2700 Elm Avenue, Manhattan Beach: a single-level Tree Section house that sold over asking in 13 days

Sold

A 1,288 square foot house on a standard Tree Section lot is, in most years, a land sale. This one was not. The owners had taken the 1955 structure down to the floorboards in 2011 and rebuilt it with new framing, a new roof, new electrical, plumbing and mechanicals, all permitted, under vaulted ceilings that make the footprint feel larger than the number. We listed it at $2,599,000 in the spring of 2026, and it closed at $2,612,000 on May 8, thirteen days after it went live. The result is a useful data point on what a finished single-level house is worth against the lot under it in the Tree Section.

What was the house?

A single-level house on a 40 by 112 foot lot, one of the standard parcels the Tree Section was platted in, with the living, dining and kitchen open to each other under high vaulted ceilings and the extra windows that ceiling height allows. The kitchen and bathroom cabinets were custom built for the house by Coastal Cabinets. The lot sits a few feet above the neighbors to the south and southwest, which gives the yard a separation most flat lots in the section do not have, and the landscaping was drought-tolerant and low maintenance. A second door from the living area to the yard lets guests move outside without passing the bedrooms. A detached structure at the rear served as storage or a studio, and a custom playhouse in the yard was unpermitted and excluded from the square footage, which the listing said plainly.

The number that mattered was 2011. The rebuild brought the whole house to that year’s code with permits across every major system, so a buyer was getting the character of the original footprint with the mechanical life of a fifteen year old house. In a section where most houses of this size are either original 1950s construction or full tear-downs, that combination is rare, and it is the reason the house was priced as a house rather than as dirt.

What was the goal?

Two things at once. The sellers wanted the price a finished house deserves, not the land price a builder would offer, and they wanted a clean, short escrow. Those goals pull against each other on a small house in an expensive section: price it as a house and the builders stay away, price it as land and the buyers who would live in it are outbid by buyers who would tear it down. The strategy was to lead with the 2011 rebuild in every piece of marketing, to put the permit history in the disclosure package before the first showing, and to price at $2,599,000, a figure that a buyer intending to live in the house could underwrite and that a builder could not justify for a lot of this size.

The market answered in thirteen days. The house closed at $2,612,000, $13,000 over the asking price, on May 8, 2026. At $2,028 per square foot it sold well above what the Tree Section’s larger houses bring per foot, which is the arithmetic of a small, finished house on a full lot: the buyer pays for the lot and gets the house at a price that reflects its condition rather than its size.

What does the sale say about the Tree Section?

That a finished, permitted, single-level house on a standard lot still finds a buyer who wants to live in it rather than replace it, and pays a premium for the certainty of the permit file. The Tree Section trades on lot value; see our note on what the words fixer, remodel and tear-down actually mean for how a builder prices the same lot. For a seller with a small house in good condition, the lesson is that the disclosure package is the marketing: a permit history that answers the inspector’s questions before they are asked is what turns a land buyer’s number into a house buyer’s number. Current Tree Section figures are on our Market Insights page.

Update: sold

If you own in the Tree Section and are weighing a sale, the first question is whether your house sells as a house or as a lot, and the answer is usually in the permit file. Send Neil the address and we will tell you which, with the recent sales behind the answer. The Sellers page describes how we prepare a listing.

Sources

• California Regional MLS listing record, SB26065251; closing figures as reported to the MLS
• Tree Section, Manhattan Beach and South Bay Market Insights

Written March 2026; updated May 8, 2026. Property facts, list price and days on market are from the California Regional MLS listing record (SB26065251); the sale price and closing date are public record. Represented by Neil Chhabria, Chhabria Real Estate Company. This article is general real estate information about one sale, not tax, legal, lending or investment advice, and not a statement about the value of any other property.

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