Malibu West Homes for Sale

Malibu, CA

Why People Move to Malibu West

Malibu's best family neighborhood. Two hundred and thirty-eight houses and condominiums sit behind one entrance on streets the owners maintain themselves, some of them with sidewalks, every utility underground and not a street light in the place. Children ride bikes to each other's houses here.
The gate is staffed. A manned checkpoint sits at the entrance off Pacific Coast Highway with patrol service around the clock. Parents here turn their kids loose on the streets without thinking about it.
Homes come with a beach club. The Malibu West Beach Club is a stretch of sand between Zuma and Broad Beach with its own lifeguard tower, an ocean deck, changing rooms and parking, and the use of it is written into the deeds of the majority of lots here. The association also keeps two tennis courts, and the condominiums have a pool.
School, groceries and the beach are all minutes from the gate. The middle and high school campus is up the road in Malibu Park, the market is a walk, and Zuma is across the highway. Most Malibu addresses make you drive for all three.

Malibu West went up as a planned tract in the mid-1960s. Most of the houses are single-level ranch and mid-century, and most have been reworked by their owners since. The neighborhood is forested and sits away from the PCH with only one quiet road in.

Living in Malibu West

Trancas Country Market is where this end of Malibu does its shopping. It is seventeen acres at 30745 Pacific Coast Highway, up against Trancas Creek. Vintage Grocers anchors it, with restaurants, a few shops and a candy store alongside.
On summer Friday nights the lawn behind the market fills with camp chairs and a live band. Trancas Summer Nights runs free from late May into early September. For a few hours the far west end of town has a proper town square!
Zuma is the beach the rest of Los Angeles drives out for. It has lifeguards, a county lot you can usually get into, and the longest run of open sand in Malibu.
The canyon behind the houses. The Trancas Canyon Trail runs up into the hills from the edge of the neighborhood, and the creek below it is where Malibu West kids build forts and catch crawdads and newts after the rains.
The holidays here turn into a competition. The whole neighborhood comes out for it, with detailed and charming displays on almost every house, and handmade haunted houses at Halloween.

This is the rare Malibu address where dinner, a gallon of milk and a tank of gas are a walk or a very short drive. When we show houses out this way, the run to Trancas comes up about as often as the surf report.

Neighborhoods Around Malibu West: the Canyon, the Condos and the Coast

Upper Trancas Canyon Road and the Trancas Highlands. Custom houses sit on larger lots further up the canyon, with room between them and views back down it. There is no gate and no club right out here, and a much freer hand on what you build.
Tapia Drive and Paseo Canyon, in the lower canyon. Houses and condominiums sit together on the canyon floor, and this is the easiest way onto this side of Malibu.
Lunita and Bailard, just west along the highway. The condominiums here, including the Vista Pacifica complex, come from a different era and a different idea of building than the canyon houses.
Anacapa View, gated on its own. The houses here face Point Dume and the open water instead of the canyon.

Trancas Canyon holds three distinct neighborhoods, and Malibu West is only one of them: the gated tract, the upper canyon, and the Bailard and Lunita stretch all have their own streets, rules and rights. Broad Beach is the oceanfront neighbor west of here and Malibu Park sits east across the canyon, with Point Dume beyond it.

Homes for Sale in Malibu West

What you are buying is usually a remodeled single-level ranch house on a compact lot. The tract was built to one idea, so the houses started out alike and have drifted apart over sixty years of individual remodels.
Find the beach club right in the grant deed before anything else. The right attaches to the lot and not to the neighborhood, so the next lot along can hold something different from the one you are standing on. A title company can pull it by name.
The association reviews what you build. Plans and materials go in front of an architectural committee before work starts, and that is what keeps the tract coherent. There are guidelines, and also a fair bit of creative leeway.
There is no public sewer anywhere in Malibu. Every house treats its own waste water in a system on the property, and the City requires an operating permit on that system when a house is sold. Ask for its records early.

Guest houses and rental units are harder here than in the open parts of Malibu, because a small lot has to fit the house, the clear distance the City requires from each property line, and the waste water system before it fits anything else. Find out what the system on that lot can carry before you price a second unit, then have a look at what is listed here now.

Buying in Malibu West with a Malibu Realtor

Listings up and down this canyon all carry a Malibu address and they carry very different rights. 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 which lots sit inside the association and which sit outside 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 West

Does the house come with the beach club?

Not every one of them does, so check it before you get attached. The association owns the club, the tennis courts and the streets, and the right to use the beachfront is recorded against individual lots, which means one address can carry it while its neighbor carries nothing. Have a title company name the club right specifically in what it reports back to you. A general answer about the neighborhood is not an answer about the house.

Is Trancas Canyon Road part of Malibu West?

No, and the distinction costs real money. The City treats this canyon as three separate neighborhoods: Malibu West, the upper canyon with the Trancas Highlands, and the Bailard and Lunita area. Malibu West is the gated part, with the association, the maintained streets and the club. A listing on upper Trancas Canyon Road sits outside all of that, which usually buys a bigger lot and a freer hand on design, and gives up the beach club.

Is it septic here, or is there a sewer?

There is no public sewer system in Malibu, here or anywhere else in the city. Houses treat their waste water on site under rules the City and the regional water board both enforce, and a permit has to be issued on the system when a property changes hands. On lots this size the capacity of that system is what sets how much more house you can add later. Get the permit history and the last inspection for the specific address.

How close are the schools?

Closer than from almost anywhere else in Malibu. The combined middle and high school campus sits on Morning View Drive in Malibu Park, the next neighborhood east over the canyon, so the morning run takes a few minutes instead of half the coast. Malibu is working through the creation of its own school district, and everything here is Santa Monica-Malibu Unified until that is finished. Confirm which campus serves a given house with the district office.

What can I change on the house?

More than people expect, with a step in the middle. Owners here do substantial remodels regularly, and the architectural committee is the gate they go through first. If you are planning to take a house back to the studs or add a second story, ask what has been approved on nearby lots recently. That record is the best guide there is to what the committee will say yes to.