Why should I move to Laguna Beach? Here’s the real reason
Answered by a 26-year resident who never planned to move there at all.
I didn’t move to Laguna Beach. I stumbled into it.
It was a Sunday afternoon in late 1999. I’d been living in Newport Beach for about a year after driving down the California coast from Portland. I’d heard people mention Laguna, but I kept cutting inland before I ever hit it. That day I stayed on PCH instead.
When I pulled into this small seaside town, it reminded me of the town I grew up in back in New Jersey — except it was on the Pacific Ocean and it was December and it was 75 degrees. I wandered around for a few hours and ducked into a bar called the Marine Room downtown. A woman at the bar told me I couldn’t leave yet — a band called Missiles of October was about to play. She bought me a beer. An hour later the place was wall to wall, Harleys lined the street, and she had introduced me to more people than I’d met in a year in Newport.
I got a room that night instead of driving home. The next morning I walked into a realtor’s office. My road trip back to New Jersey never happened. That was 26 years ago.
Understanding the Appeal: Why Move to Laguna Beach
The honest answer is: it depends entirely on what you’re looking for.
Most people who ask this question have seen the photos — the coves, the bluffs, the sunsets over the Pacific — and they want to know if the reality matches. It does. But that’s not actually why people stay.
Here’s what keeps people here for decades:
It’s a real town, not a resort
Laguna has 23,000 residents. It’s small enough that you recognize faces. There’s a dog park in the canyon where I met my wife. I’ve volunteered at the animal shelter for nearly 20 years. On weekends I’m on the sideline of youth soccer and Little League games. There’s a functioning community underneath the tourist surface that most visitors never see — and once you’re part of it, leaving feels unimaginable.
The geography is unlike anywhere else in Southern California
Laguna sits inside a coastal canyon. Unlike every other beach city in the area, it wasn’t grid-planned — the hills, canyons, and coastline forced the town to develop in a way that actually has character. There are 30+ public beaches within the city, most of them reached by stairs cut into the cliffs. Residents have trails in the hills above them and tide pools below. This isn’t Newport Beach. It isn’t Malibu. It’s its own thing.
The culture is genuinely different
Laguna has had a working arts community since the early 1900s — the Laguna Beach Art Association is one of the oldest in California. The Festival of Arts and Pageant of the Masters every summer isn’t a tourist gimmick; it’s a 90-year-old institution locals are proud of. The town has always attracted artists, writers, and people who wanted something different from the standard SoCal suburb. That energy is still there.
Most people who live here didn’t grow up here
That’s something I didn’t expect when I arrived, and it matters more than it sounds. The community is full of people who made a deliberate choice to be here — who gave something up, moved from somewhere else, and decided this was worth it. That creates a different social fabric than towns where people just landed by default. You’ll find transplants from New York, Chicago, Portland, London — people with actual stories — and within a few weeks you’ll know more of them than you’d expect.
The Honest Part
It is expensive. Median home prices are around $3 million. If you’re renting, you’re competing in a very tight market. The cost of living is real and you need to go in with eyes open.
Parking is a genuine problem. If you want to understand local politics in Laguna, know that parking has been a defining issue for years. Summer is brutal. You adapt, but you should know before you move.
It’s small. For some people that’s the whole point. For others, the lack of certain conveniences (big-box retail, a wide variety of dining options outside the tourist corridor, etc.) takes adjustment.
I built this site called movingtolagunabeach.com specifically because when I moved here I had nobody to ask the real questions. The site covers neighborhoods, what things actually cost, schools, beaches, and connects people with locals who can give you straight answers.
But the truest thing I can tell you is this: I know dozens of people who moved to Laguna Beach planning to stay a year or two. Almost none of them left. That’s not an accident. The town does something to people. If you’re asking the question on Quora, there’s a decent chance it’ll do it to you too.
