About the Building
The Malcolm Westwood is a twenty-home building of 1985 at 1722 Malcolm Avenue, and the Los Angeles County Assessor confirms it as a purpose-built for-sale condominium. Twenty separately assessed parcels sit on the roll, running from 4325-024-084 to 4325-024-103, each described as Tract 42739, Lot 1, Condominium, followed by a unit number. All are coded 010C, the assessor's classification for a building constructed as a condominium rather than converted from apartments, and quite distinct from the 0500 series used for rentals. One condominium directory publishes a thirteen-unit figure for this building; the county roll shows twenty, and the roll is right.
The unit numbering sets out the building's shape. Homes run 101 to 104, 201 to 206, 301 to 305, and 401 to 405: four on the entry level, six on the second, five each on the third and fourth. The shortfall on the ground floor is where the shared space lives, and listing material accounts for it with a lobby, a fitness room, a sauna and a banquet room. A closed listing for a top-floor home also describes patio terraces at both the second and fourth levels, which explains why the second floor carries the building's largest home count.
On area the roll gives a genuinely wide spread for a building this small. Sampled homes run from 825 square feet at unit 206, the only one-bedroom found anywhere in the association, up to 1,949 square feet at unit 404. Between those extremes almost everything is a two-bedroom of between 1,454 and 1,658 square feet, with 1,479, 1,493 and 1,499 recurring. The 825 to 1,949 square foot range published by two condominium directories matches the assessor's own record at both ends exactly, which is unusually clean corroboration and rare enough to be worth saying.
The fourth floor is where the marketing and the record most need reconciling. Sources describe two-level penthouses with skylights, and a closed listing for unit 404 supports it in detail: a split-level plan, described as the largest in the building, with a large skylight over the stairway, tree-top views, a bonus office and a laundry room. But the roll shows no fifth level of parcels and no fourth-floor quality class systematically above the floors below. The split is internal, within the top storey's volume, rather than an additional floor. Read the recorded condominium plan before assuming any home here is a duplex.
One parcel carries a history worth noting. Unit 102 appears three times in the county's records. Assessor parcel 4325-024-085 was deleted on 17 September 1990, parcel 4325-024-118 was created on 27 September 1991 and remains active at 1,489 square feet, and a third record sits in the 900 series the county uses for administrative parcels. Deletions and recreations of this kind usually reflect a correction to a recorded map or a boundary between homes rather than anything sinister, but if you are buying unit 102 specifically, have title explain the sequence and confirm what the current legal description covers.
Amenities & Services
The Residences
Four residences on the entry level, six on the second, five on the third and five on the fourth. That distribution tells you the ground floor gives up roughly a third of its area to something other than housing, which the listing record identifies as lobby, fitness room, sauna and banquet room, with parking behind. It also tells you the second level is the densest floor in the building and therefore likely the one with the most common wall. If acoustic separation matters to you, the third and fourth levels are structurally the better bet and the corner positions better still.
Unit 206 is recorded at 825 square feet with one bedroom and two bathroom groups, and nothing else in the association is remotely close: the next smallest sampled home is 1,454 square feet. That makes it the only genuine entry point into the building and also the only home in it without an internal comparable. Appraisals on unit 206 will have to reach outside The Malcolm entirely, which cuts both ways depending on the market. It is also the home most likely to be misdescribed by aggregators averaging a building whose plans are otherwise uniform.
This is the body of the building. Sampled homes include 1,454, 1,472, 1,479, 1,489, 1,493, 1,496, 1,499, 1,599, 1,649, 1,651, 1,656, 1,657 and 1,658 square feet, almost all recorded as two bedrooms with three bathroom groups. Listing descriptions consistently mention an open living, dining and kitchen arrangement, a fireplace in the living room, a private balcony, a walk-in closet in the principal suite and in-unit laundry. The tight clustering of areas is a genuine advantage to a buyer, because true comparables exist inside the association itself, which is unusual in a building of only twenty homes.
Units 104 and 404 are the outliers at the top, recorded at 1,908 and 1,949 square feet respectively, both two bedrooms with three bathroom groups and both carrying the roll's higher D9B quality class. Unit 404 was marketed as a split-level penthouse and described as the largest floor plan in the twenty-home building, with a skylit stair, a bonus office area and its own laundry room. Unit 104 sits on the entry level at almost the same area, which is unusual and suggests a ground-floor home with private outdoor space. Both deserve their own comparables.
