About the Building
2311 4th Street occupies a block of Fourth Street in Ocean Park, the low-slung southern quarter of Santa Monica that runs from Pico down to the Venice line. Main Street's shops and restaurants are two blocks west, the beach and the bike path four blocks beyond that, and Ocean Park Boulevard runs east toward Sunset Park and the airport. It is a neighbourhood of small 1920s bungalows, 1950s and 1960s apartment courts and a scattering of newer infill, and a sixty-one unit ownership building is an outlier in it. The building dates from 1967 and stands three storeys over parking.
The assessor's record is unambiguous about what this is. Sixty-one separately assessed condominium parcels sit at the address on recorded Tract 48602, each typed as a condominium, each individually valued. The unit numbers describe the building plainly: nineteen homes on the first level, twenty-one on the second, twenty-one on the third. That is a straightforward double-loaded corridor plan of the period, wrapped around or over a parking level, with an elevator. Nothing in the record points to a co-operative or to a building held on a single parcel, which is the failure mode worth checking before pursuing anything from this era in Santa Monica.
Almost every home here is a one-bedroom. The parcels sampled from the roll run 669, 670, 762 and 797 square feet, all one bedroom and one bath, and a published directory extends the range to 979 at the top and 651 at the bottom. That is a narrow band by any standard, and it means the building trades as a category rather than as a set of individually priced homes: the variables are floor, exposure, condition and whether a residence looks into the courtyard or out to the street. For a buyer, that consistency is useful. Comparables inside the same walls are genuinely comparable.
The amenity set is modest and appropriate to the size of the homes. Published records describe a swimming pool, an elevator, gated parking, controlled access and gated grounds, with electricity, cable and internet billed to the owner. One brokerage building record adds a spa and a fitness room; that is worth confirming against the association's own documents rather than assuming. Sixty-one households can carry a pool and an elevator comfortably without staffing, which is why buildings of this scale in Santa Monica tend to offer exactly this list and stop there.
On how it trades: this is one of the few addresses in Ocean Park where ownership starts below the price of a house, and that is the whole proposition. A condominium directory recorded a listing here at $629,000 with an average around $906 per square foot at the time it was published, which places the building well beneath the beachfront towers a few blocks west while sharing the same neighbourhood, the same beach and the same schools. Units turn over more often than in a small building simply because there are sixty-one of them, so a buyer usually has real comparables to work from.
Amenities & Services
The Residences
The assessor carries sixty-one separately assessed condominium parcels at this address on Tract 48602, in three unbroken runs: 101 to 119, 201 to 221 and 301 to 321. There is nothing before the first and nothing after the last. That is a hard number taken from the public record, and it matches the figure published by the condominium directories, which is not always the case. Sixty-one doors is a substantial association for Ocean Park and gives the building a budget base that most of its neighbours, which are eight and twelve unit apartment conversions, simply do not have.
Every parcel sampled from the tax roll is a one-bedroom, one-bath home: 797 square feet on the first floor, 762 on the second, 669 and 670 higher up. A published directory gives a 651 to 979 range across the building, so a small number of larger plans exist. The practical meaning is that this is a single-product building. Buyers are not choosing between a studio, a two-bedroom and a penthouse; they are choosing a floor and an exposure. That makes pricing legible and makes an appraisal straightforward, which is not a trivial advantage.
The unit numbering tells you the massing. Nineteen homes sit on the first residential level and twenty-one on each of the two above, which is the signature of a corridor building where the ground floor gives up two positions to a lobby, an entry and vehicle access. Expect interior corridors rather than open galleries, and expect the ground-floor homes to be the ones most affected by circulation noise and by sightlines from the common areas. Ask which homes face the pool deck, since in a compact plan that view is either the best feature or the loudest one.
A 1967 structure carrying a condominium map on a high-numbered tract was subdivided well after construction. Practically, that means the building was designed to apartment standards of the mid-1960s: lighter demising partitions, plumbing stacks shared between homes, and floor assemblies specified for a single owner rather than for sixty-one. None of that is disqualifying, and much of it can be improved unit by unit, but it does explain why sound transmission is the most common complaint in converted buildings of this era. Ask about the association's flooring rule and about any acoustic underlayment requirement.
Published records describe gated parking on site, which in Ocean Park is worth real money: the neighbourhood is preferential-permit territory, the beach draws visitors all summer, and Main Street competes for the same kerb. What the record does not say is how many spaces attach to each residence, or whether any are tandem or stacked. In a building of compact one-bedrooms, a second space is uncommon and a tandem space is likely. Read the deeded or exclusive-use allocation from the title report and from the recorded condominium plan for Tract 48602, and ask whether the association assigns any surplus spaces.
