Big Rock Homes for Sale in Malibu

Malibu, CA

Why People Move to Big Rock

It is the closest Malibu address to the rest of Los Angeles. Big Rock is the easternmost neighborhood inside the City of Malibu. The Getty Villa is about three miles east and Santa Monica comes not long after, so you get a Malibu address without the long run up the coast.
The whole neighborhood sits on a mesa. The land climbs off Pacific Coast Highway onto a broad shelf, which is why the views here look east and south down the length of Santa Monica Bay instead of straight out at the horizon.
Nothing will be built on the hill behind you. The slope above the mesa is Tuna Canyon Park, 1,255 acres of public land that links into more than 18,000 acres of unbroken protected open space running from Topanga State Park west to Las Flores Canyon. What you can see uphill from the house is what you will keep seeing.
You get a protected left turn off the highway. The City built a protected left-turn phase into the Pacific Coast Highway and Big Rock Drive intersection, which will mean something to anyone who has ever waited to turn off PCH.

The name comes from the rock standing just off the sand below the highway: it named Big Rock Beach first, and the beach named the neighborhood. This whole coast was Rindge ranch land before any of it was subdivided. The hillside itself moved in 1983 and has been monitored without a break since, paid for by the owners here through an assessment on their own tax bills.

Living on Big Rock Mesa

You can watch the whole bay light up. The coast curves away east from the mesa, so after dark you are looking at a continuous arc of lights from the Palisades around to the Palos Verdes headland.
A trail leaves from the top of the neighborhood. The Big Rock Motorway climbs off the back of the mesa into Tuna Canyon, so a real hike starts a block from the house with no drive to a trailhead first.
The Getty Villa is three miles east. It is a Roman country house rebuilt on the coast holding the Getty's antiquities collection, near enough that you can spend an hour there on a Tuesday and still be home for dinner.
Topanga Canyon is your back road out. The boulevard climbs from the coast just east of here over to the Valley, through a canyon that has been an artists' colony since the 1950s. Neil Young recorded After the Gold Rush in a basement up there. Stop at the Inn of the Seventh Ray, or catch outdoor Shakespeare at the Theatricum Botanicum.

Children here go to Santa Monica-Malibu Unified schools, and because Big Rock sits at the far eastern end of the city, every campus is a drive west along the highway. Malibu is partway through setting up a school district of its own. Which campus serves a particular address is worth a call to the district.

Neighborhoods Around Big Rock: the Beach, the Mesa and the City Line

Below the highway, on the sand. A short row of houses stands right on Big Rock Beach. Sand behind, highway in front, and you own a piece of the beach instead of a view of it.
The mesa above the highway. Most of Big Rock is up here. Big Rock Drive climbs from the signal and the rest of the streets fan off it, so the higher the address the longer the view.
La Costa Beach and Carbon Beach, west. The run of beachfront neighborhoods between here and the Malibu Pier, with Las Flores and its canyon road in between.
Sunset Mesa and Pacific Palisades, east. These sit past the city line, in Los Angeles proper. Big Rock is the last Malibu address before you are in the city, and for a lot of buyers that is the whole point.

The street names give the place away. Little Rock Way, Roca Chica Drive and Piedra Chica Road are three goes at the same name in two languages, and what is left runs to Seaboard, Whitecap, Seamoor and Major Seaway. Somebody laid out these blocks thinking about rocks and the sea, and then stuck with it.

Homes for Sale in Big Rock

Land is a real part of what sells here now. Much of the current inventory is a lot with a view, a permit history and a geology file attached. What to ask for on a lot that burned runs through the documents to request before you write an offer.
Every purchase on the mesa comes with a geology question. The City keeps its own Geologist, who reviews the engineering geology report on a project before anything gets built. On this hillside that review is the main event, not a formality.
There is an annual assessment on the tax bill. Properties inside the landslide assessment district pay a yearly amount, levied through the County Assessor, that pays for the wells and the monitoring. Ask for the current figure on the specific parcel.
You can price a rebuild before you commit to one. What it actually costs to build in Malibu breaks the number down, and on a rebuild you can price it against a permit record that already exists.

Three documents decide what you can build on a parcel up here: the geology report, the permit history and the current district assessment. All three can be pulled before you make an offer, and they will tell you things about the land that a walk around it will not. Ask for them early, then go and see what is on the market.

Buying in Big Rock with a Malibu Realtor

Two kinds of homes sit on Big Rock: the ones on row of sand below the highway, and the mesa above it. We are happy to help you find what fits your needs here; show you what is on the market and what is not; tell you plainly what it would take to build on a particular lot; and make the real estate process as seamless as possible. With almost 30 years of selling homes in Malibu, we are the number one realtor here at Sotheby's International Realty.

Common Questions About Big Rock

What is the landslide assessment district?

Big Rock Mesa sits in a City assessment district, numbered 98-1, that covers roughly 327 properties. It funds the installation and upkeep of dewatering wells that hold the groundwater down under the mesa, continuous monitoring of water levels and ground movement, and an annual geology report. Owners inside the boundary pay for it through a yearly assessment levied against the property by the County Assessor. The City publishes the assessment and geology reports year by year, so you can read what the engineers have found on this hillside going back more than fifteen years before you buy on it.

Did the hillside move during the fire?

No measurable amount. The fire knocked out power to the dewatering wells for an extended period, which is the thing an engineer would worry about, and the City's consultant surveyed the ground afterward and reported no quantifiable movement compared with the last survey taken before the fire. Emergency generators went in within weeks and the wells came back into service. Groundwater sat higher in a few isolated spots and was within the normal range and falling everywhere else. The post-fire status report is public if you want to read the data yourself.

How much of Big Rock burned?

Most of it. The City's own engineering consultant recorded that the majority of homes and a good deal of public infrastructure inside the district boundary were damaged or destroyed on 7 January 2025. Rebuilding is under way across the mesa, and the City runs a rebuild help desk for owners. For a buyer, that means much of what is for sale up here now is land rather than a finished house, and a rebuild on a documented permit history is a different approval path from new construction on a bare lot.

Can I get down to Big Rock Beach?

Not at the moment. The two public accessways that serve this stretch, Maritime Rocks and the Dolphin View overlook, are both listed by the agency that runs Malibu's accessways as closed until further notice, along with several others along the eastern coast. The houses below the highway get to the sand from their own back door. If walking to the sand matters to you, check whether these two accessways have reopened rather than assuming they have.

What is it like living on this stretch of PCH?

It has improved, and Caltrans has more work planned. The protected left turn at Big Rock Drive took the worst of the guesswork out of getting home. Caltrans has an eastern phase of its highway safety program planned that runs from the McClure Tunnel in Santa Monica up toward Carbon Beach, La Costa Beach and Big Rock later this decade. Our piece on what the PCH safety project means for homeowners sets out the phases and the timing.