Mulholland Corridor Homes for Sale
Why People Move to the Mulholland Corridor
- LA's best pocket of nature. State and federal agencies have bought up the land in every direction out here, so the open country around these houses is permanently protected. It also happens to be in the largest urban national park in the world.
- A private lake with a club around it. Malibou Lake has been there since 1926, and the right to use it runs with the houses on its shore. Members get the lake itself, a pool, a tennis court, gardens and the islands.
- Cornell was its own town before Agoura grew around it. A post office ran here from 1884 to 1904, and the store that shared its building is now The Old Place, a restaurant since 1970. The mail room is still in there, wall of letter cubbyholes and all, used as a private dining room.
- Horse property is normal here. Ranches and horse setups sit along Mulholland Highway, and the parcels run large enough that a paddock and a couple of horses are an ordinary way to use the land.
Cornell and Malibou Lake sit in the mountains between Agoura Hills and the coast, on and around Mulholland Highway. Neither sits inside a city. This is unincorporated county land, and that changes who you deal with on everything from a building permit to a fire engine. The lake is man-made: a dam went in during the 1920s, the founders sold out to the members, and the water finally arrived in 1926 after four dry years.
Living on the Mulholland Corridor
- The Old Place is a five table steakhouse in Cornell's original store. The Runyon family have run it since 1970, in the building that held the town's general store and post office. Steaks and clams come off a red oak grill, the old mail room with its wall of letter cubbyholes is now a private dining room, and it opens Thursday through Sunday. Book ahead.
- The Rock Store is the other landmark, half a mile up the road. A stone roadhouse that has been feeding riders, racers and the occasional film star for decades, open from early on weekend mornings. Cornell Wine Co. pours between the two of them.
- The club has a pool, a tennis court and islands. They sit at the members' end of the lake, which is small and quiet enough that boating and fishing on it feel private.
- Film crews have worked here for a century. The lake and the canyons around it have stood in for everywhere, and Paramount Ranch up the road is the only movie-making site the National Park Service owns.
The practical town for groceries and schools is Agoura Hills, a few minutes down the canyon, where the largest wildlife crossing in the world is due to open over the 101 at Liberty Canyon in December, with Oak Park and Westlake Village beyond it on the same side of the mountains. Malibu is the other way, over the ridge and down Kanan or Malibu Canyon, which is a longer run than the map suggests.
Homes for Sale on the Mulholland Corridor
- The houses began as 1920s cabins. The club went up in the 1920s as a weekend colony, and a century of owners have rebuilt, extended and replaced what they bought. A street here runs from a surviving cottage to a full ranch house.
- Ranch sized parcels. Land out here comes in ranch sizes, and the slope, the access road and the water supply decide its use far more than the square footage of whatever house is standing on it.
- Lakefront streets and ridge streets. Lake Vista Drive, Lake Drive, Cove Place and the two Lake Shore Drives sit on the shoreline. Crags Drive, Crest Drive, Highpoint Drive, Sugarloaf Drive and Lookout Drive climb the ridges behind, and trade the water for the long view over it.
- Lake rights attach to the house. Membership of the club runs through owning or leasing one of the licensed homes, with an initiation fee and monthly dues on top. Find out which of the two a house is before you get as far as an offer.
A private lake, a five table steakhouse and protected parkland on every boundary, with a supermarket at the bottom of the canyon. Current listings out this way are here.
Buying on the Mulholland Corridor with an Agoura Hills Real Estate Agent
This is a small market and the houses on it rarely come up. 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 parcels carry lake rights and which carry only a view of it; and make the real estate process as seamless as possible. With almost 30 years of selling homes in Malibu and the mountains behind it, we are the number one realtor here at Sotheby's International Realty.
Common Questions About the Mulholland Corridor
Is this Malibu?
No. Cornell and Malibou Lake are county land rather than city land. The postal address is Agoura, the nearest city is Agoura Hills, and the mountains in between are mostly national recreation area. The City of Malibu is on the far side of the ridge. Everything administrative follows from that. Building permits and inspections come from County Regional Planning instead of a city hall, your zoning sits under the County's area plan for these mountains, and the engine that answers a call out here belongs to County Fire.
How do the lake rights actually work?
They attach to specific houses. The club is a corporation, membership comes with a residential license in it, and the route in is owning or leasing one of those homes rather than applying from outside. There is an initiation fee and there are monthly dues. Members get the lake, the pool, the tennis court, the gardens and the islands. Ask which category a particular property falls into and what the current dues are before you make an offer, because two houses on the same road can sit on different sides of that line.
What did the Woolsey Fire do here?
It took a large part of the neighborhood. Malibou Lake lost a substantial share of its houses in November 2018 and the rebuild has been slow even by the standards of that fire, with very few finished houses three years afterwards. Paramount Ranch nearby lost its Western Town entirely. The Old Place and the Rock Store both survived. For a buyer the useful reading is how evacuation actually runs in these canyons, because canyon roads are what you leave on and they are the first thing a fire closes.
What about water and waste water?
Ask about both on the specific parcel, and ask early. There is no public sewer out here, so houses treat their own waste water on site, and supply arrangements vary from one property to the next in a way they do not inside a city. These are the questions that decide whether a guest house or a second unit is possible at all, so put them at the front of the conversation.
What is the drive like?
Agoura Hills is the first town north of here and the 101 sits just past it, which makes the Valley and Thousand Oaks straightforward. The coast is the harder direction: Kanan Dume Road or Malibu Canyon Road over the ridge, and both are mountain roads. Plan on the drive to the beach being longer than it looks.