Beverlywood Homes for Sale

About the Neighborhood

The Most Governed Streets on the Westside

Beverlywood is a planned tract in west Los Angeles, developed beginning in 1940 by Walter H. Leimert, the same developer behind Leimert Park. The Beverlywood Homes Association describes a membership of 1,354 family homes on winding, canopied streets organized around private parks, including the teardrop-shaped Circle Park at the center. The Los Angeles Times has described the neighborhood as bordered roughly by Robertson Boulevard on the east, Monte Mar Drive on the north, Beverwil and Roxbury Drives on the west and Beverlywood Street on the south. Listings sometimes stretch the name well past that; what governs a house is the association's own tract map, not the marketing radius.

The reason buyers research Beverlywood homes for sale more carefully than most Westside neighborhoods is the covenant regime. Under the association's recorded CC&Rs, membership and assessments run automatically with ownership, and no owner may make any alteration, addition or modification to the exterior of a home, or build anything new, without first obtaining written consent. Review runs through a Design Review Committee, with a Landscape Review Committee for planting, and then the board. Applications are due by the fifteenth of the month, the board meets monthly, and the association's own rules tell owners to expect the process to take at least two months and often longer.

The rules themselves are more specific than most buyers expect. Roofs on the main house and detached garage must carry a minimum three-in-twelve pitch, and flat roof elements are confined to a second level, out of street view, at no more than ten percent of the roof area. Walls and fences other than retaining walls are prohibited in the front setback. Off-white shades are the accepted body color and dark or bright colors are not approved. Air conditioning compressors must go in the back yard. Pool houses are capped at four hundred square feet and must match the main house in style and materials. Front lawns are to be kept trimmed to no more than four inches.

Height and massing sit in the recorded documents rather than in the rules alone: the CC&Rs permit one residence per lot, not more than one story above the first floor — a two-story house plus basement or garage — with structures not to exceed forty feet from existing grade. The rules add a notable clarification, that a second-story addition is not to be denied merely because the houses on either side are single story, while massing of surrounding homes still counts in the decision. Enforcement carries real numbers, with fines of up to ten thousand dollars for unapproved work, continuing weekly penalties, and up to twenty-five thousand dollars for removing a parkway tree without approval.

There are limits and layers worth knowing. In a 1997 appellate decision arising from a Beverlywood paint dispute, the court held that a homeowners association has no authority to record a notice of covenant violation against a member's title, and ordered the recorded document expunged — a useful precedent on the association's tools. City of Los Angeles zoning applies on top of the covenants, so both must be satisfied. North across Monte Mar Drive lies the older Monte-Mar Vista tract, recorded in 1924 and opened for sale in 1925 with 409 lots. Title reports on tracts of this era often surface historic racial covenants, void and unenforceable, which owners can have modified through the county's statutory process.