For people that don't live in a large population center Localbitcoins can be hit or miss if you are looking for a face to face transaction.
There are also people that do cash in the mail on Localbitcoins, but they either use escrow (which requires total trust with the person doing the escrow) or you have to send the cash first and hope they send you the bitcoins later.

An alternative is a 2 of 3 multi-signature transaction with an neutral arbitrator. With this type of transaction there is no trust required.
It is easy to do once you know how and the costs are negligible.

Look into it.