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PUBLISHER’S NOTE
MONTECITO LIFE
Y
ou don’t
have
to live in Montecito. After all, you could buy a two-bedroom, three-bath condominium penthouse in
Beverly Hills in a doorman building for $4,995,000 (asking). It is, admittedly, a large unit of some 3,200+ sq ft with a
beautiful (though small) patio, high ceilings, city views from every window, some of which are floor-to-ceiling, and it’s
not far from Rodeo Drive.
If you’d rather be up north, there is a 3,125 sq ft
lot
in the Castro District of San Francisco for $5,900,000 (asking); if that’s
too pricey, a 3,200-sq-ft, single-family home with three bedrooms and four baths on a 2,160-sq-ft lot
(1/20th of an acre)
will set
you back only $2,695,000. If you’d like a little more privacy, $5,500,000 will move you up to a five-bedroom, five-bath, 4,304-sq-ft
home on about a third of an acre in Sausalito.
I don’t know Los Altos well enough (though I have visited), but homes range from about $1,850,000 for a three-bedroom,
two-bath, 1,382-sq-ft home on a 9,375-sq-ft lot to $11,988,000 for five bedrooms, seven-plus baths, 7,584 sq ft of living space on a
one-acre lot, and of course, up from there.
In the following pages, we highlight a number of homes – mansions and estates, really – that are available and provide clear
evidence that one’s money goes further in Montecito and Santa Barbara than in many if not most other upper-end areas in the
United States. We’ve got the climate, the ocean, the mountains, the scenery, the space, the architecture, the schools, the arts, the
food, the wine, the proximity to Los Angeles (yet far enough away to make a real difference), and well, why – if you had your
druthers – would you possibly live anywhere else?
And, if indeed you have chosen to live here, what we’d like to say is...
... Welcome to our neighborhood!
Tim Buckley
Publisher
