Rick Edler’s South Bay Story: Valmonte, Rolling Hills Estates & Hollywood Riviera
A Life Across the South Bay: Rick Edler on Home, Community and Belonging
From Palos Verdes schools and early adulthood in Manhattan Beach to raising four children in Valmonte, living in Rolling Hills Estates and returning to the Hollywood Riviera, Rick Edler has experienced the South Bay as both a resident and a real estate leader.
In this conversation with Cliff Scherb, Rick reflects on the neighborhoods that shaped his family, the everyday rituals that create belonging, the evolution of Valmonte real estate and why the South Bay’s many micro-communities deserve to retain their individual identities.
Rick Edler’s South Bay Story
Seventh Grade
Rick moved to the South Bay in seventh grade and attended Margate, now Palos Verdes Intermediate School.
Palos Verdes High
Rick graduated from Palos Verdes High School in 1987 before attending the University of Southern California.
Four Children
Rick and his wife raised their family in the South Bay, with much of their children’s early life centered in Valmonte.
Multiple Communities
His experience includes Manhattan Beach, the Hollywood Riviera, Valmonte and Rolling Hills Estates.
Growing Up—and Finding His Way Back
Rick’s connection to the South Bay began long before he became a real estate executive. He and his future wife both moved to the area while they were young, attended Margate and later graduated from Palos Verdes High School in consecutive years.
Rick continued to USC, while his future wife attended UC Santa Cruz, studied in Barcelona and later lived in Northern California. Their friendship eventually became a relationship, followed by an engagement and her return to Southern California.
After college, Rick lived in Manhattan Beach. The couple’s first home together was on Calle Miramar in the Hollywood Riviera. When they learned they were expecting their first child, their attention turned toward Valmonte in Palos Verdes Estates—a neighborhood that would become central to their family story.
Valmonte: The Community That Raised a Family
For Rick, Valmonte was not simply a collection of houses beneath the trees. It was a connected neighborhood where children, schools, youth sports, trails and everyday relationships continually brought families together.
Rick and his wife first moved to a newly constructed home on Via Solano, where they welcomed their first daughter. They later moved one block away to Larga Vista and eventually to Navajo Place. The moves provided different homes and more room, but the family remained within the same close-knit community.
“Once you move to Valmonte, you don’t leave until there is a major life event, because it becomes a community.”
Rick remembers walking the local trails, participating in Little League and soccer, seeing neighbors at the park and watching families informally support one another. Children played together while parents shared the responsibilities and rhythms of daily neighborhood life.
Friday evenings at the Little League field became part of that rhythm, complete with parents cooking burgers and families gathering around the games. It was the kind of routine that made the neighborhood feel larger than an address, yet intimate enough that familiar faces were rarely far away.
Valmonte also provided an appealing balance between seclusion and convenience. The neighborhood’s trees, quiet streets and absence of streetlights created a distinct atmosphere, while the Hollywood Riviera, Torrance shopping and daily services remained only minutes away.
Neighbors Who Became Friends
When Rick’s family arrived on Via Solano, a neighbor welcomed them with baked goods. Similar introductions followed with later moves, beginning friendships that lasted even after people relocated.
Trails, Parks and Youth Sports
Walking the dog, taking children to the park, attending Little League and participating in school activities repeatedly brought neighbors together.
A Different World Minutes Away
Valmonte felt calm, wooded and removed while retaining convenient access to the Riviera, Torrance and the rest of the South Bay.
A Neighborhood That Holds People
Rick believes the relationships and routines of Valmonte explain why residents often remain until a major life transition creates a reason to move.
Rick’s experience captures what makes Valmonte difficult to understand through listings alone. Its value comes not only from location, schools or housing, but from repeated neighborhood encounters: the trail, the park, a Little League game, a conversation with someone down the street and the confidence that neighbors will help one another.
More Space and a Different View in Rolling Hills Estates
As their children grew older, Rick and his wife faced a familiar homeowner decision: substantially renovate an older Valmonte home or find something newer with more space and land. With few suitable Valmonte properties available at the time, they moved to a newer home in Rolling Hills Estates around 2017.
The home overlooked Rolling Hills Country Club and offered the family a pool, room for their children and a memorable northern outlook across trees, fairways and distant city lights.
After a ride around Palos Verdes, Rick remembers sitting on the patio, looking over the fairway and city lights, and thinking about how exceptional it was to live and cycle in such a beautiful setting.
