Two estates change hands. Both carry the 90210 ZIP code. Both sit behind guard gates in the hills between Mulholland Drive and Sunset Boulevard. One seller writes a check to the City of Los Angeles for hundreds of thousands of dollars more than the other, on the exact same sale price, because of a municipal boundary line that has nothing to do with the ZIP code on either listing.
That is the mechanism buyers comparing Beverly Park to the incorporated City of Beverly Hills tend to miss, and it is worth understanding before an offer gets written, not after escrow opens.
A ZIP Code That Doesn't Match the City Line
Beverly Park was built in stages starting in 1979, when developers Elliot Gottfurcht and Brian Adler took land once earmarked for a golf course and country club (one reportedly to have carried Dean Martin's name) and reimagined it as a purpose-built, guard-gated enclave of large estates. South Beverly Park was completed first, followed by the larger North Beverly Park section. By 1990 the full 250-acre community was established, with 64 lots in North Beverly Park and 16 in the South, a landscaped park, and more than 100 acres of open space. North Beverly Park's gated entrance sits at 13100 Mulholland Drive.
The community carries the Beverly Hills 90210 ZIP code, which is where the confusion starts. Beverly Park sits in the Beverly Hills Post Office area, a postal designation, not a municipal one. The land itself is within the City of Los Angeles. Schools are LAUSD. City services come from LA, not Beverly Hills city hall.
That distinction rarely matters for day to day life behind the gates. It matters enormously at the closing table, because Los Angeles and Beverly Hills tax property transfers under two entirely different rulebooks.
What Measure ULA Actually Charges
In November 2022, Los Angeles voters approved Measure ULA, the transfer tax now commonly called the mansion tax. It applies only within the City of Los Angeles boundary, funds affordable housing and homelessness programs, and layers on top of the standard city and county documentary transfer tax. The thresholds adjust annually for inflation. For transactions closing after June 30, 2026, the current thresholds are $5,400,000 and $10,900,000, according to the Los Angeles Office of Finance.
| Sale price | Tax rate | Applies within LA City limits |
|---|---|---|
| Up to $5,400,000 | Base transfer tax only (roughly 0.56% combined city and county) | Yes |
| $5,400,000 to $10,900,000 | 4% | Yes |
| $10,900,000 and above | 5.5% | Yes |
The City of Beverly Hills is an independent, self-governing municipality. Properties within its incorporated limits are exempt from Measure ULA entirely. Beverly Park, despite the name, is not inside that boundary.
The Same Ten Million Dollars, Two Different Bills
The gap is not theoretical. On a $10 million sale, a property on the Los Angeles City side of the line pays roughly $550,000 in Measure ULA tax alone, on top of the standard transfer tax. The identical $10 million property inside the incorporated City of Beverly Hills pays approximately $44,000 in transfer tax and nothing more. That is a difference of roughly half a million dollars, driven entirely by which side of an invisible line the parcel happens to sit on.
Beverly Park estates rarely trade anywhere near that modest $10 million figure. Robb Report covered a Beverly Park mansion listed at $48.5 million in 2024, a 16,000 square foot estate on two acres, and pricing at that level is typical for the enclave rather than exceptional. Apply today's 5.5% rate, which kicks in above $10.9 million, to a sale at that price and the Measure ULA portion alone runs close to $2.7 million, before the base city and county transfer tax is added on top. A comparable estate closing inside Beverly Hills city limits would owe only a small fraction of that.
For a buyer or seller thinking in nine figures, this is not a rounding error. It is a line item that belongs in the pricing conversation from the first phone call, not something an escrow officer surfaces for the first time during document review.
The 90210 ZIP code tells a buyer almost nothing about which government collects the transfer tax on the sale. Only the parcel's actual municipal boundary does.
Researchers at UCLA's Lewis Center have found that Measure ULA reduced the likelihood of a Los Angeles City property selling above the $5 million threshold by as much as 55% since the tax took effect. That kind of friction shows up in how sellers price near the cliff and in how patient buyers can afford to be once they understand which side of the boundary they are negotiating on.
