When someone tells us they want to buy on Point Dume, we always ask the same question: which Point Dume? That may feel like a strange question, most people think Point Dume is one area, but it's not. It's closer to seven distinct areas, stacked on top of each other in roughly a square mile of peninsula, each with their own privileges and lifestyles where your street decides a lot more than your view. It decides whether you get a deeded key to a private beach. Whether your dog can come with you to the sand. Whether you pay $2 million or $58 million for roughly the same square footage.
Point Dume gets covered in the national press as a single place where celebrities live. It's really a mosaic of distinct sub-markets that each trade on different value propositions. We've been selling real estate here for over twenty-five years, and this is how we actually map it for buyers.
Overview
Driving west on Pacific Coast Highway, Point Dume rises off the ocean side of the road as a broad, flat mesa. Turn inland onto Heathercliff Road, climb the slight incline, and you're on the peninsula. What you'll find is roughly a square mile of residential streets and low homes tucked behind hedges and privacy walls, laid out after WWII on what was once windblown chaparral.
The geography is what gives Point Dume its character. On the west, a sheer ocean bluff drops down to Westward Beach and catches every sunset. On the south, a thirty-four-acre state-protected headland juts out into the Pacific as a permanent natural preserve that will never be developed. On the east, a private crescent of sand called Little Dume cuts back into the peninsula, reachable only through a handful of deeded gates. On the north, Pacific Coast Highway defines the edge between the peninsula and the rest of Malibu. Inside those four boundaries sit the seven distinct sub-markets that make up Point Dume, each with its own character, its own price tier, and its own version of the life you can have here.
1. Point Dume Bluff Homes (Ocean Views)
This is Point Dume's trophy tier, and it's what people picture when they hear "Point Dume." Cliffside Drive and Birdview Avenue form a continuous bluff-edge loop around the southern and western sides of the peninsula. Cliffside wraps the southern headlands from the Little Dume side around to the point itself, and Birdview continues the line up the western bluff above Westward Beach. Every home on this loop has either an unbroken ocean view or a private path to the sand, and the price tier reflects it. Homes here typically range from the high-$20 millions to the $100+ millions depending on lot size, private beach access, and renovation date.
The current ceiling is 6962 Wildlife Road, Johnny Carson's longtime 4.1-acre compound with 327 feet of ocean frontage, which hit the market in September 2025 for $110 million (Carson's estate sold off-market for $40 million cash back in 2007 after he passed). The most recent blufftop sale was 29130 Cliffside Drive at $49.8 million in June 2025, picked up by Google co-founder Sergey Brin as his third Point Dume property. Brin has been quietly assembling a compound on the peninsula since 2020, a pattern that we've written about before. The Point Dume single-family record, former Facebook CFO Gideon Yu's $52 million all-cash purchase in April 2024, was also set on this same bluff.
Not every bluff home comes with beach keys, which is something buyers should look out for. A few Cliffside and Birdview parcels have their own private staircases down to Big Dume Beach. Others have no direct access and use the public headlands trail like everyone else. Before any offer at this level, we can help pull the title and check the deed those interested in buying a home on Point Dume. It's often the difference of several million dollars in true value, and it's not something you can always see from the street.
The character of the bluff has evolved. The original Point Dume homes (1950s and 1960s single-story ranches in the 2,000 square foot range) have largely given way to larger custom builds, especially on Cliffside and Birdview. Lot sizes on the bluff run approximately 1 to 4 acres. Views here are west-facing, which means you get sunset over the water every night of the year. It's one of the most dramatic and coveted stretches of the California coast.
2. Point Dume Homes With Beach Keys
These sub-areas control Point Dume's pricing logic, and the specifics are something most buyers may be unfamiliar with. When the Marblehead Land Company subdivided the peninsula in the 1940s, it created deeded beach easements tied to specific tracts. They show up in MLS listings, title reports, and city planning documents as Riviera 1, Riviera 2, and Riviera 3.
Before we map the three Rivieras, the most important point for a buyer to understand: Riviera keys are deeded legal rights tied to tract lines, not a description of where a house sits. The tracts date to the 1940s subdivision and follow parcel boundaries, not geography. A Riviera 2 home can sit on an interior lot a half-mile from the sand and still carry a key. It's hard to see where the pricing premium exists for homes, because you can't see the right from the street, you have to pull title.
