Manhattan Beach

Manhattan Beach carries the highest median price of the Beach Cities. Over the twelve months from October 2025 through September 2026, single-family detached homes sold at a median of $3,813,000 and $1,498 per square foot across 270 closed sales, in a median of 22 days at 98.4 percent of the original asking price, with 1.6 months of inventory. In Neil’s experience, what holds those numbers up is a built-out city with two miles of sand, a pier and a grid of walk streets that cannot be replicated, ten minutes from the aerospace and technology employers of El Segundo and the airport, with a buyer pool that refills faster than the city can release houses.

The city reads west to east. West of Sepulveda Boulevard are the Sand Section, the Tree Section and the Hill Section, and the price gradient runs by distance to the water so steeply that the same floor plan trades at a different number on each successive street. East of Sepulveda are Manhattan Village, the Heights and Liberty Village and the streets around Mira Costa, where a family gets more house and a yard for the money and the same Manhattan Beach Unified School District. El Porto, the north end of the sand, is its own market and its own surf break.

What holds the numbers up is what cannot change. The City’s 30-foot height limit and its buildable floor area rules cap what any lot can carry, so the land is the asset and the house on it is a detail: a 1950s cottage on a Tree Section lot sells for the lot, and the buyer of a new house is paying for someone else’s construction risk. Layouts that work for three generations, a walk to the Strand, the pier and downtown, and the school district are what the money is buying, and most of the city west of Sepulveda delivers all of it on foot.

Chhabria Real Estate Company has sold on this coast since 1984. Raju Chhabria was the top agent at Shorewood Realtors’ Manhattan Beach office every year from 1995 to 2014 and in 2012 ranked tenth in the United States by individual sales volume (Inman, June 2012); the family has since represented more than 130 transactions along The Strand and the Esplanade, and Neil Chhabria, who leads the firm today, carries more than $422 million in career sales across the Beach Cities and the Peninsula. What follows is the city as we price it: the areas, the numbers, the gradient from the sand, and the history that shaped the map.

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What do homes cost in Manhattan Beach?

Over the twelve months from October 2025 through September 2026, single-family detached homes in Manhattan Beach sold at a median of $3,813,000 and an average of $4,420,264, across 270 closed sales, at a median of $1,498 per square foot.

Average and median measure the same market two ways. The average adds every sale together and divides by the number of sales, so a few high-value homes pull it up. The median is the middle sale, so it stays closer to the typical home. We show both. Why the two numbers differ, and which one to use.

Do sellers get their asking price in Manhattan Beach?

Detached homes in Manhattan Beach sold in a median of 22 days at 98.4 percent of the original asking price, about $16,000 under asking for every $1 million. With 79 sales from July through September and 42 homes for sale on October 11, everything listed would sell in about seven weeks at that pace. If you own here, a well-priced house still sells within a month. If you’re buying, expect to pay close to asking for the homes that are priced right.

The Palos Verdes Peninsula ran slower over the same twelve months, at a median of 26 days and 96.9 percent of the original asking price across its cities combined. Manhattan Beach also carries the highest median price per square foot of the cities we report, at $1,498.

What MLS areas make up Manhattan Beach?

Manhattan Beach divides into six MLS areas. West of Sepulveda are MLS areas 142 (Sand Section), 143 (Tree Section) and 144 (Hill Section). East of Sepulveda are MLS areas 145 (Manhattan Village) and 146 (Heights and Liberty Village). MLS area 147 covers Mira Costa. The Strand sits inside MLS area 142 and is not a separate area.

Prices differ substantially between them, and a city-wide figure covers Manhattan Beach as a whole, not any one section within it.

How does Manhattan Beach compare with Hermosa Beach?

Manhattan Beach and Hermosa Beach sold at nearly the same pace over the twelve months, in a median of 22 and 21 days, at 98.4 and 97.3 percent of the original asking price. The difference is price: the median detached sale was $3,813,000 in Manhattan Beach against $2,650,000 in Hermosa Beach.

How does value change from The Strand inland?

Manhattan Beach is priced by distance to the sand more than by anything else, and the gradient is steep enough that the same floor plan trades at a different number on each successive street back from the water. The city-wide median of $3,813,000 and $1,498 per square foot over the twelve months to September 2026 blends three different markets. On The Strand, the asset is the parcel itself: a standard Sand Section lot is 30 feet wide by 90 feet deep, 2,700 square feet, and a double lot is uncommon enough that it changes the buyer pool. Buyers there are paying for frontage and for the fact that the row is built out, and they measure it in price per square foot of land, not in bedrooms.

One street inland, in the Sand Section proper, the walk streets set the price. The municipal code defines them as pedestrian streets with no vehicle access, the lots are still small, and a coastal development permit governs work that would need no such permit three blocks east. Buyers here are choosing a way of living, the walk to the pier and the ocean view from an upper floor, and they will pay for a view corridor that a Strand buyer takes for granted. East of the Sand Section, in the Tree Section and the Hill Section, the lots get larger, the tree ordinance and the hillside views replace the sand as the value driver, and the motivation shifts to house size, yard and the school walk. The number that tells you where a property sits on that gradient is price per square foot, and it is the first number we pull on any Manhattan Beach address.

What is Bruce’s Beach?

At 26th Street and Highland Avenue, the park now called Bruce’s Beach carries the name of Willa and Charles Bruce, who in 1912 bought property near the Strand and ran a thriving lodge, cafe and dance hall serving Black visitors at a time when almost no Southern California beach would.

In 1924 the Manhattan Beach City Council condemned their property by eminent domain, along with those of the Prioleau, Johnson, Patterson and Sanders families, stating the purpose was a public park. The buildings were razed in 1927. The land sat undeveloped for decades before being made into a park and named Bayview Terrace in 1962.

The City restored the name Bruce’s Beach in 2006 and celebrated the renaming in 2007. Following the work of a City Task Force and the History Advisory Board, the City Council adopted plaque language stating that the City’s actions at the time were racially motivated and wrong. That plaque is at the park.

Separately, in July 2022 the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors returned ownership of the County parcels at the beach level to the closest living legal heirs of Charles and Willa Bruce. In January 2023 the family announced they would sell the property back to the County for $20 million.

The park is open to the public. The plaque is worth the walk up.

South Bay life from Manhattan Beach

Manhattan Beach is the home of beach volleyball, it runs a pumpkin race instead of a fireworks show, and it holds the most significant piece of civil rights history on this coastline. These go deeper on the parts of living here that do not show up in a listing.

Working in Manhattan Beach

Chhabria Real Estate Company has sold homes on the Palos Verdes Peninsula and in the Beach Cities since 1984. In Neil’s experience, in a market where well-priced homes sell within a month at close to full asking price, the work is almost entirely in preparation and pricing before a property is published, because there is very little opportunity to correct course afterwards.

Source: CRMLS closed sales, single-family detached homes, October 1, 2025 through September 30, 2026, from Chhabria Real Estate Company’s October 11, 2026 pull. Months of inventory uses active listings counted on October 11, 2026. Stats presented here represent the city or area as a whole, not any one individual property. Our next update follows the November 10, 2026 market report.

By Neil Chhabria, Broker and CEO, Chhabria Real Estate Company. Facts checked September 17, 2026. Market figures updated from our October 11, 2026 CRMLS pull.