Some real-estate stories are about more than square footage or price. The California ranch belonging to the film director James Cameron is one such example. According to a Forbes report, the Oscar-winning film director purchased a 102-acre property on the Gaviota Coast of Santa Barbara County in 1999 for $4.375 million. Twenty-four years later, in July 2023, Cameron listed the ranch for $33 million.
The property sits along the Pacific coastline within Hollister Ranch, a 14,000-acre rural residential subdivision and working cattle ranch that was divided into 136 parcels in 1971. The ranch encompasses about 8.5 miles of shoreline, including several beaches. For Cameron, the ranch served as more than a getaway. Forbes reported that he wrote most of the first Avatar script and about half of the next two instalments there, spending months at a time working in the upper library of the house or in the guest house.
