Mansour Ojjeh, part owner of TAG and its McLaren Formula One team, is selling his Santa Barbara estate for $110 million, and if he gets a buyer for the property known as El Rancho Tajiguas at that asking price, it would mean a new record for the Santa Barbara, California area.
Forbes reports that the current record for most expensive property in Santa Barbara belongs to a 22,000-square foot home that went for $35 million last year, compared to its original listing price of $45 million. That gives you an idea of how rare listings in the nine figures are in Santa Barbara, but Ojjeh's isn't actually the most expensive Santa Barbara property listing. That would belong to one Rancho San Carlos, that was originally listed at $125 million before its price dropped down to $85 million (side note: Rancho San Carlos is being listed by one of the same agents as the infamous Neverland Ranch that once belonged to the late Michael Jackson, now seeing troubles of its own in finding a buyer).
Expand the area in question from Santa Barbara to larger Los Angeles, and you begin to see a few properties on this one's price level. There's a home in Malibu with a $125 million asking price, while in nearby Bel-Air the most expensive listing in the country belongs to the $245 million property that includes land that once belonged to none other than Ronald and Nancy Reagan.
Getting back to El Rancho Tajiguas, it consists of two combined estates across some 3,500 acres, including an operational cattle farm (along with about 120 head of cattle) and two orchards, one, where avocados are grown and another for persimmons. Together, the two ranches that make up the property includes two main houses, plus more than a dozen other buildings, most of them to accommodate the staff for those orchards and the cattle ranch.
El Rancho Tajiguas also does one better than the usual real estate listing with its own official website. Here's how the "historic" property is described there:
"The historic 3,500-acre El Rancho Tajiguas is a rare offering on a largely undeveloped natural masterpiece, the Gaviota Coast. Where development is heavily regulated, the unparalleled ranch represents 2 of the finest estates found anywhere, set in the Crown Jewel of Southern California: Santa Barbara's Gaviota Coast. El Rancho Tajiguas is the perfect marriage of utmost luxury & natural beauty, with its two ocean facing hilltop estates, surrounded by complete serenity on approximately 3,500 acres with extensive cultivated agricultural land, hundreds of acres of orchards, active cattle range & vast areas of open space. Its history traces back to the of King of Spain, Carlos III. The sheer awe inspiring scale of this land is surprising so near the culture center of Santa Barbara & Montecito."
The site also includes a video tour of the property courtesy of Randy Solakian Montecito Estates, which you can check out below:
