Kamala Harris Bought A Malibu Home. Her Neighbors Think That Means Something.

LOS ANGELES — Kamala Harris’ new $8.15 million Malibu home sits on a hill overlooking bougainvillea-dusted streets that sweep down toward the surf — a secluded idyll in a neighborhood of defensive shrubbery and eccentric statuary, where surveillance cameras swivel and the quiet feels carefully curated.

It is, in other words, the perfect place to get away for a while. Which is exactly how many of her new neighbors see it, too.

Amid all the speculation about whether Harris will again run for president, her move is regarded here — in her new celebrity-laden enclave — not as a launching pad, but as a sign of retreat.

“People usually come to Point Dume to try to downshift,” said Or Brodsky, the listing agent on a nearly 12,000-square-foot rental near Harris’ new digs — yours for $69,500 a month. “I think she’s planning to have more days with her feet in the sand.”

Harris, despite her defeat in 2024, is polling at or near the top of Democratic presidential primary surveys. She has said she is “thinking about” running again and has kept herself visible, drawing sold-out crowds on her book tour and headlining a political fundraiser next month in Nevada, a key swing state. People close to Harris say she’s genuinely undecided, and political professionals hardly see a home purchase as evidence of a decision either way.

“I think there’s honesty regarding the idea that they’re still very much thinking about it,” said Marc Adelman, a political consultant whose clients include entertainment industry figures and organizations. “She’s still in the game, actively. This idea that she bought the house, and therefore that negates the idea that she's running — I just don’t buy that.”

But in Malibu, few see it that way. When the former vice president bought the 4,000-square-foot home inthe Point Dume neighborhood in December, she joined an exclusive community where Bob Dylan, Barbra Streisand, Anthony Kiedis, Sergey Brin, Julia Roberts and King Abdullah II of Jordan have also owned houses. Walking the streets of this tony haven bracketed by the Pacific Ocean and the highway that bears its name, it is hard to find anyone — residents, tradespeople or tourists — who can imagine a future for Harris in the White House.

For one thing, as they see it, sitting out the 2028 race would give Harris, 61, time to enjoy her new home’s many amenities, among them panoramic ocean views and a private putting green.

“This is probably where people move out to when they are done with the height of their career,” said Seth Findley, a Point Dume visitor — and Harris voter in 2024 — who cradled a Chuck Palahniuk book not far from her gated four-bedroom house. “I was thinking of actors or musicians. I guess politics, too.”

And then there are the optics. If Harris were to run, her multimillion-dollar house could prove a liability, several political consultants said, with its luxury features — among them a cold plunge and sauna — inviting attacks that she's a wealthy, out-of-touch elite.

Indeed, consider the case of 2012 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney’s $55,000 in-home car elevator, which Democrats seized on as a potent symbol of his perceived distance from middle-class Americans. Harris’ Malibu house — a stone’s throw from Brin’s roughly $50 million cliffside manse — could be similarly weaponized.

“I’m not sure how much less in touch with average Americans you could be from an $8 million compound surrounded by $50 million compounds … in Malibu,” said Reed Galen, co-founder of the Lincoln Project, the anti-Donald Trump super PAC.

A representative of Harris declined to comment.

In Point Dume, she may find a degree of privacy. On a recent afternoon, more than one resident puckered at the presence of a POLITICO reporter in their community and doled out a “no comment” with the ease of someone practiced in the art of withholding information.

At one sprawling home, where twin bulldog statues stood sentinel, a woman said she couldn’t talk because she had injured her back, then swiftly shut the front door. As kiss-offs go, it was hardly a “Stay out of Malibu, Lebowski!” But she made her point all the same.

Still, tracking celebrity home purchases — and gossiping about them — is practically a civic pastime in LA. And not everyone was so tight-lipped. One prominent resident, Branden Williams, a high-end real estate agent, made an unexpected declaration: Point Dume is “a Trump neighborhood.”

It is not. In the 2024 election, the precinct that includes Harris’ new neighborhood overwhelmingly voted for her over Trump. But Williams was not happy to count Harris — whose security detail he said he has seen — as a neighbor. “Hopefully she doesn’t ruin it — like she did San Francisco,” he said, referencing Harris’ stint as district attorney of that city.

