Lunada Bay
Lunada Bay is a neighborhood of Palos Verdes Estates, California, on the bluffs at the western edge of the Palos Verdes Peninsula.
Chhabria Real Estate agents have closed more than 85 sales in MLS area 160 (Lunada Bay), on the record in CRMLS, more than in any other Peninsula neighborhood in our own closed record.
How much do homes in Lunada Bay cost?
The median home sold in MLS area 160 (Lunada Bay) measures about 3,450 square feet on a lot of roughly 12,800 square feet. What separates one price from another in Lunada Bay is the view corridor and what the Palos Verdes Art Jury will allow a buyer to build, more than the condition of the house standing today.
Over the twelve months ending August 2026, detached homes in MLS area 160 (Lunada Bay) sold at a median price of $2,725,000 and an average price of $3,820,535, across 70 closed sales. The median price per square foot was $983.
| MLS area 160, Lunada Bay | Twelve months ending August 2026 |
|---|---|
| Median sale price | $2,725,000 |
| Average sale price | $3,820,535 |
| Median price per square foot | $983 |
| Closed sales | 70 |
| Median days on market | 21 |
| Median share of original list price | 97.3% |
Average and median describe the same market differently. The average is every sale added together and divided by the number of sales, so a small number of high-value homes lifts it. The median is the middle sale, so the median stays closer to the typical home. Both are shown here. Why the two numbers differ, and which one to use.
Live MLS listings, updated through the day.
How quickly do homes sell in Lunada Bay, and do sellers hold their price?
Detached homes in MLS area 160 (Lunada Bay) sold in a median of 21 days over the twelve months ending August 2026, at a median 97.3% of original list price. Inventory stood at 3.4 months of supply. Lunada Bay carries the highest sales volume of the Palos Verdes MLS areas tracked on this site, at 70 closed sales for the period, which gives its figures a steadier footing than neighborhoods recording twenty or thirty sales a year.
Source: California Regional MLS (CRMLS), via InfoSparks. Residential detached homes, rolling twelve months ending August 2026, reported by MLS area. Refreshed quarterly. Market statistics describe neighborhoods, not individual homes, and no figure here is an appraisal or opinion of value for any specific property.
What kind of homes are in Lunada Bay?
Of our last 88 closings in MLS area 160 (Lunada Bay), 83 were detached single-family homes and one was a condominium. Lunada Bay is a detached market almost to the exclusion of everything else, and buyers looking for attached housing on the Palos Verdes Peninsula will not find much of it here.
Across the 71 detached homes that sold in MLS area 160 (Lunada Bay) in the twelve months ending August 2026, the largest share was built in the 1950s, at 32%. A further 31% was built in the 1970s, and 14% was built in 2000 or later. The median home sold was built in 1972. Lunada Bay went up as postwar housing on unusually good land and has been replacing itself a property at a time since. Buyers here are mostly buying the land and the position, and what stands on it today is the starting point rather than the finish.
Source: California Regional MLS (CRMLS). Closed single-family detached sales, September 1, 2025 to August 31, 2026, reported by MLS area.
In Lunada Bay, what the Art Jury will approve matters more to a buyer’s plans than the condition of the house standing today. The Palos Verdes Art Jury reviews any change to a home’s exterior, and its approval is required before work begins. Buyers who learn this after closing learn it expensively. Read the Palos Verdes Art Jury buyer’s guide.
Are views protected in Palos Verdes Estates?
Views in Palos Verdes Estates are protected by 1923 deed restrictions administered by the Palos Verdes Homes Association, not by a city view ordinance. Rancho Palos Verdes works the opposite way: voters passed Proposition M in 1989 and the city runs a View Restoration Division. A view you can see is not the same as a view you own.
| Palos Verdes Estates | Rancho Palos Verdes | |
|---|---|---|
| Mechanism | 1923 deed restrictions, administered by the Palos Verdes Homes Association and the Art Jury | Measure M (1989), administered by the city’s View Restoration Division |
| A neighbor’s structure | Art Jury review, plus the city’s Neighborhood Compatibility Ordinance, Planning Commission hearing, notice within 300 feet, appeal to City Council | City permit process |
| A neighbor’s trees | Palos Verdes Homes Association process. The city refers private tree questions to the Association. | City View Restoration permit |
Palos Verdes Estates was drawn in 1923 by Frederick Law Olmsted Jr. and Charles Cheney, and they wrote the protections into the land itself. Every property in this city carries deed restrictions that run with the title, administered by the Palos Verdes Homes Association and the Art Jury. Rancho Palos Verdes went a different route and now processes view permits through its View Restoration Division. Two philosophies, and Palos Verdes Estates kept the older one.
A neighbor’s tree and a neighbor’s house go through different processes in Palos Verdes Estates, and both are worth settling before an offer is written. Before you write an offer here, the questions worth answering are which trees stand between you and the water, who owns them, how tall they are now, how tall they get, and what the Association will do about it if they grow.
How the Rancho Palos Verdes view ordinance works, and what Proposition M actually protects
Paseo Del Mar
Thirteen of our closings here are on Paseo Del Mar, more than double any other street in the neighborhood.
Paseo Del Mar is the bluff road in Lunada Bay and it prices as its own market. Via Zumaya and Chelsea Road follow at five each, then Via Romero, Via Coronel, Via Victoria and Via Pacheco at four apiece.
Our closings in Lunada Bay, by street. Paseo Del Mar is the bluff road, and it accounts for more than double the next street on the list.
Chhabria Real Estate closings in MLS area 160, by street, on the record in CRMLS. Streets with three or fewer closings are not shown.
Houses we have sold twice
Seven properties in Lunada Bay we have sold more than once.
