The folks over at Pie Town Productions are doing a show for people who are serious about buying a home, and it will be airing on HGTV. They provide experts and advice on the homes and area so you can get a Good Buy (which happens to be the name of the show). And you get to be on TV!

If you live in the L.A. area, we recommend that you find homes on our site which you are interested in buying (at least two), and copy the links to them. Then go ahead and click on the HGTV link on the city and neighborhood pages, or go to Pie Town Productions and fill out the application to be on the show. They are really helpful people, and I think it is a great concept. Good luck and we hope to see some of you on TV.

Somewhat miraculously, I managed to win twice on Jeopardy! the last two nights, so I will be on the left podium for the last game of the season tonight. I wasn’t expecting to come back twice and so outlasted the outfit selections I made ahead of time – I apologize for anyone out there that has a sense of color. But c’mon and tune in anyway, at 7 on 7 in LA.

One day, back in 2005 or so, my good friend Zach called me up to talk about his search for a house, and what he had learned from it. It turns out that way back then it wasn’t a simple task to compare the quality of neighborhoods in LA using a combination of criteria. You could find school data, but just try cross-referencing that with crime, all while seeing how much houses cost in that neighborhood. Zach ended up getting a wall-sized Thomas Bros map, and using different colored markers to write stats for each area. That kind of thinking is why he got on Jeopardy and I didn’t.

And so LA Life was born. We have collected data, analyzed it, and tried to make it easier for people to get an idea of each neighborhood and city. It was a lot of work, but completely worth it. What you don’t see, though, is a lot of data that we have yet to put in. Needless to say, I’m excited about the future. So here’s what is on the way:

• Nearby businesses that are important for where you want to live (like grocery stores, gas stations, big box stores, etc. Oh yeah, and Trader Joe’s, because they’re my favorite.)

• Easier-to-read map overlays

• A better way to search for a place to live

• A better home page (Ugh, I know, my bad)

• Apartments for rent

• Sites for the surrounding counties

• Ways for you to log on and save the houses you look at

• MORE!!!

In the meantime we hope you enjoy the site, and look forward to helping you find your home.