Rick described the experience less as one isolated memory and more as a lasting feeling. Although the home was large, the relatively small portion of the patio that captured the view became the place that carried the greatest emotional value.
His reflection illustrates an important real estate lesson: the space that matters most is not always measured by total square footage. A thoughtfully placed patio, a quiet outlook or a setting that supports a favorite daily activity can define how a property is remembered.
A home’s emotional center may occupy only a small percentage of its total footprint. Buyers often remember the breakfast corner, view deck, garden, trail access or gathering space that supports the life they want—not simply the number of square feet shown on a listing.
Returning to the Hollywood Riviera
After their children left for school, Rick and his wife returned to the Hollywood Riviera, where their first home together had been located years earlier.
The Riviera offered a more walkable coastal lifestyle: nearby shops and restaurants, access to the Esplanade, and the ability for Rick to walk to the office. Evening walks with their dog became a transition between the demands of the workday and the restorative quality of the coast.
Rick recalled that a walk north toward the Esplanade gave the couple space to discuss the day. By the time they turned around near sunset, the frustrations had usually passed and the conversation had become more positive.
Daily Life on Foot
Restaurants, shops, the beach and Rick’s office are all woven into the Riviera’s everyday experience.
Evening Esplanade Walks
Walking toward the ocean helped create a natural boundary between the pressure of the day and time at home.
Food and Familiar Places
Rick mentioned Green Temple, Vida Modern Mexican + Tequila and Rockefeller as favorite local stops, often because of the people and rituals connected with them.
Community Still Matters
Although the setting differs from Valmonte, Rick has continued to find meaningful relationships with nearby neighbors.
Rick’s South Bay journey shows that the right neighborhood can change with the stage of life. Valmonte supported children, schools and family connections. Rolling Hills Estates provided space and expansive surroundings. The Riviera offered coastal walkability and an easier connection between home, work and local businesses.
How Valmonte’s Housing Market Evolved
Rick has watched Valmonte change not only as a resident but also through decades in South Bay real estate. He believes the neighborhood’s wooded character, smaller lots and historically smaller homes once created a practical ceiling on how much owners were willing to invest.
For many years, families who needed more room often moved elsewhere rather than undertaking a major expansion or rebuild. That pattern began changing as a small number of homeowners constructed more substantial properties because they valued remaining in the neighborhood—even when the immediate financial case was not yet obvious.
Those early projects established new benchmarks. As buyers saw that larger investments could be supported, more owners began renovating, rebuilding and paying closer attention to architecture, materials and details. Over time, the idea that a home could be “overbuilt for Valmonte” became far less applicable.
Outgrowing the Home
Smaller homes and lots often caused growing families to leave instead of investing heavily in major improvements.
Building for the Neighborhood
A number of owners chose to invest beyond established expectations because staying in Valmonte mattered to them emotionally.
Higher Quality and Value
New construction and thoughtful renovations created stronger comparable sales and encouraged further investment.
Quality Over Sheer Size
Many current buyers prefer well-designed, highly usable square footage over maintaining a much larger home than they need.
Rick also sees a broader shift in buyer behavior. The “bigger is better” era produced many very large homes across the Peninsula. Today, buyers frequently care more about the quality, condition and usability of the space. A smaller, beautifully designed home may command a higher price per square foot because it offers less upkeep and a more efficient daily experience.
The modern buyer is often less interested in maximum square footage and more interested in the quality of each square foot.
The South Bay as a Collection of Micro-Communities
Rick’s central message is that the South Bay should not be treated as one uniform place. It is a patchwork of smaller communities, each with its own geography, routines, businesses, architecture and relationships.
The Sand Section and Hill Section of Manhattan Beach do not offer identical experiences. Hermosa Beach is different from Redondo Beach. Valmonte, Malaga Cove, Lunada Bay, Monte Malaga and the east side of the Palos Verdes Peninsula each have their own patterns and identities.
Some communities have active commercial districts. Others are almost entirely residential. Some are organized around schools and youth sports; others around beaches, trails, equestrian life, village centers or particular streets.
“At the end of the day, it’s the relationship with the people and the relationship with the community.”
For Rick, preservation does not mean preventing new families, development or change. It means evaluating each place in its full local context rather than imposing a one-size-fits-all idea across the entire region.
The most important measure of a community is whether people still form relationships with it: recognizing someone at the coffee shop, seeing a school friend, knowing local business owners and having neighbors who can help when needed.
