FAQ
The questions people ask before they call.
If what you are after is not here, the shortest route is to ask. Grade would rather have a five-minute conversation than have someone guess.
Working with Grade
What does Grade actually do?
Four things, under one roof: residential development, brokerage, residential real estate financing, and security drawn into a house during construction. Most firms pick one. Doing all four means a project can move from acquisition through development to sale without changing hands or losing context along the way.
Where does Grade work?
Development and brokerage are focused on the Westside of Los Angeles — Bel Air, Holmby Hills, Beverly Park, Brentwood, Beverly Hills, West Hollywood and Venice. Grade Capital lends more widely, across the lower 48 states with the exception of Nevada. Grade Security works across the Americas.
Do I have to use all four services?
No. Most people come for one. A client who only needs representation still gets a team that has developed and financed the kind of property they are buying or selling.
Is there a minimum project size?
Not for development. Grade takes a project on its merits rather than against a threshold.
Grade Capital has one, because lending does: $500,000 is the smallest loan it will place.
Development
What does Grade take on as a developer?
Ground-up construction, substantial remodels, multifamily, and historic rehabilitation. Grade stays involved across all six phases — acquisition and feasibility, design, budgeting, entitlements, construction, and project management — rather than handing a project off between them.
How long does a project take?
It depends on the scope, and the uncertainty is not spread evenly across a project.
Design and budgeting move at the pace of the decisions being made. Entitlements move at the pace of the city, and are the least predictable stretch of any Los Angeles project. Construction is the most predictable once the drawings are final. And every site brings something of its own — topography, access, neighbours, and whatever turns up once digging starts.
A remodel and a ground-up estate on a constrained hillside lot are not the same undertaking. Grade will give a real range once there is a real property to look at.
Can Grade take on a project someone else started?
Yes. Grade acquires partially built projects that need completing, whether from the owner, the developer, or a lender.
Buying and selling
Who is the broker on Grade’s listings?
Carolwood Estates. Grade is a real estate development company; Carolwood is its exclusive broker, and Grade’s licensed agents all hold their licenses there. Carolwood is a boutique brokerage based in Beverly Hills, DRE #02200006.
Three earlier sales — 250 S Rockingham Avenue, 565 N Tigertail Road and 800 Tortuoso Way — closed while listed with Hilton & Hyland, and each of those pages says so.
Does Grade represent buyers as well as sellers?
Yes, both. The Brokerage page describes each side: positioning and marketing a property for sale, and searching, evaluating and negotiating on a buyer’s behalf.
Grade Capital
What kind of financing does Grade Capital arrange?
Grade Capital is a capital markets advisory practice: it places financing for borrowers rather than lending its own money. It arranges senior debt and preferred equity for ground-up construction, renovation and major remodel, acquisition and bridge, and multifamily construction, from $500,000 to $50 million on terms of 6 to 36 months.
Full terms — leverage, rate and fees by product — are set out on the Capital page.
Does Grade Capital lend to owner-occupiers?
No. Lending is business purpose only, and secured against residential assets — single-family, multifamily, condominium and residential land.
How quickly can a loan close?
It depends on the project, on what underwriting requires, and on how long the lender’s due diligence takes. Under the right circumstances it can be under two weeks.
Grade places the financing rather than lending it, so the pace of that last stretch sits with the lender. Grade will say early when a timeline is not realistic.
Security
What does Grade Security cover?
Two kinds of work. Built into the house, during construction or as a retrofit: safe rooms, ballistic glass and reinforced frames, perimeter detection at the property line, art protection, bespoke safes, and segregated network and control cabling. Arranged when a principal’s circumstances call for it: close protection, threat assessment, kidnap prevention and extraction, household vetting, cyber security, private medical aid, armored vehicles, counter-drone and yacht security.
The first belongs in the drawings; the second is a service. The Security page sets out both.
Can security be added to a house that is already finished?
Yes. Security can be retrofitted to a finished home, with the plan developed around the house as it stands and the way it is lived in.
Some elements are simpler to build in while a project is still on paper — a reinforced core, a concealed second egress, cabling that reaches the property line — so a house still in design is the easiest moment to start. It is not the only one.
Who specifies the security work?
