About the Building
Pacific Bay Towers is a genuine for-sale condominium, and the county record establishes both the fact and an important piece of its history. The Los Angeles County Assessor carries seventy-two separately assessed parcels on recorded condominium Tract 48601, Lot 1, running consecutively from assessment number 4289010035 through 4289010106 with nothing before or after. Every one is coded 010E, and the fourth digit of that code is the assessor's designator for a condominium conversion rather than a purpose-built condominium. The recorded year built is 1969; the condominium parcels were created on 6 September 1991.
That twenty-two year gap is the single most useful fact about this property. The buildings went up in 1969 as rental flats and were mapped and sold as condominiums in 1991. In Santa Monica, ownership conversions in that window ran through the Tenant Ownership Rights Charter Amendment, the measure the city's voters passed in 1984 to allow tenants in rent-controlled buildings to buy their units, and which produced most of the converted condominium stock in the city before it ceased to be available. The escrow file and the recorded documents will name the mechanism for this property specifically; the assessor establishes only the date.
The layout is unusually legible for a converted property. The seventy-two homes sit in three separate three-storey buildings on one shared site of 55,216 square feet, and the recorded unit designations carry a building letter. Units prefixed X are addressed at 2025 4th Street, units prefixed Y at 2045 and units prefixed Z at 2035. Each building carries eight homes on each of three levels, so twenty-four apiece. That gives the association a single map, a single set of governing documents and a single budget across what looks from the street like three distinct buildings.
The homes are compact. The assessor records unit X101 at 615 square feet, Z308 at 630, Y201 at 699 and Y101 at 779, each with one bedroom and one bathroom. Two condominium directories independently give the same overall range, 615 to 779 square feet, which is unusually clean corroboration between aggregators and the public record. One of those directories additionally describes a typical home as two bedrooms and two bathrooms averaging 672 square feet, which contradicts the assessor's one-bedroom entries at every sampled unit and should not be relied on without checking the specific home.
The published amenity set is broad for a building of this size and vintage: a pool, a spa, a sauna, a picnic area, controlled access with card entry, subterranean parking with guest stalls, built-in storage and camera surveillance. These come from condominium directories rather than from the association itself. Owners are described as paying their own electricity, cable, water and internet, which is worth confirming because water is more often carried by the association than by the owner in buildings of this configuration. Ask management what is currently in service and what is included.
Amenities & Services
The Residences
The assessor carries seventy-two consecutive parcels on Tract 48601, from assessment number 4289010035 to 4289010106, with nothing before the first and nothing after the last. Each is a separately assessed condominium in its own right. That is a hard number drawn from the public record and it agrees with what the condominium directories publish, which is not always the case. Seventy-two homes is large enough to give the association a workable budget base and a real spread of fixed costs, which is a meaningful advantage over the many Santa Monica associations operating with twenty or thirty members and the same list of amenities to maintain.
Recorded unit designations carry a building letter: X units at 2025 4th Street, Y units at 2045 and Z units at 2035, twenty-four in each. All three sit on one shared parcel of 55,216 square feet under one condominium map. That means one board, one budget, one reserve study and one insurance policy across three separate structures. It also means the maintenance history of all three matters to you regardless of which you buy into, because the assessment that funds a roof on one building is levied on owners in all of them.
Each building carries units numbered 101 to 108, 201 to 208 and 301 to 308 within its letter series. Eight homes to a floor in a three-storey building of this era usually means an open external walkway or a short internal corridor with homes on both sides. Corner positions at each end of every floor take light on two elevations; the six between them do not. In homes of this size that difference in daylight is more consequential than it would be in a larger plan, so establish the position first.
The four sampled homes are recorded at 615, 630, 699 and 779 square feet, each with one bedroom and one bathroom. That is a consistent picture of a late-1960s rental plan: a single bedroom, one bathroom, a galley or pass-through kitchen and a combined living and dining area, with a balcony where the elevation allows one. Buyers should expect original room dimensions rather than open-plan space, and should treat any listing describing two bedrooms in this size band as a partitioned or reconfigured plan until the recorded condominium plan confirms otherwise. A permit history from the city will show whether any such work was done properly.
