Metal fencing in this part of Los Angeles County gets asked for in two very different situations. One is a working frontage: a yard, a loading area, a side lot off an alley in Vernon that needs a perimeter nobody climbs over or drives through. The other is a home on a small lot in Huntington Park, Maywood, Bell or Boyle Heights where the front fence is part of how the house looks from the street, and where the old one has been rusting from the bottom up since somebody pointed a sprinkler at it. The fabrication is similar. The decisions are not, and a fence contractor who only does one of them tends to make the other look wrong.
Almost everything sold today as wrought iron fencing is mild steel — square tube posts, usually two inch, with pickets of solid bar or lighter tube welded to horizontal rails. True hand-forged wrought iron is a restoration material, not a fencing material. That is not a problem as long as you know what varies within steel: wall thickness and picket size. A fence made from thin-wall tube and 1/2 inch pickets looks identical to a heavier one on the day it goes in and does not look identical five years later, after a dolly, a bumper or a gate slam has put a dent in it. Ask for the gauge and the picket dimension in writing. Ask the same about the finish. Hot-dip galvanized steel under a powder coat behaves very differently from bare steel that has been primed and rolled with enamel on site, especially along the bottom rail where irrigation spray lands. Painted-only fence in this climate gives you rust blooms at the welds and at every cut end that was never sealed.
For a security run, the questions shift to height, picket spacing tight enough that a foot cannot find a hold, whether the top is plain, speared or finished with a rail, and whether the bottom sits close enough to grade that nothing slides under. For a residential front fence, spacing is about proportion and about code if there is a pool anywhere behind it, where gaps and gate hardware are regulated and an installer should already know the rules without being asked.
Layout comes first, and it is worth standing there for it. Posts get marked, the line gets checked against the property line rather than against the old fence, and underground utilities get located before anything is drilled — gas and water services in these older neighborhoods do not always sit where the plans say. Then the footings. In dirt, that means augered holes and concrete; along a sidewalk, driveway or existing slab, it means core drilling and grouting posts into the concrete, which is slower and shows up on the quote. Panels are set to a string line, racked or stepped where the ground falls away, and the gate openings are framed last because a gate post that moves a half inch makes a gate that drags.
Where custom work differs from prefab panel work is the welding. Panels cut to fit and welded in place can follow an odd lot line or an uneven curb without leaving a wedge-shaped gap. Those site welds then have to be ground smooth, primed and coated to match, which is the step that gets skipped. If you see bare grey metal at the joints on handover day, that is where the rust will start.
Price swings on linear footage, height, material weight, ornamental detail like scrolls and cast finials, the number of gate openings, demolition and haul-away of the old fence, drilling through concrete or asphalt, and finish. Those are the things to hold constant when you compare two quotes, because otherwise you are comparing different fences. Ask who pulls any permit required by your city, how deep the footings go, whether the steel is galvanized before coating, and how cut ends are treated. Ask for the contractor's state license number and verify it yourself rather than taking a logo on a truck for it.
Bad metal fencing installation fails in predictable ways: shallow footings that let posts lean after the first wet winter, posts set out of plumb so the whole run reads crooked from the sidewalk, gate posts undersized for the weight they carry, and coatings that give up at ground level. Those are all choices made during the two or three days of work, not defects that appear later on their own.