Custom Home Builder in Beverly Hills

Central Area. Every new single-family residence in the Central Area goes through design review. The City's stated aim is homes that complement the distinct residential neighborhoods, keep the scale and massing of the streetscape, and enhance the garden quality of the city. Review happens at staff level as a Track 1 project or before the Design Review Commission as Track 2.

Hillside Area. The City runs no design review process in the Hillside Area. The standards there cover floor area, height, setbacks, parking, walls and hedges, landscaping, accessory structures, allowable landform alteration, and view preservation. On a hillside lot the grading and the view questions often decide the house.

Trousdale Estates. Trousdale has its own single-family regulations, including rules for construction related to level pads. A Trousdale home starts from those standards rather than the Central Area's.

The City asks applicants to meet the Permit Center for a preliminary consultation before filing, and offers walk-in plan review hours Monday through Thursday mornings. After that meeting the project is filed through the Online Plan Review and Permit Application, City staff apply the fees, and the plans are uploaded for electronic review through ProjectDox. The City sets the review timeline for each submittal.

I sit in on the preliminary consultation with your architect when you want me there. Questions about construction sequencing, staging, and the street are cheaper to settle in that room than after approval.

1. Lot reading and site walk. Which of the three areas, the zoning standards that follow from it, and the permit history. Then I walk the lot with you.

2. Design team. Your architect designs the house and chooses the design review track with you; your engineers design what carries it. I review for constructability, sequencing, and access.

3. Design review and plan check. I work corrections with your team through both and keep the submittal complete. I never promise approval dates, because the City sets them.

4. Written scope and agreement. You approve the written scope and agreement before work starts. Each payment stage ties to a named milestone you can verify on site.

5. Build. Demolition where needed, foundation, framing, envelope, systems, and finishes, each with its City inspection. Licensed trades handle the specialty work. You get site photos as the work moves, and any condition that changes the scope reaches you in writing the day I find it.

6. Final inspection and handover. The City signs off, we walk the house together, close the punch list, and I hand over the documents for everything we built.

A Beverly Hills home is priced to its own drawings, lot, and finishes. I put the number in writing after the site walk and the plan review, never before.