South Bay real estate becomes clearer when viewed at multiple levels: region, city, neighborhood, micro-neighborhood and individual street. Two nearby homes can deliver very different daily experiences because of traffic, sunlight, terrain, walkability, school access, local businesses and the relationships that develop around them.
You Cannot Find the Right Community Entirely Online
Rick believes there is a South Bay community that can feel familiar and welcoming to many different kinds of people—but finding it requires more than reviewing listings on a computer.
Price and housing needs matter, but so do the experiences that are harder to quantify. He recommends driving the streets, walking through the parks, visiting local coffee shops and listening to residents describe their own lives.
Understand the Budget
Different South Bay communities have meaningfully different price points. Establishing a practical range helps focus the search.
Experience the Streets
Drive and walk neighborhoods at different times to understand traffic, light, noise, terrain, activity and access.
Visit Everyday Places
Spend time in parks, village centers, restaurants and coffee shops to see how the community actually functions.
Talk With People
Residents often provide the details, stories and practical knowledge that no listing description can communicate.
For someone relocating from outside the area and planning to establish long-term roots, Rick also suggested that a short period of renting can provide valuable firsthand experience before purchasing.
“To understand each of the markets is to spend a little bit of time in it.”
Why Rick’s Family Chose the South Bay Again
When the oldest of Rick’s four children approached middle school, he and his wife took a deliberate look at where they wanted to raise their family for the next eight or more years. They wanted their children to remain within a consistent community rather than changing schools and peer groups repeatedly.
They identified the qualities that mattered most, ranked their priorities and researched communities throughout the country. Their considerations included schools, proximity to the water, diversity, career opportunities, community life and a climate that fit their family.
They visited several possibilities and approached the decision analytically. After comparing the options, the place that scored highest was the place they already knew: the South Bay.
After researching communities across the country, Rick and his wife came full circle and chose to raise their children where they had grown up.
Rick has since encountered many former classmates who made a similar decision to return. To him, that pattern speaks to the area’s lasting appeal: people who experienced the South Bay during their own childhoods often see it as a place where they would like to create the next generation of family memories.
South Bay Neighborhood and Street Resources
Rick’s story spans several communities, illustrating why local real estate decisions benefit from neighborhood-level and street-level context.
Rick Edler and South Bay Neighborhood Life
Where did Rick Edler grow up?
Rick moved to the South Bay in seventh grade. He attended Margate, now Palos Verdes Intermediate School, and graduated from Palos Verdes High School in 1987 before attending USC.
Which South Bay communities has Rick Edler lived in?
Rick’s South Bay experience includes Palos Verdes, Manhattan Beach, the Hollywood Riviera, Valmonte in Palos Verdes Estates and Rolling Hills Estates.
What did Rick value most about living in Valmonte?
Rick valued Valmonte’s close neighborhood relationships, trails, parks, schools, youth sports, quiet streets, mature trees and convenient access to the Hollywood Riviera and Torrance. He especially remembered how quickly neighbors welcomed new families and became lasting friends.
How does Rick believe Valmonte has changed?
Rick observed that Valmonte once had a practical ceiling on home size and investment. As owners began building and renovating because they wanted to remain in the neighborhood, new value benchmarks emerged. Today, substantial investment and high-quality construction are far more established within Valmonte.
What does Rick think modern South Bay buyers want?
Rick believes many buyers increasingly prioritize the quality and usability of square footage over maximum home size. Efficient layouts, thoughtful improvements, manageable maintenance and meaningful lifestyle spaces can matter more than total square footage alone.
What should someone do before choosing a South Bay neighborhood?
Rick recommends establishing a realistic price range and then experiencing communities firsthand. Drive the streets, walk through parks, visit coffee shops and commercial areas, speak with residents and observe how the neighborhood feels at different times.
What does Rick believe should be preserved in the South Bay?
Rick believes the South Bay’s individual micro-communities should retain their distinct character. Preservation is not about preventing change; it is about understanding each neighborhood in its full local context and protecting the relationships, routines and places that create belonging.
Thank You, Rick
Thank you to Rick Edler for sharing his family’s South Bay story and the lessons gathered from living across several of its most distinctive communities.
These firsthand memories matter because neighborhoods are more than boundaries, architecture and sales data. They are shaped by the people who walk the trails, gather at the ballfield, greet a new family, support a local business and return years later because a place still feels like home.
Every conversation adds another chapter to the living story of the South Bay.
