Hi 99,

A lot of the agents here have already mentioned San Pedro. You may consider Long Beach as well.
Here's a link to a blog that I recently posted about these areas.

http://www.trulia.com/blog/AJonesREALTOR/2009/07/san_pedro_l…

Port Hueneme and the Oxnard Harbor area are also promising investments. As the coastal farmland in Oxnard is developed over the next 20 years, these areas will become high demand beach property.

You may also take a look at San Clemente and Oceanside where interesting deals still occasionally come up, as compared to the surrounding communities like Laguna & Carlsbad.

Finally, you can still get beach community homes in L.A. for $550k-$700k in Redondo Beach, El Segundo, Westchester & Venice. Not cheap... but considering the alternatives. I have a permanant search set up for the 100 least expensive homes from El Segundo to Redondo Beach on my website. The link is at the bottom of this comment.

Please feel free to contact me if you have any questions or would like more information about some of these options. Here's one more link to a great free tool called Market Snapshot that may be useful to you. It will give you this week's housing conditions including community reports for any neighborhood from L.A. & Orange County to San Bernardino.

http://www.homeinsight.com/Widget/default.asp?VE373T7NCA0G

Best of luck.

San Pedro is the least expensive option to live near the ocean in the South Bay of Los Angeles. There are areas in the Eastview area of Rancho Palos Verdes which are next to Sam Pedro which are still relatively affordable but are in the Palos Verdes school district.

Chula Vista in San Diego is the least expensive I am aware of.

I agree. San Pedro is the most affordable in the South Bay. Down South you can look at Oceanside.

Well, that depends on where exactly you are looking. I would say North Redondo is the most affordable beach community nearest Hermosa. Then I would look at the Holy Glen area of Hawthorne which neighbors El Segundo and Manhattan Beach. It also depends if you are looking for a house or condo.

Depends what area of S. CA. In the south bay, San Pedro is probably the most affordable. Orange county has many affordable beach communities and San Diego has bounced back into quite affordable these days. I suppose it depends on exactly what you mean by "affordable" and what part of S Cal.