Why the Enclave Still Trades Anyway
None of this has slowed demand for Beverly Park itself. The two sections still hold roughly 80 total lots between them, and turnover is rare enough that most transactions never reach the open MLS. What keeps the enclave in a category of its own is not the tax treatment. It is the scale and the privacy the HOA was built to protect from the start.
The community's covenants set a minimum home size of 5,000 square feet, though in practice almost every residence exceeds that by a wide margin. North Beverly Park, the larger of the two sections with 64 lots against South's 16, tends toward newer construction from the 1990s onward and larger footprints, often 10,000 to 30,000 square feet or more on lots running two to five acres. South Beverly Park homes typically run 8,000 to 10,000 square feet on similarly generous grounds, with a more traditional architectural character consistent with the earliest phase of the development. Architects with work in the community include Richard Landry and William Hablinski, names that recur across the enclave's larger new-build projects.
What Actually Differs Between North and South
For a buyer comparing the two sections rather than comparing Beverly Park to Beverly Hills broadly, the practical differences come down to three things: age of construction, lot scale, and architectural style. North Beverly Park's newer stock tends to favor contemporary and transitional design on the largest available footprints. South Beverly Park's earlier stock leans traditional, often Tuscan or European in influence, on lots that are still expansive by any Westside standard but generally smaller than North's largest holdings.
Neither section publishes a meaningfully different tax treatment from the other. Both sit inside the same City of Los Angeles boundary, and both are subject to the same Measure ULA thresholds on a qualifying sale. The North versus South decision is architectural and scale driven. The city boundary decision is what determines the transfer tax bill, and that decision was made in 1979 by where the developers drew the community's edge, not by anything a buyer chooses today.
What This Means for a Comparison Shopper
Anyone weighing Beverly Park against homes inside Beverly Hills proper, or against Bel Air or Holmby Hills, needs the jurisdictional line as part of the comparison, not an afterthought. The ZIP code will not tell you which government taxes the transfer. The county assessor's parcel record will. Confirming that boundary early, and modeling the transfer tax accordingly, changes how a seller should price a listing and how a buyer should structure an offer at the threshold.
This is exactly the kind of detail that separates a well-marketed Beverly Park listing from one that gets a surprise at the closing table. Confirming municipal jurisdiction, running the actual Measure ULA math against the listing price, and pricing with that cost already accounted for is standard practice for any seller who wants a clean, fast close in this price range. A buyer who understands the same math walks into negotiation with real leverage near the $10.9 million cliff.
A Few Questions We Get About Beverly Park's Tax Status
Is Beverly Park part of the City of Beverly Hills? No. Beverly Park carries the Beverly Hills 90210 ZIP code, which is a postal designation, but the land sits within the City of Los Angeles. Schools are LAUSD, and city services come from Los Angeles rather than Beverly Hills city government.
Does every Beverly Park sale owe Measure ULA? Only sales above the current thresholds. As of transactions closing after June 30, 2026, that means $5,400,000 for the 4% tier and $10,900,000 for the 5.5% tier, according to the Los Angeles Office of Finance. Given typical Beverly Park pricing, the large majority of sales in the community fall into one of these two tiers.
Can a seller avoid Measure ULA by structuring the sale differently? The tax applies to the gross transaction value at closing regardless of financing or deal structure, and it cannot be deferred the way capital gains can through a 1031 exchange. Confirming exact liability on a specific property should always go through your escrow officer or tax advisor before an offer is signed.
Beverly Park rewards buyers and sellers who do their homework before the offer, not after. If you are weighing this enclave against the incorporated Flats, Trousdale, or another Westside address and want the real math run against a specific property, Steve Frankel can walk you through it with the discretion the transaction deserves. Request a Confidential Home Valuation to start that conversation.
