When the Ventura Freeway was pushed through the valley in the late 1960s, the ranch land north of it became the first suburban tracts of what would, in 1982, incorporate as Agoura Hills. Three neighborhoods date from that first push — Hillrise, Liberty Canyon and Lake Lindero — and Hillrise is among the oldest housing in the city outside Old Agoura. The recorded sales are built from 1968 to 1972 almost without exception, which makes the tract a single product of a single moment: the four-bedroom, two-bath family house of the late 1960s, in a single-story and a two-story version, on a lot sized to the budgets of the day.

That lot is the thing to understand about Hillrise. At a median of about 5,370 square feet the parcels are the smallest of the city’s detached tracts, several thousand square feet short of Fountainwood’s and half the size of what Morrison Ranch would offer fifteen years later. The houses were built to it: compact plans, a two-car garage to the street, a yard that is a patio and a lawn rather than a field. What the developer got for that was a price that let young families into the valley, and what the tract has kept is the same role — it is, with Lake Lindero, the entry to detached Agoura Hills. The builder’s name is not confirmed in any source Gary Jacobs has been able to verify; the recorded tract map at the Los Angeles County Recorder is the document that would settle it.

No plan sheet for Hillrise is in the Conejo Simi Moorpark Association of Realtors archive that this guide series draws on, so there is no drawing to reproduce. The sale record does the job instead, because the tract was built to so few plans that the same sizes come back again and again. A 1,660-square-foot single-story four-bedroom appears on Deep Shadow Drive, Rock Creek Road and Gladehollow Court; a 2,063-square-foot two-story five-bedroom appears on Meadow Vista Way more than once; and a 1,541-square-foot single-story sits at the bottom of the size range. Above those, homes of 2,168 to 3,030 square feet are expansions, second-storey additions or the 1985 infill on Quail Run Drive.

Ten of the nineteen sales are one story and nine are two — an even split, and the reason the tract serves two buyers at once. The 1,660-square-foot single-story plan is the one downsizers ask about, because it is a real four-bedroom house on one level at the entry price of the city, and the 2,063-square-foot two-story is the one families compete for, because five or six bedrooms at this price do not exist elsewhere in Agoura Hills.

Hillrise Drive carries the most sales and gives the tract its name; Meadow Vista Way, Gladehollow Court and Quail Run Drive carry most of the rest, with Softwind Way, Trailway Lane, Deep Shadow Drive, Medeabrook Place, Tree Hollow Glen and Rock Creek Road filling in. The street names describe a tract laid out on the slope above Medea Creek, and the topography matters more than the name: some parcels are flat, some step, and a buyer should walk the lot as well as the house.

The streets do not sort the price. The top of the record is a 2,063-square-foot six-bedroom on Meadow Vista Way at $1,550,000 in May 2025 and the 3,030-square-foot 1985 house on Quail Run Drive at $1,440,000 in June 2023; the bottom is a 2,063-square-foot five-bedroom on Meadow Vista Way at $790,000 in July 2020 — the same plan on the same street, five years and $760,000 apart. That gap is condition and time, not address, and it is the clearest thing the record says about Hillrise: within a plan, the renovation is the price.

The first reason is the entry. Hillrise and Lake Lindero are the two places a buyer gets a detached four-bedroom house in Agoura Hills for a figure starting with an eight or a nine, and Hillrise does it with nothing to disclose. The second is the single-story plan: a 1,660-square-foot four-bedroom on one level, with a garage and a yard, at the entry price of the city, is the thing downsizers cannot find in the attached tracts and cannot afford in Morrison Ranch. The third is the bedroom count, with five- and six-bedroom houses at prices that buy three bedrooms elsewhere. The fourth is the schools. And the fifth is the record, which shows a tract that has moved with the rest of the west side and rewards renovation more clearly than any of them.

Listings report a Hillrise association fee in three forms: $300 to $465 a year in most sales, $35 to $39 a month in a few, and $175 a year in one. 2026 sales reported $425 to $465 a year, and a secondary source gives about $440 a year. Those figures are close enough to be the same association reported differently and far enough apart to be more than one, and this guide does not resolve it; the CC&Rs, the association’s certification and the title report for a specific parcel will. What is clear is the scale: a few hundred dollars a year, which buys a neighborhood body with some say over exteriors and fences rather than a pool, a clubhouse or maintained landscape. There is no amenity in the dues, and none appears in the listings.

For underwriting, the practical answer is that a Hillrise house carries a nominal association cost, and that the constraint on an owner who wants to add a room, a second storey or a pool is the city’s permit process and whatever architectural review the CC&Rs give the association. Read them before planning the addition, not after.

Hillrise is in the Las Virgenes Unified School District, and listing data for the tract’s addresses gives Willow Elementary, Lindero Canyon Middle School and Agoura High School. That assignment comes from listings rather than from a district boundary document this guide has been able to obtain, and in Agoura Hills the middle-school line in particular has been known to fall inside a neighborhood. A family buying for a specific school should run the exact address through the Las Virgenes address locator before removing contingencies.

Hillrise is a few minutes from the 101 in the west-central part of Agoura Hills, and the freeway corridor is where the errands are: groceries, pharmacies, banks and medical offices along the frontage roads, with Westlake Village’s commercial centers a few minutes further west. Inside the tract the streets are residential loops on the slope rather than through routes, every home in the record has a garage, and traffic is residents and their guests. The open space of the Simi Hills and the Santa Monica Mountains is a short drive in either direction; this guide does not name a park or a trailhead within walking distance of a specific street, because the record it works from does not establish one. Commuters face the usual Conejo Valley pattern, eastbound in the morning and westbound in the evening, with Kanan Road and Lindero Canyon Road the routes toward the coast.

