Malibu Park Homes for Sale

Malibu, CA

Why People Move to Malibu Park

Ranch size lots. Low ranch houses sit well back on large pieces of land, and the undeveloped part of a parcel can be put to agricultural use. Homes with horses and chickens are common here.
The school is inside the neighborhood. Malibu Middle and High School stands on Morning View Drive, a short way up from the highway, on an eighty-seven acre run of district land. Children here get to school without anyone driving the coast road.
Three trailheads open off three of the streets. The Chumash Trail starts from Morning View and Harvester, the Zuma Ridge trailhead is at the top of Busch Drive, and the Zuma Canyon trailhead is at Bonsall. You leave your own road and you are in the Santa Monica Mountains.
You get the ocean and the mountains out of one house. The neighborhood sits on the slope between Zuma Beach and the National Recreation Area, so one side of the house looks down at the water and the other looks straight into the mountains.

Four roads carry you up off Pacific Coast Highway into the neighborhood: Bonsall, Busch, Morning View and Guernsey. National Recreation Area parkland closes it off to the north, Zuma Beach and the highway run along the south, Trancas Creek and its wetlands form the western edge, and the slopes climbing toward Kanan Dume Road end it in the east. All of this was Rindge family ranch land first.

Living in Malibu Park

You can board a horse without leaving the neighborhood. There is an equestrian park on the school district's land off Morning View, and trail easements run from it to all three trailheads. A horse kept here gets to the Chumash Trail without ever going on the highway.
Zuma Canyon and Zuma Ridge are both walkable from the street. One takes you up the ridge for the long ocean view, the other runs back into the canyon in the shade. Both start inside the neighborhood.
Morning View Drive is a designated trail as well as a road. So is Busch Drive. You are walking on a route the City has mapped as a trail, which is why you keep meeting people on foot and on horseback where you would expect only cars.
The beach is downhill the hill. Zuma sits directly across the highway at the bottom of the neighborhood, so the beach run is a few minutes down rather than a drive up or down the coast.

West of Trancas Creek is Malibu West with the Trancas Country Market beside it, and Point Dume sits east past the Kanan slopes with its own village of shops. Malibu Park is the ground in between and above both of them.

Homes for Sale in Malibu Park

The original houses are low ranches on big pieces of land. A good number of them went up in the last few years though, so a buyer here is often choosing between a 1960s ranch and something finished last season.
People buy the lot here before they buy the house. A large parcel with agricultural use permitted on the undeveloped part of it leaves room for a paddock, an orchard and a guest house on the same piece of land. Very little of Malibu offers that.
Each street sells a different half of the view. Horizon Drive, Sea View Drive, Ocean Breeze Drive and Zenith Point Road face the water. Deerhead Road, Filaree Heights Road and Harvester Road sit back into the slope and the canyon, trading the horizon for shelter and trees.

Large lots, water in one direction and mountains in the other, with a school and a stable inside the same neighborhood. Nowhere else in Malibu puts all of that on one hillside. See what is listed in Malibu now.

Buying in Malibu Park with a Malibu Realtor

Malibu Park sells land more than it sells houses, and the lot is usually what a buyer is really choosing between. 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 each parcel will actually carry before you plan anything on it; 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 Park

Did Malibu Park burn in the Woolsey Fire?

Yes, and badly. The worst of the 2018 fire fell on the western neighborhoods of the city, and this one lost homes by the score. Across Malibu as a whole the fire destroyed several hundred structures, and the rebuild ran slowly: three years on, the count of finished houses was still in the dozens while hundreds of permits worked through the City. The practical consequence for a buyer today is that a lot of what sells here is either a recent build or a parcel with a permit history attached. Our guide to what it costs to build or rebuild in Malibu sets out the numbers.

Can I actually keep horses?

On the right parcel, yes, and for plenty of buyers it is the whole reason they looked here. The City recognizes agricultural use of undeveloped land here, and the County-leased stables give riders somewhere organized to start from. Road and trail easements connect it to the Chumash Trail and to the Zuma Ridge and Zuma Canyon trailheads. Confirm what a specific lot allows before you buy for that purpose, because the permission follows the parcel rather than the neighborhood.

Is the school really in the neighborhood?

It is, which is unusual for Malibu. The campus stands on Morning View Drive within Malibu Park itself, and the district's holding there runs to nine parcels, taking in the stables and the site of the former Juan Cabrillo Elementary alongside the school itself. A Malibu-only school district is being carved out of the shared one, and the campus is working through a long-term plan with the City, so ask the district about any specific address rather than assuming.

Is it septic up here?

Yes, and on lots this size it matters less than it does elsewhere in Malibu. The city runs no public sewer at all, so every property treats its own waste water, and the usual problem is fitting a system onto a small parcel. Here there is room to site one well away from the house and room to replace it when the time comes. Ask for the records and the last inspection, and ask early if a guest house is part of the plan, because capacity is part of what decides whether one fits.

What is the drive like?

Four roads connect the neighborhood to Pacific Coast Highway, so a closure on one of them still leaves you three. From the bottom of the hill the highway runs east toward the Pier and the Civic Center and west past Trancas. The trade is that you are at the western end of the city, so the run to Santa Monica is a long one.