Eilen Stewart couldn’t believe it. The little blue ranch house was simple and sweet, with a charming kitchen nook. There was enough land for a jungle gym for her children and ceramics and metalworking studios for her.
And the view. From the living room perch, one could gaze out and see a sliver of the azure Pacific Ocean waters along the horizon.
Why was it listed at $1.5 million? Sure, a huge sum in most parts of the country, but here in Southern California, tract homes in some freeway-adjacent suburbs have gone for the same amount. Houses in Long Beach, where her family of four lived, regularly sold for more. It seemed as if the house was half the price it should have been, Ms. Stewart thought.
Then she learned about the landslide.
The house was in Portuguese Bend, a neighborhood in Rancho Palos Verdes situated on a vast ancient landslide complex. Around the time the Stewarts saw the house in 2024, land on the Palos Verdes Peninsula was shifting at historic speeds, as much as a foot per week in some places.
To some longtime residents, the accelerating landslides ended what was once considered the idyllic life in a coastal enclave, where affluent Southern Californians felt as though they had it all. The threat that homes will crack or collapse looms large, and some residents may never have their electrical lines restored. Many have fled their homes and decamped for safer ground.
But to families like the Stewarts, the landslides present a tremendous buying opportunity: access to coastal real estate at a deep discount, so long as one is willing to accept the risks.
Ms. Stewart, 45, who works in the cultural arts division of the city of Manhattan Beach, wasn’t deterred. She and her husband had rehabilitated distressed properties before, and, besides, the house seemed relatively intact to them.
Plus, the combination of an excellent school district, a neighborhood where their two children were free to roam from house to house, and the tranquillity of the peacocks, horses and pepper trees outweighed the potential danger. They fell in love with the property, put in an offer and bought it for $1.3 million in May 2024.
They live in one of about 400 homes located within the Rancho Palos Verdes landslide complex. The area’s geological makeup, which includes layers of clay that become slippery when saturated, and proximity to the ocean make the region especially vulnerable.
The Palos Verdes Peninsula has long drawn wealthy dreamers, dating to 1913, when Frank Vanderlip, an East Coast banker, purchased land with plans to build a glamorous coastal development. Over the years, dozens of films have been shot in the area. While portions of the peninsula are dotted with mansions, Portuguese Bend is uniquely rural, with an independent, bohemian bent.
The region has long been plagued by land movement, but the ancient landslide complex was partly reactivated by a 1956 road construction project. Major slides have periodically damaged or destroyed homes since then.
“This is probably one of the largest active landslides with homes on it in the entire United States, if not the world,” said Mike Phipps, a contract geologist for the city of Rancho Palos Verdes.
There has also long been a strain of defiant optimism among homeowners here. In 2002, a group of landowners sued the city of Rancho Palos Verdes to challenge a moratorium on new construction. After years of court battles, they won the right to build on 16 lots.
In 2023 and 2024, after unusually heavy rainfall, land began moving rapidly in places on the peninsula that the slide had not substantially affected before, revealing a 700-acre landslide nearly twice the size of prior estimates.
The slide has split homes and sent floors off kilter. Homes have crossed others’ property lines. The city has deemed 24 properties too unsafe to inhabit. That includes some of the homes built as a result of the 2002 lawsuit.
Property values have plummeted in the last two years, and in some cases home prices have fallen to what they were in the early 2010s, right after the housing crash. Real estate agents have begun describing the landslide as an opportunity. At least 11 homes have sold in the landslide area since 2024, according to data from the firm PropertyShark.
There are catches, of course. Homeowners insurance does not generally cover landslides. Mortgages can be hard to come by, though the Stewarts were able to secure a home loan.
Soon after the Stewarts moved in, they noticed land crumbling beneath one corner of their house, where a portion of their yard was dropping. In the summer of 2024, utility companies shut off gas and electricity in large swaths of the neighborhood, including their home.
“Honestly, I never thought something like that would even be possible,” Ms. Stewart said.
Residents have largely gone off grid. Ms. Stewart estimated that she had spent about $200,000 on landslide-related fixes to her home since purchasing it, including installing solar panels and a propane gas system and lifting the house onto a raft-like steel beam structure.
Residents of Portuguese Bend say that the landslide has brought neighbors closer together. They have bonded over the shared trauma of the slide’s devastating effects and the media frenzy that followed. They meet for breakfasts and bonfires and neighborhood cocktails. They help each other haul in dirt to fill new cracks and lend one another generators.
“Everybody looks out for everybody else,” said Tim Kelly, 67, a “semiretired” engineer who has lived in the area since 1994.
Each morning, he and a group of neighbors turn on “dewatering” wells, which pump water out of the ground and into the ocean, lowering groundwater levels in hopes of slowing land movement. Each night, they have to turn them off because they are powered by generators.
In the landslide area, 172 homes remain without electrical service. Residents say they are eager to have it restored, in particular so they can power the wells without generators. Southern California Edison will consider restoring power once land movement regularly slows to less than one inch per week, according to Diane Castro, a spokeswoman. SoCalGas, the gas provider, said it does not have a specific threshold for determining safety and that it uses a computer modeling tool to determine when gas lines are under strain.
Mr. Phipps, the geologist, said the wells had slowed the landslide substantially from its 2024 pace. Less rain last winter may also have played a role.
As of June 2026, the city of Rancho Palos Verdes will have spent about $65 million on landslide mitigation since 2022, including dewatering wells and roadway repairs, Mayor Paul Seo said. By comparison, the city’s entire annual budget is about $40 million.
Rancho Palos Verdes has had to dip into reserves to cover costs. Efforts to lobby the state and federal governments for emergency funding have been largely unsuccessful.
“It’s not sustainable if we go at the rate that we’re going,” Mr. Seo said.
This summer, the city of Rancho Palos Verdes permanently banned new residential construction in the landslide zone.
“Common sense would say we just don’t want to build there anymore,” Mr. Seo said.
Ms. Stewart has no intention of leaving. She said that if the city thinks the area is unsafe, it should use eminent domain to buy residents out.
Looking out toward the ocean from the living room of her lifted house, Ms. Stewart marveled that on clear days she can see Catalina Island and watch ships float by in the distant waters.
Her view keeps improving. That’s because since she moved in, the houses directly in front of hers have sunk several feet.
Mimi Dwyer is a video journalist covering California and the West for The Times.
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