BILL CARY March 20, 2026
Listing of the Day
Location: Cambria, California
Price: $3.875 million
This Mid-Century Modern gem from the 1960s is perched right up against the Pacific Ocean in the sleepy village of Cambria on California’s Central Coast.
The Sherwood Drive home offers direct walk-down access to tide pools and panoramic ocean views, with daily sightings of whales, dolphins, otters and seabirds, according to the listing.
“It’s an incredible location with amazing views and a very unique style of architecture,” said listing agent Lindsey Harn, of Christie’s International Real Estate Sereno. “Depending on the time of year, you get incredible sunsets. The bird-watching is incredible.”
The home was designed by local architect Warren Leopold and built in 1968, she said. “He studied under Frank Lloyd Wright and has done numerous homes in this area.”
To have a property right at water’s edge is “very rare and unique,” Harn said. “It would be much harder and more expensive to build this house today, if you would even be allowed to build it at all.”
Set forward on a seawall-protected bluff, the three-bedroom home is constructed of poured-in-place aggregate concrete and redwood, “expressed in a sophisticated series of hexagonal spaces that celebrate light, geometry and the natural environment,” according to the listing.
Cambria is “one of the untouched towns on the Central Coast,” Harn said. It’s less than two hours from Santa Barbara and Montecito, “yet it still has a small-town feel. It still doesn’t feel like it has changed significantly.”
The homes here are still quite reasonably priced compared with other coastal areas in California, Harn said.
The dining and living areas in the home have an open floor plan, and the kitchen features high-end appliances, custom cabinetry and a granite island oriented toward the sea, according to the listing. Design details include redwood beams, whitewashed redwood paneling, slate and stone surfaces, built-in seating, skylights, dentil detailing and an indoor-outdoor bar.
The upstairs primary suite is accessed via a stained-glass-lined turret staircase. It features wraparound windows with particularly good views, a domed skylight, a fireplace, a connected office, a walk-in closet and an en suite with an ocean-view soaking tub.
Recent updates to the home include painting, some new flooring and new dual-pane windows, but for the most part the house has remained unchanged, Harn said.
“A lot of the original materials have been retained to maintain the architectural integrity of the home,” she said. The sellers, who have owned the home for about three years, “walked in and fell in love with the style of the house and didn’t want to change anything,” Harn said.
Stats
The 2,788-square-foot home has three bedrooms and four full bathrooms.
Amenities
Along with the open water views and the sound of the waves, amenities include two fireplaces, an office, a guest suite with its own entrance, a protected ocean-view courtyard, wraparound decks with new glass railings, and private concrete stairs that provide rare direct access to the shoreline and tide pools.
Neighborhood Notes
It’s about a 10-minute drive to Hearst Castle and the town of San Simeon, Harn said.
For restaurants, “Cambria has a ton of great options,” with many more in Paso Robles, which is about 30 minutes away, she said.
Other nearby attractions include Fiscalini Ranch Preserve, Moonstone Beach, Lampton Cliffs Park and coastal pathways and trails, according to Harn and the listing.
It’s one to 90 minutes to Big Sur and Carmel-by-the-Sea, Harn said.
Agent: Lindsey Harn, Lindsey Harn Group, Christie’s International Real Estate Sereno
Article originally published by Mansion Global.