Riviera 1 covers the eastern flank, primarily Zumirez Drive. Homes here have gate card-access parking that lets owners drive directly down to the sand at Little Dume Beach. A drive to your private beach is almost unheard of in coastal California and it's the defining privilege of these homes.
Riviera 2 is the middle tract. The streets that carry Riviera 2 access are mostly interior streets sitting well back from the cliff: Portshead Road, Selfridge Drive, Boniface Drive, and Bison Court (a small cul-de-sac of roughly seven homes off Fernhill). The streets closest to the beach itself are Wildlife Road and Whitesands Place, which together form a teardrop loop on the eastern edge of the peninsula where the actual beach gate sits. Residents of the interior Riviera 2 streets walk or drive the few blocks over to the gate, which opens onto the sandiest middle stretch of Little Dume. This is generally the most sought-after beach-key tier because it delivers direct foot access to the best section of the beach.
Riviera 3 covers portions of several streets in the central and southern peninsula. Sections of Cliffside Drive, Dume Drive, Grayfox Street, and Fernhill Drive carry Riviera 3 access, which opens a third gate with stairs down to a rocky outcropping near the headlands. A specific note on Cliffside: the portions of Cliffside that carry a Riviera 3 key are the same ocean-bluff parcels we described in the Bluff Tier above. When a Cliffside home sits on the bluff AND carries a deeded Riviera 3 key, the owner gets two distinct things stacked on one parcel: an unbroken ocean view from the lot itself, plus a private path down the stairs to the sand. Those parcels command the highest premium on the street when they come up. The other Riviera 3 streets (Dume, Grayfox, interior Fernhill) are inland streets where the key is a deeded right rather than a product of location. Some units in the Heathercliff condo cluster also carry Riviera 3 keys (more on that below).
A brief note for completeness: the city's General Plan references a fourth Marblehead subdivision from the 1940s, but it sits within Paradise Cove side and its parcels don't come with a beach key (as residents share private neighborhood beach access). The three other Point Dume Rivieras each include a deeded right for homeowners to walk through a locked gate onto a private section of Little Dume Beach, and that right transfers with every sale.
A beach key transfers automatically with a sale because it's deeded to the parcel. The premium it adds varies by street and by the specific Riviera, but the market typically prices it at roughly $1 to $2 million over a comparable no-key home on the same block. Wildlife Road and Selfridge Drive have the most single-family beach-key inventory on Point Dume, with listings typically in the high single-digit to high-teen millions. Bison Court is tighter inventory and trades in a similar range. Portshead and Boniface tend to be quieter cul-de-sacs where listings come up less frequently.
3. School Adjacent and Family Homes on Point Dume
Move off the bluff and away from the Riviera gates and you're in the interior family streets. Interior portions of Fernhill Drive and Grayfox Street form the residential spine around Point Dume Marine Science Elementary School. This is where families with school-age kids settle in, and it's the stretch that has the most classic (and often unremodeled) Point Dume builds.
Important to flag up front: this section is not mutually exclusive with the Beach-Key Belt. Portions of both Fernhill and Grayfox carry Riviera 2 or Riviera 3 keys, which means a family buyer who wants walking distance to the elementary school is not boxed out of the beach-key system. Those specific parcels trade at a premium over non-key homes on the same block, but they do exist and they do come to market.
Prices on Fernhill and Grayfox vary based on lot size, renovation, and key status. Renovated homes on interior portions of Fernhill have traded in the mid-single-digit millions in recent years, while larger estate lots and Riviera-key-holding parcels have cleared into the teens. A buyer with a $5 to $10 million budget who wants to live on Point Dume, walk to the elementary school, and not compete for a bluff view should start here. The streets are quiet, lot sizes stay generous, and the school itself is one of the defining community anchors on the Point.
4. Homes on Zumirez, Gated, and Unique Beach Access
Zumirez Drive is its own corridor within Point Dume, running from PCH down the east side of the peninsula as a separate road from the Wildlife Road loop. It's the only street on the Point that carries Riviera 1 keys, and that's the defining privilege here: card-access parking that takes Riviera 1 owners directly down to the sand at Little Dume Beach. And as previously mentioned, being able to drive directly down to a private beach is almost unheard of not only in LA but all of California if not the United States.
