Malibu Country Estates Homes for Sale

Malibu, CA

Why People Move to Malibu Country Estates

Family neighborhood in the corner of Malibu. A hundred and seven houses sit on wide cul-de-sacs, with sidewalks, street lights and the power lines buried. One road leads in and the same road leads out, so the only cars on it belong to people who live here.
The houses are connected to a sewer. Almost nowhere in Malibu is. The neighborhood and Pepperdine share a treatment plant on the mesa, which the university and the owners here paid to build between them because the city has no system of its own, and the water it cleans goes back out to irrigate the campus.
A university pool and tennis courts sit less than half a mile up the hill. Pepperdine's Raleigh Runnels Memorial Pool and its courts are open to people in the Crest program, and plenty of households here are in it.
The ballfields are half a mile. Malibu Bluffs Park sits on the bluff above the highway, close enough that a child can get to Saturday practice without a lift.

The whole neighborhood was laid out and built in the 1970s, on the mesa between Pepperdine and the ocean bluffs, north of Pacific Coast Highway and west of Malibu Canyon Road. The houses are large and sit on large lots, a good number of them with ocean or canyon views and a pool, and most have been remodeled at least once by the families who own them.

Living in Malibu Country Estates

Children actually ride bikes in the street here. There is no through traffic, the streets have sidewalks for when the road gets busy, and the association persuaded the City to keep overnight parking for permit holders. After dark the place empties out.
Two huge parks. Malibu Bluffs Open Space runs west of the City park, and its trails cross open grassland and coastal sage scrub with the water in sight most of the way. The Michael Landon Community Center stands in the City park alongside it.
The shops and restaurants are five minutes down the hill. Cross Creek Ranch is thirteen acres of retail along Civic Center Way, and the rest of the Civic Center is right there with it.
Surfrider Beach is the next thing east along the highway. It is where American surf culture first organized itself, and it is still the best longboard wave in the county.

Down the hill and across the highway are the beach neighborhoods: Malibu Road is half a mile southeast below the bluffs, with Malibu Colony a mile beyond it. Almost everything a day needs is inside five minutes of this mesa, and the house is still on a quiet cul-de-sac at the end of it.

Homes for Sale in Malibu Country Estates

The original houses were single-level ranches, and plenty of them still are. The tract was drawn once in the 1970s and no new lots are coming, so every house that sells here is one of the hundred and seven. The families who bought in have been reworking them ever since, so a lane now runs Spanish next to Cape Cod next to something low and glassy, with a few that have gone up to a second story.
The lots are flat, which in Malibu is rarer than an ocean view, and most of them have the view as well. This is a mesa rather than a hillside pad or a beach strip, so the garden is level ground you can actually use, with room for a pool and a lawn on the same parcel. The ground lifts gently as you drive in from the highway, which puts the water in the window from most of the tract and Catalina in it on a clear day.
Each lane was sold on something different, and the names still say which. Vantage Point Terrace, Skyline View Drive and Laurel Ridge Drive took the view. Bayberry Lane, Blue Dane Lane, Plover Way and Forest Gate Circle took the trees and the quiet. Malibu Country Drive is the spine that all of them hang off.
Three things come with a house here that most of Malibu cannot offer. The waste water goes to a sewer, the power lines run underground, and the whole neighborhood sits inland of the highway. So there is no leach field taking up a third of the garden, no poles in the view, and none of the sand, seawall and beach-access questions that come with an oceanfront lot.
Your outlook has a City ordinance behind it, and this association put it there. If a neighbor's planting grows up into your view there is a formal route to having it cut back. The association also looks at what gets built, which is why the tract still reads as one place fifty years on and why the house next door will not turn into something that blocks you.

A level garden, a sidewalk to walk the dog on and the ocean in the window is the particular combination this neighborhood sells, and a hundred and seven houses have it. Those hundred and seven are in among everything else listed in Malibu.

Buying in Malibu Country Estates with a Malibu Realtor

This is the only neighborhood in Malibu where a buyer gets a sidewalk, a street light and a sewer connection. 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 what the association controls before you plan a remodel; 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 Malibu Country Estates

Is the neighborhood on a sewer or on septic?

On a sewer, which makes it one of a very small number of Malibu addresses that are. The houses here and the Pepperdine campus both drain to the Malibu Mesa reclamation plant, which runs the waste water through three stages of treatment and finishes it with ultraviolet light. Pepperdine and the owners in this neighborhood paid for the plant between them, because Malibu has no public system to connect to. The cleaned water is reused as irrigation on the campus rather than discharged.

Is it a gated community?

No, though several Malibu neighborhoods nearby are. There is one way in and the same way out, which means no through traffic, and the association has added surveillance cameras and signs and has the City restricting overnight parking to residents holding a permit. What you get is a quiet street that strangers have no reason to drive down. What you do not get is a guard at a gate.

Can I use the Pepperdine pool and tennis courts?

Not automatically, and not for free. Access runs through Crest, which is the university's community support program: a household makes an annual contribution to Pepperdine and then pays a further fee to use the athletic facilities. Around two hundred households take it up in any given year, a good share of them from this neighborhood, and the campus is under half a mile from most front doors.

What does the homeowners association actually control?

Quite a lot, and that is the point of it here. A nine-member board and its committees review what owners build, working from rules recorded against every lot. The association has also used its weight outside the neighborhood, getting a City view ordinance adopted and the overnight parking rule written, and it tightened its own rules to keep houses in single-family use. Read the recorded rules before you plan anything structural.

How close are the schools?

Every campus is inside the city. Elementary, middle and high school are all Malibu campuses, so the school run never leaves town, and from a cul-de-sac on this mesa it is a matter of minutes. Malibu is partway through separating its schools from Santa Monica's, so the assignment for one address is a question for the district office rather than something to read off a map.