Local Areas

From Montecito's wooded hills to Hope Ranch's riding trails and the Santa Ynez Valley's wide open spaces, Santa Barbara's renowned beauty is more than skin deep. Active, community-minded residents have shaped this metropolitan area into a well-rounded, multifaceted gem of a place for the discriminating person to live and work.
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Opportunities abound in Santa Barbara to enjoy a life tailored your individual needs. There's quality shopping, over 400 fine restaurants, top educational institutions such a s the University of California, and easy jet and rail transportation for those whose lifestyles keep them on the move.
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This site is all about buying or selling homes, but it's also important to get a quick idea of the various key areas along the coast here. Please click on any of the following links to explore a little more.

Santa Barbara

Visitors often say that Santa Barbara is the most beautiful city they have ever experienced. It truly has an urban flair yet with the natural beauty one would expect to find in a seaside resort or quaint European village. Santa Barbara real estate features a diversity of residential areas from the Upper East Side’s older, elegant estates, to the Riviera, named after its European namesake, with its winding narrow streets and luxury homes that feature city views. And of course the city prizes its charming beach bungalows and luxury estates with unparalleled ocean vistas.
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While the city of Santa Barbara and its surrounding areas are breathtaking, its beauty is more than skin deep. It has become a hot-spot for active, community-minded residents who pride themselves on family, the environment and successful businesses. The diversity of its residents is inspiring, as is the multifaceted nature of all that the city offers. It is as easy to find quality shopping for everything from high-end fashion to camping equipment, as it is to stumble upon one of the city’s four hundred fine restaurants and enjoy a terrific meal. It also boasts one of the state’s top educational institutions, the University of California Santa Barbara (UCSB), and the local airport and easy rail transportation are essential for those whose busy lifestyles keep them on the move.

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Carpinteria

Carpinteria is a peaceful, seaside city located in the fertile Carpinteria Valley just south of Montecito. Come soak up the sunshine at the beach or simply enjoy the small town pleasures of Carpinteria where tree-shaded streets, parades and crafts shows evoke a gentle way of life.

Home to a world-renowned surfing area off Rincon Point and a beautiful swimming beach, Carpinteria State Beach Park encompasses wooded groves and 4,000 feet of ocean frontage and offers overnight camping and the best surf-fishing and tide-pooling for miles around.

It is easy to get caught up in the laidback feel of the community and the naturally beautiful surroundings. Luxury Carpinteria real estate includes everything from beachfront estates to sprawling ranches and elegant hillside villas with remarkable ocean views. Carpinteria notably harbors the historic Santa Barbara Polo Club, one of the oldest in the United States. The deluxe Club with its four elegantly groomed polo fields and a beautiful clubhouse, offers weekly polo games throughout most of the year.

Just a few blocks from the ocean you'll find wide, tree-lined streets with charming shops and restaurants creating an idyllic downtown atmosphere. Carpinteria often showcases parades, craft shows and other events that evoke a gentle way of life.
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Hope Ranch

As you pass through the gate and under the handsome, filigreed sign suspended across Las Palmas Drive, you enter another world named Hope Ranch. Towering palms, planted in the early 1900's, line the main drive. Wearing jodhpurs and shiny black boots; adults and children on horseback are commonly riding along the tree-lined trails located throughout Hope Ranch.  
Hope Ranch is a community encompassing 1,863 acres. It is situated in the southeastern portion of Santa Barbara County between Highway 101 and the ocean. It consists of a broad flat mesa and low rolling knolls broken up by a magnificent valleys covered with splendid live oaks. The scenery from the home sites on the knolls is indescribably beautiful.

A golfing foursome takes turns putting on a manicured green at the La Cumbre Country Club. Incorporated in 1924, the Hope Ranch Park Homes Association watches over this elite residential area. Membership in the association is automatic upon purchasing a home and brings many privileges: the private beach, bridle paths, tennis courts, and the advantages of the Hope Ranch Riding Trails Association.

