Point Dume Homes for Sale in Malibu

Malibu, CA

Why People Move to Point Dume

Ocean on three sides. A square mile of flat headland on the west side of Malibu. Pacific Coast Highway closes the fourth side, and the southern tip is a state preserve that can never be built on.
No through traffic. No road crosses the peninsula on the way to anywhere else, so the cars on your street belong to the people who live on it. It is a year-round neighborhood rather than a seasonal rental scene.
Wooded, not windswept. Thick foliage, streams and rolling hills give the interior streets a rural, ranch-like feel, and the lots are among the largest in Malibu.
A private cove on the east side. Little Dume curves back into the peninsula behind the headland, and certain houses come with a key to the gate onto it.

George Vancouver named the point in 1793 for Padre Francisco Dumetz, and misspelled it on his own map. The headland near Big Dume was treeless chaparral at the time, but the U.S. Army leveled the top of it during the Second World War to hold anti-aircraft artillery. The trees shading the streets today were planted by the settlers who built the first houses after the war.

Living in Point Dume

The headland trail and the marine reserve: Climb an overlook at the end of the point and get complete views of Westward Beach and Zuma below, the Santa Monica Mountains inland and Catalina out front on a clear day. A boardwalk branches off to a viewing deck out of the wind, and gray whales, dolphins and porpoises pass close in through winter and spring. A staircase drops down the east side to Big Dume, the public beach under the point, where the break catches swell that Malibu's sheltered points miss. Everything here is protected, so the tide pools are full of sea stars and octopus and kelp forest full of fish and other marine life.
Little Dume: faces east behind the headland and is sheltered from the prevailing westerly wind, so the water stays calm on the afternoons when the open coast is rough. It is also the point break many local surfers grew up on.
Zuma and Westward Beach: lifeguards, volleyball and several named surf breaks along the west side, with Malibu Park on the hill above. The Malibu Makos surf club and the Junior Lifeguards both run out of Zuma all summer.
Point Dume Village: You don't even need to drive off the point for entertainment or shopping. Pavilions for the grocery run, Lily's for the breakfast burrito after a surf, or Le Nena Cantina for a night out.
Golf carts and bikes: the streets are flat, the blocks are quiet and the beach gates are close enough to reach on a cart. Load it up with firewood and s'mores and you have the beach to yourselves.

Children go to Malibu Elementary on Fernhill Drive. It was created in 2019 when Juan Cabrillo Elementary and Point Dume Marine Science School merged, and it kept the marine science program and the aquarium (yes you can literally send your kids to a school with an aquarium). The district is Santa Monica-Malibu Unified, now separating into two. From the Heathercliff gateway, Zuma is 3 minutes away, Broad Beach and Trancas about 6 minutes west, and Paradise Cove about 10 minutes east.

Neighborhoods in Point Dume: the Bluff Loop, the Beach-Key Streets and Heathercliff

Point Dume is one name for seven different sub-markets inside a square mile, and the street you choose decides more than the view does.

Cliffside Drive and Birdview Avenue: the bluff-edge loop around the south and west sides. The views run west, so the sunset lands in front of the house every night of the year, and a few parcels have their own staircase down to the sand.
Zumirez Drive: the east-side corridor, mostly gated houses set well back from the road. It is the only street whose houses carry a Riviera 1 key, and that key opens a gate owners can drive through, right down to private sand at Little Dume.
Wildlife Road and Whitesands Place: the teardrop loop on the eastern edge, where the Little Dume gate sits. The Riviera 2 streets behind them, Portshead, Selfridge, Boniface and Bison Court, are a few blocks' walk from that gate, which opens onto the sandiest middle stretch of the cove.
Fernhill Drive and Grayfox Street: the interior spine around the elementary school. Parts of both carry Riviera 3 keys, which open a third gate with stairs down to the rocks near the headlands.
Grasswood Avenue, Bluewater Road and Sea Lion Place: the interior streets on flat ground, generally with no beach key. Grasswood in particular is an address buyers ask for by name.
Heathercliff Road: the way in from the highway, and where you find the village, the condominiums and the townhomes.
Point Dume Club: a separate community of 297 homes on oceanfront land at the western tip, with a heated pool, tennis courts, a guard on the gate around the clock and the beach at the foot of it.

Homes for Sale in Point Dume

Single-story ranch houses from the 1950s and 1960s, around 2,000 square feet. These are the original Point Dume, and most of what survives is on Wandermere Road and the interior streets.
Large custom builds on the bluff loop, which is where most of the original architectural homes were built by some of the worlds most affluent people. Lots there run to several acres and rarely come on market.
Architect-designed houses. Not everything out here is a ranch or a remodel. Many homes have been updated over the years and home style varies greatly from parcel to parcel.
Gated estates behind hedges and privacy walls, concentrated on Zumirez and the east side. You cannot see them from the street.
Condominiums and townhomes around Heathercliff Road, mostly built in the 1970s. Nothing new has been added in decades, and some units carry a beach key, so this is where buyers get onto the Point without buying a house.
Point Dume Club homes, where the house is yours and the land under it is leased. The one oceanfront address on the peninsula that does not include the ground.

Supply is fixed rather than tight. The original tracts and the preserve account for the whole peninsula, and no new beach easements have been recorded since the 1940s subdivision created them. So condition is what separates one from the next, and what reaches the market is almost always an existing house rather than land.

Choosing Your Street on Point Dume with a Malibu Real Estate Agent

A bluff lot with the sunset in front of it, a gate five minutes from the back door, a quiet block by the school, a townhome that comes with a beach key, a leased lot on the oceanfront: those are five different lives inside the same square mile. Reach out to Shen Realty and we will drive the peninsula with you street by street and tell you exactly what each area comes with.

Common Questions About Point Dume

Does a Point Dume beach key come with the house?

If the parcel carries one, yes. The Marblehead Land Company attached these rights to specific tracts of land when it subdivided the peninsula in the 1940s, so a key belongs to the lot rather than to the owner, and it transfers on sale. The catch is that the tracts follow 1940s boundaries rather than today's street layout, so a house well inland can carry a key while one closer to the water carries none. The rights are not all written the same way either, so some do not transfer automatically. Read it off the title report, never off the address.

Is Little Dume a private beach?

The gate is private. The sand is not. A key opens the gate at the top of the stairs. Below the average high tide mark the sand is public, as it is on every California beach. At low tide anyone can walk around the point from Big Dume or Paradise Cove.

Can I bring my dog to the beach here?

Not onto Big Dume, where State Parks rules keep dogs and alcohol off the beach (Though the dog laws are almost never enforced on both Big and Little Dume). The exception is a handful of privately owned parcels of sand along Westward Beach, in front of The Sunset Restaurant. A limited number of Point Dume houses hold a deeded share in those parcels, and because that sand is private rather than public, a leashed dog and a glass of wine are both fine there. There is nowhere else between Zuma and the headlands where either one is allowed.

Is Point Dume Club part of Point Dume?

It is a separate community on the same peninsula, behind its own gate. Because the land there is leased rather than sold, the monthly cost and the lending work differently from a house on Birdview. The City's rent control rules cap how much the rent on the land can go up in a year.