Western Tanager · Piranga ludoviciana

Tanager Way

Elevation

750 m

A modern architectural street named for the most vividly colored songbird in the western hills.

The Twins' Modern

1423 Tanager Way—a 2012 modern architectural home—was the former residence of Cameron and Tyler Winklevoss, the twin brothers whose name became inseparable from the early history of Facebook. The street sits on the enclave's mid-to-upper tier, where the lots favor clean, horizontal modernism. Its namesake, the Western Tanager, is the most colorful songbird of the western hills—a flame-headed, yellow-bodied bird that passes through the chaparral in migration, a flash of the tropics above Sunset Boulevard.

Paul McClean and the Olive Tree

The house that has drawn the most attention on Tanager in recent years is 1424, a 5,350-square-foot, four-bedroom, four-bath residence on roughly a third of an acre, designed by Paul McClean. Its signature is a hundred-year-old olive tree encased in glass and set into the living room, so that the house is organized around a living thing rather than around a view axis — an unusual move on a street where the view is normally the whole argument. The approach is theatrical in the way McClean's Los Angeles work tends to be: a double water wall with fire running between it leads up to the entry, and inside the palette runs to porcelain floors, floor-to-ceiling glass and a smart-home control system. It was asking just under $16 million when it went into contract in December 2024, at which point it was the highest-priced residential contract signed in Los Angeles County that week.

The Cul-de-Sac Tier

At the other end of the scale, 1410 Tanager Way sold at $25,000,000. It is a far larger proposition — roughly 14,000 square feet of house on a lot of about 22,391 square feet, five bedrooms and eight baths, by Vantage Design Group — and it is sited on a cul-de-sac, which on this hillside is worth paying for in its own right. A cul-de-sac lot removes through-traffic from a street whose whole topography funnels cars toward the view, and it is one of the quieter reasons certain Tanager addresses clear higher numbers than their square footage alone would suggest. The specification is the full contemporary inventory: a second-level infinity pool with a baja shelf, a cascading water wall and spa, a walk-in wine room beside a jade bar, an elevator, a gym with a yoga area, a steam room and a dry sauna, with honed travertine and walnut millwork throughout.

What the Two Houses Say About the Street

Put 1424 and 1410 side by side and you have the whole range of what Tanager Way trades. One is 5,350 square feet asking just under $16 million; the other is roughly 14,000 square feet that traded at $25 million. The price per square foot runs in almost opposite directions, which is the point: on this street the number is set by the quality of the architecture and the specific lot far more than by size. A McClean house on a third of an acre and a 14,000-square-foot Vantage house on a cul-de-sac are not competing for the same buyer, and a comparable analysis that treats them as the same market will mislead in both directions.

The Lot, the View and the Approach

Tanager branches off the upper reaches of the enclave and carries the same south-facing exposure that defines the Bird Streets premium — the city falling away toward the basin, with the ocean visible on a clear day. What varies street to street, and lot to lot within a street, is how much of that panorama survives the neighbor in front. Buyers on Tanager should be looking at the specific sightline from the specific pad rather than at the street's reputation, and at how the driveway meets the road, because the grades here are steep and the approach is often the hardest part of a Bird Streets property to fix after the fact. Elevation on this stretch runs around 750 feet.

Buying on Tanager Way

Inventory is thin, as it is across the enclave, and the houses that matter turn over rarely. Three things are worth establishing early on any Tanager address. The first is the view easement position — what, if anything, protects the sightline from future construction below. The second is the geology and the hillside grading permits, which on streets of this gradient govern what can be rebuilt or extended and at what cost. The third is simply the approach and the parking: a steep, narrow driveway is a permanent condition of the lot and a real constraint on how a house lives, however the interiors photograph.

Residences on Tanager Way

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