Hope Ranch real estate includes elegant french country homes, Mediterranean villas, equestrian estates and everything in between. Homes sites were developed to enjoy a variety of views from the landward purple mountains of the Santa Ynez range to the seaward views of the Pacific Ocean and Channel Islands. Governed by homeowners since the 1920s, Hope Ranch prospers from a heartfelt sense of community and concern for the quality of life of every resident. A golf course and country club, small lake, private beach and bridle paths are just some of the benefits of living in this elite residential area.
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Montecito

Once a fashionable health resort, the tiny seaside village of Montecito was discovered just after the turn of the century by some of the most influential families in the United States. Soon the wooded Montecito hills, just east of Santa Barbara's city limits began to sprout such magnificent creations as marble palaces, picture-book Normandy castles, elegant Italian palazzos, gracious Cape Cod colonials, and regal English manor houses. For those looking for private schools, country clubs, quaint shops, and quiet lanes that lead to secluded homes, the beach, mountain trails, creeks, and waterfalls - pastoral Montecito is waiting, pristine.
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It is hard to imagine a more idyllic setting than the tiny seaside village of Montecito. One of the nation's wealthiest communities, it communicates its grandeur with understated elegance and sublime sophistication. It is certainly an A-list locale without an oversized attitude.
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With approximately 10,000 residents and 3,000 households, Montecito retains much of its original charm but with the niceties of a contemporary, stylish community. Just east of Santa Barbara, the area is nestled between the sea and the picturesque foothills known as the Santa Ynez Mountain Range. This natural boundary leaves no room for growth or urban sprawl, sustaining high property values and a thriving community. Montecito real estate and architectural styles vary, offering something for everyone—picture-book cottages, elegant Mediterranean villas, luxury oceanfront estates and most everything in-between. Montecito presents discreet, tree-lined lanes, leading both to its grand estates and its bucolic hiking trails.
For families, Montecito offers two exceptional public schools and an array of private school options. Montecito's exemplary weather allows for abundant outdoor activities such as hiking, biking, horseback riding and surfing twelve months a year!

Coast Village Road offers premiere shopping and dining, with everything from traditional Italian trattorias to authentic Mexican cantinas. Shoppers will enjoy the contemporary clothing boutiques, vintage shops and classic antique stores, most within walking distance of each other. Butterfly Beach, with its sandy beaches and relaxing ocean breezes is perfect for strolling, swimming, lounging or dog walking. The ideal location to call "home," pastoral Montecito is ever pristine and always waiting.

Summerland

Just south of Montecito is a quaint beach community named Summerland; a relaxed, hillside community snuggled on the coast with breathtaking ocean and island views. Today it is a thriving beach community with 1,545 residents living in 785 homes, condos, or apartments. Summerland is known up and down California for its wonderful weather, friendly residents, good restaurants, outstanding beach, wonderful antique stores and lots of great boutiques.
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Goleta

​The City of Goleta is located in southern California on the south coast of Santa Barbara County, approximately 100 miles northwest of Los Angeles and ten miles west of the City of Santa Barbara. The City stretches approximately 8 square miles along the beautiful south coast, within a narrow coastal plain of exceptional natural beauty between the Santa Ynez Mountains and the Pacific Ocean.
 
Incorporated in 2002, the City of Goleta is home to 30,000 residents and a progressive, entrepreneurial business community. Goleta is a safe and active community that prides itself on the high quality of life available to its residents. In fact, in 2008, CNN Money listed Goleta as one of the “Best Places to Live.”
 
The Goleta community exemplifies diversity and balance in areas such as: single-family homes and multi-family apartments; new start-ups and long-established and thriving businesses; quiet neighborhood streets and smoothly flowing freeways; tree canopies and wide open spaces; organic farms and high technology manufacturing; a busy Old Town commercial district, shopping centers, and lively local farmers’ markets; diverse scenic views that include ocean and island vistas as well as the backdrop of the Santa Ynez Mountains and foothills; and a range of opportunities for passive recreation and active sports.

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Santa Barbara Neighborhoods

Santa Barbara has a diversity of residential areas. Made up of many neighborhoods and areas you will find information provided on several below.

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Westside

​The "Westside Story" of Santa Barbara is laid in our city's first suburb to be initiated by Anglos rather than Hispanics; the Spanish genesis of the city was located on the Eastside. In 1850, when the United States annexed California to the Union, the Westside was open grazing range and farmland, turning marshy near the beach. Today this area is solidly overlaid with urban development extending inland to the Goleta Valley, making it the most densely populated neighborhood in Santa Barbara. The earliest historical reference to the Westside came in 1793 when Captain George Vancouver, a British explorer-scientist, who was circumnavigating the globe, anchored the Discovery off West Beach and received permission for his sea cook to chop stove wood from the Mesa oak groves and refill his water tanks from a steep at the base of the Mesa bluffs near Pershing Park.