Bespoke Home & Yacht Security, a specialized security consultancy. Grade is Bespoke’s exclusive partner in the Americas. Grade brings the house — the drawings, the trades, the schedule and the standard of finish. What a safe room has to withstand, where detection belongs on a particular site, and how an opening is rated come from Bespoke.
Getting in touch
How does a conversation usually start?
By telephone on (310) 879-0026, by email at hello@grade.la, or through the form on the contact page. There is no obligation attached to a first conversation, and Grade will say plainly when something is not a fit.
Privacy Policy
Last updated 25 August 2026
Grade LA LLC (“Grade”) is a real estate development, brokerage, capital and security firm based in Beverly Hills, California. This policy explains what happens to personal information when you use grade.la or get in touch. It is written to be read rather than to be impressive, and it describes what the site actually does rather than everything it might one day do.
What we collect, and when
When you contact us. The form on the contact page asks for your first and last name, an email address, a telephone number, and what you would like to talk about. A message is optional. If you call or email instead, we hold whatever you choose to tell us. We use this to answer you and to carry out any work that follows, and for nothing else. We do not add you to a mailing list.
When you browse. With your permission, Google Analytics records which pages are opened, roughly where in the world the visit came from, and what kind of device and browser were used. It is measurement, not identification: we cannot tell who you are from it, and we have not enabled any of the features that would let Google connect it to a person — Google signals, user-provided data collection and granular location and device data are all switched off on our property.
Our web host records the ordinary technical information any web server does, including IP addresses, in order to serve pages and defend against abuse.
Cookies
Grade sets no cookies of its own. Google Analytics sets two, _ga and _ga_7PW0GGCHBK, which distinguish one visit from another. They are set only once analytics is running, which depends on where you are and what you have chosen:
- In Europe and the United Kingdom, nothing loads until you agree. No script is fetched from Google, no cookie is set and no measurement is sent unless and until you accept.
- Elsewhere, analytics runs and you can turn it off. The notice on your first visit says so, and at the foot of any page will change your mind at any time.
Your choice is remembered in your own browser’s storage, under grade.consent.v1. That single entry exists only so we do not ask you the same question on every page, and it never leaves your device.
Who else handles it
We use a small number of services to run the site, and each sees only what it needs to:
- Netlify hosts grade.la and receives contact form submissions, which it passes to us by email.
- Microsoft 365 carries our email, so anything you send us rests there.
- Google Analytics receives the measurement described above, where you have allowed it.
- Google Fonts serves the typeface this site is set in, and sees your IP address when your browser fetches it.
- Vimeo and YouTube are used for property films and the films on the Security page, and see nothing at all unless you press play on one.
We do not sell personal information, and we do not share it for cross-context behavioural advertising — the two things California law gives you a specific right to refuse. Grade runs no advertising and carries no advertising trackers, so there is nothing of that kind to opt out of.
How long we keep it
Analytics expires on Google’s side automatically: event data after two months, visit-level data after fourteen. We do not have to do anything for that to happen.
An enquiry that does not become business — a question asked and answered, with nothing following — is kept for twenty-four months and then deleted. Holding a cold enquiry longer than that serves us no purpose and serves you none at all.
Where an enquiry becomes a transaction, the records are kept for seven years after it closes. Real estate carries record-keeping obligations of its own, and seven years clears them with room to spare.
Ask for yours to be removed sooner and we will, unless we are required to keep it — in which case we will tell you that, and why, rather than simply declining.
Your rights
If you are in California, you may ask what personal information we hold about you, ask for it to be corrected, and ask for it to be deleted. We will not treat you differently for asking.
If you are in the United Kingdom or the European Economic Area, you may ask for a copy of your information, have it corrected or erased, object to or restrict what we do with it, and withdraw consent to analytics at any time without that affecting anything done beforehand. You may also complain to your data protection authority, though we would rather you told us first.
Ask by writing to hello@grade.la or calling (310) 879-0026. We will need enough to be sure the request is really yours before acting on it.
Children
This site is for people buying, selling, developing and financing property. It is not directed at children and we do not knowingly collect information about them.
Changes
If this policy changes, the date at the top changes with it. If it changes in a way that materially affects what happens to information already given to us, we will say so rather than rely on you noticing.
Contact
Grade LA LLC
Beverly Hills, California
hello@grade.la
(310) 879-0026