Scroll through listings behind the Sherwood gates and you will find agents describing access to "the country club" as though there were only one to refer to. There are two now, and they are not related the way the shared name implies. One has been member-owned since 2007. The other has spent this year under construction and is set to reopen under a new name before the season is out.
If you are comparing Lake Sherwood against other Conejo Valley enclaves this fall, the club your future home does or doesn't touch matters more to its value than the number sitting on any single portal snapshot. Here is why, and how to tell the two clubs apart before you write an offer.
Two Clubs, One Name, Different Owners
David Murdock bought the roughly 1,900-acre parcel around what is now Lake Sherwood in the 1980s, and by 1989 he had built the golf course that carries the Sherwood name today, a Jack Nicklaus championship 18 laid into a river valley of transplanted oaks and manufactured streams. Golf Digest still rates it a strong Top 150-200 course nationally.
That golf course, Sherwood Country Club, has not belonged to Murdock for nearly two decades. In 2007, its members took out a $14 million loan from a local bank and bought the club outright, adding nearly 100 new members in a four-month drive that brought total membership to 350. Since then it has operated as a member-owned club, separate from anything else Murdock controlled at Sherwood.
What Murdock kept was the other property: Sherwood Lake Club, built around a different Nicklaus design, an 18-hole "Bear's Best" par-3 course, one of only two such layouts Nicklaus has ever built and the only one in the United States. Murdock held onto that club until he died on June 9, 2025, at age 102. Earlier this year, Rick Caruso, the developer behind The Grove, The Americana at Brand, and the Rosewood Miramar Beach resort in Montecito, acquired it. Caruso has since rebranded it The Miramar Lake Club and his team has said they are targeting a fall 2026 opening, a window that starts right about now.
| Sherwood Country Club | The Miramar Lake Club | |
|---|---|---|
| Ownership | Member-owned since 2007 | Caruso, acquired earlier this year |
| Course | Jack Nicklaus championship 18-hole | Nicklaus "Bear's Best" par-3, 1 of 2 worldwide |
| Status | Operating, unchanged | Under renovation, targeting fall 2026 reopening |
| Was part of the Caruso deal? | No | Yes |
That table is the whole point of this post. A listing that name-drops "the country club" without specifying which one is telling you almost nothing about what the home actually connects to.
Why the Median Stopped Making Sense
While the club story was unfolding behind the gates, the pricing data for Lake Sherwood was doing something that should make any buyer suspicious of a single snapshot. In October 2025, the reported median sale price for the neighborhood sat at $2.2 million, down 35.6 percent year over year. Five months later, in a March 2026 market report, the exact same figure showed up again: $2.2 million, down the same 35.6 percent.
That kind of stillness is not what a healthy market looks like. It is what happens when a rolling median is calculated from so few transactions that it simply freezes in place because nothing new has closed to move it. Then, over the three months ending in May 2026, a cluster of sales did close, nine of them, and the median leapt to roughly $5.0 million. By June, a different data provider put the median list price closer to $4.45 million with the median sold price back down around $2.9 million.
None of those figures are wrong. They are each an accurate snapshot of a market small enough that a single closing can swing the headline number by seven figures. If you are cross-shopping Lake Sherwood against North Ranch, Westlake Village, or another Conejo Valley enclave using whatever median happened to populate a site that week, you are reading noise, not signal.
The Bet That Actually Tells You Something
While the median bounced, something more durable was happening a few hundred yards from the water. Caruso didn't buy Sherwood Lake Club after months of due diligence. In his own account of the deal, he described getting a cold call from a broker on a Friday afternoon while he was at home with his family in Newport Beach, spending about twenty minutes on the phone, and telling his team to close it as soon as possible.
"I knew Dave Murdock well, and I knew the quality that he put into everything that he built. The whole development behind the gates out there, it's really one of a kind. To own part of that with our own club, I thought it was an opportunity that we couldn't pass up."
That is a structural bet on the neighborhood's amenity floor, made by a developer whose track record is reshaping how a property is perceived well before the appraisal data catches up. Caruso's team is putting a new 18,000-square-foot clubhouse, a resort-style pool, a signature restaurant, and a wellness center into a property that will also connect to his broader Miramar ecosystem, including the Miramar Beach Club in Montecito. His own press materials cite National Golf Foundation data showing golf participation up more than 50 percent over the past decade as part of the reasoning behind the investment.
That kind of commitment is a better leading indicator for Lake Sherwood than a monthly median calculated on nine sales. Whether it produces a durable increase in home values, or a temporary bump in interest while renovations wrap up, is a separate question. But it is the question worth tracking, not the median.
What Actually Separates a Well-Priced Lot Here
Under its prior ownership, Sherwood Lake Club built its membership structure around lot location. Class A memberships, capped at 185, were reserved for homeowners whose lots directly bordered the lake. Everyone else, whether on a golf fairway or tucked into one of the interior gated pods, held a different tier of access, if any at all.
That distinction predates Caruso's purchase and there is no public confirmation yet of how membership access will be restructured once the Miramar Lake Club fully reopens. What is confirmed is that the physical facts on the ground, lake frontage versus fairway frontage versus interior pod, have historically determined which amenities a given address could actually reach. A portal search will show you square footage and a list price. It will not tell you whether a specific lot qualifies for lake access, sits within view of the new clubhouse renovation, or is functionally landlocked from both clubs entirely.
That is the specific homework worth doing before an offer goes in on anything inside the Sherwood gates this fall: confirm which club, if either, actually attaches to the lot, and whether that access is transferable or tied to the current owner.
What This Means If You're Comparing Enclaves Right Now
If Lake Sherwood is one of several Conejo Valley neighborhoods on your list this fall, the takeaway is not that the median price is unreliable, though it is. It's that the number worth tracking right now is happening at the club level, not the listing level. A rebrand this significant, backed by a developer with a specific track record of reshaping perception ahead of appraisal data, is the kind of local signal that a generic market report will not surface for another year.
Frequently Asked Questions
Is Sherwood Country Club the same club Rick Caruso bought? No. Sherwood Country Club has been member-owned since 2007 and was not part of the Caruso transaction. Caruso acquired the separately owned Sherwood Lake Club in February 2026 and has rebranded it The Miramar Lake Club.
Does every home in Lake Sherwood come with country club or lake club access? Access has historically been tied to lot type. Lake-bordering lots carried Class A membership eligibility under Sherwood Lake Club's prior structure, while fairway and interior-pod lots carried different terms. Buyers should confirm current membership rules for a specific address rather than assume access based on the neighborhood name alone.
When does The Miramar Lake Club open? Caruso's team has targeted a fall 2026 opening, which puts the relaunch at or near the present moment.
Lake Sherwood's next chapter is being written behind a set of gates most portal searches can't see past. If you're weighing this enclave against others in the Conejo Valley, or you want a read on how a specific lot connects to what's changing at the club level, Frontgate Real Estate can walk you through it property by property. Get Access to Off-Market Listings.
