Carol Gilles Realtor
Beach Cities Online — Your Trusted South Bay Real Estate Resource Led by award-winning Realtor® Carol Gilles, Beach Cities Online is your one-stop destination for buying or selling homes across Torrance, Redondo Beach, Manhattan Beach, Hermosa Beach, Palos Verdes, and the greater South Bay area of Los Angeles.
With decades of local expertise, Carol helps buyers find their dream homes and sellers maximize their property value through personalized service, deep neighborhood knowledge, and proven results. Explore the latest MLS listings, discover detailed community guides, and get expert insights into the dynamic South Bay real estate market.
Whether you’re searching for a beachfront property in Redondo Beach, a family home in Central Torrance, or downsizing in Palos Verdes Estates, Carol Gilles and her team are here to guide you every step of the way.
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Don & Sherri Wright
Carol Gilles is the most amazing realtor we have ever met in our lifetime! She has been helping us buy and sell property for many years. Whether you’re looking for an investment, A forever home or just curious about the market Carol should be your first go to! Carol is a knowledgeable, intelligent, professional, caring, understanding and kind hearted! She will fight for you! We bought our Forever home when the market was extremely competitive and there were at least 12 offers per home. The market for homes by the beach are always very competitive, but at the time we were buying it was more competitive then usual! We got our home because she was quick, efficient and made it happen.Carol Is Dedicated to Helping You Check All The Boxes
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Real Estate Articles
TREES ADD UP TO 10% TO YOUR PROPERTY VALUE
TREE SAFETY
Does the severe weather of the past several years have you looking up at your trees in fear? It’s an understandable concern. A big storm could destroy the plants’ majesty in a flash — and send a quarter-ton branch crashing down onto your roof. Still, before you preemptively chip a favorite tree into mulch, consider this: It may be contributing 8% to 10% to your home’s value, according to Scott Cullen of the Council of Tree and Landscape Appraisers.
Here’s how to keep your leafy assets from becoming a liability.
Schedule regular upkeep
Have your trees inspected every five years or so — a free service offered by tree-care companies. An arborist will look for branches that are weak or hanging within 10 feet of a building, and send workers to remove them.
If necessary, they’ll also buttress the tree against high winds by cabling limbs together. All this work costs about $200 to $400 a tree and is typically needed only once a decade.
Related: Tips on homeowners insurance
In many cases the tree will more than cover the cost of its maintenance over a few years; a big shade tree will knock nearly $70 off annual air conditioning bills, says David Nowak of the U.S. Forest Service, and a large evergreen that blocks winter winds will reduce heating costs by around $60 a year.
Bonus: Trees also provide protection from road noise and basement flooding.
Get removal right
When a tree becomes diseased or dangerously overgrown given its proximity to a house, your arborist will recommend taking it down.
Removing a substantial tree could cost $2,000 to $5,000, depending on its size and whether it is accessible by truck or requires climbing — and what’s underneath that the crew must protect.
Related: 4 ways to save on landscaping
You can have the stump ground down to just below grass or mulch height for $50 to $200 more. Or carve a trough in the top, drill some drainage holes, and use it as a planter.
Invest in new growth
To replace an unsafe tree or propagate a bare lot, look for varieties that grow quickly and have compact spreads to minimize pruning headaches, says Charlotte, N.C., landscape architect J’Nell Bryson.
A local nursery can suggest good options and plant eight-footers for $250 to $500 each. In about a decade they could add tens of thousands to your property value, probably the best investment return you’ll ever make.
MORE OF THOSE POPULAR ‘HOMEOWNER TIPS’
Splatter Stopper
Whenever I mix 5-gallon buckets of paint with a drill and paddle attachment, I put the paddle’s shaft through a hole in a large cardboard square before attaching the shaft to the drill. Then I lay the cardboard directly on the container before turning on the drill. No splatters!
Tidy Patio Joint Filler
Here’s an easy way to fill joints between pavers or patio flagstones: Simply take an empty screw-top wine bottle and punch a hole in the top of the cap near its edge. Fill the bottle with sand, mortar mix, or polymeric sand; screw on the cap; and pour the contents into the joints rather than on the pavers. There’s no waste and no cleanup.
Photographic Memory Aid
When I’m taking apart something that I need to put back together, I take pictures at each step of the disassembly. Then I arrange the photos in reverse order to see step-by-step how to reassemble it.
Tire Reviver
Here’s a quick way to inflate any small pneumatic tire after it’s gone flat. Tie a rope tightly around the circumference of the tire, then use plumber’s putty to seal the edge where the rubber meets the wheel rim. Now you can pump up the tire and untie the rope. Simple as that.
Million Dollar Listings
DataQuick, a real estate information service, announced that California’s Million Dollar Home Sales were the highest since 2007. The jump in million-dollar home sales last quarter outpaced overall home sales. Total California home sales – including all price levels – increased 10.3 percent year-over-year last quarter, from 109,713 in second-quarter 2011 to 121,058 last quarter.
Last quarter’s $1 million-plus sales were the highest since third-quarter 2007, when 10,946 changed hands. Good news for sure. Manhattan Beach made the top list with a $5.50 Million sale.
Last landing of Endeavour at LAX
Emotions were running wild when, after traveling almost 125 million miles in space, with 25 completed missions, our now retired shuttle ‘Endeavour’ touched down at LAX for the very last time the last week of September. Endeavour landed at LAX just before 1 p.m. on top of the massive Boeing 747 Shuttle Carrier Aircraft.
Before touching down at LAX, thousands of people gathered around Southern California to witness Endeavour as it flew atop the 747 at low altitude over California’s most famous places and landmarks. On October 12th, Endeavor will be towed up to the California Science Center, its final home. The shuttle is expected to go on public display on Oct. 30th.
SPACE-X OF HAWTHORNE IS THE SOUTH BAYS “NEW HIGH FLYIN’ KID IN-TOWN”
After several successful launches and space missions, Space-X of Hawthorne seems to be off to a ‘roaring’ start. In the tradition of many aerospace giants that came before it, Space-X is making a name for itself throughout the world. It’s fitting that this “cutting edge” assembly of aerospace engineers and 21st century space innovators, are working in the city of Hawthorne where so many of the aviation and aerospace giants of the past made their huge mark on history. Big corporations and little companies alike, during good times and bad, worked together to win wars, the race to the moon and the cold war. Companies like Northrop, American Aviation, Lockheed, AirResearch, Xerox and Ratheon helped make the South Bay what it is today giving us all a great standard of living and a fantastic lifestyle like nowhere else. There is no doubt about it, the South Bay is a great place to live, to work and to play.
Space Shuttle Endeavor – Making LA it’s new Home!
Do you remember .. for those who are old enough, the black and white TV of John Glenn in the small space capsule? He was the First American to orbit the Earth, aboard Friendship 7 on February 20, 1962, on the Mercury-Atlas 6 mission. Well jump ahead to 1992 ... the...
