Best Neighborhoods in Torrance

Walteria, if you want the South High schools at a lower price, and the Hollywood Riviera if the budget stretches to the beach. Both are zoned for Richardson Middle and South High, with Walteria Elementary or Riviera Elementary before that, and Walteria has its park and library on one block of 242nd Street. Old Torrance goes to Torrance Elementary or Fern Elementary, then Hull or Madrona Middle and Torrance High. Run the exact address through the Torrance Unified School Locator.

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The lower streets of the Hollywood Riviera. Torrance Beach is at the foot of the hill, a Los Angeles County beach with lifeguards in daylight hours and more than 300 parking spaces. Miramar Park and Riviera Village are a walk from the streets near Palos Verdes Boulevard. From the upper hill most people drive, because the streets wind. Walteria is about two and a half miles from the sand.

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Old Torrance, of the three neighborhoods we cover. As of September 2026, its condos and townhomes asked about $385,000 to $1 million and the few houses for sale about $780,000 to $1.7 million. Most Walteria houses asked about $1.4 million to $1.75 million, and most Hollywood Riviera houses about $1.8 million to $2.8 million. The lower price in Old Torrance comes with century-old systems, overlay review for big changes to houses on the historic survey, and the refinery to the north.

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Yes, for a lot of buyers. The Hollywood Riviera has a county beach at the bottom of the hill, Walteria gets you Torrance Unified's South High feeder schools for less than the Riviera, and Old Torrance has a small walkable downtown laid out on the city's 1912 plan. The downsides are Zamperini Field's general aviation traffic, the refinery north of downtown, and hillside rules and fire zones along the Palos Verdes line, so check each one for the exact block.

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Walteria most of all. Zamperini Field sits directly across Pacific Coast Highway from it, with about 10 flight schools in 2023 and Robinson Helicopter's factory on its southeast side. The airport is about a mile east of the Hollywood Riviera's edge at Anza Avenue and about 2.5 miles from Old Torrance. The city logged about 27,000 noise complaints in 2023, filed by just 54 people, and banned touch-and-go training in January 2024. Check the city's NoiseLab flight tracks for any block you're considering.

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Close. The refinery, run by PBF Energy since 2016, fills the blocks between 190th Street and Del Amo Boulevard, and its south fence is less than half a mile north of Dominguez Street and under a mile from El Prado. The February 18, 2015 explosion there threw debris that narrowly missed a tank holding modified hydrofluoric acid. Flaring still happens, and the South Coast AQMD posts flare notices online.

Read the Old Torrance guide

Only part of the Hollywood Riviera is in a fire zone. CAL FIRE's 2025 map, which Torrance adopted in June 2025, puts a band along the Palos Verdes Estates line in moderate, high and very high zones, with about 130 homes in the very high zone, most on Calle de Arboles. Old Torrance and Walteria sit outside the zones. For flooding, FEMA maps Old Torrance as Zone X, Walteria as Zone X except one Zone A pocket of about an acre, and the Riviera's houses as Zone X, with the beach below in a coastal VE zone.

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Our guides don't use crime data, so I won't rank the three on that. On the hazards the guides do map, Old Torrance and Walteria sit outside CAL FIRE's 2025 fire zones, while the Hollywood Riviera has a band of fire zones along the Palos Verdes line, as well as bluff and hillside ground that moved in 2016 and 2024. For crime, check the Torrance Police Department's public crime data for the exact block.

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Mostly Torrance. About two thirds of the houses on the Torrance side carry a Redondo Beach 90277 mailing address because the Redondo Beach post office delivers there, but they pay Torrance taxes, get their permits from Torrance and are zoned for Torrance Unified schools. Riviera Village, the shopping street, is in Redondo Beach. Confirm the city on the county assessor's parcel record, not the mailing address.

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Walteria is the inland tract neighborhood along Hawthorne Boulevard, and the Hollywood Riviera is the hillside above Torrance Beach; they meet around Anza Avenue. Walteria has 1950s and 1970s houses, its own park, library and elementary school, lower prices, and the airport across the highway. The Riviera has 1950s view streets, bluff lots, fire zones along the Palos Verdes line and Riviera Village a walk away in Redondo Beach. Both are zoned for Richardson Middle and South High.

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Yes. I'm Slava Ploshkin, a REALTOR® (CA DRE #02323623) brokered by Hayden & Bach, and I work with my broker Joe Goodman in English and Russian. In Torrance, the first things we go over together in Russian are which city the parcel is really in, what the School Locator says, and the flight tracks over the block.