The buildings are of their period: three storeys, wood-framed above the parking level in all likelihood, with central heat and no cooling recorded anywhere in the assessor's design coding. A conversion map does not change the structure it sits on. Everything mechanical, electrical and structural in these buildings dates from 1969 unless it has since been replaced, and the twenty-two years the property spent as rental housing before conversion covered a period in which capital reinvestment in Santa Monica's rent-controlled stock was frequently deferred. That is not an accusation about this property; it is the reason to ask for the maintenance record in detail.
Parking is described as subterranean with guest stalls and built-in storage, serving all three buildings from the one shared site. A below-grade structure of that kind is an asset when it means enclosed, secure parking close to the lift, and a liability when the slab, the drainage and the waterproofing fall due, because those are among the most expensive items in any association's reserve schedule and they cannot sensibly be phased building by building. Confirm the deeded or assigned allocation for your specific home from the title report and the recorded plan, and ask when the garage was last surveyed.
Due Diligence
This is a true condominium. Seventy-two separately assessed parcels sit on recorded condominium Tract 48601, each coded 010E. The E designator marks it as a conversion rather than a purpose-built condominium, which affects how you should inspect it but not what you own. You take fee title to a unit and a share of the common area, and you finance it conventionally. Lenders will require the association's questionnaire, budget and insurance certificate before underwriting, so request them at the outset.
Condominium parcels were created on 6 September 1991 for buildings completed in 1969. The relevant diligence for a converted building is different from that for a purpose-built one. Ask what was renewed at conversion and what was left in place: roofs, plumbing risers, electrical service and panels, windows, and the sound separation between homes. Conversions of this era commonly renewed finishes and left building systems untouched, which shows up as reserve pressure two or three decades later.
Santa Monica adopted a mandatory retrofit programme in March 2017, codified in Chapter 8.72 of the municipal code, covering roughly two thousand buildings in five categories. The wood-frame soft-storey category reaches buildings of wood construction built under codes enacted before 10 November 1980 with a ground floor containing parking or similar open space. A three-storey 1969 building over parking is precisely that profile. Ask the association for any order issued, the structural evaluation report and evidence of final approval.
Under the Santa Monica programme, owners had two years from the order to submit a structural evaluation report, three years to file plans and a permit application, and six years to obtain final approval. Orders were distributed between September 2017 and July 2018, which put final compliance dates in 2023 and 2024 for the soft-storey categories. Any work here should therefore be complete, or the association should be able to explain precisely why it is not. Ask for the permit numbers and the signed-off final.
Subterranean parking with guest stalls and built-in storage is described across three directories. What is not published is the allocation to individual homes. In conversions, parking is frequently assigned as exclusive-use common area rather than conveyed by deed, and the two behave differently on transfer and in disputes. Read the title report against the recorded condominium plan and confirm in writing how many spaces, of what type and in what location transfer with the home.
The association does not publish its dues. Directories state that owners pay electricity, cable, water and internet, which is worth testing: in buildings of this configuration water is commonly master-metered and carried by the association, and a directory entry is a weak source for that. Expect the assessment to cover common-area maintenance, the pool and spa plant, landscaping, refuse, the access systems and the master insurance policy. Obtain the budget, two years of financials and the assessment history.
Civil Code section 5550 requires a reserve study with visual inspection at least every three years, reviewed annually by the board. Here the reserve schedule spans three separate roofs, three sets of exterior stairs and walkways, a shared subterranean garage slab and drainage, pool and spa plant, and any retrofit work. That is a wide capital surface for seventy-two homes to carry. Ask for the current study, the percentage funded and whether recent work was funded from reserves or by special assessment.
The association publishes no leasing rule. California Civil Code section 4741 prevents a rental cap below twenty-five per cent of units while permitting a prohibition on tenancies of thirty days or fewer. Separately, Santa Monica's home-sharing ordinance is among the strictest in California, effectively prohibiting whole-unit short-term letting and permitting only hosted home-sharing with a licence. Do not assume a holiday-letting strategy is viable here. Read the CC&Rs and the city's rules together.
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.
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