Huntington Harbour

Yes, if you want a boat, or at least the water, at the back door. The channels are calm, the islands are quiet bridged tracts, and the yacht club has run sailing programs since 1965. The December boat parade, run by volunteers since the harbor's first years, holds its 64th edition in 2026. What comes with a dredged harbor: FEMA flood zones, aging seawalls that owners maintain, and coastal permits for dock work. City planning also finds that 2050 sea-level projections would overtop long stretches of the bulkheads, so price the seawall into any waterfront offer.

Six, five of them man-made. The city lists Admiralty, Davenport, Gilbert, Humboldt, and Trinidad as the dredged islands, with Sunset Island naturally formed. Each man-made island is a small tract with waterfront homes around the outside and interior streets in the middle. Admiralty holds about 90 single-family homes, Gilbert was laid out with 100 home sites, Davenport with 227, and Humboldt has around 335 homes. Trinidad sits at the north end, near Seabridge Park.

Construction began in 1963 on the former Sunset Bay estuary, at a cost of about $200 million. Christiana Oil Corporation, led by Lewis 'Pete' Douglas Jr., developed the first phases; Douglas stepped down in 1964 and later islands were built by other developers. The Huntington Harbour Yacht Club was incorporated in 1965, and the boat parade has run every December since the harbor's first years, reaching its 64th year in 2026. Sunset Beach, the town on the sand across PCH, is older, founded in 1904 and annexed by Huntington Beach in August 2011.

Parts of it are. A 2010 FEMA letter of map revision designated the harbor's channels as zone AE and the non-submerged waterfront lots as shaded zone X. On March 21, 2019 FEMA released new coastal flood maps that revised the Huntington Harbour and Sunset Beach boundaries. Affected properties were placed in a Special Flood Hazard Area designated AE or VE. Owners in those zones must carry flood insurance if they have a federally regulated or insured mortgage. It changes parcel by parcel, and the FEMA Map Service Center shows the zone for each address.

Through Anaheim Bay. The harbor's main channel passes under Pacific Coast Highway at the north end of Sunset Beach into the bay. From there boats run out between the breakwaters, past the Seal Beach naval weapons station and the wildlife refuge inside it. The Navy widened the bay entrance in 1944, and the channel serving the harbor is 164 feet wide and 13 feet deep. Inside the harbor the channels run 15 to 20 feet deep and need periodic maintenance dredging. The county and city permitted up to 248,000 cubic yards of dredging in 2015.

The Ocean View School District covers transitional kindergarten through eighth grade, and Marina High School in the Huntington Beach Union High School District covers high school. Harbour View Elementary sits inside the neighborhood on Pickwick Circle beside Harbour View Park. Ocean View's middle schools are Marine View, Mesa View, and Vista View, and its school locator gives the assignment for a specific address. Marina High is on Springdale Street and opened in 1963. Check the address with both districts, since the elementary and high school come from different ones.

Many waterfront homes do, but the dock usually sits over public water rather than land you own. The Coastal Commission describes the harbor's waterfront homes as having docks over public waters. On the Main Channel the State Lands Commission leases that water to the homeowner for 10-year terms with annual rent, out to a pierhead line 60 feet into the 400-foot-wide channel. In its 2023 dock permits the Commission noted the city has no dock lease program of its own yet, and it made owners agree to pay a lease fee if one starts. Some docks are shared between neighbors or sit in recorded easements, so I read the title report, the city harbor permit, and any state lease before we price the slip.

Whatever fits at the dock without crossing the pierhead line or blocking the channel. City code section 13.36.080 bars any dock, float, or other structure beyond the pierhead line, and bars mooring a boat in a way the Orange County Harbor Patrol finds hazardous to navigation. The city sets pierhead lines tract by tract, usually on the recorded tract map, so the usable water can differ from one channel to the next; on the Main Channel the line sits 60 feet out from the bulkhead. For sailboats, the channel out through Anaheim Bay is 13 feet deep.

Most houses don't have them, but condos and townhomes do. Of the 30 houses for sale in late September 2026, 19 listed no HOA, and most of the rest listed dues from about $150 to $1,900 a month. Condos listed dues of about $320 to $925 a month and townhomes about $470 to $920, in channel-front complexes that often share docks and pools. Ask what the association covers, because on a house the seawall and dock behind the lot are the owner's to maintain.

Only hosted ones, where the owner lives in the home and stays on site during the guest's stay. The harbor is in the city's Zone 1, where Ordinance 4224 allows rentals of 30 nights or fewer only at the owner's primary residence, with an annual city permit and the city's 10 percent transient occupancy tax. A condo also needs CC&Rs that allow short-term rentals. Whole-home vacation rentals run only across Pacific Coast Highway in Sunset Beach, on permits obtained by March 1, 2022, and the city isn't issuing new ones.

December 12 and 13, 2026, the parade's 64th year. It's run entirely by volunteers of the Huntington Harbour Philharmonic Committee, a nonprofit, not by the city or a marina. The committee asks harbor residents to decorate their homes and enter its decorating contests, and its Cruise of Lights, the main fundraiser, takes visitors by boat past the lit waterfront houses.

Huntington Harbour is the 1960s boating neighborhood of channels and islands on the inland side of Pacific Coast Highway, and Sunset Beach is the older beach town on the ocean side. Sunset Beach was founded in 1904 and stayed a county area until Huntington Beach annexed it in August 2011; the harbor was dredged from the Sunset Bay estuary starting in 1963. They even use different ZIP codes, 92649 for the harbor and 90742 for Sunset Beach. Rental rules differ too: whole-home vacation rentals are allowed only in Sunset Beach, on permits obtained by March 1, 2022.

Read the Sunset Beach guide

Yes. On a waterfront house here the papers that matter are the FEMA flood map, the seawall inspection and the state dock lease, and I'll go through each one with you in Russian. Buying from abroad? I'll film the seawall and the slip so you see their condition before you book a flight.