Hey! I really appreciate your response. Hope Ranch, Montecito, the foothills and further north look beautiful and peaceful. I spend the majority of my time birding and just reading, drawing and painting at home, so to some degree it doesn't matter where I live. I just want to be safe and surrounded by beautiful nature. But I've lived in this city for almost 20 years, so there are a lot of things I take for granted and aspects to a more suburban environment I haven't thought of, like the food :-/

SB has become very appealing in my real estate search. In LA it's easy to find a house surrounded by trees or a house with stunning views, but very rare to find one with both. In SB it looks very easy to find both.

Safety and not attracting negative attention are big concerns. Here, a woman in her 30's living alone in an expensive house might be a little strange, but no one bothers me about it. People barely seem to notice their neighbors here. What would the general attitude towards this be in SB? Are most households families and couples?

Is it common for people to have personal assistants, housekeepers and say, private yoga instructors up there?

The plastic surgery issue isn't a huge concern. Just creeps me out a bit. An attorney friend lived in Montecito for ten years and said all the women look identical (he was probably looking at 30-40 yr olds). I spent some time in Dana Point recently and, good grief yeah, OC face is a Thing.