Most of the inventory is gated estate homes set well back from the street behind landscaping and privacy walls, though a smaller number of non-gated, family-style homes are mixed in. Only a minority of Zumirez parcels actually face the ocean or sit on the bluff; most are interior homes on flat or gently elevated lots, with canyon views, and some with ocean views. What they share is the Riviera 1 access, the privacy, and a reputation as one of Point Dume's most coveted addresses. Lot sizes typically run about 1 to 1.5 acres, with home sizes from the low-thousands of square feet into the high single-digit thousands. Actor David Duchovny sold his longtime Zumirez home at 6709 for $10.95 million in June 2025, a clean example of the kind of inventory this corridor moves. The City of Malibu completed a Zumirez Drive Realignment Project in recent years that added a traffic signal at PCH and cleaned up the intersection.
5. The Point Dume Interior (No Beach Keys But Strong Value)
Between the beach-key belt and the school belt sits a collection of streets that typically don't carry deeded beach access but offer some of the strongest single-family inventory on Point Dume. Grasswood Avenue, Bluewater Road, Sea Lion Place, Greenwater Road, and Wandermere Road all sit in this tier, each with its own character. Always verify Riviera status parcel-by-parcel at title before offering, because a small number of tract boundaries cross through this area in ways that aren't obvious from the street address alone.
Grasswood Avenue runs north-south on the east-central interior, parallel to Dume Drive. Despite not carrying a Riviera key, it's quietly become one of Point Dume's most prestigious interior streets. Pricing runs from the high-single-digits into the low-teens, with recent listings including a $10.995 million seaside-Italian-villa compound at 7015 Grasswood and a Spanish-style estate. It's also where former Vice President Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff bought in December 2025, an $8.15 million, four-bedroom, roughly 4,000 square foot home on the street.
Bluewater Road runs east-west across the southern interior, with the ocean-adjacent elevation giving higher parcels peek ocean views even without deeded beach access. Homes here have traded from the mid-$5 millions into the low-teens depending on condition and view. Sea Lion Place and Greenwater Road sit in the same general pocket, both on flat interior lots of roughly half an acre to an acre-plus.
Wandermere Road sits in the northwest interior and is where the original 1960s and 1970s ranch-style Point Dume still lives. The City of Malibu's General Plan calls out Wandermere as a street where "original styles predominate," which is usually the pre-luxury Point Dume that longtime residents remember. A portion of this corridor was affected by the 2018 Woolsey Fire, and a wave of rebuilds and fire-lot sales has reshaped inventory here since. For buyers open to new construction or thoughtful renovation, Wandermere offers one of the most attractive lot-to-price ratios on the Point. Recent sales have ranged from the mid-$3 millions for teardown-era homes to the high-$7 millions for fully renovated or rebuilt estates.
6. The Tip: Point Dume Club
At the very western tip of the Point, on a 95.4-acre oceanfront parcel, sits the Point Dume Club. It's a gated mobile home community with 297 residences, originally built in 1969 by the Rindge family's Point Dume Ltd. (direct descendants of Frederick and May Rindge, the family that once owned nearly all of Malibu). It is also probably the most misunderstood piece of real estate on the coast.
Transactions commonly range from around $900,000 for a two-bedroom to well over $5 million for large renovated units, with current listings reaching into the low-$7 million band. Buyers own the home and lease the lot, with monthly space rents in the low-thousands (rent-stabilized under a Malibu ordinance, with some spaces exceeding $4,000 per month per reporting in the Malibu Times).
The park sold in September 2024 for approximately $200 million to Chicago-based Hometown America Communities, which the brokerage Marcus & Millichap called the highest price per site ever achieved for a manufactured housing community anywhere in the country. The club has a heated pool, a sauna, tennis and basketball courts, a clubhouse, 24-hour gated security, and direct beach access at the foot of the community. For buyers who want oceanfront Malibu living under $5 million, this is often the best answer.
7. The Heathercliff Gateway and Condo Cluster
Back at the entrance, Heathercliff Road is the commercial and multifamily concentration. This is where Point Dume has its most accessible entry-level inventory, in a cluster of named condo and townhome communities that were mostly built in the 1970s, before the city's current zoning discouraged new multifamily construction on the peninsula. Point Dume has not added a new condo development in decades, which makes this existing stock quite scarce and sought after.
