A cabin that Kenneth Roebbelen built by hand as a UC Davis student in 1974 has grown into a 48-acre El Dorado Hills compound with its own airstrip, helipad and a recreation center rivaling a country club, and it just hit the market for $6 million. The original cabin, built using only hand tools with no power tools and no electricity, still stands as part of the estate today.
The property's transformation from student project to sprawling compound is detailed in a report from the Sacramento Bee, which notes the family once owned 623 acres stretching to Folsom Lake before the current 48-acre parcel took shape. Roebbelen raised three children on the property with his wife, Kimberly, and the main residence itself, built between 2008 and 2010, now spans roughly 9,800 square feet according to the Roebbelen Estate Executive Summary marketing materials, which put the figure at 9,804 square feet with three distinct living quarters under one roof. That summary describes six bedrooms, 10 bathrooms, four kitchens, nine fireplaces, three laundry rooms and an art gallery inside the main house, along with a staircase rising more than 40 feet.
A Runway Built for Construction Business Travel
The estate's private runway was installed by Kenneth Roebbelen's father, according to the Bee's reporting, and it helped him reach construction projects across the western United States. The land also includes a hangar, a helipad, storage for RVs and boats, and a six-car garage. Kenneth Roebbelen is the former president of Roebbelen Contracting, Inc., the firm his father, Hans Roebbelen, founded in 1959 — a company whose corporate headquarters still sits nearby on Hawks Flight Court in El Dorado Hills, according to Roebbelen Contracting, Inc.
Hans Roebbelen, who died in August 2018 at age 90, was drafted into the German army at 15 during World War II, was held as a prisoner of war, and immigrated to Sacramento in 1953 with $50 before starting the contracting firm, according to an obituary published by The Sacramento Bee. That company has since built a substantial regional footprint, including a $78 million renovation of the historic Sacramento Municipal Utility District headquarters between 2017 and 2019 that earned LEED Gold certification, and naming rights through 2040 for the 160,000-square-foot Roebbelen Center at @the Grounds in Roseville, a deal reported by Construction Dive in 2020.
A Pool House That Doubles as a Neighborhood Rec Center
Added in 2024, the estate's pool house functions less like a backyard amenity and more like a private recreation center. It houses an 82-foot Junior Olympic lap pool, a children's pool, a hot tub, men's and women's private locker rooms, and a commercial-grade kitchen, bar and entertainment space across 2,200 square feet, per the Bee's account. Neighbors reportedly use the pool facility several times a week, and the pool house has occasionally pushed electricity use beyond what the property's solar system can offset.
That solar system is substantial in its own right: a roughly 38-kilowatt array paired with 10 Tesla batteries that generally offset the property's electricity consumption. Elsewhere on the grounds, a spring-fed pond connected to a creek was expanded to roughly twice its former surface area and is stocked with bass and bluegill, while a commercial-size greenhouse built around 2010 was used to start vegetable plants during winter, with excess garden produce going to a food bank in Folsom.
A Wedding for 200 and a Wine Cellar From Monterrey
The estate hosted one of the Roebbelens' daughters' weddings in 2011, drawing roughly 200 guests to a pergola and stage built for a 13-piece band. Inside the main house, a 2,300-bottle wine cellar features doors carved in Monterrey, Mexico, and even a freezer door was salvaged from a Sacramento high school remodeling project, small details that underscore the custom, decades-long build-out of the compound.
Listing agent Chris Wolfe of eXp Realty estimated the estate's replacement cost at $15 million, according to the Bee, framing the $6 million asking price as effectively a discount relative to what it would cost to build today. Kenneth and Kimberly Roebbelen are selling, per the same reporting, because they are traveling more and facing the maintenance demands of an estate of this scale — motives echoed in the Roebbelen Estate Executive Summary, which adds that the couple plans to relocate to Henderson, Nevada, to be closer to their children and grandchildren.
A Standout Even in a Hot Sacramento-Area Luxury Market
The $6 million listing arrives as El Dorado Hills real estate runs far cooler than the compound's price tag suggests. In August 2026, the median home closing price in the 95762 ZIP code was $900,000, according to Resideline, meaning the Roebbelen estate is asking more than six times the local median. Resideline's data on 465 closed sales in the area between February and August 2026 showed a middle-half price range of $740,000 to $1,290,000 and an average of $363 per square foot, with single-family homes making up 99% of those transactions.
The listing also lands amid a broader wave of high-end Sacramento-suburb properties hitting the market. Hoodline previously reported that Governor Gavin Newsom listed his Fair Oaks estate for $7.5 million in August 2026, a comparable benchmark for the region's surge in multi-million dollar suburban listings. Meanwhile, El Dorado Hills itself remains an unincorporated community in El Dorado County, though local officials released a draft environmental review in July clearing an initial hurdle toward potential municipal incorporation — a governance shift that could eventually shape land use around large private compounds like the Roebbelen estate.
