The lake came first. In 1904 a 45-foot dam across Potrero Creek, built for irrigation, made a reservoir of 877 million gallons in a valley that had been ranch land, and the lake stayed a ranch reservoir until the movies found it. In the early 1920s the shore was dressed as Sherwood Forest for Douglas Fairbanks’s Robin Hood, and the name stuck; the cabins along Lake Sherwood Drive and the Upper and Lower Lake Roads were built in the decades after as weekend places, and some of them still stand, which is why a 1932 house appears in a sale record otherwise full of 1990s and 2000s build years.

The modern community is David Murdock’s. The lake was drained from late 1983 to the summer of 1984 by its previous owner, Murdock bought the property in 1985, the rains of 1986 refilled it, and from 1989 he built the Sherwood Country Club on a Jack Nicklaus course — formally opened October 30, 1989 — the Sherwood Lake Club on the water, and by a secondary source’s count more than 650 homes in three gated neighborhoods around them. The course hosted Greg Norman’s Shark Shootout through the 1990s, the 1999 Showdown at Sherwood, Tiger Woods’s World Challenge from 2000 to 2013 and the 2020 Zozo Championship, which is how most people outside the Conejo Valley have seen it.

Politically, Lake Sherwood belongs to no city. It is unincorporated Ventura County, with a Westlake Village mailing address, Conejo Valley Unified schools, county permits and the Ventura County Sheriff. That matters for permits, for services and for what a buyer should expect from the county rather than a city hall; the schools section and the practical notes below come back to it.

The MLS files Lake Sherwood sales under a handful of subdivision names, and they sort the community from the old lakeshore to the gated estates. With the recorded sales since 2020:

The Villas at Sherwood and Upson each show a single sale in the record, and eight sales carry no subdivision name at all, which in Lake Sherwood usually means a custom house on the older streets. The table is drawn from the MLS subdivision field, which agents fill in by hand.

The cabins along the water and the streets above it — Lake Sherwood Drive, Upper and Lower Lake Road, Stafford Road, Trentham Road — are the part of the community that predates Murdock, and they are being rebuilt one lot at a time. The record shows a 777-square-foot 1932 cabin on Lake Sherwood Drive at $909,000 in May 2024, a 1952 house on Stafford Road, and beside them 9,438-square-foot houses built in 2004 on the water at $10,730,000. A buyer on these streets is buying the lot and its relationship to the lake: frontage, a dock, the view and the slope. The houses range from tear-downs to new construction, the association fees are nominal or absent, and the permits are the county’s. Lake use — boating, paddleboarding, swimming, fishing — runs through the Sherwood Lake Club and the lake’s private ownership, and what a given lot’s deed actually carries in lake rights is a title question, not a listing claim; get it answered in escrow.

The four 1990s and 2000s tracts inside the gates are where a buyer enters the community. The Glen, 2000 to 2001, is the smallest houses at the lowest prices, 2,222 to 3,707 square feet at a median of $1,767,000. Meadows at Sherwood, 1996 to 2000, is the largest by sales — twelve since 2020 — at 2,548 to 3,561 square feet on lots of 7,800 to 21,800, median $2,173,000, with three single-story sales. Sherwood North Shore on Ravensbury Street, 1993 to 2008, is a size larger at a median of $2,472,500. Trentwood is the mixed tract of townhomes and houses, 1,964 to 3,758 square feet, with the widest fee range in the community as listings report it. The dues in all four run $700 to $925 a quarter for the gates, the streets and the common grounds, and the disclosure package will say what else.

This is the name most buyers mean by Lake Sherwood: the gated estate tract around the golf course, built from 1992 and still being finished, with 56 recorded sales since 2020 from $2,100,000 to $11,000,000 and a median of $5,125,000. The houses run from 3,025 to 9,438 square feet on lots from about a fifth of an acre on the fairway streets to several acres on the ridges, and thirteen of the 56 sales were single story. The top of the record is new construction: $11,000,000 on Queens Garden Drive in May 2025 for an 8,785-square-foot house built in 2024, and $10,000,000 on Elderoak Road in June 2023. Association dues are $2,341 to $2,458 a quarter as listings report them, which carries the gates, the guards and the private streets. Club membership is not included with the house.

Sherwood Country Club is private, with roughly 375 golf members and 175 tennis members by a published count, and membership is by application and separate from home ownership; buying inside the gates does not carry a membership, and the initiation and dues are set by the club. The Lake Club on the water is the second membership, and it is the one that governs use of the lake. A buyer who wants either should ask the clubs directly about current cost and availability before treating them as part of the purchase. What the clubs give every owner is the land use: a Nicklaus course and a private lake that will stay what they are.

The first reason is the lake: private, a century old, and the only one of its kind in Southern California with houses on the water. The second is the course and the club, for those who play. The third is the gates and the privacy, which is why the community draws buyers who could live anywhere. The fourth is the estate market itself: with North Ranch’s Country Club Estates, it is the top of the Conejo Valley, and the record shows it holds its value through cycles.

