Manhattan Beach

Manhattan Beach is the most expensive city in the South Bay and the one that moves fastest. Over the twelve months ending August 2026, detached homes sold at a median of $3,800,000 and $1,643 per square foot across 270 closed sales, in a median of 12 days and at exactly the original asking price, with three months of inventory. Nothing else on this coast clears like that, and the reason is not complicated: 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 $375 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.

What do homes cost in Manhattan Beach?

Over the twelve months ending August 2026, detached homes in Manhattan Beach sold at a median price of $3,800,000 and an average price of $4,419,670, across 270 closed sales. The average price per square foot was $1,643.

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.

Do sellers get their asking price in Manhattan Beach?

Detached homes in Manhattan Beach sold at a median 100.0% of original list price over the twelve months ending August 2026, in a median of 12 days. A median of exactly the original asking price means half of all sales closed at or above the price the seller first published. Inventory stood at 3.0 months.

That is a different market from the Palos Verdes Peninsula, where the three cities averaged 19.7 days and 97.2% of original price over the same period. Manhattan Beach also carries the highest price per square foot of any South Bay market tracked here, at $1,643.

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 describes Manhattan Beach as a whole rather than any one section within it.

How does Manhattan Beach compare with Hermosa Beach?

Manhattan Beach and Hermosa Beach both sold in a median of 12 days over the twelve months ending August 2026, at 100.0% and 99.9% of original list price respectively. The difference is price: the median detached sale was $3,800,000 in Manhattan Beach against $2,720,000 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 $3,800,000 and $1,643 per square foot over the twelve months to August 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 rather than 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 a market that clears at full asking price in under two weeks, 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: California Regional MLS (CRMLS), via InfoSparks. Residential detached homes, rolling twelve months ending August 2026, reported by city. Refreshed quarterly. Market statistics describe cities and neighborhoods, not individual homes, and no figure here is an appraisal or opinion of value for any specific property.