Malibu Cove Colony Homes for Sale
Why People Move to Malibu Cove Colony
- The whole neighborhood is one gated street. Malibu Cove Colony Drive runs off Pacific Coast Highway, carries about fifty houses, and ends. A gate closes it off at the highway end, and the only traffic behind that gate belongs to the fifty households on it.
- Homes on the water. Several of them are built out over the rock on pilings, which puts the main rooms directly above the waterline. Slide the doors open on that side and the surf is the only thing you can hear.
- The sand in front stays quiet. Both public stairways to this shoreline sit upcoast at Escondido Creek and Seacliff, so beach walkers start from there and the foot traffic thins out long before it reaches these houses.
- You are in the middle of Malibu, with the city on both sides of you. Point Dume sits a few minutes west and the town center a few minutes east, so the long haul up or down the coast belongs to somebody else's address.
The street sits on a shoreline that runs from Escondido Beach above it down to Latigo Beach, with Point Dume closing the horizon to the west. The City's Local Coastal Program treats it and Escondido Beach as a single stretch of shoreline, under the heading Escondido Beach to Malibu Cove Colony. The two streets sit on one continuous beach and are run on entirely different terms.
Living in Malibu Cove Colony
- Swimming at the bottom of your own steps. You pick up a towel, go down your own stairs and you are in it. The car stays where it is.
- Low tide turns the rock in front into tide pools. This shoreline is rock shelf rather than flat sand, and at low water it opens into pools worth an hour with a child and a bucket.
- You can walk the sand upcoast to Escondido Beach. It is a twenty minute walk on a low tide and the easiest way to leave the street without getting in a car.
- Dinner is a short drive in either direction. West gets you to the restaurants around Point Dume, east to the Country Mart and the Pier.
You give up a front lawn and a wide beach for a house where the tide is audible from the bedroom and the nearest stranger is a quarter of a mile up the sand. Paradise Cove is further upcoast again if you want the cafe and the pier, and the water off Latigo next door has ranked among the clearest in the country.
Homes for Sale in Malibu Cove Colony
- Most of these houses have been rebuilt, and they read as modern beach houses now. The street went up as cottages in the 1950s and very little of that survives untouched. What is here instead is open plans, glass walls facing the water and sliding doors the width of the room.
- Every room that matters faces the water. These are narrow lots and the houses use the full width of them, so the plan runs front to back: living space and the main bedrooms on the ocean side, parking and the back rooms behind. The view is in front of you from almost anywhere inside.
- A gated road on the sand is a rare combination in Malibu. Most of the Malibu beachfront is open road with public stairways running through it. This street is private, the association maintains it and the gate, and about fifty households share the cost of both.
A gate, a road nobody else drives on and the surf running under the deck is a combination about fifty houses in Malibu can offer, and this street is all of them. See the Malibu listings.
Buying in Malibu Cove Colony with a Malibu Realtor
About fifty houses on one gated street is the entire supply, and most of them change hands quietly. We are happy to help you find what fits your needs here; show you what is on the market and what is not; walk the deck and the waterline with you before you commit to anything; 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 Cove Colony
Is the beach in front of the houses private?
The dry sand next to the house is private and the wet sand is not. In California the public owns the beach below the average high tide mark, which in practice means anyone may walk the strip the water reaches, on this street as on every other beach in the state. We have written up how the sand divides on a Malibu beach, including where that line falls and how the access easements sit on top of it. What makes it feel private is where the stairways are. Both of them, Escondido Creek and Seacliff, sit upcoast, so the walkers who come down them stay up there and this end of the sand carries almost no one.
Is there a gate, and who looks after the road?
Yes. The road is private rather than a City street, so the association maintains it, the planting along it and the gate itself. The households share that cost between them. Ask what the association collects and what it covers. On a street this small that figure is a real part of the running cost of the house.
What should I check on a house that sits this close to the water?
Three things, and all of them are documented. Ask for the structural history of the deck and the foundation, because on this street both are load-bearing and both sit over rock and salt water. Ask what has been permitted on the parcel, because building anything at the waterline runs through the Coastal Commission as well as the City. And ask for the waste water system records, because Malibu has no public sewer and every house here treats its own.
How is this different from Escondido Beach next door?
The coastal plan treats the two as one shoreline and a buyer should not. Escondido Beach is a public road with two stairways cutting down through it to the water. Malibu Cove Colony is a single private street behind a gate with no public way down inside it. The sand runs straight through from one to the other. The difference is the road behind it: one you can drive onto, one you cannot.
How close is everything else?
Everything is close here, because the street sits in the middle of Malibu instead of out at one of its ends. Two beaches are inside a mile on foot along the sand. The shops, the Pier and the restaurants out at Point Dume are each a few minutes by car, in opposite directions, so nothing here depends on a single road being clear.