Lake Sherwood is in the Conejo Valley Unified School District. A secondary source gives Westlake Elementary, Colina Middle School and Westlake High School for the community’s addresses, and Westlake High is the school most buyers have in mind. The assignment comes from a secondary source rather than a district boundary document this guide has been able to verify; run the exact address through the Conejo Valley Unified locator before relying on it. The drive to the schools is down Potrero Road and Westlake Boulevard, which is the same drive as everything else.

Lake Sherwood is a ten-minute drive from Westlake Village’s shopping and the freeway, down Potrero Road to Westlake Boulevard, and that drive is the whole point and the whole cost: there is no store inside the community, and every errand is a trip. The lake, the clubs and the trails into the Santa Monica Mountains are the amenities. Hidden Valley, the ranch country next door, is where the horses are. The Ventura Freeway at Westlake Boulevard is about fifteen minutes in normal traffic, and the drive to the Westside is what it is from anywhere in the Conejo Valley.

The Murdock-era tracts sit behind gates with staffed entries, and each has an association whose fee, as listings report it, runs from $700 to $925 a quarter in the 1990s tracts to $2,341 to $2,458 a quarter in Sherwood Country Estates. What each covers and restricts — architectural review is strict in the estates, and the CC&Rs govern everything visible from the street — is not confirmed in any source Gary Jacobs has been able to verify; take the budget, the reserve study and the CC&Rs from the seller’s disclosure package and read them before removing a contingency. Outside the gates, on the old lakeshore streets, there is often no association at all, and the constraint is the county: Ventura County planning, building and fire, not a city hall.

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 September 2026, 62 homes in Lake Sherwood sold through the MLS, at prices from $1,650,000 to $11,000,000 and a median of $3,399,975. Over the longer record, 125 sales from April 2020 through September 2026 ran from $909,000 to $11,000,000 with a median of $3,775,000. The top of the record is new construction in Sherwood Country Estates and the largest houses on the water: $11,000,000 on Queens Garden Drive in May 2025, $10,730,000 on Lake Sherwood Drive in April 2023 and $10,000,000 on Elderoak Road in June 2023. The bottom is the old lakeshore: the 1932 cabin at $909,000 and a 2,222-square-foot single story in The Glen at $1,259,000 in August 2020.

The shape of the six years is the same as the rest of the Conejo Valley at the top of the market: a sharp rise from 2020 into 2022 and a band since, with the premium going to new construction, lake frontage and the ridge lots. Twenty-six of the 125 sales were single story, concentrated in Sherwood Country Estates and Meadows at Sherwood. Against North Ranch, the other estate market inside Westlake Village addresses, Lake Sherwood trades higher at the median — $3,775,000 against $2,000,000 — because it has no townhome tracts to pull the number down and because the lake and the gates carry a premium that North Ranch’s club does not.

Three lists. The 1990s and 2000s tract houses carry that decade’s items: original furnaces, water heaters and condensers at end of life, tile-roof underlayment approaching the end of its span, and the slab, stucco and window questions of any production house. The estates are individual, built by different contractors to different standards over thirty years, and a buyer should budget for a geotechnical review on any slope lot, a pool and equipment inspection, and a system-by-system look at a house that may have been remodeled in stages. The old lakeshore houses are the hardest: septic or sewer, the age of the dock and seawall, the condition of anything built before the current codes, and the permit history of every addition, all of it through the county.

No lease is recorded in the MLS sources this guide draws on, so it does not quote rents; a current figure should come from the leasing agents who work these streets. Leasing inside the gates is governed by each association’s rules, which should be read before buying as an investment, and a tenant does not inherit club membership.

Start with the drive, because it is daily: ten minutes to a store, fifteen to the freeway. Then the tract, because the name tells you the era, the fee and the price. Then the lake rights and the club, from the title and the club rather than the listing. Then the association package, from the disclosures. Then the house, with the inspector briefed for its decade and, on the lakeshore or a slope, a geotechnical engineer. Then the insurance quote, because the fire mapping here is not the same as in the city.

Estate buyers first, comparing Lake Sherwood with North Ranch, Hidden Hills and the coast, and choosing it for the lake, the course and the gates. Golfers second. Families third, in the 1990s tracts, for Westlake High and the privacy, accepting the drive. Second-home buyers fourth, for whom the drive is not a daily cost.

The comparison is North Ranch, the other estate market inside Westlake Village addresses: a dozen tracts from townhomes to Country Club Estates, on the freeway side of the community with its own shopping and a 27-hole club. North Ranch has the wider ladder and the convenience; Lake Sherwood has the lake and the higher median. Hidden Valley Estates, next door, is ranch property on acreage without gates or a club. Westlake Island and the lakefront tracts on Westlake Lake, inside the city, are the other way to live on water in Westlake Village, at a fraction of the price and a fraction of the privacy.

For a buyer, name the tract, settle the lake rights and the club question early, take the association package from the disclosures, and brief the inspector for the decade. On the lakeshore, add the county permit history, the septic or sewer question and a look at the dock and seawall. On any slope, add the geotechnical review. Everywhere, get the insurance quote before the contingency comes off.

For a seller, the comparable is the same tract and, in the estates, the same generation of construction: the record separates new and rebuilt houses from original 1990s ones by millions. State the tract, the lot size, whether the house is on the water and what the deed carries, the fee and the school assignment in the first lines of the listing; those are the questions every Lake Sherwood buyer asks first.