Exclusive | Gaping sinkholes arent the only issues tormenting Malibu homeowners: You pay for the risk of living there

It could be a scene from a Nicolas Cage film.A giant, expanding sinkhole swallows up part of an Oscar-winning actor’s oceanfront Malibu escape, leading to the evacuation of 31 homes on an exclusive, gated street.But the scene is real — and only in Malibu could residents just shrug it off.“We had three back-to-back hurricanes in a row.That’s why this is happening.

Stuff happens.It’s nature!” said broker Irene Dazzan-Palmer, of the Agency, who shared the four-story home’s listing with her son Sandro Dazzan when Cage bought it, on exclusive Sea Level Drive, for $10.5 million in 2024.

But sinkholes aren’t the only issues Malibu homeowners presently face.More than a year after the January 2025 Palisades Fire, which scorched 600 Malibu homes, giant waves up to 10 feet high are crashing into oceanfront homes.In some cases, they’re “taking away decks and even a pool,” one resident told Gimme Shelter.

Another described the crashing waves in front of her home as “violent.”“Eight-foot-high waves may not seem huge, like a tsunami.But if you are on the sand and the wave is 8 feet high, that is considerably taller than you, and you would be engulfed by it if it came to shore,” said broker Ernie Carswell, of Sotheby’s International Realty.But Malibu residents are a resilient, hardy lot, used to dealing with all sorts of issues — all while their homes slowly sink into the Pacific.“There is so much that those tough Malibu people have to endure, so many geological traumas, tsunami warnings, mudslides, floods, fire, earthquakes — our whole region is susceptible to that — as well as slowly sliding into the ocean and now this,” Carswell said.

“It’s typical Malibu risk,” he added.Once, Carswell said, when he sold the late actress Loretta Swit’s Malibu home, the deal came with a disclosure, so that the buyer was aware that the home “was moving one half an inch toward the ocean every year.”“That’s a lot of movement,” Carswell ...