Williams — who touted one of his recent sales by teasing, “Google it; I have an NDA” — had thoughts on why Harris and so many other notables have bought homes near Point Dume. “It’s very powerful land — the Chumash Indians used to converge right here,” he said.

While Williams’ Trump pronouncement may not be reflected in the voter data, he was tapping into the zeitgeist: Brin, the Google co-founder, has, according to recent reports, shifted rightward after years of backing liberal causes. He isn’t the first resident to undergo a political transformation: Robert F. Kennedy Jr. once lived in the neighborhood.

The differing views of Harris’ new neighbors were on display on a recent afternoon, when two women walking their dogs declined to be interviewed — before one offered, “I love Kamala Harris.”

“Well, I don’t!” the other woman added, with a laugh, and both agreed that the divide didn’t stand in the way of their friendship.

This isn’t the first time a Harris abode has drawn attention in LA. Some neighbors were delighted to have her in the Kenter Canyon section of Brentwood, where her husband, Doug Emhoff, has owned a roughly 3,500-square-foot home since 2012. But others complained about the traffic and security issues that followed. The former second gentleman still owns the Brentwood house, offering the couple a more convenient perch in the city. But since her return from Washington, people close to Harris have discussed the difficulties of providing adequate security at that property, which is situated on a narrow street where residents park along the curb.

Harris’ new house is about 18 miles from the one in Brentwood. But, owing in part to the psychic baggage attached to the geography separating them, it feels much farther. Getting from Brentwood to Point Dume means winding up traffic-clogged Pacific Coast Highway, past the charred evidence of the deadly Palisades fire. Burned-out husks of houses remain jarring more than a year after the blaze. Past a Sinclair gas station in Malibu — where premium fuel cost $7.59 a gallon on a recent trip — the fire damage gives way to sleek residences nestled against the crystalline coast.

Many properties in the Point Dume area are extravagant, but some are modest — even quirky (see: bulldog statues). And the area used to be a lot funkier, said longtime resident Jeff Stockwell, a screenwriter whose credits include the films “A Wrinkle in Time” and “Bridge to Terabithia.”

Stockwell has lived in the neighborhood since 1999 — he counts his home as a funky one — and has seen celebrities come and go. “In the 27 years since I’ve been here,” he said, “it’s been a steady shifting of ranch houses … redeveloped into much bigger things.”

“There might be a feeling that if you’re here, you are in the cocktail party circuit of really big money, and that might be useful to her,” said Stockwell of Harris, adding that he was happy to have her in the neighborhood.

But what if Harris’ Point Dume home were to become a Western White House?

“Of course, I wouldn't welcome a heavy, aggressive Secret Service presence while I'm taking my dog for a walk around the neighborhood,” said Stockwell, who supported Harris in 2024. “But I also already have kind of a vibe with some of the places that I walk by — with all their cameras and electric gates — that I'm supposed to keep my space from them.”

Some presidents have owned expansive retreats: Richard Nixon’s seaside estate in San Clemente, George W. Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas, and Trump’s Mar-a-Lago in Palm Beach. And other potential 2028 contenders maintain second — and in some cases third and fourth — houses, too. Illinois Gov. JB Pritzker, a billionaire, has owned a vacation home in the Bahamas, another on Lake Geneva in Wisconsin that’s known as Casa del Sueño, and equestrian properties in that state and Florida. Gavin Newsom, the California governor, bought a $9.1 million house in Marin County in late 2024, complementing another residence in the Sacramento area. It is understandable that Harris would have such a spot, said Matt Littman, a political consultant whose company HowLitt focuses on the intersection of politics and entertainment.

“Whether she runs for president or not, it actually makes sense to have a secluded house somewhere,” said Littman, a former speechwriter for President Joe Biden. “I think that this is actually a good idea, because you don't have to rely on the generosity of your donors to provide you with a vacation home. …That’s the kind of thing that people should not be doing.”

As for Harris’ Malibu home, Littman approved, optics be damned, saying it ranked ahead of at least one recent president’s pick: “If you ask most people in America where they'd actually want to be, they would be in Malibu, not on a ranch in Texas.”

Melanie Mason contributed to this report.