Across the whole record it is 140 properties, nearly a quarter of everything this family has closed. People come back when the first sale went the way they were told it would.
What schools serve Lunada Bay?
Palos Verdes High School on Cloyden Road and Lunada Bay Elementary on Paseo Lunado are both inside the Lunada Bay neighborhood, roughly half a mile either side of Lunada Bay Plaza. Across most of the Palos Verdes Peninsula the school run means driving down one canyon and up another; from many Lunada Bay streets it is a walk.
Palos Verdes High School sits at 600 Cloyden Road, inside the neighborhood rather than down the hill, and the campus has a small second life on screen. The Go-Go’s filmed their 1981 concert special in the school gym and used actual students as the audience. The campus has turned up in productions since, more recently for Netflix. Peninsula schools, boundaries and the district picture are covered in full in our South Bay schools guide.
School attendance boundaries are subject to change and are not guaranteed. You are advised to verify current attendance areas, enrollment eligibility, and all school information directly with the school district for any specific address.
What happened at Lunada Bay, and what is the beach like now?
Lunada Bay has a long reputation for surf localism. A group known as the Lunada Bay Boys was accused for years of harassing surfers who did not live here, and in 2016 two visiting surfers sued both the individuals and the City of Palos Verdes Estates, arguing the city had failed to stop it.
The case ran nearly a decade and settled in September 2024. Thirteen individuals settled separately, agreeing either to stay away from the bay for a period or to pay sums reported between $25,000 and $90,000. The city agreed to a list of physical and procedural changes: signs welcoming visitors, public stone benches on the bluff, an improved public access path, removal of unpermitted structures on the beach, training for city staff on California coastal access law, and police follow-up on harassment complaints. The work is to be finished during 2026, and the city removed another unpermitted structure from the beach in April 2025.
The practical answer for anyone reading this as a visitor or a buyer is that the bluff and the trail down to the water are public, the city is under a binding agreement to keep them that way, and the changes are being installed rather than argued about. Settlement terms and reported figures are drawn from the City of Palos Verdes Estates and contemporaneous news coverage.
Working here
Chhabria Real Estate Company has sold homes on the Palos Verdes Peninsula and in the Beach Cities since 1984, and our office is at 717 Yarmouth Road inside the neighborhood. That means we know which streets carry a view premium and which only look like they should, what the Art Jury has approved recently and what it has sent back, and what a 1950s house on a good lot is actually worth to the person who will replace it.
If you are selling in Lunada Bay, that is the difference between pricing the house and pricing the land.
Where do homes sell in Lunada Bay?
Over the six years from January 2021 to December 2026, 321 detached homes sold across 56 streets in MLS area 160 (Lunada Bay). Paseo del Mar, the bluff road, recorded 26 of them, more than any other street in the neighborhood.
Each marker is a street, positioned by its real coordinates and sized by the number of detached homes sold on it. The map shows where activity concentrates. It is not a boundary of the neighborhood and it does not identify any individual property or sale. Streets with six or more sales are named in bold, three to five in grey. Source: California Regional MLS (CRMLS) for sales; OpenStreetMap for street and coastline geometry.
Lunada Bay Plaza
The neighborhood’s center is Lunada Bay Plaza, on Yarmouth Road where it meets Palos Verdes Drive West. Lunada Bay Plaza is small enough to cover on foot, which is why most errands in the neighborhood do not involve driving down the hill.
The plaza is where you run into people you know. Four doors sit in a row on Yarmouth Road, and ours is the one in the middle, between the barbershop and the liquor store. When the door is open, come in. No appointment, no obligation, and nothing to sign. Bring the questions people actually ask on this Peninsula. Whether the Art Jury will approve the roofline you have in mind, or has already turned down something similar on your street. Which side of a road carries a real view premium and which only looks like it should. What a 1950s house on a good lot is worth to a buyer who intends to replace it. Whether to sell before or after a remodel. What the Homes Association will do about a neighbor’s tree that is still growing. We have been selling on the Palos Verdes Peninsula and in the Beach Cities since 1984, more than forty years, and we work out of this plaza rather than down the hill, so most of these answers are shorter than people expect. Yarmouth Road, Lunada Bay Plaza On the evening of March 13, 1961, in heavy fog, the Greek freighter Dominator turned left too early and struck the reef below Rocky Point in Palos Verdes Estates. Her captain believed he had rounded into Los Angeles Harbor. Pieces of her are still on the rocks at low tide. She was carrying ten thousand tons of wheat and beef from Portland to Algiers when she grounded at around 5:30. The Coast Guard took the crew off. Tugs worked for three days and could not move her. She had started as a Liberty ship, launched in 1944 and named for Melville Jacoby, a journalist killed covering the war in the Pacific. The cargo rotted where it lay. The smell carried across the peninsula, the lobster population ate very well for a season, and in 1962 the wreck caught fire and burned in front of everyone. We have sold Rocky Point Road four times. Palos Verdes Drive West has a median because of a streetcar that never came. The road went in during 1926, when it was called Granvia La Costa, and the central strip was left for the Red Car line everyone assumed was coming up the hill. It never did. The median is still there. This was supposed to be a resort. The Olmsted Brothers planned a pleasure basin at Lunada Bay for bathing and boating, with a breakwater off Resort Point and a road down the canyon from Avenida Mirola. Budget was $132,000 to $200,000 in 1927. The crash of the late twenties took the Palos Verdes Project’s money with it, and the plan died on paper. The reason you live in a neighborhood instead of next to a swimming basin is the Depression. Lunada Bay Homeowners Association, Lunada Bay history · Palos Verdes Library District, Local History Center Live MLS listings, updated through the day. Have a question about this? Neil answers personally.What is the shipwreck below Rocky Point?
Two more things about Lunada Bay most people here do not know
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