Broad Beach Homes for Sale in Malibu

Malibu, CA

Why People Move to Broad Beach

Sand is your back yard. The houses on the ocean side of Broad Beach Road sit directly on the beach, and several of them have what amounts to their own stretch of it behind the house (The most sand any homes have in Malibu).
The beach is empty. Two marked accessways serve the whole road, and Zuma sits less than two miles east where most crowds settle, so in daily use this sand behaves like a private beach.
No two houses here match. There is no repeated style and no design committee, so a wall of glass sits a few doors from a planted, jungle-like retreat. Buyers who want a house nobody else has end up here.
There are no power lines in the view. The overhead utilities along Broad Beach Road were put underground by an assessment district the owners formed in 2010, covering 84 parcels. No poles, no wires between the window and the water.

The rock along the high-tide line is a boulder wall running a little over four thousand feet, dropped in as emergency protection when the sea got too close to the houses. Every report on this beach calls it a revetment. The owners here pay to keep their own beach: Broad Beach has its own geologic hazard abatement district, funded by assessments on the properties inside it, and that district is why there is still sand in front of these houses at all.

Living on Broad Beach

At low tide the beach turns into a mirror. The water pulls back and leaves a sheet of reflected sky with pockets of tidepools across it. The pools gather at the Victoria Point end, where the sand runs out into rock shelves, and you can walk the whole mile of beach to them from the house without crossing a road.
Trancas Country Market is the town center for this end of Malibu. It is a low cluster of barn-style wood buildings on a seventeen-acre site beside Trancas Creek, with a full grocery, coffee, a surf shop and a taproom. There has been a Trancas on that corner since the late 1930s, and in the roadhouse years it booked Carole King, Bo Diddley and Dr. John, with Dick Dale playing it regularly until it closed.
El Matador is a mile west. Walk down through the arches and the sea caves before breakfast and you will have the place to yourself.
Zuma is a mile and a half east. Lifeguards, parking, volleyball and every amenity a public beach has, which is where you go when you want all of that, and why your own sand stays quiet.
Leo Carrillo and the state beaches are five miles up the coast. Camping, tidepools and the run toward the county line turn a short drive into a whole Saturday.

Malibu High sits about two miles east along the highway, which this far west counts as close. The district is Santa Monica-Malibu Unified, with a Malibu-only district partway through forming.

Neighborhoods Around Broad Beach: Malibu West, Trancas Canyon and Anacapa View

Broad Beach Road itself: oceanfront houses on the sand, and inland-facing houses across the street from them. Same address, two different things to own.
East and West Sea Level Drive: a gated enclave of its own, and one of the few places in Malibu that genuinely feels like one. A private road runs about two thirds of a mile above Lechuza Beach, with a small community of houses on it, its own homeowners association and Lechuza Point closing the east end. The conservation authority keeps the beach below, so you get patrolled, cleaned sand at the bottom of a street the public does not drive.
Malibu West, inland: a planned community laid out in the mid-1960s with a manned checkpoint, which is unusual in Malibu, and a private beach club on the sand with its own clubhouse and lifeguard tower.
Trancas Canyon Road, Tapia Drive and Paseo Canyon: the canyon behind the beach, with custom houses at the upper reaches and a pocket of condominiums lower down. That pocket is the least expensive way into this end of Malibu.
Anacapa View Drive: a private gated run of custom houses up the hill, turned to look back down the coast toward Point Dume and across the bay.
Lunita Road and Bailard Road: just past Trancas, where Lunita turns into Bailard, with a larger condominium complex on that stretch.
Point Dume and Paradise Cove, east: the run back down the coast, with Zuma in between. Point Dume is the headland about four miles east, not the far end of this beach.

Broad Beach Road and Malibu West sit a quarter of a mile apart and run on opposite principles. The beach road has no gate and no design committee. Malibu West has both, and a beach club on the sand as well. Which of the two you want narrows the search to one side of the highway.

Homes for Sale on Broad Beach

The contemporary cluster towards the end. Three-story designs with floor-to-ceiling tempered glass and interior courtyards holding a spa and an outdoor entertainment area where almost every room has a view of the ocean.
A beach club membership does not come with the address. Deeded rights to the private club are not uniform across this end of Malibu. Confirm them in the title report and the grant deed rather than assuming them from the street you are buying on.
Oceanfront and inland-facing are priced on different things. On the sand you are buying frontage and the beach behind the house. Across the street you are buying the view over the rooflines, and a much lower entry.
Everything here sits in the coastal zone. That shapes what you can add, how far, and how long the approval takes, so it belongs in the plan before the architect does. This is a short road, so the list of what is for sale on it is short too making it some of the most desired Malibu real estate.

The gap between the two halves of this street is wide. On the sand you get the beach itself behind the house. Across the road you get the same low tide, the same grocery and the same quiet, at a fraction of the frontage. Stand on both sides in the same hour and the choice usually makes itself.

Buying on Broad Beach with a Malibu Realtor

A good number of the houses on this road change hands without ever being listed. Tell us what you want on Broad Beach and we will show you what is on the market and what is not; help you find which home has a deed for the beach club; 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 Broad Beach

Who pays for the sand on Broad Beach?

The owners do, through a geologic hazard abatement district formed after severe erosion. It is a state-level public entity rather than a homeowners association, and it is funded by special assessments on the properties inside its boundary. Its central job is putting sand back on the beach. It holds a Coastal Commission permit to place 300,000 cubic yards of sand along close to a mile of shore and to build a dune system roughly fifty to sixty feet wide over the top, with at least two feet of sand covering the rock. The point of the dune is to bury the revetment that protects the houses now and eats the usable beach at high tide. Ask what the current assessment is on the specific parcel, and where the program stands this year.

Can the public walk in front of the house?

Yes. Two marked vertical accessways bring people down to the sand, at 31202 and 31346 Broad Beach Road, and the Coastal Commission permit also provides for a ten-foot-wide public path along the top of the revetment. Landward of that path is private, and exactly where that line falls is recorded against each title. With only two ways in, and a far easier beach to park at just up the coast, foot traffic along this sand stays thin.

Is the house on septic?

Almost certainly. Houses here run their own onsite wastewater systems, and Malibu operates one of the strictest septic programs in California. An inspection is required at the point of sale on every transaction, so this will come up whether or not you raise it. On this street in particular, where the leach field sits in relation to the rock revetment is the thing coastal permitting looks at hardest, and it can constrain what you are allowed to add later. Get the system located on a plan early rather than in escrow.

What is involved in remodeling on the sand?

A coastal development permit, and a thicker set of studies than a normal remodel. Budget for geotechnical review, a sea-level rise analysis and an erosion study on top of the ordinary drawings. Because the whole street sits inside the coastal zone, even work that would be exempt from a standard building permit can still need Planning Department sign-off. None of it is unusual for Malibu beachfront. What catches people out is the timeline, so build it into the purchase rather than discovering it afterward.

Why does the City filter the runoff on this road?

Because the state treats the water off this beach as some of the most sensitive on the coast, designating it an Area of Special Biological Significance. To keep street runoff out of it, the City built a biofiltration system that takes the flow from nine storm drain inlets along Broad Beach Road and filters it through lined bioswales before it can reach the ocean. It was finished in 2015, paid for mostly by a state water grant, and it is part of why the water in front of these houses is as clean as it is.