The complexes to know:
- Heathercliff Colony is a gated townhome complex where select units carry Riviera 3 beach keys to Little Dume. It's one of the few paths into the Point Dume beach-key system at condo pricing rather than single-family pricing.
- Heathercliff Villas is a separate gated townhome complex with two-bedroom units, lofts, and attached garages. Some units here also carry Riviera 3 beach keys. Quieter, more family-oriented overall.
- A cluster of townhome buildings (found around these addresses 29231, 29233, and 29235 Heathercliff Road) shows as Rhoda Lane on some maps but addresses to Heathercliff. Three-story townhomes, many with Riviera 3 beach keys to Little Dume, generally newer interiors thanks to active renovation over the last few years. Along with Heathercliff Colony and Heathercliff Villas, this is another path into the beach-key system at condo pricing.
- Dume View Villas on the 6500 block of Dume Drive is a cluster of 1977-built attached townhomes a few blocks deeper into the Point, with an HOA that keeps common areas tight and fees modest.
- Zuma Bay Villas on Shearwater Lane is a 24/7 guard-gated community with a saltwater pool, spa, and direct beach access to Zuma, built in 1975. It's the resort-feel option of the cluster.
Pricing across the cluster typically runs from about $1.4 million up to the high-$3 millions depending on complex, unit size, renovation level, and whether the unit carries a beach key. For a buyer who wants to live on Point Dume without committing to a single-family purchase, this is where the door is open. Availability shifts constantly and these complexes don't always show on general searches, so our active listings page is the cleanest starting point, and we're always happy to give a tour of the specific buildings if a particular complex catches your eye.
Heathercliff is also Point Dume's daily-life hub. Point Dume Village runs roughly 56,000 square feet, anchored by a Pavilions grocery store. Other tenants include SunLife Organics, Lily's Malibu (justifiably famous for its breakfast burritos), Le Cafe De La Plage, a fitness studio, a salon, and a rotating cluster of boutiques. Paradise Cove is a 10-minute drive, Zuma Beach is 3 minutes, and PCH west to Trancas Country Market and County Line is about 6 minutes.
More Details For Beach Access On Point Dume
There are multiple beaches in and around Point Dume, and the rules are not the same at any of them. Understanding the differences is one of the most important things a buyer on the Point can do (and something we're happy to help with).
Big Dume Beach (also called Dume Cove) is the main public beach, accessed via a trail and long staircase from the Point Dume State Natural Preserve. Free two-hour parking holds about ten cars and fills early on weekends. The reliable public-access option is the fee parking lot at the end of Westward Beach Road (this is the general public beach lot, not to be confused with the private Lot 35 and other private lots described further down). No dogs and no alcohol on Big Dume itself under State Parks rules. Tide pools at the southern end are some of the best on the coast, and gray whales pass close to shore from December through mid-April.
Little Dume Beach is the private-easement beach, reached through the Whitesands gate for Riviera 2 and Riviera 3 keyholders. The public can walk in from either Paradise Cove or Big Dume at low tide. Above the mean high tide line, the land is privately owned and operated under the Riviera easement rules, which is why you'll see signs and why the beach tends to feel like a private extension of the neighborhood rather than a public beach.
Westward Beach is operated by LA County for the State of California and stretches roughly three miles from Zuma Beach around the base of Point Dume. Because it falls under LA County's rules rather than the City of Malibu's, locals often call it "Free Zuma" for the no-cost roadside parking along Westward Beach Road.
Then there's Lot 35 and other private Westward Beach lots, the access almost no one outside of Point Dume knows about. Directly in front of The Sunset Restaurant sits a small, privately-owned parcel of sand that is physically separate from the public Westward Beach. It's not beach access in the Riviera sense of a right-of-way through a gate; it's a share of a privately-held piece of beach that operates under its own rules. A limited number of Point Dume homes carry deeded ownership shares in these lots (contact us for more information). Because the parcel is private rather than public, both leashed dogs and alcohol are permitted here, which makes these lots the one place along the entire Zuma-to-headlands stretch where you can legally do either.
Pirates Cove, the small pocket cove below the headlands, is public below the mean high tide but only reachable at low tide by rock-scrambling from Westward. It's the tip where the 1968 ending of Planet of the Apes was filmed, and where the 1970s clothing-optional beach battle played out before the 1994 U.S. Supreme Court ruling. Today it's mostly surfers, tide-poolers, and the occasional sea lion.
