Malibou Lake was made in 1922, when the Malibou Lake Mountain Club dammed Medea Creek where it meets Triunfo Creek to create a private lake and sold cabin lots around the shore to members, many of them from the film industry that worked the neighboring ranches. The cabins became houses, the hillside above the lake was subdivided over the following decades, and the community has survived floods, fires and the Woolsey fire of 2018, after which a number of houses were rebuilt. The club still owns the lake and its shore and the parcels on the water belong to members; the parcels on the hillside streets are outside the club.

What the county records show inside this guide’s outline is about 383 parcels, from the small lakeshore lots to hillside parcels of more than an acre, with houses from the 1930s to 2021 in the sale record. The MLS files the sales as Malibu Lake/Lakeside and Malibu Lake Mountain Club.

Every house is individual, and the record runs from a 1931 cabin to a 2021 rebuild. The top is $1,725,000 on Terrace Lane in August 2023 for a 1,950-square-foot three-bedroom from 1935 on three levels, and $1,638,278 on Lookout Drive in February 2026 for a 3,903-square-foot four-bedroom from 1986 on 1.3 acres. The bottom is $1,005,000 on Lookout Drive in June 2023 for a 1,281-square-foot three-bedroom from 1931, and $850,000 on Lookout Drive in June 2020 for a 1,322-square-foot two-bedroom from 1988. Five of the eleven sales are three-bedrooms, three are two-bedrooms and three are four-bedrooms; one of the eleven is single story.

No plan sheet for Malibou Lake is in the Conejo Simi Moorpark Association of Realtors archive that this guide series draws on, so there is no drawing to reproduce. The sale record shows homes of 1,216 to 3,903 square feet, median 1,950, with three bedrooms in five of the eleven, two in three, four in three, and one of the eleven recorded sales is single story.

Lookout Drive on the hillside carries six of the eleven sales, with East Lakeshore Drive, South Lakeshore Drive, Terrace Lane, Crags Drive and Triunfo Drive one each. The lakeshore streets ring the water inside the club’s gate, with docks on the lake lots, and the hillside streets climb from Lake Vista Drive and Mulholland Highway with the lake and the Goat Buttes of Malibu Creek State Park in view. The lots run from about 4,900 square feet on the shore to 1.8 acres on the hill, median about 11,400.

The Malibou Lake Mountain Club owns the lake, the dam, the clubhouse and the shore, and the lakeshore parcels are held by club members behind the club’s gate, with docks, the clubhouse, tennis courts, a playground and picnic grounds as the amenities listings describe. The hillside parcels outside the club have no lake rights and, in the record, no fee. Whether a given house comes with membership, and what the membership costs and requires, is a question for the club and the seller’s disclosure, and it changes what the house is worth.

The first reason is the lake, the only private lake in the Santa Monica Mountains, with docks at the door for the club parcels. The second is the history, a 1922 community of cabins and rebuilt houses that nothing in the tracts resembles. The third is the price, since a house in the mountains twenty minutes from Malibu starts under $1,000,000.

Listings report the fee at $488 a month. The recorded sales report no fee on the hillside parcels and $488 a month on a club parcel. The club’s membership terms, dues and assessments for the dam and the lake are the first documents to read on any lakeshore purchase.

What the association covers and what the CC&Rs restrict is not confirmed in any source Gary Jacobs has been able to verify. Take the budget, the reserve study, the insurance certificate and the CC&Rs from the seller’s disclosure package, read the minutes for any special assessment or litigation, and confirm the current fee with the manager before removing a contingency.

Malibou Lake is unincorporated Los Angeles County in the Las Virgenes Unified district, and listings give Sumac Elementary, Lindero Canyon Middle School and Agoura High School. Confirm the exact address with the district locator.

The lake itself, Malibu Creek State Park and the Backbone Trail, Paramount Ranch and the Rock Store are the neighborhood; the Kanan Road shops are fifteen minutes north and the coast at Malibu twenty minutes south over Malibu Canyon. Agoura Hills runs on Kanan Road and the freeway: the shops and restaurants along Kanan Road and Agoura Road, the Whizin Market Square and the Twin Oaks center, Chumash Park and the city’s smaller parks, the Reyes Adobe Historical Site, and the Santa Monica Mountains trails at Cheseboro Canyon, Ladyface and Paramount Ranch a few minutes away. The Ventura Freeway runs through the middle of the city with interchanges at Kanan Road, Reyes Adobe Road, Chesebro Road and Liberty Canyon Road, and the drive to the Westside is the same forty minutes to ninety it is from anywhere in the Conejo Valley.

