For as long as I could remember, I never thought I would move back to NY.
To me it always felt like if that were to happen it would be some sort of a failure that I couldn’t make it in LA.
Oddly enough I’ve managed to push past a lot of those feelings as that really is not how I feel at this time about this move. I have realized how much time with my family I had sacrificed and also just how much LA has changed in the 16 years I’d been there.
One of my amazing “hacks” as an actress, is that I’m also a real estate agent and have used that to manage buildings to avoid paying market rate rent for years. Which actually led to my having a remote job in property management I started during the Pandemic.
As much as I love California and my friends the mere thought of starting over again, paying rent or even managing a property as an on site manager was daunting. For those of you who don’t know, a couple of things:
Another thing you may not know, is the benefit of rent control in LA is if you locked in the price of a place when you first moved (2006 I think our 2 bedroom 1 back was $1200 a month in Hollywood) you could only have your rent raised a small amount each year.
Every time I moved it was to a certain extent out of my hands…a familiar pattern you will see. Since moving to LA in 2006 I moved a total of 13 times. Current rents in LA are out of reach for me and specifically where I was considering moving back to (South Bay area) just wasn’t going to happen.
Right before the Pandemic, I was represented across the board and had a literary agent all through the same agency, which then shut its doors in 2021. I had still been doing some fit modeling work but I was living in Orange County and thought this is where I was staying, I was even looking into possibly buying a place in OC. But life had different plans.
Let’s go back a bit to where this all started.
I went through a break up, I had said I would stay in the home we shared to allow time for him to find care for Nova, the dog he adopted in our relationship, while he worked.
My exit plan was to move in with my friends in their house with my dog Luna. A week into the breakup my ex felt he was not able to find a place for the dog or care for her and asked if I wanted her. I said yes as I did not want her to go back to the rescue, I also love that crap out of that sweet girl and I didn’t want her to have to start all over again.
But that meant there would not be room for me and my crew in my friends house with 2 dogs, 2 cats and existing roommates.
The original plan I had concocted was to live at my friend’s house for a few months, then move to Portugal and travel Europe like a local for a year and my parents would watch my dog Luna.
Adding Nova to the equation changed everything.
I seriously considered trying to find a new management job or apartment, but I really couldn’t decide if I wanted to live in LA or OC, and couldn’t imagine squeezing 2 dogs into a tiny apartment and just barely scraping by and go fully back into survival mode. Also all of those ideas would completely throw Portugal away.
My parents had recently fenced their yard in update New York so I asked if I could move back in with them. Get the girls settled with them then do a truncated version of my trip to Europe. Much to my surprise my parents were quickly onboard, which led to a cross country trip from LA to NY in under 50 hours in December.
Thanks for reading.
Danielle Cintron 