via BackyardChickens.com. And a couple chicken adoption sites: Farm Sanctuary and Earth Angels.
So to anybody I told this week that we bid on a house... we lost out. Here's what we did get: AK was the winner of a terrible cold that's kept him home from work and brought us home early last night from the L.A. Philharmonic (thank you neighbor, whom we've never met before, for knocking on the door with free tickets). His cold came a day after his credit card was stolen and used on an Ikea shopping spree in Illinois. Yesterday Mia landed a deal on a UTI that had me taking the afternoon off to bring her to the vet.
Despite my whining, we couldn't be more grateful. Every weekend since we've been in L.A. (we moved in mid-February) we've either spent time with friends & family or explored the city. Our current airbnb in Echo Park has introduced us to an incredible neighborhood and friendly neighbors. And we're confident we'll soon have a neighborhood to call our own. With chickens.