Home / Neighborhoods / Ramirez Canyon
Fifty-odd houses on three-to-five-acre parcels along a gated private road above Paradise Cove.
About the Neighborhood
Ramirez Canyon is one of the few places in Malibu where the words estate parcel are literally accurate. The City of Malibu's Local Coastal Program describes a watershed of 2,880 acres running between Kanan Dume Road and Escondido Canyon, with a relatively small canyon floor bounded by steep hills on both the east and west sides, holding roughly fifty to sixty homes on parcels of about three to five acres, with some smaller lots of one to two acres. That is a very small number of houses spread across a very large drainage. Buyers looking at Ramirez Canyon Malibu real estate are buying land, quiet and a creek, not a coastline.
Access is the canyon's governing fact. Ramirez Canyon Road is a private road, gated at both the Winding Way and the Paradise Cove entrances, and the plan states plainly that use of it depends on recorded deeded easements — the document is commonly referenced as the Hope Ann Goodrich easement. A parcel's right to drive its own road is therefore a title matter rather than an assumption. So is wastewater: the plan records that all wastewater in the watershed is disposed of through onsite septic tanks and leachfields, which means the septic design and its permitted capacity set the practical ceiling on any house here.
The canyon's history runs deep and is well documented. The Local Coastal Program identifies the area as an extension of the large Chumash village of Sumo at Paradise Cove, with roughly nine thousand years of use, and Ramirez Creek is described as a significant blueline stream with thriving native riparian habitat — oak and sycamore along the water, coastal sage scrub on the slopes, and a wildlife list that includes deer, bobcat, raccoon, badger, gray fox, coyote and cougar. The Rindge family's Adohr Dairy operated in the canyon before the Marblehead Land Company subdivided it in 1941, which is why the parcel pattern reads agricultural rather than suburban.
The canyon's most publicly known address is Ramirez Canyon Park, the 22.5-acre property Barbra Streisand transferred to the Santa Monica Mountains Conservancy in 1993 — reported at the time as a gift valued at roughly fifteen million dollars. It operated for years as the Barbra Streisand Center for Conservancy Studies before being renamed Ramirez Canyon Park in 2009, and it survived a 2011 state budget proposal to sell it, which the Conservancy opposed. The Peach House, the estate's best-known structure, was lost in the 2018 Woolsey Fire; four other buildings survived. A trail connection from Kanan Dume Road was approved in 2015.
Diligence here is unlike coastal Malibu diligence. Confirm the recorded easement chain that gives a parcel access to the private road and the arrangement for maintaining and gating it. Read the septic permit, the geotechnical report and the floodplain mapping — the plan notes that Ramirez Creek drains the full 2,880-acre watershed into Paradise Cove, and about thirty acres at the mouth sit in that floodplain. Understand what riparian habitat and the blueline stream mean for a building envelope, since biological review shapes siting. And read the fire record parcel by parcel: the Woolsey Fire destroyed 473 single-family homes inside Malibu city limits in November 2018.
Life Here
Ramirez Canyon Road is private, gated at the Winding Way and Paradise Cove ends, and used under recorded deeded easements. A parcel's right of access is a title question, confirmed in escrow rather than assumed from the driveway.
The city's Local Coastal Program counts roughly fifty to sixty homes on parcels of about three to five acres, with some one to two acre lots — a density closer to ranch country than to the Malibu coast a mile below.
Ramirez Creek is a blueline stream with native riparian habitat, oak and sycamore along the water and coastal sage scrub on the slopes. The plan identifies the canyon as an extension of the Chumash village of Sumo at Paradise Cove.
Education
Canyon addresses sit within the Santa Monica-Malibu Unified School District today. Separation agreements creating a Malibu district were approved locally in December 2025 and still require state action, with no confirmed opening date. Confirm boundaries and transportation with the district before relying on them.
Common Questions
Work With Ben
This canyon turns over a handful of parcels a year and easement rights are the whole conversation. Tell me what you want to build and I will read the title with you before you bid.
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