Bay Area’s Priciest Listing Comes to Market at $100 Million

Listed at $100 million, a 150-acre estate in Big Sur appears to be the Bay Area’s most expensive residential property on public markets. If it sells for anything close to the asking price it would set a record for Monterey County, where the most expensive sale thus far is a home on the 18th hole of Pebble Beach that went for $45 million this summer.

Known as the “Heart of Rancho Rico” and located at 47320 and 47324 Highway 1, the Big Sur property has been in the family of Cyril Chappellet, a former Lockheed executive, for four generations and hasn’t been on the market since the 1960s.

“Heart of Rancho Rico” and located at 47320 and 47324 Highway 1 (Sherman Chu)

Three of Chappellet’s grandchildren — C. Blake, Michele and Kira Forrest — are the sellers, according to a press release from Carmel-based Tim Allen of Coldwell Banker, the listing agent who also repped the seller of the 18th hole home.

Allen said he and his team “researched iconic and irreplaceable properties across the luxury market and considered local sales of much smaller luxury properties in Big Sur and the Monterey Peninsula” to come up with the $100-million asking price.

The property is one of several once owned by Chappellet, who died in 1991 at 85. It has beach access via a private road, panoramic views of both the coastline and the Santa Lucia Mountains, three separate homes and two campgrounds.

The 1940s-era main house is the largest at 3,750 square feet with four en suite bedrooms and three fireplaces. A mature fruit orchard separates the main house from the 1995-built Ranch House, which has four bedrooms and two full bathrooms in 2,500 square feet.

The most recent addition is the Garden House, which was built in 2001 and has three bedrooms and two full bathrooms in 1,960 square feet. It sits further back from the coastline, near the reflection pond and “food forest.” There is enough room to raise livestock and poultry, according to the release.

“Four generations of our family have spent time on this property for the past 60 years,” C. Blake Forrest said in a statement. He and his two sisters inherited the land from their mother, one of Cyril Chappellet’s three children, and raised their own families there as well.

They had “countless family gatherings for six decades” and spent most of their summers on “the ranch,” he added. “We hope the next owners will embrace this property, share it with their family and preserve the beauty of it for generations to come.”

Allen said in a statement that “many long-standing residents in the region have an affinity for the history of this property.” It was previously owned by the Pfeiffer family, one of the first European settlers in the coastal community 150 miles south of San Francisco and 100 miles south of Silicon Valley.

Allen said the likely buyer would be “looking for something special—a compound where privacy, space, views and a private beach are coveted or where an extended family can go to unplug and get back to basics and nature, yet be in a location where the Monterey peninsula is at their doorstep. There is a reasonably wide buyer pool, both geographically and by industry, who purchase luxury properties in this area.”

The next-most-expensive homes publicly listed in the Bay Area are all on the Peninsula: a $78 million new build in Woodside, a Hillsborough estate on 2.3 acres asking $68 million and a $55 million ask on a new build in Atherton.