Oh, never-mind. I quickly learned that all flat land has already been developed or is way outside my price range - since depending on where it's located, the land can easily cost more than the house (or even triple, plus). Any piece of land is buildable if you have enough money, time, and patience to make it so - but ignoring the environmentally poisoned properties, you're most likely looking at an upslope or downslope lot. The best way to describe these would be how you'd want to live - dug into a hillside with the potential of something falling on you from above (upslope). Or hanging off the top edge of a hill with the fear of your house sliding down it with the next 'big one' (downslope). Yes, those are my two options, and since my fear of being crushed in a landslide is less than barrel rolling down a hill in my house, I opted to look exclusively at upslope properties.
In the greater LA area there is also very few 'gentle' upslope properties available - its either ridiculously expensive (see above) or not built for another reason - we'll get to that in future posts. So for the most part, I'm looking at some steeper properties. The best part about my search - I'm going to keep it small. I don't want some 4,000 sq/ft house or terraced gardens - 1,400-2,000 is more than enough - so the properties I'd be looking at would be unattractive to those looking to go big (at least I kept telling myself that). As far as how I look - Redfin, Zillow, the usual online places are a great to start. On both, you can filter for just land, put in your price range, and prepare to be disappointed.