The name is a real one. John Morrison and his family took up the ranch house at the mouth of Cheeseboro Canyon in 1904 — a building that dates to the late 1800s, when Pablo Reyes lived there — and ranched the land for close to sixty years, clearing it for hay, raising horses and cattle for the local market, and putting up the barns, cisterns and corrals that a working ranch needed. The house survived into the National Recreation Area era as a landmark a half-mile up the Chesebro Canyon trail, and was lost in the Woolsey Fire of November 2018; a historical marker stands at the site. The ranch land below it, between the canyon and the freeway, is what became Morrison Ranch.

It was subdivided in the third push of the city’s growth. The first tracts had followed the freeway in the late 1960s and the west side had filled in through the 1970s; the 1980s were the decade, in the city’s own account of itself, when the large land areas on the east side were subdivided into housing tracts, and Agoura Hills incorporated in 1982 in the middle of it. The recorded sales put East Meadows first, from 1979 to 1985, North Meadows in 1982, and Ranch South and the Highlands from 1983 to 1987 and 1988. What was built was the product of that decade rather than the last one: larger houses on larger lots, five bedrooms and three-car garages in the Highlands, two-story plans almost throughout, and associations that carried greenbelts and mature landscaping rather than a pool. The builders are not named in any source Gary Jacobs has been able to verify; the recorded tract maps at the Los Angeles County Recorder are the documents that would settle it.

The Highlands is the top of the market in Agoura Hills outside Old Agoura, and the numbers say why. Twenty-three recorded sales since May 2020 run from $1,630,000 to $3,500,000 with a median of $2,600,000, for houses of 3,833 to 5,902 square feet — median 4,610 — on lots that median about 15,600 square feet and reach 28,000. Five bedrooms is the norm. Twenty-one of the twenty-three sales are two story. Laro Drive carries the most sales, with Weeping Willow Drive, Bertrand Drive, Greenbriar Court, Macadam Court, Queens Way and Deerview Court behind it, and the top of the record is a 4,935-square-foot five-bedroom on Deerview Court at $3,500,000 in May 2024, a 4,412-square-foot house on Weeping Willow Drive at $3,200,000 in June 2025, and a 4,925-square-foot house on Greenbriar Court at $3,068,400 in June 2023. The floor was 2020, at $1,825,000 and $1,968,500 on Queens Way.

What a buyer is paying for in the Highlands is the lot and the plan together: a third of an acre with a house of nearly 5,000 square feet on it, on the slope above the rest of the ranch, is a combination the rest of the city does not offer at any price outside Old Agoura, and the association fee — $255 to $256 a quarter in most listings, $600 to $780 a year in others — is small against the house.

Ranch South is the largest of the four by sales and the center of the Morrison Ranch market. Twenty-two recorded sales since July 2020 run from $1,340,000 to $2,425,000 with a median of $1,770,000, for houses of 2,369 to 4,000 square feet — median 3,267 — on lots that median about 10,200 square feet. Twenty of the twenty-two are two story; the two single-story sales, at 2,369 square feet, are the entry to the tract. Middle Crest Drive carries the most sales, with Meadowmist Way, Hempstead Drive, Green Meadow Drive, Woodbrook Drive, Stonecrest Drive, Willowtree Drive and Woodglen Drive behind it. The tract also takes in the two short Oakpath Drive cul-de-sacs that run east and west off Grey Rock Road just south of Thousand Oaks Boulevard, a group of about fifteen houses set apart from the rest of Ranch South; the 4,000-square-foot five-bedroom that tops the tract size range sold there at $2,135,000 in January 2024 on a 10,824-square-foot lot. The top of the record is a 3,524-square-foot four-bedroom on Willowtree Drive on a 19,500-square-foot lot at $2,425,000 in May 2023 and a 3,359-square-foot five-bedroom on Woodglen Drive at $2,350,000 the month before; the floor is a 2,369-square-foot single-story on Meadowmist Way at $1,390,000 in July 2024.

The fee reads several ways in the listings — $255 to $262 a quarter most often, $85 a month or $1,020 a year in others — and this guide does not resolve whether that is one association reported differently or more than one; the certification for the specific parcel will.

The two Meadows tracts are the entry to Morrison Ranch, and the older part of it. East Meadows, built from 1979 to 1985, has fourteen recorded sales since March 2020 from $1,175,000 to $2,125,000 with a median of about $1,527,500, for houses of 2,343 to 3,705 square feet on lots around 7,300 square feet; four of the fourteen are single story, which is the highest share in the ranch, and the floor of the whole ranch — a 2,600-square-foot single-story three-bedroom on Catherwood Court at $1,255,501 in August 2023 — is here. Saddlebrook Drive, Catherwood Court, Garden Oaks Court and Woodcreek Court carry the sales, and the top is a 3,705-square-foot five-bedroom on Fountainwood Street at $2,125,000 in May 2023.