When a residence is under eight hundred square feet, the monthly assessment is a large fraction of the total cost of ownership and it moves the affordability calculation more than the interest rate does. The association does not publish its dues. Get the current schedule, the budget and the reserve study, and work out the assessment per square foot as well as per month, because that is the figure that determines how this building compares with a larger home in a smaller association a few streets away. It is also the number a future buyer will run.
Due Diligence
Santa Monica's Tenant Ownership Rights Charter Amendment was adopted on 5 June 1984 and allowed occupied rental buildings to convert to tenant ownership. It required cosigning tenants in at least two thirds of the residential units, statements of intent to purchase from at least half, forty-five days' notice before signatures were solicited, and a conversion tax equal to twelve times the unit's monthly maximum allowable rent. No application could be filed after 1 July 1996. If this building converted under TORCA, that history sits in the recorded map and the association's founding documents.
Santa Monica's rent control charter amendment and the state Costa-Hawkins Act interact awkwardly in converted buildings. A separately alienable condominium sold to a bona fide purchaser is generally exempt from local price controls, but Santa Monica's Rent Control Board still administers registration and exemption determinations, and a unit's status is a matter of record rather than assumption. If you intend to lease, ask the seller for the unit's registration or exemption documentation from the Board before you remove contingencies. Do not rely on a listing agent's characterisation.
Santa Monica adopted a mandatory retrofit programme by Ordinance 2537CCS on 28 March 2017. Chapter 8.72 covers wood-frame buildings with soft, weak or open-front ground floors built under code standards enacted before 10 November 1980, with deadlines of four years for a structural evaluation report, five for permit application and eight for final approval. Chapter 8.80 covers concrete buildings built under standards enacted before 11 January 1977. A three-storey 1967 building over parking is a plausible candidate for one of the two. Ask the City whether a notice was served on this parcel.
Which retrofit chapter applies, if either, depends on whether the structure is light wood frame over a parking level or a concrete frame. That is a question for the original permit set and the association's engineering records, not for a listing description. A wood-frame soft-storey retrofit in a building of this size is a manageable, well-understood scope with a known cost per unit. A non-ductile concrete retrofit is an order of magnitude larger. The difference should be settled before you agree a price, because it is capitalised into the assessment either way.
Santa Monica's chapter 6.20 bars vacation rentals, meaning the letting of an entire dwelling for periods under thirty days, and permits only licensed home-sharing where the resident host remains present. That rule sits above whatever the association has adopted. Separately, Civil Code section 4741 stops an association setting a rental cap below twenty-five per cent of the units while allowing it to prohibit tenancies of thirty days or less. Ask the board what its current rule is and how many units are leased today.
The association does not publish its budget. A condominium directory reports that owners pay their own electricity, cable and internet, which implies the assessment carries water, trash, common-area maintenance, landscaping, the pool, the elevator contract and master insurance. In a 1967 building the elevator and the pool are the two lines that produce surprises, along with plumbing. Ask for three years of financials, the reserve study, the current assessment schedule and any special assessment adopted or discussed in the past five years.
Civil Code section 5550 requires a reserve study with a visual inspection at least every three years, reviewed annually by the board. Sixty-one units give this association a wider funding base than most of Ocean Park, which is an advantage, but the building is nearly sixty years old and its major systems are original unless proven otherwise. Look specifically for the age of the elevator, the state of the pool equipment and shell, the roof, the plumbing risers and any retrofit work already carried out.
Compact one-bedroom condominiums in older associations attract closer scrutiny from lenders than larger homes do. Expect the underwriter to look at owner-occupancy ratio, the percentage of units delinquent on assessments, the reserve funding level, any litigation the association is involved in, and whether master insurance meets agency requirements. Ask the management company for a completed lender questionnaire early. In a building of this vintage it is the association's answers, not the borrower's, that most often delay a closing.
Everything above is drawn from public records, city permit data and published sources. The association’s statutory disclosure package is the only authoritative answer on dues, rules, reserves, insurance and litigation — Ben will request it and read it with you before you remove contingencies.
Common Questions
Keep Exploring
More about the neighbourhood: Santa Monica
Off Market & Coming Soon
Residences here reach the open market rarely, and some never do. Ask Ben to tell you when one is coming, including quietly.
Work With Ben
Units here often trade before they are ever listed. Tell Ben what you are looking for and hear first when something opens up, including off market.
Start the ConversationOff Market & Coming Soon
Residences here reach the open market rarely, and some never do. Ask Ben to tell you when one is coming, including quietly.
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