Cornell Road runs north to Agoura Road and the Kanan Road interchange in about ten to fifteen minutes, and Malibu Canyon Road runs south to the coast. The Westside is fifty minutes on a good day and ninety on a bad one, and a buyer who commutes should time it.

The figures in this section were current when this guide was last reviewed. The sale record in the facts above and the listings below are drawn live from the MLS each time the page loads.

In the two years through March 2026, 4 homes in the tract sold through the MLS, at prices from $1,075,000 to $1,638,278 and a median of $1,128,225. Eleven sales are on record since June 2020, from $850,000 to $1,725,000. The top of the record is $1,725,000 on Terrace Lane in August 2023 for a 1,950-square-foot three-bedroom; $1,638,278 on Lookout Drive in February 2026 for a 3,903-square-foot four-bedroom. The bottom is $1,005,000 on Lookout Drive in June 2023; $850,000 on Lookout Drive in June 2020. Single-story homes account for one of the eleven sales, at a median of $1,625,000.

Eleven sales in six years from $850,000 to $1,725,000 is a record of individual houses in which the water, the view and the rebuild decide the price more than the square footage: a 1,950-square-foot 1935 house on Terrace Lane is the top of the record, above a 3,903-square-foot house on 1.3 acres. What the record supports is $850,000 to $1,100,000 for the older hillside cabins, and $1,500,000 to $1,750,000 for the lake and view houses. Gary Jacobs keeps the full sale-by-sale history and can say where a given house sits in it.

No lease is recorded in the MLS sources this guide draws on, so it does not quote a rent. Leasing here is occasional and private, and the club’s rules apply on its parcels.

These homes date from 1931 to 2021, and the inspection carries the late-1960s list: original galvanised supply lines, original electrical panels of brands insurers now flag, single-pane aluminum windows where not replaced, original furnaces and ductwork, and roofs and sewer laterals at or past end of life. Slope lots add drainage and retaining-wall questions that a general inspector will flag but a geotechnical engineer should answer; pools of this age often have original equipment and plaster. None of this is unusual; all of it is negotiable if it is found before the contingency comes off rather than after.

In a tract of this era the remodels that return their cost are the ones that bring a 1930s plan to the way people live now: the kitchen opened to the family room, the primary bath and closet, the floors and the glass, and, on the right lot, the pool. What does not return its cost is the addition that pushes the house past what the street will support; the record shows the top sales are renovated versions of the original plans on the better lots, not the biggest houses.

The comparison is the rest of the mountain country south of the freeway. Cornell along Cornell Road is individually built estates on acreage at a median of $3,963,000 in a four-sale record. Medea Valley Estates, gated, trades at a median of $3,137,500. Old Agoura north of the freeway is horse property at a median of $2,365,000. Hillrise, the 1968 to 1985 tract on the south side of the freeway, trades at a median of $1,041,249. Malibou Lake is the only lake, the oldest houses and the lowest entry price in the mountains.

Start with the club: whether the parcel is inside it, what membership costs and requires, and what the dam and the lake assessments have been. Then the ground: the county for fire mapping, septic, flood and any well, a geotechnical engineer on the hillside, and an insurance quote before anything else, because the Woolsey fire burned through here and insurance is the question that decides many purchases. Then the house, briefed for its own decade, with the permit history of any rebuild. Then the road, since Cornell Road and Mulholland Highway are the ways in and out.

Buyers who want the water first, from the Westside and the Valley, for a weekend house or a full-time one. Buyers priced out of Malibu second, for the mountains twenty minutes from the coast. Film and music people third, as they have been since 1922.

For a buyer, read the plan off the square footage and the level, take the association package from the disclosures before the inspection, and brief the inspector for the 1930s. Pull the permit history of any addition, pool or converted garage from the county. Confirm the school assignment for the exact address.

For a seller, the comparable is the same plan and level, and the top of the record — $1,725,000 — is the renovated house on the better lot. Price to the record for the plan, say the association fee and the school assignment in the first lines of the listing, and let the condition argue for the top of the band.