Why Point Dume Endures
Point Dume has something almost no other Malibu neighborhood has, which is a hard ceiling on supply. The peninsula is bordered on three sides by the ocean and on the fourth by a protected state preserve. Most of the lots on the peninsula were built out decades ago. The city's zoning discourages new multifamily construction, new beach-key easements haven't been issued since the Marblehead era, and the coastline itself is held in permanent preservation. What exists here is what will exist here.
That structural scarcity is the reason Point Dume tends to hold value through every Malibu cycle. Buyers who want ocean-adjacent Malibu, a real community feel rather than a seasonal rental scene, proximity to one of California's only protected marine preserves, and a private beach-key system that literally cannot be replicated, end up here. Lifetime residents like Bob Dylan (since 1979), Barbra Streisand (since 1997), Sir Anthony Hopkins (since 2001), Martin Sheen, and Julia Roberts (since 2003, now with multiple parcels) give the Point its enduring celebrity pull. The steady flow of tech, finance, and creative-industry money, from Sergey Brin's three homes to former VP Kamala Harris and Doug Emhoff's 2025 purchase on Grasswood, reflects the same fundamentals playing out at every price level.
Finding Your Point Dume
When a buyer calls us asking about Point Dume, we don't ask about budget first. We ask what kind of life they want. A family with elementary-age kids belongs near Fernhill and Grayfox. A buyer who wants to wake up, walk down a private gate, and be in the water in five minutes should look into Riviera 2. A blufftop trophy buyer might fit along Cliffside or Birdview. A couple who wants oceanfront Malibu under $5 million can find their property in The Point Dume Club. A condo buyer who wants access without the single-family commitment might fit in the Heathercliff cluster. A renovation-minded or build-to-suit buyer belongs in the interior on Grasswood, Wandermere, or Bluewater.
We've been selling Point Dume for over twenty-five years. The streets themselves haven't changed much. The prices have. If you're thinking about a Point Dume purchase or sale, we're happy to walk you through what's on market, what's coming, and which sub-area fits. Browse our current Point Dume listings, request a free Point Dume home valuation to see where your parcel sits in the current pricing logic, or get in touch with our team directly for a walkthrough tailored to your search.
Shen Schulz
Sotheby's International Realty
(310) 980-8809 | shen@shenrealty.com | DRE #01327630
Sources
- City of Malibu General Plan, Appendix 1.6, Neighborhood Descriptions – https://ecode360.com/44603605
- Point Dume Community Services District – https://www.pdcsd.org/about-us
- California Coastal Commission, Public Hearing Transcript – https://www.coastal.ca.gov/ventura/transcript10_30.pdf
- California State Parks, Point Dume State Beach – https://www.parks.ca.gov/?page_id=623
- The Real Deal, "Malibu Manse Sells at Discounted Price of $50 Million" – https://therealdeal.com/la/2025/07/17/malibu-manse-sells-at-discounted-price-of-50-million/
- Robb Report, "Johnny Carson's Longtime Malibu Estate Lists for $110 Million" – https://robbreport.com/shelter/celebrity-homes/johnny-carson-former-house-malibu-point-dume-1237037797/
- Robb Report, "Inside Sergey Brin's Property Portfolio" – https://robbreport.com/shelter/celebrity-homes/lists/sergey-brin-property-portfolio-1237691361/
- Robb Report, "Facebook's Former CFO Bought a $52 Million House" – https://robbreport.com/shelter/celebrity-homes/gideon-yu-house-malibu-1235578954/
- Page Six, "Kamala Harris Upgrades LA Real Estate Portfolio with $8M Point Dume Home" – https://pagesix.com/2026/01/23/hollywood/kamala-harris-upgrades-la-real-estate-portfolio-with-8m-mega-mansion-in-malibus-celeb-packed-pt-dume/
- Malibu Times, "Point Dume Mobile Home Park Is Sold" – https://malibutimes.com/point-dume-mobile-home-park-is-sold
- Robb Report, "David Duchovny Sells Point Dume Home" – https://robbreport.com/shelter/celebrity-homes/david-duchovny-house-point-dume-malibu-1236848969/
- Wikipedia, "Point Dume" – https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Point_Dume