A nearly 9,000-square-foot estate built in 1916 along the fairways of the Diablo Country Club has hit the market for $19.5 million, offering a rare shot at one of the founding homes of one of the Bay Area's most exclusive and secluded enclaves. The property, known as Fairway Oaks, sits on 1.5 acres at 1817 Calle Arroyo and comes packed with amenities that read more like a private resort than a single-family home.
The listing, first reported by the San Francisco Chronicle, is being handled by Marilee Headen, a longtime Diablo resident of 44 years who works as a local listing agent with Compass Real Estate. Headen told the paper that the current owners, who bought the estate for $11 million in 2014, have added new furnishings, a pickleball court and a wine cellar since taking ownership. The five-bedroom, eight-bathroom home also includes a spa house, guest house, barbecue pavilion, mini golf course, indoor gym and sauna, a wine cellar holding 4,000 bottles, and cave storage for cases.
A Founding Home in a Golf Resort Enclave
Fairway Oaks is considered one of the original homes in Diablo, built after developer Robert Noble Burgess bought the land for the Diablo Country Club in 1912 and went on to build both the club and the mansion itself, according to the Chronicle's reporting. The prairie-style home cost roughly $20,000 to construct in 1916, per the Diablo homeowners' association, and Diablo itself had become mostly a resort community by the 1920s, with the country club at one point including its own hotel.
The estate's original owner did not hold onto it for long. Burgess went bankrupt within three years of building the home and was forced to sell it, though his son, Robert Jr., later reacquired the estate and lived there from 1951 to 1961, according to historical reporting from SFGate. Per the article's reporting, Shirley Temple supposedly once slept in one of the home's bedrooms, a detail that has followed the estate through its long ownership history.
Designed by an Architect With Deep Bay Area Ties
The mansion was designed by architect George Applegarth, who also designed San Francisco's Legion of Honor. Applegarth studied drawing under Bernard Maybeck at UC Berkeley before graduating from the École des Beaux-Arts in Paris in 1906, and he went on to design other major Northern California landmarks, including San Francisco's Clift Hotel, according to background from the UC Berkeley College of Environmental Design. During World War I, Applegarth also served as acting architect under Maybeck to lay out the company town of Clyde, California, built for shipyard workers in Contra Costa County.
The grounds were designed by landscape architect Thomas Church, a pioneer of the Modernist California Style of garden design that blended indoor and outdoor living and popularized biomorphic, kidney-shaped swimming pools, per the PureModern design archive. Headen said the house retains its original shape and style despite the decades of ownership changes, and that Fairway Oaks includes a private putting green in addition to its pickleball court and mini golf setup.
East Bay Weighs Whether AI Wealth Will Follow
San Francisco has experienced surging demand for luxury homes during the AI boom, but San Jose and Oakland have not seen the same surge in luxury home sales and prices, according to Redfin data covering May through July 2026 cited in the Chronicle's reporting. Redfin chief economist Daryl Fairweather said AI-driven housing demand may eventually spread from San Francisco to the East Bay, while Redfin agent Jessi Crummey said Bay Area buyers can generally get more housing value outside of San Francisco proper.
Headen said she anticipates strong interest in Fairway Oaks from artificial-intelligence wealth and expects the home to attract a young family seeking golf, tennis, swimming and bocce activities. She also told the Chronicle that the property needs the right buyer and estimated that a home like Fairway Oaks would likely sell for around $28 million if it were located in a Silicon Valley luxury neighborhood instead of Diablo.
A Small, Tightly Held Community
Diablo remains a small, unincorporated enclave with just 385 homes, adjacent to the Diablo Country Club, whose golf course is the only one in the world co-designed by Golden Age architects Jack Neville, designer of Pebble Beach Golf Links, and William Watson, designer of San Francisco's Olympic Club and Harding Park, according to a release detailing the club's history. As of the 2020 U.S. Census, the community had a total population of 1,255 residents across 1.36 square miles, with a 100 percent owner-occupancy rate, per data compiled via Zip-Codes.com. Local public infrastructure and services there are administered by the Diablo Community Services District rather than an incorporated city government. The Diablo Community Services District publishes financial documents. The Diablo Community Services District's fiscal year runs from July 1 through June 30, according to the district's financial documents page. Contra Costa County's Historic Resources Inventory acknowledges Diablo as an unincorporated site of historical significance with numerous historical resources. Because Diablo is unincorporated, Contra Costa County controls land use and development there, according to county planning materials.
The country club itself completed a $41 million master plan renovation across all its facilities and its historic 18-hole course in June 2024, continuing a run of major private investment in the enclave. Real estate market data from May 2026 puts the median home price in Diablo's 94528 ZIP code between $2.4 million and $2.79 million, according to the Diablo Real Estate Guide — a range that puts Fairway Oaks' $19.5 million asking price well above the neighborhood norm. The Chronicle reports that the current owners paid $11 million for the estate in 2014.