A closed listing describes patio terrace areas at both the second and fourth levels, in addition to the private balconies that come with the individual homes. In a California condominium those private balconies are almost always exclusive-use common area rather than part of the unit: yours to enjoy, the association's to maintain and repair, with the cost falling on the membership. That allocation is set by the CC&Rs and the recorded plan, not by convention, and on a 1985 wood-framed building with cantilevered decks it is the single provision most likely to become expensive.
The closed listing for unit 404 records two side-by-side parking spaces at ground level behind gated access. Side-by-side rather than tandem is a real advantage in a twenty-home building, because it removes the daily shuffle that tandem allocation imposes on any household with two cars. Whether every home receives two spaces, and whether they are deeded, assigned as exclusive-use common area or licensed, is not published by the association. Take the allocation for your specific home from the title report and the recorded condominium plan rather than from the listing.
Due Diligence
The parcel is zoned [Q]RD1.5-1 on city permit records, a restricted density designation allotting 1,500 square feet of lot area per dwelling unit. Against the assessor's recorded lot of 16,481 square feet that formula supports roughly eleven homes; twenty stand. The building is legally nonconforming as to density. That is normal for Westwood stock of this age and generally protects value, but it makes ordinance-and-law insurance coverage a question worth putting to your broker in writing rather than assuming.
City permit records show a permit issued at unit 304 in November 2024 for application of an approved coating to an existing exterior balcony or deck, carrying the notation that it complies with a department order effective 10 October 2024. A department order means the city required the work rather than the owner electing it. The permit was finalled. Ask the association what prompted the order, whether it applied to one home or to the elevation, and what has been done at the other nineteen.
Civil Code section 5551 requires associations of three or more units to have balconies, decks and walkways inspected by a licensed architect or structural engineer, with the first inspection due by 1 January 2025 and repeats every nine years. A 1985 wood-framed building with cantilevered balconies at four levels is exactly the stock the statute was written for. Ask for the inspection report, the engineer's findings, the board's remediation plan and the funding decision, and read them alongside the 2024 department order.
The Malcolm sits outside both of the city's mandatory retrofit programmes. The soft-story ordinance reaches wood-frame buildings built under codes enacted before 1 January 1978; the non-ductile concrete ordinance reaches permits applied for before 13 January 1977. A 1985 building clears both. The contrast on its own block is instructive: 1700, 1738 and 1756 Malcolm Avenue and 1761 Selby Avenue, all on the same assessor page, each completed soft-story retrofits between 2020 and 2022. Being outside a programme is a code fact, not a performance guarantee.
Two condominium directories state that the building was refurbished or modernised in 1999. No permit or assessor record found in this research confirms the date or the scope, and the assessor's effective year for the sampled parcels remains 1985. Treat the refurbishment as plausible but unverified. If it happened it would most likely have touched common areas, the amenity rooms and the envelope rather than the frame, so ask the association what was done, what it cost and how it was funded.
The association does not publish a schedule here, and the directory and aggregator numbers that circulate are unconfirmed and go out of date quietly, so this site does not carry one. The current figure for a specific home appears on the listing and in the statutory disclosure package. Earthquake cover, if genuinely carried, is a significant line item and a significant benefit. Get the current budget, the last two years of financials, the reserve study and the insurance declarations page.
Civil Code section 5550 requires a reserve study with a visual inspection at least every three years, reviewed annually by the board. On a four-storey wood-framed building of this age the schedule is dominated by balcony and terrace waterproofing, the roof, the stucco and paint cycle, the elevator, and the amenity rooms. The 2024 department order at unit 304 gives you a place to start: ask whether the reserve study anticipated that work, and whether any special assessment has been levied or discussed since.
No rule is published by the association. One directory states that pets are allowed subject to HOA rules and that sublets and short-term rentals are permitted; that same directory publishes a unit count contradicted by the county roll, so treat it with caution. California law is the floor. Civil Code section 4741 stops a rental cap below twenty-five per cent of units, which here means five homes, while allowing a ban on tenancies of thirty days or less. Ask the board directly.
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
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