The figures in this section were current when this guide was last reviewed. The sale record in the facts above and the listings below are drawn live from the MLS each time the page loads.

In the two years through June 2026, 7 homes in the tract sold through the MLS, at prices from $953,000 to $1,550,000 and a median of $1,130,000. Over the longer record, nineteen sales from July 2020 through June 2026 ran from $790,000 to $1,550,000 with a median of about $1,032,000. The single-story homes — ten of them — have a median of about $990,000 and run from $855,000 for the 1,660-square-foot plan on Gladehollow Court in August 2020 and $895,000 for the same plan on Rock Creek Road in March 2023 to $1,350,000 for a renovated one on Deep Shadow Drive in April 2024. The two-story homes have a median of about $1,140,000 and hold the top of the record: $1,550,000 on Meadow Vista Way in May 2025, $1,440,000 on Quail Run Drive in June 2023, $1,322,000 on Hillrise Drive in May 2023.

The shape of the six years is the same as the rest of the west side: strong appreciation from 2020 into 2024 and a band since, with the premium inside the band going to renovation rather than to plan or street. The 1,660-square-foot single-story plan moving from $855,000 to $1,350,000 in under four years is the tract’s story in one line. Against the rest of the city Hillrise trades level with Lake Lindero and below Fountainwood, for a smaller house on a smaller lot with nothing to disclose.

These homes are more than fifty-five years old, and on unrenovated houses of this era in this market inspectors commonly report original galvanised or early copper supply lines and cast-iron drains, aluminium-frame single-pane windows and sliders, period electrical panels — including brands that insurers now flag — original furnaces and water heaters, and popcorn ceilings that may test positive for asbestos. Second-storey additions and expansions are common in a tract where a 1968 house can be recorded at 2,168 square feet, and the permit history of any of them belongs on the list. Every home is different and only a licensed inspector on the specific property can say what is actually there.

Two items are specific to the site. The first is the slope: parcels on the hillside streets can carry retaining walls, drainage and, on the lower ground toward Medea Creek, the questions that come with a creek. The second is the sewer lateral, which on a 1968 house is the owner’s and is often original. On the remodel side the record is emphatic: kitchens, baths, floors and glass return, and a renovated single-story house has sold $400,000 to $500,000 above an unrenovated one of the same plan.

No lease is recorded in the MLS sources this guide draws on, so it does not quote a rent for the tract; a current figure should come from the leasing agents who work these streets. What can be said is that a detached four-bedroom house with a garage in the Las Virgenes district and a nominal association is an easy product to let and to hold, with no association fee to carry between tenants and, in a body that maintains nothing, no rental cap that this guide has been able to find. A landlord should still read the CC&Rs, and should budget for the roof, the lateral and the systems that an association elsewhere would carry.

Start with the lot, because it is the smallest in the city’s detached tracts and on the slope it may carry a wall, a drainage condition or a creek. Then the house: fifty-five-year-old systems, the panel, the lateral, the ceiling texture and the permit history of any addition, with the inspector briefed on the actual year. Then the association fee, which reads three ways in the record and should be confirmed for the parcel along with the CC&Rs and whatever architectural review they give the association. Then the floor count, which is an even split and should be read off the record rather than assumed. Then the schools, through the district locator. And finally the comparable, which is the same plan and floor count in the last two years, not the tract median — because on Hillrise the same plan has sold at $790,000 and $1,550,000 and the difference was inside the house.

First-time detached buyers, more than in any other Agoura Hills tract, because this is where the entry is. Downsizers second, for the 1,660-square-foot single-story plan, and they are often coming from a larger Conejo Valley house and are prepared to renovate. Families third, for the five- and six-bedroom two-story plans and the schools, at a price that would buy an attached home in Westlake Village. And the renovator fourth, who has read the record and knows that a $900,000 unrenovated house and a $1,350,000 renovated one of the same plan sit on the same street. What the tract draws less often is the buyer who wants a large lot, a view or an association that carries the roof, because it has none of those.

The nearest comparison is Lake Lindero, the other first-push tract on the west side: detached houses of 1,260 to 2,516 square feet on lots around 7,000 square feet at a median of $985,000, with a golf course and club in the association and, at present, a $15.6 million judgment against it. Hillrise is the smaller lot without the club and without the judgment, at a similar price. Fountainwood, 1973 to 1980, is the larger house on the larger lot at a median of $1,200,000, with a $30-a-year association, and it is where a Hillrise family that has outgrown the tract goes next.

To the east, Chateau Springs, 1983 to 1989, is entirely two-story houses of 2,489 to 3,338 square feet at a median of $1,500,000, and Morrison Ranch South, 1983 to 1987, at a median of $1,770,000, is a different market. Old Agoura is the other end of the city altogether, at a median of $2,365,000 for acre lots and horses.

Figures are from CSMAR MLS sales records for 2020 through mid-2026 as carried in this site’s listing feed.

For a buyer, the inspection and the lot are the whole game. Brief the inspector on the year and on any addition, ask for the permit history of anything that changed the footprint, have the lateral scoped, and walk the parcel for walls, drainage and the creek. Confirm the association fee and read the CC&Rs. Read the floor count and the square footage off the record. Run the address through the Las Virgenes locator. And compare within a plan and a floor count, because that is how the tract prices and the spread within a plan is enormous.

For a seller, the comparable is the same plan and floor count in the last two years, and the top of the record is the renovated house — $1,350,000 for a 1,660-square-foot single-story, $1,550,000 for a 2,063-square-foot two-story. If the kitchen, the baths, the floors and the glass are done, price to those and say so in the first line; if not, price to the unrenovated sales and do not spend on the footprint. Lead with the floor count and the bedroom count, which are what the buyer is searching on, and be plain about the fee, which the buyer will otherwise find three ways.