I am seriously considering moving to Southern Cali in the next 6 months to year. Any one from the area know reasonably priced areas to live in or near LA?

Well, seeing as I spent like a month or so hunting down housing around here, i can give you a little advice, at least as far as the LA area goes. South of orange county, i cant really help you...

Culver city is a centrally located and decently priced placed to live and isnt too ghetto. Its not the greatest area, but its definitely not too bad- you can get a 1 bedroom there for probly like 900, same with Palms. The LA valley (san fernando) is not a bad place to live, if your careful about it. Valley village, sherman oaks, and studio city are pretty cheaply priced and not far out of the city. The southernmost parts of north hollywood are not bad either, and are real cheap. The rest of the valley is either too ghetto, too far from the city, too crappy in terms of weather, or too expensive, or a combination of these. Burbank and glendale are also surprisingly cheap, and really are okay places in themselves, and close to the city- the problem in LA is if you want to get into hollywood, santamonica, the westside, beverly hills, etc, where all the hottest chicks and 'coolest places' are, ya gotta deal with traffic- so when i say that a place is close in to the city, that doesnt necessarily mean much in terms of travel time during alot of hours of the day. ANyways, i got a lot to say about this, so PM me if you want to know a bit more- i gota get outta here and do some weekend liver damage.

Actually may be closer to 2 weeks... I'm headin over there to check em out, and if it has a family room big enough to hold my pool table, and isn't TOO far from the Strip (I'm pretty sure it's about 10 minutes north), I'm good to go...

What's motivating the move?

Why wouldn't you want to move to Vegas?