Beverly Park
Beverly Park makes one wonder how Beverly Hills is only the 3rd most expensive real estate in the country. This exclusively private gated community harbors the world's richest gathering of mansions within a 250 acre space that's the home or former home to some of the most famous, infamous, and just plain rich celebrities known throughout the world. It also resides in the 90210 zip code, which means you can still watch some TV shows and feel a connection to the area.
There are two separate sections of Beverly Park, known as North Beverly Park and South Beverly Park. North Beverly Park is the more exclusive of the two sections, with 56 mansion out of 64 available lots, as some homeowners bought two lots so that they could build bigger places to live. South Beverly Park has only 16 mansions, and is sometimes at the whim of the other side regarding access to the community for staff and visitors.
How exclusive is this area in general? There's a 70-page homeowners contract that every resident has to agree to which basically states no home can be less than 5,000 square feet. With that said, none of the homes in the community are close to being that small, with the largest homes easily passing 40,000 square feet. It's one of the few communities in the country were there are often twice as many bathrooms as there are bedrooms.
And it's no wonder why. When one has a mansion, they're not relegated to only bedrooms, family rooms, and a kitchen. There's often more than one great room, media rooms, ballrooms (yes, a few homes in the area have their own ballroom), home studios, both indoor and outdoor swimming pools, tennis courts, stables, and game rooms. When one has to walk throughout all these rooms in a home that's on average nearly 30,000 square feet, sometimes there just isn't time to find a bathroom if there are only a few of them.
The community seems to also have an interesting mix of rich. Of course there are celebrities such as Eddie Murphy, Denzel Washington and Sylvester Stallone. There are also corporate stars, moguls such as Russ Weiner, the man who founded Rockstar Energy Drink, and Larry Flax, who founded the California Pizza Kitchen. Add to that those who bring international wealth and those who decide to remain a bit more anonymous and you have a community that's strangely diverse in its own way.
Being an exclusive gated community for the rich and famous, you know that security is tight. Initial security and gate access is paid for through their version of a community association, for which the North and the South seemed to have their own. Many of the homes have their own security as well, and something different about this gated community is that most of the homes in the community have their own gates surrounding their homes.
I hear you asking about price. It seems that some of the rich have suffered because of the problems with the financial health of the world, but you don't have to feel too sorry for these folks. At the low end some homes are going for around $8.5 million, while on the high end some have asked for as much as $50 million for their homes. Because of the price of homes in this neighborhood, sometimes it takes a couple of years to find a buyer, but there always seems to be some homes for sale so if you're interested, make a call.