Hill Section

The Hill Section is the part of Manhattan Beach south of Manhattan Beach Boulevard, west of Sepulveda Boulevard, north of Boundary Place and the Hermosa Beach line, and east of the Veterans Parkway greenbelt on Ardmore Avenue and Valley Drive. The city's General Plan draws it the same way and describes it as an area of large lots with ocean and downtown Los Angeles views. Brokers list it as MLS area 144.

In the zoning code it's Area District I, which also covers the neighborhoods east of Sepulveda, but the Hill Section name stops at the highway, and that's how our map draws it. By the city's parcel map it has about 950 parcels, nearly all zoned for single-family houses, and the county counts about 820 houses. The Sand Section is on the other side of the greenbelt, and the Tree Section is across Manhattan Beach Boulevard to the north.

The height limit is 26 feet and two stories. Floor area on a house lot over 4,800 square feet is 240 square feet plus 0.65 times the lot, which comes to about 5,115 square feet on a 7,500-square-foot lot. Up to 400 square feet of garage, or 600 with a three-car garage, and any basement that's fully below grade don't count toward that number. The front setback is 20 feet, and the rear setback grows with the depth of the lot.

County records date 43% of the houses to 1990 or later and 34% to before 1960. The older houses have a median of about 2,000 square feet of living space. The ones built since 2010 have a median of about 5,300.

The Hill Section doesn't have many listings at once. In late September 2026, our mapped area had five houses for sale, asking $4.5 million for a 1950s house to $11 million, and the two newest asked about $8.4 million and $11 million. There were also four houses for rent, from about $15,000 to $99,000 a month.

Veterans Parkway runs along the west side. It's a 21-acre greenbelt built in 1986 on the old Santa Fe railroad right-of-way, with a running path from Sepulveda to the Hermosa Beach line. Inside the neighborhood there's the small Larsson Street Parkette. Downtown and Metlox Plaza are about half a mile from the middle of the Hill Section, and the pier is a quarter mile to a mile away depending on the street.

East of Sepulveda, Polliwog Park covers 18 acres on land the city leases from the school district, and its pond doubles as a stormwater basin. The city has held free Sunday concerts there since 1978; the 2026 season ran from July 5 to September 6. Next door, the Manhattan Beach Botanical Garden opened on Earth Day 2001, and the historical society's beach cottage museum, a house from around 1905 moved there in 1987, is closed for now.

The Hill Section is in the Manhattan Beach Unified School District. On the district's attendance map, dated November 2015, the whole neighborhood falls in Robinson Elementary's area; the school is on South Morningside Drive just west of the greenbelt. Everyone goes on to Manhattan Beach Middle School and Mira Costa High School, which sits on Artesia Boulevard just southeast across Sepulveda.

The first thing I order is a topographic survey with the four corner elevations, because that's where the height envelope comes from on a slope. If the house has a view, I look at the lots between it and the ocean: how big they are, what's on them now, and what the code would let their owners build. If the house downhill is a small older one, assume it could be replaced with a full two-story house.

After the survey, the site work: retaining walls, drainage, and any grading permits, and the tree situation in the front yard if you plan to rebuild. Schools are simpler here, since the whole neighborhood maps to Robinson, but I still get the district to confirm the address.

I walk these streets with buyers at different times of day, because the view and the Sepulveda noise both change with the hour. I work in English and Russian. If you're abroad, I film the view from inside the house at the hour you'd actually be home.