Bars on the second story windows? Must be some big skeeters up there in Rainbow.

Luxury and opulence are obviously the prime factors underpinning what we do here at Unreal. Whether that means ultramodern sleekness in a living space rivaling the size of a large grocery store, a penthouse unit atop one of the tony high-rises Downtown, or the classic refinement of the turn-of-the-last-century, posh living is usually what dominates. Still, just because you’re rich doesn’t necessarily mean you’re fancy. So this week we’ve got a treat for our expansive multi-millionaire readership, the sort more at home clomping along a hiking trail, strolling farmland to check on the crops, or boating out on a lake. Except, you know, the lake and trails are all privately owned, so you don’t have to share them with anyone.

“Welcome to Rosa Sattoria, a beautiful Oasis located here in Southern California,” opens the pitch for 6036 Rainbow Heights Road, a 100-acre plot of land with a Fallbrook ZIP code that’s actually closer to the tiny hamlet of Rainbow, just a couple of miles from the county’s northern border. Our photo tour opens with a heavily-photoshopped but still compelling photo of the aforementioned private lake, which occupies about two acres, and which and the listing tells us is as deep as 16 feet. “Get ready for a summer to remember...jet skis, rope swings and a jumping platform provide fun for all ages.” While summer may not be exactly around the corner, we should probably take note that the property has been on and off-market for a few years now, so perhaps at one point, this copy made more sense.

Oceans are so public. Better to just own a lake.

We get several more shots of the lake before we proceed to the gated entry that leads us (judging by the fact that we get four successive photos of it) down a very long, tree-lined driveway to the 3568-square-foot main residence, built in 1970 and featuring four bedrooms and three baths. The front isn’t particularly impressive, though I do like the path down to the front door, with the lower level sunken below road level. Still, I’m left wondering why there are bars on some of the windows, particularly the second-floor ones. Who is getting through the gate and fence (the listing says “approximately 95% of the property is already fenced”), and are they really bringing a ladder to get up to that level? Even in my considerably less savory neighborhood, barred windows are generally reserved for the ground floor.

Before we get inside, there are more photos of the grounds, which “offer private picnic areas or camping grounds, with guest bathrooms and showers nearby.” There’s some water flowing through a ditch with a small bridge at one point — maybe this is the stream that feeds the lake? Off to the side is one of those picnic area with granite slab tables and tree stumps hacked down into chairs.

We finally make it to the arched brick entryway (also heavily fortified, with more iron across the door and windows) and into a Saltillo-tiled living room. The space is very much from 1970, with exposed brick walls and rough-hewn beams supporting the thick plaster ceiling. It seems well preserved, and the heavy wood coffee and end tables contribute to the retro look and feel of the space, which I like.

The kitchen seems to have received some updating sometime in the last decade or two, and it’s functional and spacious without calling for any boasting about “chef’s delight” this-or-that in the way of appliances or appointments. We pass from there to an efficient office that appears to feature some sort of teddy bear wearing a pilgrim’s hat straddling a porthole high on the wall, and then to a bedroom outfitted with a huge four-post bed. The orange-reddish tile continues to flow from room to room, which I guess explains why there’s a bath mat next to the bed. Better not to start your day on a mountain winter morning by getting out of bed and shocking yourself on a freezing stone floor.

The baths seem to have been updated around the same time as the kitchen, and in some of the other bedrooms, we actually do see a bit of carpet on the floor. I know trends have shifted over time, from the durable hardwood flooring favored a century ago to wall-to-wall carpet in the latter half of the 1900s and back to solid surfaces again, but hear me out: carpet belongs in bedrooms, solid floors go everywhere else. I want my bedroom warm and comfy, but whoever decided to carpet the kitchen in the first house I owned can get right the hell out. Bathroom carpet comes in a close second.

An interesting flooring choice can be found in a low-ceilinged room that might be an attic: it looks like the floor is just 4x8 sheets of plywood, but they’ve been sanded down smooth and then stained to form a surface simpler and cheaper than hardwood, but not altogether unattractive. If I had a finished attic, I might do something like this.

The listing doesn’t mention the garage size, but it must be huge. We first get a shot showing a black sedan taking up just a tiny chunk of space otherwise given over to storage; then in the next photo, there’s an old red Ferrari surrounded by more mountains of stuff. We didn’t even get a hint of the latter vehicle in the first picture.

Back outside, we get a few photos of the two-bedroom “caretaker’s house” that seems to have been nicely (if modestly) remodeled, a building that looks like a public park bathroom (they did tell us there were a few of these), and some of the other garages and sheds. We don’t see the two “farm worker trailers,” but given that this is the full description of them, I don’t imagine they’re very attractive. We also get more shots of the grounds and lake, including a small waterfall from a stream that looks much more natural than the ditch we saw earlier.

We’ve been focusing on the forest and park settings of the property on our tour, but we’re also reminded that Rosa Sattoria Ranch is a working farm: 70 of the nearly 101 acres are dedicated to an avocado grove, one that we’re told is capable of producing over 950,000 pounds of fruit per year. There’s also “an arboretum with labeled species, genus, and origin, 100’s of palm trees, in addition to macadamia nut, oranges, lemons, pear, and grapefruit trees.”

An old listing for the property promoting it as a business more than a residence tells us that the property had $735,000 in net operating income from the groves in 2020, that those groves are fed by five on-property wells, and that there’s room for a helicopter pad (though with 100 acres, I’d imagine it’s hard for there not to be).

Public records list a Marrocco family as the property’s current owner, which matches the entry signs featured in the photos. There’s no history of any publicly recorded sales in at least the past 20 years, though the ranch has been listed for sale at least three times since 2019. The original asking price of $10,995,000 was raised to $11.5 million when it was re-listed in July, a curious choice in a generally declining market.

• 6036 Rainbow Heights Road | Rainbow, 92028
• Current owner: Marrocco Family Trust | Listing price: $11,500,000 | Beds: 4 | Baths: 3 | House size: 3568 sq ft