San Roque

​Few residential neighborhoods of Santa Barbara can boast the rich historical background of the San Roque and Rutherford Park areas. Ten thousand years ago the area, bounded by Ontare Road, Foothill Road, Alamar Avenue and State Street, was an open expanse of treeless grassland, sloping up to the knees of the foothills and bisected by the heavily wooded course of San Roque Canyon. Now a built-up, economically stabilized suburb, it is admired for its sweeping curved streets, its luxuriant landscaping, and its harmonious blend of many architectural themes - Spanish Colonial, English Tudor, French Normandy, California Redwood, Italian and American Colonial, mostly built since 1925. San Roque features older, custom homes with charm.

The Riviera

​Bridging the two mile span which separates Mission and Sycamore Canyons, the sylvan uplift which the padres knew as the "mission ridge" has for the past 65 years been known as "the Riviera" due to its resemblance to slopes along the Mediterranean coasts of France and Italy. Santa Barbarans lucky enough to live on this ridge attach premium value to their homes because of their unsurpassed views of the city, mountains, sea and islands.

The Mesa

The Mesa is located on the bluffs just beyond the harbor and extends from the ocean up to the top of the hill. There are both tract and custom homes, many with ocean and/or city views. San Roque is a charming area with smaller, individual homes in a quiet, yet convenient in-town location. Architectural styles range from small California cottages to classic Tudors and Spanish haciendas.
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The Wilcox Property, now known as the as the Douglas Family Preserve, at southwestern tip of the Mesa was a commercial nursery, currently preserved for public use. The neighborhood between Mesa Lane and Oliver Road, while originally plotted as early as 1920, did not develop until after World War II when many veterans built homes with the help of GI loans.  City weather records show that the Mesa's winter temperatures are 10 to 12 degrees warmer than downtown, and 10 to 12 degrees cooler in the summer.

Mission Canyon

​Mission Canyon, which with the Old Mission complex and the area bounded on the south by Mission Street, making up Santa Barbara's "Mission District," is unique. No residential neighborhood in the city boasts a richer historical background, or offers more relics and landmarks of Old Spanish Days.Fr. Junipero Serra, when he helped found the Royal Presidio of Santa Barbara in 1782, intended Santa Barbara's Franciscan mission to be built in El Montecito near the present site of Our Lady of Mount Carmel church on East Valley Road. But four years later, when his successor, Fr. Fermin Lasuen OFM, arrived to establish our mission, he decided that Montecito was too infested with grizzly bears and renegade Indians to risk building a mission so far removed from the protection of the presidio soldiers, so he looked elsewhere.

Samarkand

​Samarkand meant "the land of heart's desire" in the archaic Persian tongue. It identified the fabulous Asian city where a mythical Queen Scheherazade spent her 1001 Arabian nights. In Santa Barbara, the melodic oriental name was first applied in 1920 to a deluxe Persian style hotel, formerly a boy's school. As the dominating landmark of a hilly, elevated neighborhood, the Samarkand gave its name to an area bounded on the east by Oak Park, on the north by Hollister Avenue (now De La Vina Street), on the west by a ranch boundary fence centered on modern Las Positas Road, and on the south by the old Coast Highway and the railroad. Samarkand is a delightful area of homes full of charm.

Waterfront

 The Spaniards who founded Santa Barbara in 1782 were soldiers and priests, not seafaring men. Perhaps that is why no provision was made for a seaport. The waterfront, extending 3.6 miles from Shoreline Park to the Bird Refuge, offers no natural headlands to create a safe anchorage. Early-day mariners dreaded Santa Barbara's exposed roadstead so much they used to drop anchor a mile offshore, ready to slip their cables and head for the open sea if foul weather threatened. As recently as 70 years ago the ocean used to cover what today is the City College football field, dashing its surf against cliffs now paneled by La Playa Stadium. Leadbetter Beach did not exist. But just around the corner, east of Castle Rock (a long-vanished promontory), semi-sheltered West Beach became the traditional landing place for visitors. It is thus overlaid with history covering two centuries.
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The Santa Barbara Waterfront stretches from the Harbor across from Santa Barbara City College along Cabrillo Boulevard past Stearns Wharf to East Beach, which is near the Santa Barbara Zoo and Bird Refuge. There are Hotels and Motels located along the Waterfront, but behind them are charming homes, duplexes, triplexes and apartment buildings.