Montecito is small. The part of it that people actually mean when they say Montecito is smaller still: a handful of lanes on the hill side of the village, heavily planted, mostly walled, and almost entirely invisible from the road.

Why so little moves

Houses here are held for a long time. Owners tend to be at a stage of life where there is no reason to sell, and the tax position of a long-held California property makes selling actively unattractive. The result is a market where five or six houses of real quality change hands in a year.

What that means for a buyer

You cannot search this market. You can only be known in it, and be ready when something moves. The buyers who succeed here are the ones who agreed their brief eighteen months before the house appeared, and who could see it within forty-eight hours of the call.

We keep an advisor living in Santa Barbara for exactly this reason. The information that matters does not travel.