11400 Topa Vista Road

The mailing address says Santa Paula; the MLS files 11400 Topa Vista Road under Upper Ojai, and the view settles the question. The house went up in 1997, two stories of stucco under a metal roof, about 3,400 square feet with four bedrooms, on a slab, with an attached two-car garage. Floor-to-ceiling windows and sliding doors run the main rooms out to a concrete patio, and the finish palette is warm and plain: custom maple cabinetry, limestone surfaces, river rock.

The parcel is ten acres, zoned OS10AC, which in Ventura County's code reads as open space with a ten-acre minimum lot. Water is private and the house is on septic. Hundreds of California native plants were sourced and set around the house on drip irrigation, layered for texture and seasonal bloom and chosen for pollinators and low water; the listing calls it a living tapestry, and the photographs bear that out.

The record is thin before the house. By the public-record line the aggregators carry, the land changed hands in March 1989, and the house followed eight years later; no architect is named anywhere we could find, so the credit for now belongs to the site.

The gathering rooms are turned toward the Topa Topa Mountains, and the Pink Moment, the sunset glow Ojai is known for, arrives in the glass. Downtown Ojai, the trails and the swimming holes are close, and Los Angeles is within reach.

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