North Meadows, built in 1982, is almost entirely Fountainwood Street, with Fenworth Court and Kerryhill Court: ten recorded sales from $1,323,000 to $2,072,500 with a median of $1,675,000, for houses of 2,343 to 3,523 square feet on lots around 8,700 square feet. The 3,157-square-foot four-bedroom plan on Fountainwood Street has sold at $1,925,000 in April 2025 and $2,072,500 that September, which is the clearest read on what a renovated Meadows house is worth today. Fees in both Meadows tracts are reported at $172 to $255 a quarter or $540 to $690 a year.

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, 33 homes across the four tracts sold through the MLS, at prices from $1,175,000 to $3,200,000 and a median of $1,829,000, and they sort by tract before they sort by anything else. Over the longer record since 2020, the Highlands is a market of its own at a median of $2,600,000; Ranch South sits at $1,770,000; North Meadows at $1,675,000; East Meadows at about $1,527,500. Within each tract the two-story plans carry the volume and the single-story homes — ten of sixty-nine since 2020 — trade at a discount to the tract median that reflects their smaller size rather than a lack of demand.

The shape of the six years is the same across the ranch: strong appreciation from 2020 into 2023 and 2024, and a band since. The Highlands moved from under $2 million in 2020 to $3.5 million at the top in 2024; the Meadows plan on Fountainwood Street moved from the $1.3 millions to $2,072,500. Against the rest of the city, Morrison Ranch is the top of the tract market by a wide margin — Chateau Springs, the other 1980s tract, medians $1,500,000, and the 1970s west-side tracts $985,000 to $1,200,000 — and only Old Agoura, at a median of $2,365,000 for acre lots, sits alongside the Highlands.

The first reason is the house. Nowhere else in Agoura Hills does a tract offer five bedrooms, 4,000 to 5,900 square feet and a three-car garage on a third of an acre, and outside the Highlands the ranch still offers the largest houses on the largest lots of any tract in the city. The second is the streetscape: forty years of association greenbelts and mature trees have produced the kind of street the 1970s tracts cannot match. The third is the canyon at the back door. The fourth is the schools. And the fifth is the record, which shows the strongest appreciation in the city from 2020 to 2024 and a top — $3,500,000 — that only Old Agoura exceeds.

Morrison Ranch is an association neighborhood in the way the 1970s tracts to the west are not, and it shows in the streets: greenbelts, mature trees and maintained common landscaping are what the listings photograph, and an architectural committee has a say over what an owner does to the outside of a house. Morrison Ranch Estates HOA, managed by HOA Organizers with a community manager at (818) 574-8261, publishes its architectural guidelines and forms through its portal; which of the four tracts it covers, and whether the others are separate associations, is not something the public record settles and this guide does not guess.

The fee, across the sixty-nine sales, is most often reported at $255 to $262 a quarter, with variants of $172 a quarter, $540 to $1,020 a year and a few monthly figures. On a $1.8 million house that is a rounding error, and what it buys is the streetscape rather than a pool or a clubhouse: no pool, tennis court or clubhouse appears in the listing amenities for any of the four tracts. A buyer should take the fee, the association and the architectural guidelines from the certification for the specific parcel, and should read the guidelines before planning anything visible from the street.

Morrison Ranch is in the Las Virgenes Unified School District, and listing data for addresses across the four tracts 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. A family buying for a specific school should run the exact address through the Las Virgenes address locator before removing contingencies.

Morrison Ranch is the part of Agoura Hills that backs onto the Santa Monica Mountains National Recreation Area at Cheeseboro and Palo Comado Canyons, and the trail up Chesebro Canyon past the Morrison Ranch House site is the neighborhood’s back yard for anyone who walks, rides or runs; this guide does not name a trailhead within walking distance of a specific street, because that depends on the parcel, but the canyon is a short drive from every street in the ranch. Inside the tracts the greenbelts and the association landscaping are the everyday amenity, and the streets are residential loops and courts rather than through routes.

The 101 is a few minutes away at the east end of the city, and the freeway corridor is where the errands are: groceries, pharmacies, banks and medical offices along the frontage roads of Agoura Hills, with Calabasas a few minutes east and Westlake Village a few minutes west. Every home has a garage — three-car in much of the Highlands — and commuters face the usual Conejo Valley pattern, eastbound in the morning and westbound in the evening, with Kanan Road the route toward the coast.

