Lake Sherwood Homes for Sale

Ventura County, CA

Why People Move to Lake Sherwood

A private lake you are actually allowed to swim in. Most reservoirs in Southern California keep you out of the water. This one does not, so residents swim, fish, paddleboard and take boats out, and the houses on the shore have their own docks.
Gated, and surrounded by mountains rather than by more houses. The community sits in the Santa Monica Mountains with open space on most sides, which is why the roads in are two-lane and the ridgelines stay empty.
Two Jack Nicklaus courses inside one community. The championship course at Sherwood Country Club and a separate eighteen-hole par-three at Sherwood Lake Club, a few minutes apart.
Ten minutes from ordinary life. Westlake Village and Thousand Oaks handle the groceries, the restaurants and the schools, so you get the quiet without being far from anything.

The lake is man-made and it is old. The dam went up in 1904 and the water filled in behind it over the following winter, creating what was then called Potrero Lake. In 1921 Douglas Fairbanks shot his Robin Hood around its shoreline, the ranch became known as Sherwood Forest, and the name stuck to the lake and then to the community.

Living in Lake Sherwood

The lake is the amenity. Swimming, fishing, kayaking and paddleboarding are all allowed, and it is fed by springs and mountain watershed rather than piped in. If you are on the shore you can be on the water in about a minute.
Sherwood Country Club: the Jack Nicklaus championship course that opened in 1989, a Georgian clubhouse and a driving range. It has hosted the Tiger Woods World Challenge and the Zozo Championship, so the course you play on a Saturday is one you have watched on television.
Twelve tennis courts, and two of them are grass. Eight hard courts, two clay and two grass, with one of the hard courts set up with stadium seating. There is a pool, a gym, a spa and a sand volleyball court alongside.
Sherwood Lake Club: a second Jack Nicklaus course that opened in 2006, eighteen holes and all par threes. You can finish a round in an afternoon.
Trailheads instead of sidewalks. Boney Mountain and the Santa Monica Mountains back straight onto the community, and Potrero Road is one of the best road rides in the county.

Children here go to Conejo Valley Unified schools, the same district that runs Thousand Oaks and Westlake Village.

Neighborhoods in Lake Sherwood: the Lakefront, the Country Club and Trentwood

The lakefront, along Lake Sherwood Drive: the houses with water at the bottom of the garden and a dock of their own. This is the smallest group in the community and the only one where you step out of the house and into a boat.
Above the lake: the hillside lots looking down over the water, where you get the view and the quiet without the dock. Older and more varied architecturally than the country club side.
Sherwood Country Club: guard-gated, arranged around the championship course, and the most formal part of the community. Large lots, newer construction, and you walk to the clubhouse.
Trentwood: a gated pocket of its own on the Westlake side, closer to the way out toward town.
Hidden Valley, next door: not Lake Sherwood, but worth driving. Horse ranches on large acreage along Potrero Road, with no gates and no lake, and it is what the whole valley looked like before the clubs arrived.

The lake and the golf course sit on opposite sides of the same valley, and the houses around each were built in different decades to different plans. Walk the lakefront and the club in the same afternoon before you decide.

Homes for Sale in Lake Sherwood

A homeowners association owns the lake and the dam. The state lists the Sherwood Valley Homeowners Association as the owner of record of Lake Sherwood dam, which is certified and inspected by California's Division of Safety of Dams. That is unusual, and it is the thing to understand before you buy here.
Lake access runs through the association, not the shoreline. Boat registration, launching, guest use and where a dock can go are all association matters. Ask which association a specific house belongs to and what it actually entitles you to on the water.
Club membership is separate from the house. Buying inside the gates does not hand you a country club membership. Treat the two as different transactions and ask early.
Three kinds of property, really. A lakefront house with a dock, a golf-course estate behind the guard gate, or a hillside lot with a view of both. They are priced on completely different things.
Budget for insurance from the start. This is the Santa Monica Mountains, so coverage is a planning item rather than an afterthought. Price it on the specific address early, and see what is for sale across the valley while you do.

The lake is what makes this market its own thing rather than an extension of Agoura Hills or Westlake. It is also the part of the purchase buyers investigate last, which is backwards. Read the association documents before you fall for a view.

Buying at Lake Sherwood with a Thousand Oaks Real Estate Agent

A dock on the water, a fairway lot behind a guard gate and a hillside view over both are three different purchases, and each one comes with its own association documents. Reach out to Shen Realty and we will tell you which association covers the house you are looking at and what it gets you on the lake. We have worked this coastline and the Conejo Valley for almost 30 years, out of Sotheby's International Realty.

Common Questions About Lake Sherwood

Can you actually swim in Lake Sherwood?

Yes. It is a body-contact lake, so swimming, fishing, paddleboarding and boating are all permitted, which is rare for a reservoir in Southern California. Access and boat rules run through the homeowners association rather than a public agency, so what you are allowed to do depends on your membership rather than on turning up.

Who owns the lake?

The residents do, collectively, through their own association. That is genuinely rare: almost every other lake this size in the state answers to a water district or a city. Here it means lake rights, dues and dock permissions live in association documents, and the county has nothing to do with them. Read those documents the way you would read a title report.

Is Lake Sherwood in Malibu?

No. It is an unincorporated community in Ventura County, in the Santa Monica Mountains south of Thousand Oaks and west of Westlake Village. It shares the mountain range with Malibu and nothing else: different county, different schools, different planning department. We cover it as part of our Westlake and Agoura Hills region.

How hard is it to get insurance here?

Harder than down in the valley, but it gets done. Mountain addresses are harder to place with a single carrier, so owners here often end up stacking two policies, or leaning on the state FAIR Plan for the part nobody else will take. Our insurance guide sets out how that stack works. It was written about Malibu, over the ridge, but the insurers and the FAIR Plan are the same ones you will deal with at Lake Sherwood. Price a specific address early, not once you are in escrow.

Which schools serve Lake Sherwood?

Conejo Valley Unified. Its catchment stretches well past the gates, over Thousand Oaks and Westlake Village too, and which school a house feeds into is set by its address and not by the Lake Sherwood name on it. Pull the assignment for the exact address.