Quitting my job and want to go to California

Yes vrbo.com would be an ideal place to look for rentals. Since you want to rent for a month you should have cheaper rates. January is generally a slower month for costal rentals.

Also try AirBnB's long term rental section. I've found reasonably-priced month-long or more rentals in their long-term section several times.

You can also try looking for a short-term sublet on Craigslist. Obviously, this is much shadier and obviously never send money to someone before you arrive on anything via Craigslist. However, with some common sense, you can often tell if something is legitimate or if it's questionable. I've done this with month-or-more long rentals in a variety of places. I don't necessarily recommend doing it from Vancouver -- but if you'll have a car anyway and your budget is up to $100 a night, you could always go and stay in a hotel for 2 or 3 nights while you visit some apartments in person. There are plenty of scams out there -- but there are also plenty of people who leave town for a month and rent their place while they're gone.I'd imagine you could more than cut that $2500 in half that way. I rented an apartment in Berlin, Germany for 3 months that I found on Craigslist (and one for 10 days when I first arrived so I would have a week to find a 3-month place).

Best of luck and enjoy -- as someone who always answers "a lot of places" when someone asks me, "Where do you live?", I wholeheartedly support the month living elsewhere.

Maybe you can check out Irvine, Newport Beach or even San Diego.

Great weather, healthy fresh vibe.

Homeaway is also a good site to check for rentals but I prefer VRBO.

i do also think vrbo is good place to find ideal rentals as one of my friends found a reasonable rental there when he moved to USA alone..