These houses are thirty-five to forty-five years old, and construction of the 1980s brings a different list from the 1970s tracts: copper supply lines rather than galvanised, better glazing and insulation, but also original furnaces and water heaters at or past end of life, tile roofs whose underlayment has not lasted as well as the tile, early vinyl or aluminium windows, and in some homes of this vintage polybutylene supply piping, which is the one item to ask about by name. Additions and pool installations are common on lots of this size, and their permit history 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 Highlands sits on the slope, and parcels there can carry retaining walls, drainage and slope-maintenance obligations that the flat Meadows lots do not. And the whole ranch backs onto open space toward Cheeseboro Canyon, so defensible space, brush clearance and the cost and availability of insurance are live questions on the edge streets in a way they are not in the middle of the city; establish the insurance position before the appraisal. On the remodel side the record says the money is in the kitchen, the primary suite, the floors, the glass and the yard, and that a 1980s two-story that has been opened up sells at the top of its tract.

No lease is recorded in the MLS sources this guide draws on, so it does not quote a rent for the ranch; a current figure should come from the leasing agents who work these streets. What can be said is that a four- or five-bedroom house of 3,000 to 5,000 square feet in the Las Virgenes district lets to a specific and well-funded tenant — a relocating executive, a family between houses — and that the association’s rules on leasing and the architectural guidelines bind a landlord as much as an owner-occupier. Read them before committing, and budget for the roof, the systems and the landscaping that the fee does not carry.

Start with which tract you are buying, because the four are four markets: a Highlands comparable will misprice a Meadows house by a million dollars and the reverse. Then the association: confirm which one covers the parcel, what the fee is and what the architectural guidelines allow, because on this ranch the committee has a real say over the outside of the house. Then the site: slope and drainage in the Highlands, fire and insurance on any street that backs onto open space, and the permit history of any addition or pool on lots this size. Then the house, with the inspector briefed on 1980s construction and asked by name about polybutylene. Then the floor count, because single-story homes are ten in sixty-nine and mostly in the Meadows and Ranch South. Then the schools, through the district locator. And finally the price, which sits at the top of the city’s tract market and should be underwritten against the same tract’s last two years rather than against the ranch as a whole.

Families first, and families who have already lived in the Conejo Valley: the buyer for a Highlands house is often moving up from Ranch South or from a Westlake Village tract, and the buyer for a Meadows house is often moving up from Fountainwood or Hillrise. Executives relocating to the corridor second, for the five-bedroom two-story on the large lot and the schools. Downsizers third, and only for the handful of single-story homes in the Meadows and Ranch South, which is why those sell quickly when they appear. What the ranch draws less often is the buyer who wants one level in a house of this size, because the plans of the 1980s put the bedrooms upstairs, and the buyer who wants no association, because the streetscape is the association’s work.

Within Agoura Hills the only tract of the same era is Chateau Springs, 1983 to 1989: entirely two-story houses of 2,489 to 3,338 square feet on lots around 6,800 square feet at a median of $1,500,000, with a park in the center and a fee of about $140 to $188 a year. It is the Meadows product on a smaller lot at a lower price, and it is where a buyer priced out of Ranch South looks next. The 1970s west-side tracts — Fountainwood at $1,200,000, Hillrise at about $1,032,000, Lake Lindero at $985,000 — are a different market, with smaller houses on smaller lots and nominal or troubled associations. Old Agoura, up Chesebro Road, is the only part of the city that trades above the Highlands, at a median of $2,365,000 for acre lots and horses and a top of $6,400,000.

Across the city line, Three Springs in Westlake Village, 1988 onward, is the closest comparison in product and era — 2,800 to 4,300-square-foot two-story houses at a median around $2.15 million, with a $270-a-year association — and the Highlands trades above it.

Figures are from CSMAR MLS sales records for 2020 through mid-2026 as carried in this site’s listing feed, and from the Old Agoura guide on this site.

For a buyer, name the tract before the search, because the comparables, the lots and the prices are different in each. Then the association: the certification for the parcel, the fee, the architectural guidelines and any minutes that mention an assessment. Then the site: slope and drainage in the Highlands, insurance on the open-space edge, permits on any addition or pool. Then the house, with the inspector briefed on the 1980s list. Then the schools, through the district locator. And then the offer, underwritten against the same tract’s last two years of sales by plan and floor count.

For a seller, the comparable is the same tract, not the ranch, and the sales at the top of each tract are the renovated ones: $3,500,000 and $3,200,000 in the Highlands, $2,425,000 and $2,350,000 in Ranch South, $2,072,500 in North Meadows, $2,125,000 in East Meadows. Lead with the tract, the lot and the bedroom count, which are what the buyer is searching on, and with the canyon, which is what the photographs cannot show. Kitchens, primary suites, floors, glass and yards return; a permitted addition returns; an unpermitted one is a negotiation, and on this ranch the architectural committee will have a view of it too.